Blurb Your Enthusiasm: A Cracking Compendium of Book Blurbs, Writing Tips, Literary Folklore and Publishing Secrets

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I'd forgotten about blurbs. But the process of getting blurbs - which the US journalist Rob Walker has termed "blurb-harvesting" - is thought, by some, to be a necessary part of modern book publishing. You send the manuscript of your book to another writer, hoping they'll like it, hoping they will give you a favourable comment to put on the cover. It's a weird transaction. No money changes hands. There is only one unspoken convention: if somebody blurbs your book, you should not blurb theirs. Not until a decent amount of time has elapsed, anyway. So you're asking somebody who is probably busy, and possibly even a rival, to do some work on your behalf, for nothing in return. We do get some nice stuff like that, such as finding out that Donna Tartt has rejected all attempts to change the blurb or cover for The Secret History, and an acceptance that publishers, in pretending that all their books are brilliant, are essentially lying, or at least fibbing. This is an enthusiastic and opinionated review of the world of blurbs. She skewers lazy blurbs. "Moving", "compelling", "brilliant", etc., are empty words that add nothing. Good blurbs latch onto one or two specific things that explain why you should read the book. Spoilers do not belong in the blurb. The tone of the blurb should match the tone of the book. A humorous blurb works for a humorous book, it does not work for a serious literary novel.

Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A-Z of Literary [PDF] [EPUB] Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A-Z of Literary

I loved the chapter on the classics, the opening quote from Alan Bennett is all too true and highlights Wilders previous point about how a opening line can make or break a novel. Being a big whodunit fan I really found the section on writing blurbs for these books very interesting and it does explain why that sometimes the blurb is better than the actual book. The section of woman’s literature was my favourite I have had many of the same thoughts as the author, and I particularly loved the discussion and quotes from Marian Keyes. She also discusses first lines (Stephen King is a bit of a star here), why titles and covers matter, Anglo-American differences, why blurbs and the world of publishing are often sexist, when and when not to do puns and much more. The book is funny and readable throughout. She gives some examples of terrible real-life blurbs which have genuinely been used e.g. for a recent edition of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: "Mom's fishing for husbands - but the girls are hunting for love" and other blurbs which, in contrast, do their job perfectly: distilling the essence of the book into a few sentences while still leaving you thirsty for more. So I think blurbing serves a purpose, if you know how to read it. Some blurbs are over the top, such as when a blurber feels flattered, or when he is unconsciously seeking good karma. But I don't think many people want to be blamed by readers for making them read bad books. there’s a bit in the chapter titled “ventriloquism” that would be good for teaching the analysis of syntax but it’s too long to write out hereOr her take on the sort of Literary Fiction where nothing really happens: “You know the kind of book. They win prizes. There generally isn’t much in the way of a plot. Or if there is, it’s something along the lines of woman goes away and finds herself, someone thinks about an event from their past, or sad middle-aged man has an affair – or even just considers said affair and doesn’t go through with it.” Followed a little later by “... Thomas Pynchon’s notoriously ‘difficult’ (in other words, mainly read by show-offs) novel Gravity’s Rainbow…. I wonder how many people have read it and then not told anybody they’ve read it? Zero, I suspect. Because the point of books like these is that they are an Iron Man literary challenge, and once you’ve been macho enough to read them you can boast about it.” Then as now, hyperbole sold books. And speaking as a copywriter, Willder admits to creating her share. The blub is ‘my 100 words of little white lies’, she says. ‘There has to be some kind of sugar coating and, yes, lying.’ I enjoyed it, it contained lots of interesting facts and was fun to read, and I trusted the author’s judgement enough to add three of the books she praises to my TBR queue. I think Rebecca Solnit nails it when she says ‘a book without women is often said to be about humanity, but a book with women in the foreground is a woman’s book.

