By Edward Nawotka
Today’s feature editorial by Nico Vreeland considers the downside of deceptive jacket flap copy. Blurbing — that practice of soliciting favorable quotations from fellow authors — is an accepted practice in the book business, but one that is often less-than-forthright. As many have noted before, blurbs all-too-frequently overpraise a work in terms the author of the blurb would never use had they been reviewing the book. In short, they are rarely to be trusted.
What’s more, as Laura Miller pointed out in her astute essay on the topic last year in Salon:
When publishing people look at the lineup of testimonials on the back of a new hardcover, they don’t see hints as to what the book they’re holding might be like. Instead, they see evidence of who the author knows, the influence of his or her agent, and which MFA program in creative writing he or she attended. In other words, blurbs are a product of all the stuff people claim to hate about publishing: its cliquishness and insularity.
It can also be assumed that readers have by now caught on to these shenanigans. Few people I know buy a book because of a blurb; and almost all writers I know hate writing them. Blurbs written by booksellers are a better idea, but only just…The fact is: blurbs are a remnant of publishing’s B-to-B culture; they are written more for other publishers and booksellers than they are for readers.
So, isn’t it time we banish blurbs to the dustbin of history? Publishers have a limited amount of space on a book jacket to use as “advertising.” Couldn’t the space presently committed to blurbs be put to better use? If so, how?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
8 Comments
Blurbs to the dustbin? I fully agree. I never read them and if perchance I do, I certainly don’t believe in them.
Replacing them with excerpts of “real” assessment from a “real” critic might be far more effective. Or even calling it “praise from” and give a list of selected excerpts with the source it’s taken from…I should think that would work better. The fact that the blurb is written anonymously really gives it away as the work of a salesman – on par with washpowder!
As a reader I did catch on to blurbs being pretty much BS and then working in a bookstore they have become rather ridiculous. Sometimes I wonder how certain writers could possibly have the time to read all of the books they blurb and still write books of their own. I admit to picking up a book here and there that a favorite author has blurbed but I will rarely read them. (Sarah Waters’ blurb for Catherine Hall’s Days of Grace is the rare exception as it did prompt me to notice the book and then read it. I enjoyed it. Waters isn’t a blurb machine so her recommendation stuck out for me.) But just this week I started reading a new release by a favorite bestselling author that turned out to be a complete dud. The blurb on the front cover of this book is by a huge bestselling author who I’ve avoided reading and the blurbs on the back are by big names, too. One blurb writer on the back is a writer who has been on my list to read, but her recommendation of this book makes me wonder. Did these blurb writers actually read the book? I imagine authors are under pressure to write blubs, but I’d encourage them to protect their own reputations.
As a university press publisher, I can tell you that most of the blurbs on our new books (whether scholarship, fiction, or general nonfiction) come from people who have not only read the full manuscript but written a multi-page peer review critique of it, from which we then excerpt (with their permission) a brief blurb. Of course, not all peer review reports are positive, so then we don’t quote from them or don’t choose to publish the manuscript. A few of our blurbs come from people to whom we’ve sent the manuscript. We can’t be sure they read the whole ms, of course, but we can be sure they had it available to read.
On reprinted books, we’re often drawing quotes from published reviews, and of course we cite the name of the reviewer and of the publication where the review appeared.
How nice to know that an author is sufficiently familiar with known ‘names’ to impose on them for a compliment. But who really cares?
Now, quotes from reviews? That’s an entirely different matter. They might actually tell you something you’d be interested in knowing about the book.
As a self-published author I don’t bother with posting complimentary reviews or blurbs on the back cover or inside flyleaf, mostly because the buyer won’t see them until he/she gets the book. I post a short synopsis of the book’s subject and a short bio about me, along with a link to see my other books. Nuff said. I have often found such extra fluff useless, especially if I read a book and find that it does not live up to the hype.
I still read blurbs, looking for authors whose books I’ve enjoyed. I know they’re mostly political, but I get sucked in. It’s kind of like the excerpted reviews in movie trailers: “A masterpiece!” — USA Today
I like to imagine the context. “This certainly couldn’t be a masterpiece, but….”
I disagree. I personally do look at blurbs from time to time, especially if it’s from an author that I’ve heard of or metions a book title that I recognize / liked. I think the blurbs help to categorize unknown books a bit in a reader’s mind. “Hmm… this book has a blurb from Stephen King. It must be horror related.” It certainly helps to put things into perspective when confronted with a sea of books in a bookstore.
Similarly, a book with an ambiguous title is also helped quite a bit by blurbs. If a book called Blue Toads & Grasshoppers has a blurb from Paula Deen on it then I am probably going to *assume* that it is cooking related. The actual title doesn’t exactly hint at exotic Southern American food in anyway. If that same book is on a display table, out of context with its genre, then its title becomes even more confusing.
Does every blurb put on a book sell it? Hmm. No probably not. However, it does give a sense that other people have liked the book too. Of course now we are getting into buyer psychology and the fact that a lot of people gravitate towards things that others have already accepted as a quality item / product.
It is just one piece of an overall sales and marketing plan. Even “As Seen On TV” products have testimonials. And if the number of infomercials on late night TV is any indication, they sell quite well.
For the debut author, I think that one has to think beyond the bottom-line. The solicitation of author blurbs offers something more than a sales tool. It can be an introduction of one’s work to other members of the writing community (and if one writes within a genre, that can be incredibly powerful).
With my debut crime novel coming out in September, I contacted authors directly, none of whom I knew or ever met. They were all writers I respected with books that I had read. Essentially, I was asking a complete stranger for a huge favor.
The result was that I ended up blurbs from a range of authors, including: Tana French, Craig Johnson, Ray Banks, Sean Doolittle, and a handful more. Are the blurbs honest? I hope so, seeing as how they had nothing to gain. Will those quotes sell books? Who cares? I’ve made a connection to fellow writers that have made themselves available to me.
It is true that I question the effectiveness of the author blurb as a sales tool, but for an otherwise unknown author, anything that helps legitimize their work to the potential book-buyer can only be helpful.