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

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First, an English/American translation. In America a "blurb" is a quote or remark by an author or celebrity that appears on a book cover. Stephen King is famous for blurbing many books. In England, a "blurb" is the description of the book that appears on the cover. This book is about the English kind of blurbs. 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...) 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.’ Waugh thinks blurbing doesn't fool anybody. But Matt Thorne, whose novel Tourist was blurbed by Julie Burchill ("As sad as a Sunday and as sexy as a scar"), is in favour of the practice. "I'm always happy to give blurbs," he says. To Thorne, blurbing is about being a helpful part of the literary community. He thinks it's much less corrupt than people might think and can be useful. "There are certain authors I'd pay attention to," he says. "For instance, Bret Easton Ellis. I'd read anything that Ellis blurbed. Not necessarily because I like him as a writer. But he's got a good eye." Although Willder admires blurbal perfection, she has also put together a ‘little cabinet of horrors’ – blurbs so deliciously bad that we suspect the copywriters were impaired or never read the books. She describes these productions as ‘unhinged’, ‘barking’, ‘bats’, ‘deranged abominations’ and ‘a big “screw-you” to the reader’. A standout in that last category: ‘This is a Lord Peter Wimsey story. Need we say more?’ Well, yes.

Curb Your Enthusiasm review – Larry’s back, and funnier than Curb Your Enthusiasm review – Larry’s back, and funnier than

A book full of anecdotes from the author’s years of experience in publishing, shared with wit and passion - I can’t recommend it highly enough for enthusiastic readers out there. Gotcha, didn’t it? That line got me too. It’s from a blurb for The Plague, and the nameless copywriter deserves a plaque. Those five words conveyed all the ominous menace of the book and got there a lot faster than Camus, bless him. 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. We love the words in books – but what about the words on them? How do they work their magic? Penguin Books blurb wizard Louise Willder joyfully divulges what those 100-or-so words can tell us about literary history, the craft 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 why we read. She also answers burning questions such as:Wilder enjoys a good digression. She is a huge Orwell fan, so she spends some time on his rules of writing. She discusses the rest of the outside of the book. What makes a good cover? What about illustrations on the cover? Do the American kind of blurbs sell books? She also gives a bunch of hints on writing blurbs which are actually hints on good writing. Similarly, Wilder is impatient with a new Kurt Vonnegut blurb that “gives little clue as to what the book is about,” when anyone who has read Vonnegut knows that that’s the least interesting thing about his novels (and, arguably, most novels) anyway. The fact that the blurb captures the voice and spirit of Vonnegut is far more important — to readers anyway, if not to unit-floggers. Louise Willder has worked in publishing as a copywriter for 25 years and she’s written more than 5,000 blurbs. She seems eminently qualified, then, to guide us on ‘the outside story of books’ (as the book’s own blurb puts it). This is a good description, as Willder doesn’t limit herself to exploring blurbs – there are lots of elements that combine to produce a book’s cover and most of them are touched on here. I pulled out my copy of Jim Crace’s Quarantine to see how Willder managed to write a blurb about a novel about Jesus without mentioning Jesus (“a Galilean who they say has the power to work miracles”)! 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.

Blurb Your Enthusiasm eBook by Louise Willder | Official

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 way this book is designed, bound, promoted, hyped... it's all on the cheap and on the nose, a "smooth" publishing job but as a book, no thanks. The dazzling, staggering, astonishing, unputdownable* story of the book blurb, filled with writing tips, literary folklore and publishing secretsSo is there such a thing as blurbing karma? Let's see. Ellis, one of my favourite writers, was memorably blurbed for his first novel Less Than Zero by Richard Price, who found it "filled with a languid comic terror". Price, of course, has been blurbed for his novels: for instance, Dennis Lehane blurbed him as "the greatest writer of dialogue, living or dead, this country has ever produced". I love that unnecessary, yet resounding, "living or dead". 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 by Louise Willder | Book review - TLS Blurb Your Enthusiasm by Louise Willder | Book review - TLS

A delightful bibliophile’s miscellany with a great title – not just for the play on words, but also for how it encapsulates what this is about: ways of pithily spreading excitement about books. The first part of the subtitle, “An A–Z of Literary Persuasion,” is puzzling in that the structure is scattershot rather than strictly alphabetical, but the second is perfect: from the title and cover to the contents, Louise Willder is interested in what convinces people to acquire and read a book. 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?

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It’s also about quotes, titles, first lines, hooks, adverts, puns, swearing, plots, someone called Belinda and much more. It answers questions such as: You wouldn't think you could get a whole book from just talking about blurbs, but actually they make for really interesting discussion. I enjoyed this, though I am not usually a big non-fiction fan. Being about books though helped with that & I enjoyed all the interesting facts and snippets of blurbs and author thoughts about blurbs, publishing insights and funny examples. 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. t.s. eliot on louis macneice: ‘his work is intelligible but unpopular, and has the pride and modesty of things that endure.’ Blurb Your Enthusiasm is about more than blurbs, really. It’s about publishing, the art of writing, and strategies for selling words. The scope is impressive, but Willder never forgets to make it enjoyable and accessible. Her enthusiasm for the topic and her work is obvious, and the result is a delightful exploration of books and their covers.

Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A-Z of Literary Persuasion — Inside

I really liked this book, what would have been great was a reading list of the books mentioned at the end along with the bibliography , that would have taken it to five stars.We love the words in books – but what about the words on them? How do they work their magic? Penguin Books blurb wizard Louise Willder joyfully divulges what those 100-or-so words can tell us about literary history, the craft 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 why we read. She also answers burning questions such A New York publishing CEO joked that Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog would be an optimal title to appeal to readers (respected president + health + animal), but there are actually now six books with some variation on that title and all were presumably flops! Hamm (oy, Hamm of all names?) accuses Albert Brooks of being a shanda when an embarrassing secret is discovered at the end of the episode, one of the only references to Covid. David’s decision to largely put the pandemic in the rearview fits perfectly with the tone of the series, which has always shoved aside life’s bigger and more realistic problems and focused on the frustrating aggravations of minutiae. The ultimate book for any bookish sort, whether that is a reader, writer or collector. Written by an experienced copywriter, this non-fiction book looks in depth at such marketing tools as titles, punctuation, book covers, opening lines, swearing and - blurbs. It literarily is an A to Z of literary persuasion. George Orwell worried over his blurbs in detail with his editor, and his original description of Nineteen Eighty-Four as “the history of a revolution that went wrong” is still used on many editions today. The Italian author Roberto Calasso, who beautifully dubbed the blurb “a letter to a stranger”, wrote hundreds of blurbs for the publishing company Adelphi, and even produced a book of them. TS Eliot noted “what a difficult art blurb-writing is”, and sweated over countless blurbs for Faber – although I doubt his interpretation of Robert Graves’s The White Goddess as “a prodigious, monstrous, stupefying, indescribable book” would get past a marketing department today.