‘If you read only one story this issue, make sure it’s this one’
Blurbs are the hard-working, unsung drudges of publishing. Alongside the title and cover art, they do the heavy lifting that gets a book off the shelf, across the counter and into your home. For many people, these are the first words of a book they read. They have to perform a multitude of tasks with a minimum of resources.
“[Someone] picks it up and you’ve got six seconds, apparently, to get some information across about what it is,” says Allen & Unwin New Zealand publishing director Jenny Hellen. “So that’s our primary thing: to attract a reader. And the secondary thing is to sell it.”
In theory, small but perfectly formed, the blurb is the product of much love and diligence, usually by the publisher, occasionally by the author. For writers and publishers, words are their profession – surely they would have no trouble knocking out an effective sales pitch? If only it were that simple.
‘Impeccably researched and brilliantly argued’
What exactly is a blurb? “A letter to a stranger,” according to Italian publisher, author and prolific blurb writer Roberto Calasso. His formula, like many blurbs themselves, sounds nice until you scratch at the surface and realise there is not much going on underneath. A letter to a stranger could be many things – a request for information, a message of condolence, an apology for backing into their car. Or a book sales pitch.
According to blurb.com, a blurb is “the persuasive summary of any book, film, or creative work, … a short promotional description”. Which again sounds good, except blurbs don’t have to summarise, be short or even describe. Perhaps the most workable definition is that a blurb is a set of words that it is hoped will convince the person reading them to buy the book. Within that broad remit it can be all sorts of things.
‘A fascinating behind-the-scenes peek into the mechanics of publishing’
‘It’s just part of the job, but it’s super important,” says HarperCollins New Zealand publisher Alex Hedley. “It’s a craft and an art. I would love to spend more time on them, but the reality is that you don’t have a lot of time.” Or resources, which is why the task usually falls to the publisher, who at least has been thinking about the book for a long time before it is finished.
“My role on a book starts with those first conversations with an author about what the book is. There’s no one who understands the book quite like the publisher and the author, obviously. So they are always going to be the best person to write the blurb.”
‘An essential guide for every reader’
‘A good blurb first needs to be short and succinct,” says Hedley. “Then it needs to leave the reader wanting to know more. And it needs to create some intrigue, to compel the customer to open the book and see a bit more for themselves.”
He is very proud of the blurb work done on Mary Holm’s highly successful personal finance guide, A Richer You. “Her blurb was classic. It was: ‘Read this one book, set up your money and get on with your life.’ For personal development [books], you always want to promise the reader that what’s in the book is going to help them. Then the next line was: find out what many in the financial world don’t want you to know. Straight away, you want to know more.”
Rather than having the contents described, some people like their blurbs to be more … “vibey”. Jane Arthur, a writer and manager of Good Books in Wellington, says, “I wish they focused so much more on … emotions and themes of the books, not just plot points.” Her fellow writer and sometime bookseller Eamonn Marra has a very specific gripe: “Blurbs should stop pretending that all books are laugh-out-loud funny. I’ve talked to so many people who have been burnt by books being sold as hilarious when that was clearly never the author’s intention.” LOL.
Kiran Dass, reviewer and programme director of Word Christchurch, is on their side. “I’m not interested in gleaning plot,” says Dass. “Also, I really love to know how a book made people feel.”
‘Timeless perfection’
Telling someone how a book made you feel can be challenging, but certain words and phrases never seem to lose their allure for blurb writers.
When they can’t think of anything substantive to say about the book in question, they are likely to fall back on describing it as a pitch perfect, engaging, relatable, essential, inspirational, intriguing, raw, compelling, landmark or stunning meditation, homage, journey, celebration, deep dive, reality check or testament, whether told in a bold new voice or by one of New Zealand’s best-loved authors, about what it means to be human.
Anyone who needs a book to tell them what it means to be human should probably get out of the shop and into counselling.
Madeleine Collinge is a specialist blurb writer who has worked with Penguin in the UK and is now based here. Hers is a rare specialty. “You never particularly intend to become a blurb writer,” she admits.
Some of Collinge’s experiences are included in a book by her former colleague and fellow blurb writer Louise Willder. Blurb Your Enthusiasm (Oneworld Publications) is a “captivating, sometimes scandalous, always entertaining, insider’s guide. (Paul Little, New Zealand Listener).”
And you can see Collinge’s blurbs for the likes of Penguin Classics editions of David Copperfield and The Koran at madeleinecollinge.co.nz.
Collinge says the key to blurbs is that “every book has a sort of conflict or tension or situation or problem that can be resolved no matter what genre it is. If it’s fiction, that’s very easy to find in the plot. But, say it’s a dictionary. The situation is that this is the best and most authoritative dictionary the reader needs, and it will solve all their problems, even if it’s a dictionary of chemistry.”
She is happy to share her extremely practical “dos” for good blurbs, which could in most cases be applied to almost any other kind of writing. To begin with, she says, ask yourself who you’re writing for.
