On Blurbs
I felt like I had something to add to the conversation.
This is your reminder that my debut novel, VICTIM, is available for pre-order. VICTIM is a fearless satire about a hustler from the Bronx who sees through the veneer of diversity initiatives and decides to cash in on the odd currency of identity. If you enjoy this newsletter, I think you’ll also enjoy the book.
I swear I didn’t want to write about blurbs.
But over the last few weeks, pieces kept popping up about them, and these pieces just so happened to coincide with me recently closing out the blurb-seeking process for my novel. An endeavor that went really, really well, and that looked and felt quite different from the anguished experiences often described in these pieces.
But before I get to why that is important, two things.
One, a basic definition for those who don’t know what a blurb is: A blurb is a few lines of moving and positive praise about a book, its writing style, or its author, attributed to another writer, generally another writer who is more successful and well-known than the writer whose book their words appear on.
The best of these little descriptions that tend to be filled with adjectives like—“stunning,” “dazzling,” “stellar”—will appear on the cover of a book, and the rest, more often than not, on the inside flap.
What is the purpose of a blurb?
In my own opinion, they mostly serve as a co-sign, especially when they’re written by other writers (some people also use sentences pulled from book reviews as blurbs, especially on paperback editions of novels).
When I’m in a bookstore and I pick up a book I’m considering buying, a blurb, particularly one from an author I respect, or whose work I’ve enjoyed in the past, says to me: “Hey, I vouch for this writer. They’re good, trust me.”
Now, for number two: I’d like to lay my cards on the table.
I’m just a writer. I don’t have a ton of knowledge about the publishing industry, how books are sold, or what blend of marketing, publicity, dollars, and strategy results in one book becoming a best-seller and the other quickly disappearing from the face of the earth.
But also, I’ve come to the conclusion—having read widely on the subject of selling books ever since I suddenly had a book of my own to sell—that probably nobody knows the secret combination. That, perhaps, there is no secret combination. That, for the most part, if you’re not some huge celebrity, politician, or otherwise widely known public figure, whether your book garners attention and sales or not largely involves a great deal of luck—no matter how devoted the team working behind the scenes is.
Maybe I’m wrong. Who knows. I certainly don’t. And that is my point.
Because I’m no expert on this matter, and because I generally like to avoid speculating on shit I really have no idea about, I’m going to skip right over some of the larger arguments being made in some of these recent pieces about blurbs.
Like the argument that the “pursuit of ever more fawning praise from luminaries has become absurd” as a result of there being less literary critics in the media landscape, more books than ever being published in the marketplace, and a smaller share of attention to go around. Or the argument that blurbs are useless and do not help sell books because “the average consumer doesn’t care about them.” Or the argument that blurbs do move the needle on sales and attention, which is why they’re so bad because, after all, the whole blurb game is a “rigged system long overdue for a change.”
There is probably some merit to all of these arguments. But at the end of the day, if the fundamental questions are: “Are blurbs good or are they bad?” and “As a writer, should I bother trying to get them?” I come away from these pieces less clear on what the answers are then when I first read them.
But then again, as a writer making his way into the literary marketplace in the next six months, I don’t believe it is all that useful to think about blurbs in a “good” or “bad” binary to begin with. The fact remains that blurbs are here, and, as far as I’m aware, they’re here to stay.
I put a lot of effort into getting the wonderful blurbs I received for my novel mostly because the hard-working people trying to get my book out into the world said it would be a good idea for me to do so—and I trust them.
Also, it made logical sense.
I’m a debut author who nobody knows. Getting a group of far more accomplished writers who’ve written similar sorts of books to my own and who are respected in the literary community to read my book and say nice things about it in the hopes that other readers considering my book might believe them just seems like a reasonably good idea.
Maybe it is my Bronx upbringing—a place where the motto “a closed mouth don’t get fed” was drilled into me quite young—but for whatever reason, reaching out to writers I love to ask for these co-signs never struck me as harrowing. The process certainly didn’t feel “‘excruciating,’ ‘anxiety-riddled,’ ‘deeply dreaded,’ and ‘the worst part of the publishing process’,” as some authors described it to Esquire.
It was actually pretty cool.
After all, I had an excuse to write to writers I’ve long admired, writers whose books helped shape my own, tell them these things, genuinely mean them, and see if they’d be willing to help me out. I’ve experienced far worse than that, and I have to imagine most writers out there have, too.
Whether the writer was someone I happened to study under as an undergraduate student, or an MFA student, or someone I first met as a peer in one of these workshops, or someone I simply admired and didn’t know at all, I took care to write each one a short, personal request. I meant every word I wrote when I talked about how their work inspired me, and why I was reaching out to them specifically.
But perhaps the most important part of the process was that I had ZERO expectations that they would actually agree to what I was asking of them as soon as I hit send on my emails.
After all, I knew I was asking for a lot. I was asking for their time above all else—and time is everything.
