“No Hyperbole Can Be Hyperbolic Enough”
March 8, 2023 3:58 PM Subscribe
When a galley arrives, many blurbers read no more than the publisher’s plot summary which is written by the editor or publicity department or both. It is then quite easy for a blurber to riff off of what they’ve been supplied. Blurbs generally share a common format across all genres of books: Author praise: “A talented writer who…”; “Her intelligence is such that….” One-word gushing: “electrifying”; “gripping.” Two-word slobbering: “wickedly smart”; “hauntingly beautiful.” Dubious equivalences: “as satisfying as it is unsettling”; “as sharply conceived as it is brilliantly written.” from Beware of Book Blurbs by GD Dess [The Millions]
By coincidence, I was recently asked to write a blurb for the first time. The request came from an editor I don't know, at a publishing house that publishes none of my books, for an author I didn't know and had never read before. I said I'd read the book and give it a blurb if I liked it. That seemed reasonable enough to me.
That isn't to say it always works that way; in fact, I'd be surprised if the linked article wasn't correct for the most part. I do have to say, though, that I find some of the article's evidence a little bit, well... "The blurbs said this was a good book, but it was in fact a bad book!" I mean, maybe, but that seems rather subjective.
Be that as it may, I mostly agree -- including with the bit at the end where the author says that most people probably don't actually pay all that much attention to blurbs, anyway. I pretty much only use them for genre placement -- "Oh, the publisher thought that this book was similar in style to this other author, because they asked for a blurb."
posted by kyrademon at 4:30 PM on March 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
That isn't to say it always works that way; in fact, I'd be surprised if the linked article wasn't correct for the most part. I do have to say, though, that I find some of the article's evidence a little bit, well... "The blurbs said this was a good book, but it was in fact a bad book!" I mean, maybe, but that seems rather subjective.
Be that as it may, I mostly agree -- including with the bit at the end where the author says that most people probably don't actually pay all that much attention to blurbs, anyway. I pretty much only use them for genre placement -- "Oh, the publisher thought that this book was similar in style to this other author, because they asked for a blurb."
posted by kyrademon at 4:30 PM on March 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
“No Hyperbole Can Be Hyperbolic Enough”
That's a rather hyperbolic statement, isn't it?
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:40 PM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
That's a rather hyperbolic statement, isn't it?
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:40 PM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
But can a parabola be sufficiently parabolic?
posted by pipeski at 5:02 PM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by pipeski at 5:02 PM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
This article was cloy incisive! The author has a great future ahead!
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:07 PM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:07 PM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
I still want to build a site that collects book blurbs. It could have user-created content, and auto-generated charts of interlocking relationships, and could let people search for e.g. all books blurbed by Stephen King, or everyone who ever co-signed a Val McDermid.
I’m still not remotely qualified to make something like that, and I don’t know that the audience for such a thing is a whole lot bigger than myself, so…
posted by box at 5:32 PM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
I’m still not remotely qualified to make something like that, and I don’t know that the audience for such a thing is a whole lot bigger than myself, so…
posted by box at 5:32 PM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
I meant to type “very,” but autocorrect discerned my true meaning….
More seriously, although the article addresses this, I’m unconvinced that very many read books because of blurbs. They’re just so… ignorable.
My favorite blurb is one by Lovecraft for Chamber’s The King n Yellow. It’s from the essay “Supernatural Horror and Literature,” where Lovecraft says:
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:33 PM on March 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
More seriously, although the article addresses this, I’m unconvinced that very many read books because of blurbs. They’re just so… ignorable.
My favorite blurb is one by Lovecraft for Chamber’s The King n Yellow. It’s from the essay “Supernatural Horror and Literature,” where Lovecraft says:
The King in Yellow, a series of vaguely connected short stories having as a background a monstrous and suppressed book whose perusal brings fright, madness, and spectral tragedy, really achieves notable heights of cosmic fear in spite of uneven interest and a somewhat trivial and affected cultivation of the Gallic studio atmosphere made popular by Du Maurier’s Trilby.which gets blurbed as “notable heights of cosmic fear,” which, yes, the words are there….
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:33 PM on March 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
Blurbs for academic books are very frequently pulled from the peer review reports and/or solicited from one of said peer reviewers, so there's sometimes a bit of a reveal going on for the author. I've written one blurb and have also been pull-quoted to humorous effect (the review basically said that the book might be thought-provoking for someone who really knew the field, but was misleading for anyone who didn't; that is...not how the pull-quote went).
posted by thomas j wise at 5:38 PM on March 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by thomas j wise at 5:38 PM on March 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
box: I still want to build a site that collects book blurbs.