“Every time you start to write a blurb, you’re thinking about an imaginary reader.” Once you know who that is, “you need to be attention grabbing, keep it fairly short, and make sure all your words work really hard. Make sure that any strong word or adjective isn’t repeated. And be really careful of nothing words like ‘interesting’. ‘Interesting’ is my bugbear. A good fun detail from a book works heaps harder than all the adjectives in the world.”
What if the book stinks – sorry, if the blurb writer doesn’t like the book? “You have to go back to imagining the reader and think, well, somebody likes this sort of book. And write the blurb for them.”
‘A transformative and compelling meditation’
Beware phrases that occur only in blurbs. They are there because the writer has not been able to think of anything to say that is specific to the book in question so reaches for the nearest impressive-sounding phrase on the shelf, those tired assemblages of words that sound impressive but don’t bear close scrutiny. Has anyone in real life ever uttered aloud the phrase “our shared humanity”, a condition about which many books, according to their burbs, are “a profound meditation”?
‘Spoiler alert’
It will come as no surprise to anyone to learn that giving away too much of the plot – especially the ending – is the gravest sin a blurb writer can commit. In this respect, as in much of life, too much information is a most grievous fault. A plethora of character or place names is similarly undesirable. Other faults to be avoided: “I instantly feel quite cynical when I see things like, ‘The next Sally Rooney’,” says Dass. “It’s lazy and throwaway. It really misses nuance.”
‘All-new updated edition’
While an evening curled up on the couch with a bunch of blurbs isn’t most people’s idea of a great reading experience, perusing a range of puffery can be illuminating. Monitoring the kind of blurbs a book has worn over its publishing life is a barometer of changes in the book’s status and what a culture values.
The blurb for the 1963 first edition of Ronald Hugh Morrieson’s timeless rural black comedy The Scarecrow wisely began with the novel’s brilliant opening line: “The same week our fowls were stolen, Daphne Moran had her throat cut.”
A 1976 edition also quoted the line, but inexplicably preceded it with these words: “Before that moonlit night when the Scarecrow, a sex-fiend, stalked into Klynham, there was little more to excite the small town than a theft by some boys of their neighbours’ fowls.” Which rather diluted the impact of Morrieson’s zinger.
And in 2002, Reed abandoned all decorum when it reissued the book with a blurb that began with a different quote: “According to my father the police have found out that this guy conks them first and then roots them and that makes him the saddest guy and a necro something.”
The first edition of Janet Frame’s debut novel, Owls Do Cry, in 1957 carried a discreet blurb which read in full: “This novel about a New Zealand family is by an author already distinguished for a book of brilliant short stories. The publishers believe that Owls Do Cry will prove an outstanding literary event.” Nearly 60 years later, a US edition did not hold back, describing “a defiant and joyful work from New Zealand’s most celebrated writer … a landmark of modernist literature.”
‘A writer of rare sensitivity and skill’
Authors are sometimes said to be the worst people to write the blurbs for their work: too close to it, want to mention every thought they ever had. Author Catherine Robertson describes the experience of writing blurbs with a limit of 150 words for her novels as “heinous – to fit everything you want to fit in that amount of words. There is nothing worse than trying to write something really short about your book that seems to capture the whole flavour of it, as well as giving a certain amount of sense of the plot.” She credits assistance from former Penguin editor Harriet Allan, who would “just draft one for you. You would rewrite it, but it was great having someone start you off. I’m lucky that I did get to write mine, so I’ve got nobody to blame but myself.”
One writer who was an exception to the rule, according to her publisher at Allen & Unwin, Jenny Hellen, was Ruby Tui. The rugby-playing superstar is a phenomenal communicator and living proof that not even a bachelor’s degree in communications and media studies can hold a good writer back.
“She started off [the blurb with], ‘This is Ruby Tui’,” says Hellen. “That was her, and I thought, ‘That’s genius.’ She used some of my words, but she didn’t like some words I had used to describe her childhood – too negative. And at the end, she goes, ‘In Straight Up, Ruby looks herself in the eye, understanding that she can turn pain into purpose. It’s time to be straight up.’ And that is all Ruby.”
‘Exciting, timely, unforgettable’
Lavish endorsements from critics or other writers are highly prized and sought after to include in blurbs. Suspicions of mutual massaging in such cases are easily aroused, although hard to prove.
Poet, reviewer and Landfall Review Online editor David Eggleton says, “There are some publishers in New Zealand who, and quite blatantly, will use their own stable of authors to endorse a particular book, which is fine, but it does give you the sense that it’s sort of skewed. And too much praise is as bad as too little praise. That makes you suspicious, or at least sceptical of a book.”
Eggleton is lukewarm on blurbs in general. “I definitely take notice of blurbs, even if only to argue with them.” In his view, although blurbs have their place, “I take note of pretty much all the information that surrounds a book. There’s lots of information now. In the age of the internet, we’re overwhelmed. So it’s really a matter of selecting. And in terms of what’s on the back of any given book, it usually has a context and a frame of reference that I relate to my own interests. It’s about genres as much as anything. They provide the initial context.”
His is a cool but common-sense summing up: “In the end, a book works by word of mouth, or it works by having its own gang, its own posse, its own supporters and fans. And that’s how books work in this country at the moment, and probably everywhere else.”