'A Plague on the Industry': Book Publishing's Broken Blurb System
'A Plague on the Industry': Book Publishing's Broken Blurb System
Do authors actually like the books they endorse—or even read them? Writers, literary agents, and publishing workers take Esquire inside the story of a problematic "favor economy."
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When an author I’d worked with a decade ago at Simon & Schuster emailed me asking if she could send over an advance copy of her new novel, I of course said yes. But what really got me to read her book over all of the many unread books in my apartment was this quote from mystery writer S.A. Cosby on the cover: “Polly Stewart's The Good Ones is a fantastic achievement. A classic Southern Gothic tale told through the prism of modern-day sensibilities. Not to be missed.”
Having been unable to stop thinking about Cosby’s heartbreaking thriller Razorblade Tears ever since I read it, I inherently trusted him to guide me to my next great summer read (spoiler alert: he was right).
That quote from Cosby is what’s known as a book blurb, or more commonly, just a blurb. These endorsements from other authors or relevant notables are included on book covers, press releases, bookseller letters, and other promotional materials both before and after publication. Requests for blurbs are commonly made author-to-author or otherwise put into motion through their editors or agents ahead of publication, as soon as the manuscript is ready to send out—the earlier, the better.
On their surface, book blurbs seem fairly innocuous, but in reality, they’re a small piece of the puzzle with a big impact—one that represents so much of what’s broken within the traditional publishing establishment. Blurbs expose this ecosystem for what it really is: a nepotism-filled system that everyone endures for a chance of “making it” in an impossible industry for most. To borrow a phrase from Shakespeare enthusiast Cher Horowitz, “Blurbs are a full-on Monet. From far away, they’re okay, but up close, they’re a big old mess.”
“[Blurbs] are a PLAGUE on this industry” said Lucy Carson (emphasis her own), a literary agent at The Friedrich Agency who has worked with literary bigwigs like Pulitzer Prize-winner Elizabeth Strout. “Authors hate them (both asking for them and being asked), agents hate them, and publishers hate them.”
The many authors I spoke to for this piece described the process of asking for blurbs as “excruciating,” “anxiety-riddled,” “deeply dreaded,” and “the worst part of the publishing process.” It turns out that asking authors you admire to do you an unpaid favor is stressful—go figure! As author L’Oreal Thompson Payton wrote in her Substack on the topic, “Don’t get me wrong, writing the book itself was a feat. But somehow having to email authors and influencers I look up to and ask them to spend (unpaid) time and energy reading said book and then writing kind words about it made me feel like [a] high school girl all over again.”
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Originally Posted by Standing Wolf