I actually started building that, years ago. The real challenge, from my experience, is gathering all the blurbs, although it would probably be a lot easier now with so many blurbs online, and decent scraping tools readily available.
posted by kristi at 5:44 PM on March 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
I actually started building that, years ago. The real challenge, from my experience, is gathering all the blurbs, although it would probably be a lot easier now with so many blurbs online, and decent scraping tools readily available.
posted by kristi at 5:44 PM on March 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
But can a parabola be sufficiently parabolic?
Only if it has a really good story arc.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:49 PM on March 8, 2023 [17 favorites]
Only if it has a really good story arc.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:49 PM on March 8, 2023 [17 favorites]
Jail.
posted by grobstein at 5:54 PM on March 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by grobstein at 5:54 PM on March 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
"I didn't dare put it down."
I don't know what it means, but I'd like to put that on a book jacket someday.
posted by hippybear at 6:19 PM on March 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
I don't know what it means, but I'd like to put that on a book jacket someday.
posted by hippybear at 6:19 PM on March 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
I actually started building that, years ago. The real challenge, from my experience, is gathering all the blurbs, although it would probably be a lot easier now with so many blurbs online, and decent scraping tools readily available.
If you could find a source for training, you could train a machine learning bot to look at book jackets posted to Amazon and extract the blurbs but not the titles and other cruft.
posted by hippybear at 6:21 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
If you could find a source for training, you could train a machine learning bot to look at book jackets posted to Amazon and extract the blurbs but not the titles and other cruft.
posted by hippybear at 6:21 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
I would be thrilled if someone described my writing as having a “certain something which makes you want to crawl through thirty miles of dense tropical jungle and bite somebody in the neck”.
That’s the true purpose of great literature.
posted by betweenthebars at 6:22 PM on March 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
That’s the true purpose of great literature.
posted by betweenthebars at 6:22 PM on March 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
As opposed to "making me feeling like I crawled through..." etc.
posted by hippybear at 6:22 PM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 6:22 PM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
(Although if cinema is Literature, then All's Quiet On The Western Front" accomplished that.)
posted by hippybear at 6:23 PM on March 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 6:23 PM on March 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
Blurbs are such an odd thing. You need to pick up the book and turn it over to read them. Then you presumably have to have heard of the blurbers to be swayed by their words. And also be unaware that blurbs are... blurbs. That's an increasingly narrow funnel given how many books are consumed in formats that don't have a back cover, how we often pick up books at random anyway, and how transparently the blurbs themselves read as hyberbole. Maybe it's as much a ritual as a marketing tactic.
posted by pipeski at 6:30 PM on March 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by pipeski at 6:30 PM on March 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
No but like I think telling a lie to encourage someone to spend hours of their lives doing something you haven't bothered to learn thing one about is actually quite wrong.
I guess the more defensible shade of this practice is giving special praise for reasons of loyalty and duty, as Shteyngart describes:
Professors' recommendations letters are a bit like this, I think. (By reputation, American profs' recommendation letters are like blurbs that all say "electrifying," and the Brits are possibly like this except instead of "electrifying" they say "possibly decent, may not be a complete waste of your time, in the worst case you can use it to prop up a table.") The reason you're writing the blurb is because you have a personal connection to the author, but you can tell yourself you really think it's electrifying, too.
Similarly, if you're blurbing a book out of pure log-rolling / back-scratching, to do a favor for someone you think might be able to help you, you can tell yourself you really think the book is an indispensable commentary on whatever. Well, at least if you read it. If you didn't I feel like your self-respect deficit is more serious. Even then you could say the author is a sharp and discerning so and so.
As with the case of recommendation letters, there may be some blurb language that is harder to just shit out. Like if you say, "This is my best student in 25 years," you put something on the line, at least if you are writing to someone who is any kind of colleague. Similarly, a blurb writer presumably can't go around saying every author is "our best living writer," so maybe that means something.
Blurbers can also try to pick words of praise that are surprising rather than generic and so convey some information even if all the claims about quality have to be discarded. From the piece: "The blurbs for her recently released collection Normal Distance state that [Elisa] Gabbert [someone I know very slightly and like] is a 'restless thinker' calling her new work 'casually brilliant.'" This praise may or may not be hyperbolic (I haven't read the book), but at least it's not completely generic.
