Death to blurbs
We're all tired
Ciao,
I’ve been thinking about blurbs, the lines of advance praise that authors provide for one another’s books. ‘Gripping and necessary’ — Jane Austen, ‘Genre-imploding’ — Leo Tolstoy, ‘Pungent’ — P.G. Wodehouse, et cetera.
Recently I was one of the authors asked to weigh in on this Guardian article about a Simon & Schuster imprint’s recent decision to drop them. Here’s what I said:
Pragmatically speaking, I do give blurbs and am very grateful to receive them because as an individual author, you want to be supportive (and supported) within the industry as it currently stands. But I would be delighted if they were done away with. […] There are famous authors who give blurbs to complete strangers; I’ll never forget Hilary Mantel doing so for my first book. But by and large, blurbs reflect who’s friends with whom. It’s natural, and not at all a bad thing, for writers to find companionship with people whose work they admire. But I think we would all breathe easier in these intellectual friendships if our publishers didn’t constantly make us pester one another for glorified marketing copy.
Like finding an agent, blurbs can seem opaque to those outside the publishing industry. In fact the mechanisms are rather precise. I — and I’d imagine most authors — wind up giving blurbs one of three ways:
The direct approach: someone I personally know asks me to read their book and send their editor something nice. If I have the time and I genuinely admire their work, I do. More often than not I never get around to it because I already review a lot of new fiction, but once a year or so I manage. The fact that I can’t do more causes me constant fear that people will take it personally.
The cold call: An editor or publicist contacts me directly, goes via my agent, or gets my address from a colleague and sends me a proof without asking. The latter pisses me off because it’s a) a breach of privacy and b) wasteful; I move apartment every couple of years and I never have very much space, so I end up having to recycle most proofs I haven’t requested. (You’re not allowed to give them away – understandable for the author’s reputation given they’re uncorrected, but frustrating ecologically.) I sometimes wonder if publishers keep sending books to the apartments I’ve long since vacated and what the new tenant, let’s say Bruce who works for an instant noodle startup, makes of suddenly becoming a tastemaker for contemporary literary fiction. That said, I do blurb at least one complete stranger a year so I’m not just back-patting my mates.
The press extract: I’ve written a review or otherwise publicly praised the novel through an official outlet, and the publisher quotes what I said. This is my favourite way for it to happen; I prefer to meaningfully interpret a book than to send on ‘Stonking good — Naoise Dolan’.
A few years ago I gave a lot more blurbs than I currently do, partly because I was — let’s be honest — flattered to have been asked as someone whose own first novel was only just out, and partly because the exhaustion had not set in. I don’t regret the blurb-happy era. The novels were good and I stand by what I said about them. But it was never going to be sustainable in the long run.