Blurb Your Enthusiasm | Oneworld

Wilder is brilliant. She offers examples of stunning blurbs – generally, these show, not tell, and are pithy, presenting a ‘tell me MORE’ sum-up without spoilers or dry and overloaded detail about plot or character, And she gives samples of the pits of blurb – for example, the cliché ridden oversell, the overweighty comparison of an utterly drab novel to something else, stratospheric ‘if you liked THAT you will love THIS, based purely on some similarity in setting of place, time, or general subject matter A haunting tour de force of genre-defying wit and love, Blurb Your Enthusiasm will take you gently by the hand of Reading and hold your head under the water of Literary Appeal until you finally, finally appreciate the Art of Blurbs.Louise Willder has been a copy writer for over twenty years and really knows what she’s talking about. She has read a huge number and a vast range of books, and both her knowledge and her engaging love of books shows through consistently. She is quite brilliant on the use of language, I think, quoting some excellent examples and analysing what makes good writing in a variety of contexts. She also has a very clear-eyed view of publishing and isn’t reverential where she thinks pomposity or pretence needs to be punctured. Every clich�� and hundred-times-told story or anecdote about books and publishing is repeated here. Never mind if some of those tales are untrue, because this is not a serious book, anyway. Nothing to see or learn here, just a few jokes, jokes, and jokes, it's like ten late-night monologues in a row. The thing that drove me absolutely crazy whilst reading was down to formatting - my copy was a free review copy from Net Galley (thank you Net Galley!) so hopefully it will be fixed in the 'real' version, but on my Kindle, every time she'd written a footnote, it inserted it into the middle of whatever text I was reading, so it was jumping about all over the place and that really spoiled the flow for me. (There are a lot of footnotes...) Louise Willder certainly makes a 5 star splash with her smart, joyful and knowledgeable non-fiction debut with its insights and history of the publishing industry, more specifically on the book blurb, the writing of which she has decades of experience, all of which she relates with wit, charm, warmth, with the occasional acerbic comment. If you love books, are in the publishing industry, are an author, a would be writer, or a book reviewer, then this is not one you should miss out on. Willder identifies the critical qualities that underline the thinking that goes behind the 100 words of blurb, citing a plethora of real life examples across literary fiction, classics, across every conceivable genre and non-fiction, the good, the bad, the ugly and the downright unhinged. The blurb works in a symbiotic relationship with the cover, title, first line of the narrative, to persuade, and/or manipulate, distort, or deceive through the use of the dark arts to get us to want and buy that book.

Blurb your enthusiasm | Books | The Guardian Blurb your enthusiasm | Books | The Guardian

It is the history of a revolution that went wrong – and of the excellent excuses that were forthcoming at every step for each perversion of the original doctrine. The authors Jonathan Franzen and Jennifer Weiner have been duking it out over the issue of seriousness since 2010, with Weiner criticising the ‘Franzenfrenzy’ that greeted the publication of his novel Freedom. In her eyes, women writing about domestic situations were seen as limited in their appeal, but when Franzen ‘writes a book about a family … we are told this is a book about America’.’ They’re just a few words on books. But what are blurbs really doing (other than trying to twist your arm)? This book is all about those 100-or-so words that take seconds to read but can make a world of difference – and what they tell us about literary history, the art of writing, authors from George Orwell to Zadie Smith, genres from children’s fiction to bonkbusters, cover design, the dark arts of persuasion and even who we are as readers. one of the first tactile books for children was pat the bunny , 1940, which featured different textures inside, and was advertised with the great line ‘for whom the bell tolls was magnificent – but it hasn’t any bunny in it.’

Reviews

I remember working with one author who always wanted to put question marks at the end of statements in his titles, e.g. britain: a democracy? when used this way it gives off the air of a student essay, or an anachronistic 1940s ‘whither germany?’ energy. the question mark: a useful ally? It’s also about quotes, titles, first lines, hooks, adverts, puns, swearing, plots, someone called Belinda and much more. It answers questions such as: Of course, one has to draw the line somewhere, and Willder would like to see fewer shopworn adjectives on book covers, specifically ‘luminous’, ‘dazzling’, ‘incandescent’, ‘stunning’, ‘shimmering’, ‘sparkling’, ‘glittering’, ‘devastating’, ‘searing’, ‘shattering’, ‘explosive’, ‘epic’, ‘electrifying’, ‘dizzying’, ‘chilling’, ‘staggering’, ‘deeply personal’ and the ubiquitous ‘haunting’.