It does seem like any work of aspirationally high-toned fiction gets praised in ridiculous terms by at least a book-cover's worth of people who should presumably know better. The linked piece by Christian Lorentzen helps us out by including some example prose from American Dirt, which sounds very bad indeed. And he in turn links to a characteristically stupid piece by Pamela Paul praising the novel and saying people were mean to it! (Sounds like the Woke Mob may have been at fault.)
Lorentzen:
I guess the more defensible shade of this practice is giving special praise for reasons of loyalty and duty, as Shteyngart describes:
he said he would go on blurbing for “all former, present, and future students of mine at Columbia University; authors of my Random House editor, David Ebershoff; authors of my agent, Denise Shannon; my B.F.F.s”
Professors' recommendations letters are a bit like this, I think. (By reputation, American profs' recommendation letters are like blurbs that all say "electrifying," and the Brits are possibly like this except instead of "electrifying" they say "possibly decent, may not be a complete waste of your time, in the worst case you can use it to prop up a table.") The reason you're writing the blurb is because you have a personal connection to the author, but you can tell yourself you really think it's electrifying, too.
Similarly, if you're blurbing a book out of pure log-rolling / back-scratching, to do a favor for someone you think might be able to help you, you can tell yourself you really think the book is an indispensable commentary on whatever. Well, at least if you read it. If you didn't I feel like your self-respect deficit is more serious. Even then you could say the author is a sharp and discerning so and so.
As with the case of recommendation letters, there may be some blurb language that is harder to just shit out. Like if you say, "This is my best student in 25 years," you put something on the line, at least if you are writing to someone who is any kind of colleague. Similarly, a blurb writer presumably can't go around saying every author is "our best living writer," so maybe that means something.
Blurbers can also try to pick words of praise that are surprising rather than generic and so convey some information even if all the claims about quality have to be discarded. From the piece: "The blurbs for her recently released collection Normal Distance state that [Elisa] Gabbert [someone I know very slightly and like] is a 'restless thinker' calling her new work 'casually brilliant.'" This praise may or may not be hyperbolic (I haven't read the book), but at least it's not completely generic.
It does seem like any work of aspirationally high-toned fiction gets praised in ridiculous terms by at least a book-cover's worth of people who should presumably know better. The linked piece by Christian Lorentzen helps us out by including some example prose from American Dirt, which sounds very bad indeed. And he in turn links to a characteristically stupid piece by Pamela Paul praising the novel and saying people were mean to it! (Sounds like the Woke Mob may have been at fault.)
Lorentzen:
Paul writes that “publishers have become wary of what is now thought of as Another American Dirt Situation, which is to say, a book that puts its author and publishing house in the line of fire.” Maybe publishers are actually afraid that they are stupid. But they are not stupid. They are actually pretty good at knowing what sells. They are afraid that their cynical marketing campaigns can’t thread the needle between exploitative, pornographic, commercial trash and virtue-endowing social justice literature. Obviously the ability to thread that needle could be tremendously lucrative. And in fact, American Dirt was a bestseller for months. The book made its publisher and its author a lot of money. The backlash from critics, foremost among them Myriam Gurba, could not stop that. Paul writes that Cummins has not since been asked to blurb another author’s book. Boo-hoo!posted by grobstein at 6:33 PM on March 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
"Un-putdownable" should be on Michio Kaku's gravestone
posted by aspersioncast at 8:18 PM on March 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by aspersioncast at 8:18 PM on March 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
I feel like the author missed the opportunity to note that calling your book A Heartbreaking work of staggering genius is poking fun at blurbing , but maybe that’s supposed to be an exercise left to the reader.
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:26 PM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:26 PM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
This discussion isn't complete without Groucho Marx's endorsement of a book by S. J. Perelman: "From the moment I picked it up until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:30 PM on March 8, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:30 PM on March 8, 2023 [13 favorites]
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend." &etc.
posted by hippybear at 8:36 PM on March 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 8:36 PM on March 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
(I'm starting to appreciate the Wodehouse form of making a joke. "The f of the s is more d than the m" is in and of itself a wit because you have to decipher it and you feel clever and so haha hoho.
