Hello and Happy Wednesday.
In this section of my newsletter, “Path to Publication,” we experience the steps of book publication from the author’s point of view. Today, I am the author, and we’ll be talking blurbs.
We all know what those are, right? They are the one to two sentence endorsements by an author about another author’s book used to give readers an idea of the tonal register the work is written in and—for booksellers—the company the book is keeping and the publishers’ hopes for it. This informative Book Riot article about the history of blurbing has the first-ever blurb appearing on the second printing of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in 1856. (The “blurb” was excerpted from a letter of praise that Ralph Waldo Emerson had sent Walt privately: what a strategist he was!)
Regardless of when blurbs started, for the moment, they are here and very much in use. Despite the hullabaloo around Simon & Schuster’s 2025 announcement that blurbs would now be “optional,” most authors I know (myself included) are still asking for—and discerningly giving—blurbs, and most publishers expect them.
As for the writers who are doing the blurb asking? In my personal experience, most of them complain about the process. Moaning and groaning about blurbs is a practice I personally abhor and wish would stop immediately. Let me tell you why.
When we were readying my debut novel, I AM HAVING SO MUCH FUN HERE WITHOUT YOU for publication with Simon & Schuster in 2012-2013 (it published in 2014), one of the first questions my editor had for me was “who can you ask for blurbs?” At the time, I had no connections whatsoever to published authors or literary names that would get book buyers excited. I had so few contacts, in fact, that I suggested my high school English teacher, Jeff Schwartz as a potential blurber, because he really loved my work and wrote poetry himself. My editor was kind about that suggestion, and offered that Jeff could definitely support the book or maybe join me in conversation at an event, but did I know anyone novelists who could blurb my novel?
I thought back to the summer before when I had been a student at the Tin House workshop in Oregon. Frustrated by the public readings dedicated only to authors who had already published versus the writers who were learning to, my friend Thaddeus Gunn and I organized a guerrilla style reading for the students, and the only faculty member who attended was Jim Shepard. I read a piece of nonfiction at the event that was structured as a bullet point confessional, and after the reading, Jim came up to let me know how powerful he thought the piece was. He was effusive about it; he really seemed to like it. When my Simon & Schuster editor urged me to think of novelists I could ask for blurbs, I thought back on that conversation and wondered if Jim Shepard would endorse my debut book?
I got Jim’s email address off the website for the college that he taught for, and wrote to ask if he’d let me take him out for coffee because I had a question for him. (I cringe now thinking how I treated that blurb request like a marriage proposal—I drove two hours for that coffee appointment and I’m sure poor Jim was wondering what the hell I wanted.) If memory serves, I believe I brought a bound manuscript of my new book and asked him, red-faced, if he might consider blurbing it because I loved his work, and ummm, no other famous author had ever complimented my writing? Despite my awkwardness and theatrics around the ask, not only did Jim agree to blurb it, but this is the blurb that he sent:
Reader, I cried. I think I sobbed, actually. I just couldn’t believe that someone so talented and famous had said these things about a book that, for the moment, only my agent and the editors I’d talked to had said they liked. No one else had weighed in yet; I didn’t grasp what I had written, nor did I know if someone of Jim’s caliber would find my work trite or too commercial or I didn’t know what else. But not only did he like it, Jim gave me insight into the meaning of the book, and held a mirror up of what I was doing on the page.
That initial blurb—the first one that came in for my debut—altered and informed my approach to blurb asks. I hold all my manuscripts against that blurb today, desperate to insure that my writing is still good enough to earn a blurb from Jim.
You now have the context from which I am writing today’s newsletter. This is the level of tenderness and respect and meaning I attribute to blurbs and blurbing, as a literary act.
Contrast this goodwill, then, with the bulk of emails I get asking me to blurb somebody’s manuscript that go something like this:
Dear Courtney,
I know you are insanely busy and that you probably don’t have time for a peasant like me who has written something that I am not sure is any good and can’t believe someone actually wanted to publish (!!), but this same publisher is asking me to do the terribly dreaded and mortifying thing of asking you for a blurb. I totally get if you don’t want to, (I mean, we don’t even know each other!) and I understand that blurbing in general is something we all hate, but here I am, anyway, asking you to blurb me. The deadline is in three weeks.
Signed,
An author who has not read Before and After the Book Deal, the actual book, that has a whole chapter devoted to blurb etiquette.
I’m barely exaggerating. I receive numerous requests phrased in this manner every week. Emails like this that position the author’s manuscript as some kind of miracle child that came out of nowhere that they now have to shepherd through the world, isn’t that a bummer. Requests phrased in this self-deprecating manner pay no respect to the years of hard work and sacrifice that the author invested to get to the point where they are now, which is asking for a blurb because their book is going to be published.
