Are We Living in a Post Blurb Economy?
"Big if true." --Kate McKean author of....
Hi Friends,
I hope your experience of The Horrors, as my friend calls them, broadly, is as painless as possible. I hope you call your senators and representatives as often as possible.
In brighter publishing news, Simon & Schuster, the flagship imprint1 of the publisher Simon & Schuster, said they aren’t going to require authors and editors to get blurbs for their books anymore. They didn’t require them in the first place, as a formal policy, but Publisher Sean Manning said they’re going to move away from them as the cornerstone, or prerequisite, or any marketing plan.
Is that good? Is that bad? Does that mean there will never be another blurb?
Before I tackle, or don’t, those questions, let’s go over some basics.
What’s a blurb?
A blurb is an endorsement for a book typically used in the marketing of said book. A blurb can come from an author or a review. They traffic in the name recognition of who’s doing the blurbing. A blurb from a well-known author is worth more than a blurb from someone just off the street. A blurb from a review in a well-known newspaper, website, or magazine is worth more than…. you get the picture.
What does a blurb do?
Oh, if we only knew. I mean, we mostly know what they do. They signal to a prospective buyer that hey, someone you have heard of likes this book you have never heard of. Personally, I look at the tone of the blurbs to get a sense of the vibes of a book. If they all say gripping, tense, edge-of-my-seat and I’m looking for a cozy read, maybe that book is not for me right then. No one knows, however, if blurbs directly lead to sales. I mean, there is no way to track that Blurb A led 486 people to buy the book and Blurb B led 1267 people to buy the book. There is just no way to track that. No one wants that level of tracking when it comes to book buying, especially not in These Troubled Times.
Publicists I’ve talked to say that blurbs are very useful to them because they mean something to other people in their ecosystem. If they’re pitching a book to a morning show and can say hey, listen to this great blurb we got from JD Salinger, that can make the morning show take notice. Because it’s doing the thing it’s supposed to do: someone you have heard of likes this book you have never heard of. It’s also a reason to follow up, says Michael Goldsmith, senior director of publicity at Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House. He says, a “new blurb warrants an excuse for selective follow ups beyond the cadence of others or normal pitching.” This is great, and a great use of blurbs. But other things besides blurbs can be used in this way. If there are other things.
How do blurbs happen?
The agent, editor, author, marketing and publicity teams all get together (in email, in person, over zoom) and say who do we know? and who would be perfect to blurb this book? Those can be two different lists. The author might say oh, I’m good internet friends with XYZ, I can ask them. The agent might say, oh, my client PDQ is super into snakes and I can ask if they want to take a look at this. Editor might say, remember that big book three years ago with the hot air balloon on the cover? Let’s ask them. I know their agent. A list is made, divided, and conquered. Emails are sent. Fingers are crossed.
How does an author blurb a book?
Any way they want! No, but usually the author will be given an electronic copy of the book, or if available, a galley or early print copy of the book, and they’re told the ideal time frame by which the publisher would like the blurb. The publisher will say we’d love to hear back by March 15th to showcase your blurb on the galley, or by May 3rd for the final jacket. (Sometimes it’s early enough that the publisher can print a blurb on the galley, but sometimes it’s not.) If a blurb comes in after those deadlines, it’s ok, too. The publisher with use it in other marketing materials, like those graphics you see on Instagram or in product information on online retailers.
To create the blurb, an author who’s trying to market their last book and write their next one and make 400 toddler snacks a day or walk an elderly dog or reckon with the collapse of Democracy or whatever, reads the book and tells people what they think about it, in such a way that makes the end user go ohhhh, that book sounds great I want to buy it. Ideally, they’ll think of a nice thing to say with the goal of enticing others to read. If for some reason the author doesn’t want to blurb the book, that’s ok, too. They can beg off gracefully, usually saying something like oh gee, I just didn’t have time to get to this. Sorry! Everyone understands and this is fine.
Does anyone get paid for blurbs?
NO. The thinking goes that authors blurbed you once, and you can return the favor one day. Asking to blurb a book is a compliment. Sometimes you get to read super super cool books before everyone else does. But it is also work. It’s not sponcon. It’s an honest review.
Are blurbs dead?
No. I don’t think so. Blurbs aren’t even dead at the whole of Simon & Schuster, and certainly not anywhere else. I just had a blurb conversation yesterday. I think blurbs will always be in the marketing and publicity toolkit. They should be. They can really work! But I think the pressure might ease off a bit, in some ways, in some places. Maybe publishers and agents can still throw their weight around for books that really needs those blurbs, like debuts and sophomore books, or for marginalized voices. That takes more work, but it’s worth it. Blurbs take a lot of time, all around. To make the list of names, to write the emails, to find the contacts, to send, to follow up and follow up and follow up on. We’re all too busy to get 15 blurbs for each book. Maybe this move, this popping of blurb inflation, will focus efforts instead of erase them. It’s tough to ask anyone to work harder right now. But maybe we’ll work smarter, not harder now.
Contrary to my clickbait headline, this is not a post-blurb economy. One day, I will be asked to blurb something and I will be honored. (The next fifteen asks, if any, will be less shiny.)
Speaking of blurbs, sort of, I just read a book I liked and I wanted to tell you about it:
I actually got it first from the publisher (Thanks, Harper Muse!) via NetGalley, an industry site where publishing people can get review copies, and then I ended up buying it in audiobook form because that’s how I like to consume this kind of book. I finished it last night on the couch while knitting and it was a wholly relaxing and restorative experience. ACE, MARVEL, SPY is the story of real life tennis champ Alice Marble who, among many other things, becomes a WWII spy. She’s plucky and funny and the book is highly engaging. This is exactly the kind of historical fiction I like—someone told a woman she couldn’t do something, and she did it anyway. Highly recommend!
In the comments, please provide blurbs for this newsletter that I can use when I promote my book. :) :) :) More news on that coming soon!
OXOXOXOX,
Kate
Remember, an imprint is like a brand, a line of books within a publisher, with a certain purview or style.
One thing that I think is missing from the blurb conversation is that it gets authors to ACTUALLY READ the book (and do so in advance of publication). I know my own TBR is always at risk of toppling, and despite best intentions I don't always get around to reading books by internet mutuals in a timely manner (and sometimes at all).
If I've read it to blurb, I'm ready to talk about it at launch and promote it in a more specific way than "my friend did a thing." This might not apply to all authors, but I think especially in getting authors with strong platforms to act as surrogates, the blurb process works in a back door way to do that.
It makes sense to me if blurbs go away. They have lured me into buying a few books, but I don’t trust them anymore. Too often, halfway through the read, I’ve ended up wondering if the blurber is the writer’s close personal friend. Maybe his lawyer, or girlfriend? Like the book is objectively not “a searing prose freight train of human heart,” okay? Blurber, you should have just said it “feels like a Netflix limited series produced in Belgium.”