On Blurbs

A quick think on them.

Hi friends.

I got interviewed for this article in the NYT about book blurbs and why they matter. I wrote a longer email response to the very nice Liz Egan so I thought I’d share my full thoughts from it.

But first, a little background: Last week there was this essay about why Simon & Schuster isn’t making authors get blurbs anymore. This seemed like it didn’t apply to me because (1) my fiction isn’t published by Simon & Schuster (only 1000 Words is) and (2) this seems like a plan that will only have real impact if every publisher decides to do it in order to level the playing field.

After I sent my email response, I texted with Maris and Jason about how we have less ways of publicizing and promoting our books now, so why take away another thing that might help us? And what do we replace the blurbs with? Our social media presence? It still ends up sounding like work for the author.

(By the way, Rebecca Makkai went long on blurbs recently, if you want to read her thoughts on it. Also she wrote another piece on it for the Book Review. I was interested to see that her time estimate spent on blurbs—12 hours—basically matched mine.)

Anyway Liz asked me to talk about why I was on blurb hiatus (which I had posted on social media recently) and what I thought about blurbs in general. So here’s my full response as a (tiny) matter of interest:

I wrote:

I'm on blurb hiatus because I'm trying to get traction while I finish the first draft of my new novel. Writing blurbs is a huge time commitment. I read every book I blurb from start to finish and am thoughtful about what I say about each book. (I also read the marketing materials from each book to make sure what I'm saying will be helpful to the publisher's narrative.) So I'm throwing a couple of days a month at any book I blurb, and I don't have time for that in my schedule right now. Also, I don't want to take a chance on reading anything that doesn't feed my writing. There are books I get asked to blurb and I'll read enough of it to know I won't want to read the rest, and then that's time my brain doesn't get back. I only want to read perfect, beautiful books right now.

It does seem like a nice gesture on Simon and Schuster’s part—to release the authors and editors from an unpleasant task—although frankly there are bigger fish to fry in the publishing industry. I do agree that the blurb ecosystem is a scourge. So many of my author friends complain about the time we spend on it! We all want to be helpful, but also we are busy. It's a real tussle. My long-term solution has been to cap how many books I blurb a year to a dozen. I actually think doing too many waters down the value of your praise.

However! I hate to say it, but I know for a fact that blurbs do sell books and can create opportunities for a writer. A dozen years ago I got a blurb from Jonathan Franzen for one of my books, and it was so helpful for the life of my book not just here, but abroad, too. I remember at the time my publisher calling it “a game-changer.” A blurb from me does not have the same impact as Mr. Franzen's does, but if my words can help at all, it would feel good to return the favor to someone else down the line. And truthfully, I hear from people often enough that they bought a book because they saw my blurb on it. So it does do something.

OK so that’s enough of that! I’ll be back in a few days talking about writing into your unexpected feelings.

Until then, write hard—

Jami

You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on bluesky and instagram.