Personally, when I reach a point where my hard work has paid off and I inked a deal in a horrendously tough market and found an entire team of smartypants who want to see my book out in the world, what I am is grateful. What I am is proud. What I am is moved by the good fortune I now have to be in conversation, even over email, with authors I admire about a book I made.
Most authors feel this way too, I know they do. So what the hell is it with this trend where blurb requests are such a freaking drag??
By way of instruction, I’m going to annotate the above email to show you everything that’s wrong with it and why such letters drive me nuts.
Dear Courtney,
I know you are insanely busy
I am insanely busy. You reminding me of this isn’t going to help your chances of me carving out time to read your manuscript.
and that you probably don’t have time for a peasant like me who has written something that I am not sure is any good any good and can’t believe someone actually wanted to publish (!!),
yeah, I’m not buying this. I bet you have been working on this with passion and fury and hope in your heart for at least seven years. Why not celebrate that? Why not lead with dignified elation, especially if this is a debut? If you’re not excited about your book, why the eff should I be?
but this same publisher is asking me to do the terribly dreaded and mortifying thing of asking you for a blurb.
Okay, so…what, you’re just carrying out orders? Is there any particular reason that you are asking me to blurb your work? Anything about my own writing or career that has inspired you to email, or are you just doing errands for your imprint? And if so, why didn’t your publisher write me instead of you?
I totally get if you don’t want to, (I mean, we don’t even know each other!)
This letter isn’t making me want to blurb you, that’s for dang certain! Also, given that you still haven’t complimented my work or made it clear why you are writing me, pointing out that we don’t know each other is adding insult to injury.
and I understand that blurbing in general is something we all hate, but here I am, asking you anyway!
Good god how I hate being lumped into the “royal we.” Do not do this in a blurb request. Do not do this in a query. Do not do this in your writing, both fiction and non. It really gets my hackles up when someone assumes that I feel the same way about something as they do, especially when it comes to reading and writing, which is utterly subjective.
The deadline is in three weeks.
Go jump off a pier! The ludicrous turnarounds that most writers approach other authors with for blurb deliveries is rarely the author’s fault, so writers, just know that if you are sending requests out with anything less than a two-month reading allowance, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. One plus here is that the deadline is at least mentioned. I get so many emails from authors and publishers where they don’t include the deadline, creating extra work for me because I have to write to ask for a detail that they should have included from the jump.
In addition to the chapter dedicated to blurbing in BATBD, this 2023 article of mine has a bullet-point list of blurb asking advice and formatting tips for blurb writers (you might want to skip the intro which is repetitive to some of the backstory I’ve included here, above.) Regardless of where you get your blurbing advice, the principal message I want you to take away from today’s missive is: be joyful in your blurb asks. For those of you reading this who don’t yet have an agent or another milestone you’re working toward, bottle up the yearning you have to be recognized and published and lauded for the particular way you see the world in writing, and keep that feeling with you, always. In this ruthless industry, gratitude and joy will serve you well.
So be proud and elated and honored that you get to write known authors for blurbs. You are publishing a book, goddamnit, not sending in a stool sample!
Do you want to have as much fun as writer Elizabeth Austin is having in this photo and eat a carne con papas that is as flipping delicious as the one featured to the right? Then you should apply for Turning Points, the destination writing workshop I run in New Mexico. It’s open to men, women, and folks of all gender expressions writing in fiction, nonfiction and memoir. If you aren’t sure whether your career is at the right point for this workshop, I bet you that it is! I organize the retreat in such a way that we not only accommodate, but support people at various levels of expertise and publishing experiences. Applications close April 30th and all info is here.
I have a big announcement coming about a special pre-order campaign I’m running for ALAN OPTS OUT. Look for that next week!
Speaking of ALAN, if you participated in the early reader program and got (and enjoyed) an advance e-version of the book, please find time to leave a positive review of the novel on Goodreads and/or Amazon. Those early reviews help convince booksellers, librarians, book reviewers and book buyers that the novel is worth their time. (If you didn’t like the book, feel free to skip this step ;)
That’s all for now. Where I live it was 70 degrees on Monday and today it snowed. Wow!
xoxo
Courtney
Thank you for this! By and large, I have found only joy in the blurb requesting and giving process* -- and I am so appreciative that you shared your stance on this. Like you, I see blurbing as an act of literary citizenship, and while I cannot always do it, I really really try for someone in my genre or an author writing about the same setting/locale, etc. as long as they give me enough time. I still pinch myself to be a part of this world and do not take any of it for granted.
*One bad experience
This was a great read! Before and After the Book Deal (the book) helped me be brave about asking for blurbs. It feels scary, for sure. But then you do it (and you do it right because you learned how from posts like this) and it's so rewarding! :)