For a while I'd tell a shaggy dog story just by explaining there was a very long joke leading up to the punchline, and then deliver the punchline. "Only Hugh can prevent florist friars." It often sufficed.)
posted by hippybear at 8:39 PM on March 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
For a while I'd tell a shaggy dog story just by explaining there was a very long joke leading up to the punchline, and then deliver the punchline. "Only Hugh can prevent florist friars." It often sufficed.)
posted by hippybear at 8:39 PM on March 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
You could always take the Iain Banks approach. The trade paperback version of The Wasp Factory and pages and pages of quotes from people and reviews about how demented and evil the book was.
posted by tavella at 11:21 PM on March 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by tavella at 11:21 PM on March 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
Another game you can play is to read the publisher's plot summary on a book's back cover and then see how far its writer bothered to read before bashing it out. Hint: it's very seldom past page 20.
Two favourite blurbs which have always stuck in my mind:
"A flat-out ballbuster. Sabbag is a whip-song writer." - Hunter S. Thompson on Richard Sabbag's Snow Blind.
"The best book ever written by man or woman. Deserves to sell more copies than the Bible." - Rebel Inc (a small Scottish literary magazine) on Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting.
As it happens, both books were excellent, so I don't resent the hyperbole in those cases.
Finally, does anyone else remember Spy magazine's old Logrolling in our Time feature? They'd run one blurb with Author X praising Author Y, immediately followed by one where their roles were reversed. The suggestion was that there was nothing much going on here beyond a bit of mural back-scratching.
posted by Paul Slade at 11:35 PM on March 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
Two favourite blurbs which have always stuck in my mind:
"A flat-out ballbuster. Sabbag is a whip-song writer." - Hunter S. Thompson on Richard Sabbag's Snow Blind.
"The best book ever written by man or woman. Deserves to sell more copies than the Bible." - Rebel Inc (a small Scottish literary magazine) on Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting.
As it happens, both books were excellent, so I don't resent the hyperbole in those cases.
Finally, does anyone else remember Spy magazine's old Logrolling in our Time feature? They'd run one blurb with Author X praising Author Y, immediately followed by one where their roles were reversed. The suggestion was that there was nothing much going on here beyond a bit of mural back-scratching.
posted by Paul Slade at 11:35 PM on March 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
This discussion isn't complete without Groucho Marx's endorsement of a book by S. J. Perelman: "From the moment I picked it up until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."
See also Dorthy Parker: "This is not a book to be lightly tossed aside. It should be hurled with great force." (Anyone know which book she was talking about?)
posted by Paul Slade at 11:58 PM on March 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
See also Dorthy Parker: "This is not a book to be lightly tossed aside. It should be hurled with great force." (Anyone know which book she was talking about?)
posted by Paul Slade at 11:58 PM on March 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
Few writers decline to blurb a book
This isn't true; if it were, the blurb process wouldn't favour the well-connected as much as it does.
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 12:40 AM on March 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
This isn't true; if it were, the blurb process wouldn't favour the well-connected as much as it does.
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 12:40 AM on March 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A-Z of Literary Persuasion by Louise Willder is unutterably lovely.
posted by Calvin and the Duplicators at 12:51 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Calvin and the Duplicators at 12:51 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A-Z of Literary Persuasion by Louise Willder is unutterably lovely.
a-and it has its own blurbs!
'The bookiest book about books you'll ever read - I loved it.' - Lucy Mangan, author of Bookworm
posted by chavenet at 2:52 AM on March 9, 2023
a-and it has its own blurbs!
'The bookiest book about books you'll ever read - I loved it.' - Lucy Mangan, author of Bookworm
posted by chavenet at 2:52 AM on March 9, 2023
The wick.ed.ly talented
posted by BlunderingArtist at 3:13 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by BlunderingArtist at 3:13 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
It seems to me there was a time, maybe 20 or 30 years ago, when I could get information out of blurbs. Not from the text of the blurbs, but it the blurbs were from authors I liked, I would probably like the book, and if they were from authors I didn't like, probably not. More recently, blurbs are more likely to be from people I've never heard of (to be fair, I'm not as caught up on recent fiction) or group sites like Publishers Weekly or the Chicago Plain Dealer.
I think blurbers are less carefully chosen to suit the book than they used to be, and it's harder to to find a blurb that actually suits the book. That last is obviously a result of more generic blurbs.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:26 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think blurbers are less carefully chosen to suit the book than they used to be, and it's harder to to find a blurb that actually suits the book. That last is obviously a result of more generic blurbs.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:26 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Blurbs are very useful. The more blurbs a book has, the more you know nepotism rather than writing ability contributed to it getting published. Stephen King wrote a review for this? Then the author is very well placed in the publishing industry. Mary Balogh blurbed this? There will be NO deviation from the publishers outline, and it was very likely was written by her same stable of ghost writers. Seven blurbs from people I never heard of? Author networks in a small community, probably members of their own writing group.
