To Blurb Or Not To Blurb?

Writers, booksellers, and publicists weigh in on book blurbs.

Last week, Simon & Schuster’s new publisher Sean Manning ended the company’s policy of requiring book blurbs, which writers, with the help of their agents, are responsible for acquiring ahead of publication.

In an essay for Publishers Weekly, Manning wrote: “I believe the insistence on blurbs has become incredibly damaging to what should be our industry’s ultimate goal: producing books of the highest possible quality. It takes a lot of time to produce great books, and trying to get blurbs is not a good use of anyone’s time.…What’s worse, this kind of favor trading creates an incestuous and unmeritocratic literary ecosystem that often rewards connections over talent.”

Book marketing is something I think about constantly. In The Makings of a Literary It Girl, I argued that writers must understand the growing role of persona and personal branding when it comes to book marketing, especially because publishers increasingly place this burden on writers, especially lesser-known ones. As someone who writes about books, I love to judge books by their covers because that’s what readers have to do. We can’t pretend like every single part of the book cover: the fonts, color schemes, cover imagery, and yes — the blurbs! — don’t affect whether or not someone picks up a book, let alone buys it.