I’m a dad and a husband. I have a day-job. I have my own personal writing projects. I have this newsletter. I’m no famous novelist with tons of obligations, and even I often struggle to finish a new novel every month. I know full well that squeezing in a read of 300 pages of fiction is no small task. And I made that understanding clear to everyone I wrote to. I told them, flat out: I really, really wouldn’t blame you if you said no. I promise.
I sent my emailed requests out early, giving people as much time as possible, and simply hoped for the best. I understood, too, that the worst thing that would happen is that these writers would say no or never respond. I was perfectly happy with the idea that, at the very least, I’d had an excuse to write a nice letter to a writer I admire, and perhaps, that might make them feel good for a few minutes. That alone seemed worth it.
Now, did it take up a good chunk of time for me to write thoughtful letters, and to coordinate with my agent and editor to come up with a list of people worth reaching out to, and decide who they’d reach out to and who I’d reach out to and when I should follow up and when I shouldn’t? Yeah.
But during the process did I think about “how much unpaid effort” I had to put into it, as some writers shared in the Esquire piece? No. Not once.
In fact, the idea that someone, like my publisher, would have to pay me to ask other writers for blurbs, or placate me in some way for doing this work, seems ridiculous. If anything, it should be the other way around—especially for those writers who become so successful that they’re swamped with blurb requests all year round.
In my mind, I was simply doing my part to give my book its best shot. And I think its incumbent on all writers who have a book coming out, and particularly their debut book, to do the same.
We live, after all, in the year 2023. There are all types of things competing for people’s attention these days, and books are becoming an increasingly less appealing option. If blurbs might help give us an edge of any sort, why not try your best to get them?
What followed from my efforts was nothing short of spectacular—and, I’ll readily admit, really fucking lucky. My requests went out in the winter and early spring. A lot of no’s came back, which again, I didn’t take personally for one second. But then, slowly, yes’ trickled in.
And then, by the summer, these beautiful, moving blurbs for my book from literal heroes of mine started to roll in that astounded me.
They astounded me not just because of the nice things said about my novel and my writing, but to be completely honest, more so the generosity these writers showed me when they really, really didn’t have to.
There was nobody holding a gun to their head to read my book and say something nice, and I certainly have no power in this industry to coerce them to do such a thing. If anything, I made a good effort to give every single one of them an out.
Yet, so many of them still took the time to read my book and say something nice about it, and about me, and send the nice words off to me with the highest, most genuine hopes that it would help me and my book out in some way as it enters this wacky literary marketplace where blurbs may or may not mean a damn thing depending on who you talk to.
And for that, man, I’m so damn grateful.
If the blurb process has been anything for me, it’s been instructive. Writers who don’t owe me shit were incredibly generous to me, which, in turn, makes me really want to be generous to others. To pay it forward where possible.
Whether their generosity leads to sales and attention for my book, or whether their generosity is symptomatic of a larger industry issue, or whether their generosity really isn’t generosity at all but back-scratching as some of the more pessimistic takes on blurbs suggest (I’m not sure how, given that I’m a nobody), doesn’t really matter to me.
What stands out more is the generosity itself. What stands out is that these writers who are way ahead of me in the game made the decision to turn around and extend a hand out to me when they were absolutely under no obligation to.
The literary world likes to throw the word “community” around a lot. But if you ask me, I can’t think of a better embodiment of it than that.
So, listen, are blurbs “good” or “bad”? I don’t fucking know. And I don’t care. And if you’re a debut writer in my position, I don’t think you should care either.
They’re here. And while they’re here, as writers, when it comes time to push our book out from our safe desks into the wild wild west of the market, we’d be silly not to make our best efforts at shooting our shot.
So: Make a personal, kind request to your heroes with no expectations or strings attached. Feel grateful when they even take the time to respond, and more so if they put forth the monumental effort to read you and say something nice. And, above all else—beyond even those nice words they write—remember the generosity you’ve been extended, so that you can put it back out into the world one day.
Peace,
Andrew
Recommendations:
- of the wild success of Blumhouse Productions (makers of films such as Get Out, Paranormal Activity, and Whiplash, among others) was fascinating. It also made me think of a lot of parallels to writing. The biggest one being: take big risks and have low expectations for what happens as the result of those risks.
This was a fun, out of the box read in The Paris Review about the music you hear at CVS and the experience of shopping at CVS in general. Proof that the right writer really can make anything interesting.
Man, I loved this essay in The New Yorker, written by a man serving life in prison for murder who also happens to be a huge Taylor Swift fan.
I enjoyed this essay on surrealist art and embracing art that “makes you feel weird,” by
, and also came away inspired to create some of it myself.This essay by
, which draws out the connection between running and writing, deeply resonated with me and stoked up some fond memories of my own distance running past.
Thanks for the shoutout, Andrew!
I love your outlook.