Fuck book blurbs!
I recently bought a book by a renowned local author who generally writes in my genre, mystery, and so I just went and bought it. All good right? I did a quick scan of the back cover, and it was all blubs, not a short teaser for the plot. Instead that was on the inside cover, which is the other place it would be. But here’s the issue: the teaser suggested something between two characters that had a past relationship, but I’m half-way through the book, and that something hasn’t happened yet. In fact, I’m just reading through this sort of soap opera of a book waiting for something to happen.
What the fuck?
I realize I could have done a little more investigation into this book to see if it actually fit into what I wanted to read, but I bought it on a whim, and I thought, “Okay, this famous author writes mysteries, writes mysteries that happen in Baltimore (where my mystery happens), and actually lives in my neighborhood. Let me just get on it and read some of her work and learn from a master.
And a back cover full of blurbs can’t be wrong, can they? And yet...
Helen Lewis says in The Atlantic, “And that reveals another dirty secret of the blurb: They’re not addressed to you. “The biggest thing to understand is that blurbs aren’t principally, or even really at all, aimed at the consumer,” Richards told me via email. “They are instead aimed at literary editors and buyers for the bookstores—in a sea of new books, having blurbs from, ideally, lots of famous writers will make it more likely that they will review/stock your book.” “
Fool me once... I trusted the brand, the history of said author, and the blurbs. And yeah, this is my fault, but you all said wonderful things. Only you weren’t saying them to me, the reader, you were saying them to each other.
“Blurbs have always been controversial—too clichéd, too subject to cronyism—but lately, as review space shrinks and the noise level of the marketplace increases, the pursuit of ever more fawning praise from luminaries has become absurd. Even the most minor title now comes garlanded with quotes hailing it as the most important book since the Bible, while authors report getting so many requests that some are opting out of the practice altogether. Publishers have begun to despair of blurbs, too.”
I have a word for this that I got into the Urban Dictionary - a word that doesn’t actually fit in this situation but still feels right: vomitrocity. Imagine the puke emoji. I mean, come on, people, how pathetic is this whole concept of the self-licking ice cream cone of authorship now that we’re being duped by the author community itself? Oh, the NYT loved this book! Praise for (insert title here)! This author loved it. That author loved it.
This book is boring. I’m half way through and I’m still waiting for something to happen. Isn’t something supposed to have happened by now? The very last line of the book teaser on the inside cover of the novel goes like this: “And then X asked Y to do the unthinkable.” And yet, I’m literally in the middle of the book, page 159 out of 310 pages, and nothing has happened that was noteworthy.
So, sadly I’ll just report here that you should read this article in the The Atlantic because all this book blurbing, as Helen Lewis describes it, is just cronyism. Not useful. Just annoying and misleading, and just not what the world of writing needs. Indy authors, small authors, nobodies like me who just have a story to tell deserve a better writing world. And readers deserve a better way to discover the books that they will love reading and recommend to their friends. Because that’s the kind of network we need. Not the world of corporate book blurbs.
I hope you enjoyed my rant.