Hey,

I love reading a sentence which stops me in my tracks. It’s a gift which the world readily supplies, which is a nice salve to, well, everything else going on.

The sentence?

When we think of the purchases we have made – especially expensive ones – we often weigh the logical aspects.

The miles per gallon. The restaurant review score. The free parking at that particular vendor of fine hams.

At least that’s how we like to view our purchases: driven by logic above all else.

In reality, this is something we retcon on the way home to our spouse. In the meeting with the bank manager as he reviews your mortgage application. (Or when reading his letter of refusal.)

But if we were truly honest with ourselves, or self-aware enough – we’re going deep this week! – then we would admit that all these purchasing decisions are really made with something else we lug around all day: emotion.

This isn’t just gut instinct developed during a life spent convincing others to buy things – it’s backed by research into the neuroscience of purchasing decisions, and how almost all that decision-making process happens subconsciously... despite what we may tell ourselves in the car home.

Why does this matter to you?

Well, if you want to convince someone to buy something you must reach them emotionally.

Emotion is what triggers the desire to purchase – sometimes an overwhelming desire that defies logic!

Reason might help seal the deal, and certainly helps justify it after the fact. But emotion is what serves it up on a platter.

To put it another way, logic might close a sale, but emotion is what hooks them in the first place, and if you don’t hook them, there is no sale to close.

I’d go further again.

Most good books are written with emotion. Most terrible ones are written with logic. “This happens, and then this happens, and then this big thing happens too.”

Boring, right?

But we do this all the time. Maybe not in our books so much (one hopes!), but often in our blurbs and all our reader-facing marketing.

Emails, covers, ads, website copy – too much logic, not enough emotion.

Emotion is what grabs readers. It’s what sweeps them off their feet, what makes them fall in love with your stories and worlds and the characters you populate them with.

If you feel like your blurbs are flat, your ads aren’t landing with readers, or even that no one cares about your heroes, or your covers aren’t getting enough clicks, then change tack.

Put logic to one side and get emotional instead. Remember: Art Is A Container For Feelings.

Dave

P.S. Writing music this week is Desireless with Voyage Voyage.