You know those little quotes on book jackets that say something nice about the pages within? Publishers have long required authors to obtain testimonials or “blubs” from other authors to help their books stand out. But as Constance Grady recently reported for Vox, the practice is facing new scrutiny after a well-known author and a major publisher announced plans to move away from blurbing.
Grady spoke with “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal about why blurbs have become a flashpoint. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Kai Ryssdal: For those unfamiliar with the blurb economy — and first of all, there is a blurb economy — how does it work? Where do these things come from?
Constance Grady: Yeah, absolutely. So. Blurbs are those little testimonials that you see on a book’s cover — usually from another author saying, you know, “luminous,” “masterpiece,” “the best I’ve read in a while.” Those little testimonials are at the middle of a big controversy right now.
Ryssdal: Well, discuss: What kind of controversy?
Grady: Yeah. So the way blurbs work is that some combination of an author, an editor, a publicist will reach out while the book is getting copy-edited — kind of making its way down the production line — to try to get some blurbs from famous authors, to make it have a big, splashy entree when it comes out. And what that means is, if you’re a successful author, you get tons and tons of requests for blurbs every single day. Most authors want to pay it forward — they’ve received good blurbs when they were starting out, they want to help out. But this is an enormous amount of blurbs that you’re being asked to write. And on the end of the author who’s trying to get their book published, it’s a lot of famous people to try to reach out to, and most likely hear a “no” from. So there’s been a bunch of authors and publishers lately saying, “Hey, this is hugely time-consuming. It’s an incredibly emotional process. What would happen if we stopped doing all this?”
Ryssdal: Yeah, well, wait, so yes, what would happen? I — personally, as a reader — look at the back cover of a book, I don’t read the blurbs. I look to see who did the blurbing, and I go, “Huh, interesting,” but it has no effect on whether or not I buy the book. So do you know whether readers actually use these things?
Grady: So, I have never seen any studies showing that readers care about these things or anything like that. I know that before I became a book critic and started having to read professionally, I found blurbs a little annoying. I was kind of like, “I just want to know what the book’s about. Why are you using up this real estate?” I [do] think blurbs are really handy for people like me now who have to read professionally, because there are so many books coming out every year that you simply just don’t have time to carefully evaluate each book before you decide how much attention you’re going to give it. We are basically the end audience of these blurbs.
Ryssdal: So, authors are annoyed by it. Authors who write the books [and] authors who are asked to be blurbing are annoyed by it, publishers are annoyed by it, but you need them. Is that where we are?
Grady: I mean, I would make do without them, right? As a reader, I would certainly much rather that authors spend their time writing good books than having to deal with this whole sort of emotional labyrinth of reaching out and making requests and saying “No” and reading books that you probably aren’t that interested in and scraping together a few lines. Like, that’s not really serving anyone except me, but I will live without it.
Ryssdal: Yeah, you’ll pay that price. There’s no requirement that people actually have read the book, right, when they blurb?
Grady: Basically, no. It’s kind of an honor system situation. And a lot of authors will admit, I don’t read everything. I blurb, I maybe read, you know, the first and last chapter and kind of hope for the best from there.
Ryssdal: Totally. So what happens? Do you think the blurbs eventually go the way of the dodo or what?
Grady: Well, the main thing that blurbs do for the authors who do want them to stick around is blurbs can be kind of an equalizer. The way publishing is set up right now, most of the resources in marketing and publicity end up getting saved for just a few books that publishers hope will do really, really well, and the rest of the books kind of have to scrounge for what’s left. And blurbs are one of the things that if you’re an author, it’s one of those things that you can kind of use like it’s a magic shield and be like, “I can’t control anything else about the debut of my book, but I can control this.” So I think for that reason, a lot of authors are going to want to keep trying to get blurbs and hope that they will make a difference.
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