Blurbs and book buying…
As many readers and writers know, “blurb” is a technical writing term for those little more-than-tweet-length paragraphs used to entice people to read a book. I prefer “read” to “buy,” because people might borrow the book from a library or online service like Overdrive.
A blurb has to do many things. First, it has to summarize the book, or at least part of it. Second, it has to be a teaser, a bit like a movie preview to grab the reader’s attention. And third, it has to be short—not necessarily as short as an endorsement or “elevator pitch” (called that because one is only allowed the time it takes to go down in an elevator to make the pitch).
That third requirement is quite a constraint when considering the first two. I’ve been doing them for 10+ years, and they don’t seem to get any easier. All authors have to market their books now, so I imagine there are “pros” out there specialized in writing blurbs, ready to take authors’ money. And there are also people who tell an author how to do it free of charge.
I wish there were some metric that allows authors to measure how good their blurbs are. I know of none. How will they satisfy those aforementioned requisites? Like many things in the book business, an appreciation for blurb quality is often subjective.
When I see a book I might want to buy, either on a bookstore’s shelf or an online site’s book page, I look first at the title, genre, and then the blurb. For a physical book, it had better be on the back cover or right inside the front. For an ebook displayed online, it had better jump out at me. If satisfied, I’ll then peek inside a bit to see if the author can write (who the author is doesn’t matter so much to me). I don’t care much about any reviews the book might have—they’re always subjective, so they usually don’t tell me if I’ll like the book. Finally, there’s price (I won’t pay more than $5 for an ebook, for example, and I only read print if someone gives the book to me—my bookshelves are already sagging!). Once the book passes all those tests, I might buy it.
If most book buyers follow a similar program, we can conclude that titles and blurbs are very important. Some people would add covers, but a reader should never judge a book by its cover (sorry, all you cover artists who make wonderful covers). Besides, in a bookstore, you can only see the spine, so my eye first looks for the other things.
Note that endorsements are like reviews. Who cares if Baldacci or Patterson endorses a book? Now, if they write a review of it, that would be something else. They don’t, and I probably wouldn’t see it anyway!
So that blurb is very important to me as a buyer of books and as an author looking for people to buy my books. Other authors can ignore them at their own peril. I sweat blood writing blurbs for my own books. Maybe 10+ years of practice helps, but I don’t think so because every book is different. It’s ironic that 50-100 words mean so much when compared to the 50 kwords or more of a typical novel. It’s also strange that a long novel’s success might depend on so few words. I don’t think that’s always been the case—did books rolling off Gutenberg’s press have blurbs?—but they’re part of the book business now.
So I’ll just keep trying to hone my blurb-writing skills.
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Comments are always welcome!
“Reading Notes for The Last Humans.” This free PDF can be downloaded by visiting the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website. It’s designed to provide useful information to all readers about my new post-apocalyptic novel, and it contains a list of questions that will stimulate discussions in book reading clubs. The ebook is available now for pre-orders on Amazon and Smashwords, and it will be released in print and ebook versions by Black Opal Books on March 30.
While you’re on that web page, be sure to check out the other free PDFs that are available—these are all just a thanks to you for being a reader.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