As for the content of the blurbs themselves, the more they read like they were written by a ChatGPT who was given a select vocabulary of thrilling words, the more you know that work is going to be so dense, narcissitic and unsatisfying that you can only conclude the person who wrote the blurb was unable to finish it. In fact, Gary Shteyngart, a well-regarded author who writes blurbs, has described the way they are written in these words:
"I'll look at a first sentence [of a galley], I'll look at the cover and it just comes to me. Reading randomly from a book is also very helpful. Sometimes I try to read further — but you know, how far can you get? Does anyone even read these books anymore?"
I find it is far more useful to read the first sentence and a random passage myself than to read the blurbs - the more hype, the less substance, is a safe conclusion.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:06 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
As for the content of the blurbs themselves, the more they read like they were written by a ChatGPT who was given a select vocabulary of thrilling words, the more you know that work is going to be so dense, narcissitic and unsatisfying that you can only conclude the person who wrote the blurb was unable to finish it. In fact, Gary Shteyngart, a well-regarded author who writes blurbs, has described the way they are written in these words:
"I'll look at a first sentence [of a galley], I'll look at the cover and it just comes to me. Reading randomly from a book is also very helpful. Sometimes I try to read further — but you know, how far can you get? Does anyone even read these books anymore?"
I find it is far more useful to read the first sentence and a random passage myself than to read the blurbs - the more hype, the less substance, is a safe conclusion.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:06 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't read the blurbs, I just look at who wrote them. It's a much better tell for whether I'll like the book than the blurbs themselves. If the book is by someone I haven't heard of, and there are Names on the cover, that's good. If I don't know any of the names, that's probably bad. If it's an SF book by not-a-man and the blurb writers are also not men that's very, very good.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:08 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:08 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think blurbers are less carefully chosen to suit the book than they used to be, and it's harder to to find a blurb that actually suits the book.
In the UK (I assume similar may be true of the US) this feels part of a publishing tendency to underappreciate market positioning. Marketing efforts are very general - a few lead titles are given a huge push at an undifferentiated public.
One thing I found a bit frustrating about the article was a flattening of the conditions authors blurb in. Brand name authors frequently close to advance copies because they get overwhelmed with more requests for cover quotes than they could reasonably respond to. Among the midlisters I know, there's a pervasive awareness of how few authors benefit from any marketing spend, which shapes their willingness to at least consider reading the proof, because they could be helping out a good writer without much marketing activity. The strategic blurring of whether cover quotes are a review rather than - more accurately - a line of advertising copy is also surely more likely to happen given traditional reviewing is in decline and publishers don't want to cough up for unambiguous advertising for the majority of their authors. I'd be happy to see an end to cover quotes - as a customer I pick based on a random paragraph as suggested above - but there's some nuance to the ways authors end up complying.
Probably worth pointing out too that some of the perceived value of blurbs isn't their appeal to potential reader, but the building of hype within the industry. I say this somewhat ruefully, after sitting in a recent film rights meeting where the possibility of high profile endorsements was discussed (the book is yet to hit the shelves).
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 6:16 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
In the UK (I assume similar may be true of the US) this feels part of a publishing tendency to underappreciate market positioning. Marketing efforts are very general - a few lead titles are given a huge push at an undifferentiated public.
One thing I found a bit frustrating about the article was a flattening of the conditions authors blurb in. Brand name authors frequently close to advance copies because they get overwhelmed with more requests for cover quotes than they could reasonably respond to. Among the midlisters I know, there's a pervasive awareness of how few authors benefit from any marketing spend, which shapes their willingness to at least consider reading the proof, because they could be helping out a good writer without much marketing activity. The strategic blurring of whether cover quotes are a review rather than - more accurately - a line of advertising copy is also surely more likely to happen given traditional reviewing is in decline and publishers don't want to cough up for unambiguous advertising for the majority of their authors. I'd be happy to see an end to cover quotes - as a customer I pick based on a random paragraph as suggested above - but there's some nuance to the ways authors end up complying.
Probably worth pointing out too that some of the perceived value of blurbs isn't their appeal to potential reader, but the building of hype within the industry. I say this somewhat ruefully, after sitting in a recent film rights meeting where the possibility of high profile endorsements was discussed (the book is yet to hit the shelves).
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 6:16 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Not from the text of the blurbs, but it the blurbs were from authors I liked, I would probably like the book, and if they were from authors I didn't like, probably not.
I thought that, but I got burned. A couple years ago, I bought a book (Scarlett Thomas's The Seed Collectors) because of an effusive blurb by Neil Gaiman. Given that I enjoy Gaiman's books, and that he struck me as the type who would not give a blurb unless he really meant it, I figured that was good enough for me. I also assumed that the blurb by Gaiman (the only blurb on the book, as I recall) was meant to imply that there would be some sort of fantastical element to the story.
Reader, I hated that fucking book. Dreary, ugly, filled with horrible characters doing horrible things. There was in fact a passing, minor fantastical element, but it was so tangential and unimportant to the story that it seemed tacked on.
Sorry Neil, never again.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 6:56 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I thought that, but I got burned. A couple years ago, I bought a book (Scarlett Thomas's The Seed Collectors) because of an effusive blurb by Neil Gaiman. Given that I enjoy Gaiman's books, and that he struck me as the type who would not give a blurb unless he really meant it, I figured that was good enough for me. I also assumed that the blurb by Gaiman (the only blurb on the book, as I recall) was meant to imply that there would be some sort of fantastical element to the story.
Reader, I hated that fucking book. Dreary, ugly, filled with horrible characters doing horrible things. There was in fact a passing, minor fantastical element, but it was so tangential and unimportant to the story that it seemed tacked on.
Sorry Neil, never again.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 6:56 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I am asked to write a decent number of blurbs. I say no more often than I say yes. I would never write a blurb just from the publicity material. I don't think I'm atypical. Also, Elisa Gabbert's new book of poems is really good. So all in all, I didn't really care for this article.
posted by escabeche at 6:59 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by escabeche at 6:59 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
The word "blurb" has appears so many times in this thread it's beginning to not look like a word to me.
posted by hippybear at 7:20 AM on March 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 7:20 AM on March 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb
posted by kyrademon at 9:36 AM on March 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by kyrademon at 9:36 AM on March 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
"One of the best threads ever on MetaFilter - top notch insights, dry wit, and plenty of beans. A real page turner scroll wheel burner! And just when you think its over - there's the refresh button!"
posted by nubs at 9:47 AM on March 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by nubs at 9:47 AM on March 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
Someone get the Flextape, kyrademon's sprung a leak!
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:17 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:17 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
A while ago I decided to not read any book which had the phrase "stunning tour-de-force" in a blurb, and I don't feel like I've missed anything.
posted by indexy at 11:00 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by indexy at 11:00 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
The site Fantastic Fiction lists blurbs an author has given for other books when you look up that author's page, although I doubt it is exhaustive. Here is Stephen King
posted by lizard music at 11:38 AM on March 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by lizard music at 11:38 AM on March 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Yeah, blurbs ...
I get asked for cover blurbs quite frequently. (Often by editors who think of me because of stuff I wrote decades ago, and my interests have long since moved on.) Anyway, I have some personal rules ...
1. I won't blurb anything I haven't read a substantial amount of. Ideally the entire book; minimum, 50% of a book by an author whose other books I have finished and whose work I enjoy. Writing a blurb on the basis of the cover copy is awful. Writing a blurb on the basis of only reading 60% of a book ... I did it last month. It's a great book by one of my favourite authors, it's just that I have an allergy to Westerns and wouldn't normally have looked at it at all. (But other folks will like it, and the blurb isn't for me, so I ploughed as far through it as I could ...)
2. I won't provide a blurb for a book I don't like a lot—at least not any more. (After that one time when I had a furious argument with myself over whether or not to provide a blurb—the book annoyed the hell out of me, even though I finished it—and finally did so: it was a first novel, it wasn't terrible, I could see other people might like it, so ... but that book went on to beat a vastly better book (which I actually loved the hell out of) to the bottom nomination slot on the Hugo ballot in its year. And The Expanse didn't really need my blurb.) Anyway, that's why I blame myself for The Quantum Thief not having made the Hugos.
3. If I'm going to volunteer a blurb at all, I want to offer something that tells readers why they should read it, not just an incoherent word or phrase. Something like, oh, the cover quote for Gideon the Ninth.
4. Message to editors: "I won't automatically blurb a manuscript for you but if you don't send it to me I can't guiltily ignore it."
And 5: It's all about marketing. Not just for the book I'm wracking my brain trying to think of something positive to say about, but also for me. I don't want my name on the back cover of something I disagree with or dislike. Readers remember who praised a book that stuck with them, whether for the right or wrong reasons, and they hold grudges.
posted by cstross at 11:43 AM on March 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
I get asked for cover blurbs quite frequently. (Often by editors who think of me because of stuff I wrote decades ago, and my interests have long since moved on.) Anyway, I have some personal rules ...
1. I won't blurb anything I haven't read a substantial amount of. Ideally the entire book; minimum, 50% of a book by an author whose other books I have finished and whose work I enjoy. Writing a blurb on the basis of the cover copy is awful. Writing a blurb on the basis of only reading 60% of a book ... I did it last month. It's a great book by one of my favourite authors, it's just that I have an allergy to Westerns and wouldn't normally have looked at it at all. (But other folks will like it, and the blurb isn't for me, so I ploughed as far through it as I could ...)
2. I won't provide a blurb for a book I don't like a lot—at least not any more. (After that one time when I had a furious argument with myself over whether or not to provide a blurb—the book annoyed the hell out of me, even though I finished it—and finally did so: it was a first novel, it wasn't terrible, I could see other people might like it, so ... but that book went on to beat a vastly better book (which I actually loved the hell out of) to the bottom nomination slot on the Hugo ballot in its year. And The Expanse didn't really need my blurb.) Anyway, that's why I blame myself for The Quantum Thief not having made the Hugos.
3. If I'm going to volunteer a blurb at all, I want to offer something that tells readers why they should read it, not just an incoherent word or phrase. Something like, oh, the cover quote for Gideon the Ninth.
4. Message to editors: "I won't automatically blurb a manuscript for you but if you don't send it to me I can't guiltily ignore it."
And 5: It's all about marketing. Not just for the book I'm wracking my brain trying to think of something positive to say about, but also for me. I don't want my name on the back cover of something I disagree with or dislike. Readers remember who praised a book that stuck with them, whether for the right or wrong reasons, and they hold grudges.
posted by cstross at 11:43 AM on March 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
If there's one thing I believe, it's that the worst would definitely never be full of passionate intensity.
posted by grobstein at 11:47 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by grobstein at 11:47 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
My favorite blurb is by William Gibson, who described Sandman Slim as “The best B-movie I’ve ever read,” which is absolutely accurate and how I market it to all my friends.
Something like, oh, the cover quote for Gideon the Ninth.
I maintain that this quote overpromised on the amount of necromancy and time spent in space one could expect from the novel, thought the lesbian content did deliver. But said quote certainly did sell the book.
posted by brook horse at 5:52 PM on March 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Something like, oh, the cover quote for Gideon the Ninth.
I maintain that this quote overpromised on the amount of necromancy and time spent in space one could expect from the novel, thought the lesbian content did deliver. But said quote certainly did sell the book.
posted by brook horse at 5:52 PM on March 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
The sequels contain more lesbians, more necromancy, and more space.
posted by kyrademon at 7:11 PM on March 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by kyrademon at 7:11 PM on March 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
William Gibson, who described Sandman Slim as “The best B-movie I’ve ever read,”
That's good enough for me, Mr Gibson. I've just bought a copy.
posted by Paul Slade at 11:37 PM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
That's good enough for me, Mr Gibson. I've just bought a copy.
posted by Paul Slade at 11:37 PM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I write blurbs for other books, and I beg other people to write blurbs for me. Generally, I am asked by people who don't know me, but they have written/edited something hella queer in the YA space. Generally, I ask people I don't know, through my agent, because it's weird to ask your friends to compliment you. This may be different in the adult space, YMMV, etc..
In my very EARLY career, however, we were all desperate for blurbs and we blurbed each other, and none of them actually got printed, because booksellers don't care if Unknown Debut Author things Unknown Debut Novel is "timeless."
posted by headspace at 10:11 AM on March 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
In my very EARLY career, however, we were all desperate for blurbs and we blurbed each other, and none of them actually got printed, because booksellers don't care if Unknown Debut Author things Unknown Debut Novel is "timeless."
posted by headspace at 10:11 AM on March 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
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posted by an octopus IRL at 4:22 PM on March 8, 2023 [19 favorites]