That collective cheer you heard on Jan. 30 was the sound of nearly every author on the planet reacting to the essay Why Simon & Schuster’s Flagship Imprint Won’t Require Blurbs Anymore. It’s by Simon & Schuster publisher Sean Manning, who succeeded Jonathan Karp (now CEO) last year. He writes, “While there has never been a formal mandatory policy in the eight years I’ve been with the Simon & Schuster imprint, it has been tacitly expected that authors—with the help of their agents and editors—do everything in their power to obtain blurbs to use on their book cover and in promotional material. I have always found this so weird.” (Don’t know what a blurb is? Explanation.)
Manning says this policy only applies to his flagship imprint, but one can only imagine that other publishers might (just might) feel emboldened to follow in his footsteps or at least encourage more reflection and purposeful decision-making about what a blurb costs and what a blurb accomplishes for each book.
Within hours of the essay’s publication, major media outlets started calling up editors, agents, publicists, and industry experts to get their reactions, and the publishing industry complex on Substack quickly churned out varied perspectives.
Leaning toward “not worth it”
What Are Book Blurbs, and How Much Do They Matter in Publishing? | Elisabeth Egan | New York Times
“Do blurbs really help sell books? The truth is, no one can say for sure. … Victoria Ford, the owner of Comma, a bookstore in Minneapolis, said, ‘My initial reaction was that blurbs don’t matter at all.’ She’d rather read a thorough summary on the back of a book, or a lively description on the flyleaf, than rely on a few beats from an established author who might have a personal relationship with the author in question.
“As for her customers, Ford went on: ‘I have not noticed readers paying a lot of attention to blurbs, with a few exceptions. I’ve definitely sold books because a customer was browsing and saw a book Ann Patchett had blurbed. Readers trust her.’”
Yes, Free Us from the Blurb Industry Complex | Cassie Mannes Murray (publicist) | Pine State
“Imagine if we lived in a world with options on back cover copy (or the space above the title on the front cover where a blurb normally goes) instead of blurbs … imagine if it was another way to have a weird little, singular, exciting marketing moment. This may or may not also be an assignment (several assignments) you could do for your book that would give you more insight into how to market the book.”
Let’s Talk about Blurbs … Again | Kathleen Schmidt (publicist) | Publishing Confidential
“Some authors worry that blurbs are a promotional tool for their books and that they won’t receive attention without them. This is simply untrue. … Second, in all my years doing book publicity, a blurb has never swayed someone from the media to cover a book. What sways most people now is the author’s platform. …
“To put that much weight on blurbs is to remain insular in the industry—which is often the problem with book publishing: It is so caught up in itself and its processes that it forgets about the consumer. As much as we may not want to admit it, books are products. These days, products gain popularity due to recommendations rather than because someone in the same field offers a catchy quote about them. Now, excuse me while I scroll Instagram. I need a good lip balm.”
Somewhere in the middle
Inside the Blurb-Industrial Complex | Imogen West-Knights | Slate
“One of the first novelists I asked, a British author whom I will not name, went in hard. ‘I think it’s a lazy tactic made popular by publishers who can’t be arsed to fairly distribute and creatively employ a marketing budget to anyone who isn’t Sally Rooney or Richard Osman,’ she said. …
“But in general, across the board, when people were positive about them, they were positive because of a perception that, although deeply flawed and incredibly annoying to procure, they can make or break a book. As one editor put it: ‘If you get, say, a blurb from a massive name for a debut, you’re more likely to get decent orders from retailers and more likely to get press. It completely changes a book’s fortunes.’”
I Don’t Know If You Can Become a Writer without Buddies | Leigh Stein (author) | Attention Economy
“Book publishing is a competitive business. At every stage of the publishing process, you’re competing for attention and resources. If you have an MFA from Iowa, that’s your unique advantage. If you have 100,000 TikTok followers or 30,000 Substack subscribers, that’s your unique advantage. … If you have a friend or a colleague or a mentor who is influential and willing to say a few words of praise about the book you’ve been writing for six years, why wouldn’t you leverage that? …
“[Literary agent Mackenzie Brady Watson] recognizes that securing blurbs is ‘often an arduous and labor intensive process for all involved, especially for authors sending and receiving requests’ and is bothered that ‘the blurb game rewards the most connected people, not necessarily the most quality material.’”
Leaning toward “worthwhile”
Too Busy Blurbing Books to Write One | Rebecca Makkai (author) | New York Times
“I will never begrudge the [blurb] asker, in part because blurbs matter—and not just to readers. Reviewers who receive early copies notice blurbs, as do those booking guests for radio shows and booksellers deciding orders. I’ve judged prizes for which each juror needed to consider 150 books, and, yes, compelling blurbs will push a book to the top of the stack.”
A Luminous, Brave, and Unputdownable Article about Blurbs | Lincoln Michel (author) | Counter Craft
“The brutal math of publishing is that there are far more books published than there are readers to support them, book review spots to cover them, or shelf space in bookstores to sell them. Blurbs are one way to help everyone sort out which books to pay attention to. Blurbs aren’t necessarily for readers browsing a bookstore, although I’ve known readers who buy based on blurbs. They are more important behind the scenes. Blurbs are frequently used in publicity pitches to book reviewers—ETA that while editing this I got two publicity emails, and both subject lines quoted blurbs. Booksellers have told me they’re useful for figuring out which books to buy and where to place them in the store. (Ironically, one bookseller told me that big imprints like S&S—that publish a variety of books in different genres and ranging from literary to commercial—are exactly where blurbs are useful for booksellers trying to sort through new titles.)”
On Blurbs | Jami Attenberg (author) | Craft Talk
“I hate to say it, but I know for a fact that blurbs do sell books and can create opportunities for a writer. A dozen years ago I got a blurb from Jonathan Franzen for one of my books, and it was so helpful for the life of my book not just here, but abroad, too. I remember at the time my publisher calling it ‘a game-changer.’ A blurb from me does not have the same impact as Mr. Franzen’s does, but if my words can help at all, it would feel good to return the favor to someone else down the line. And truthfully, I hear from people often enough that they bought a book because they saw my blurb on it. So it does do something.”
Bottom line: Blurbs can matter to industry insiders, and while authors hate to secure them, they psychologically crave them, as agent Anna Sproul-Latimer pointed out (sub required). If you want to impress booksellers and people in elite literary spaces, it’s probably worth it, especially as a debut. If you reach readers directly or if you’re trying to appeal to readers, it matters less, unless you secure a trusted name that truly matters to readers.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
As a former children’s editor at a major publisher, I was most surprised by the language of this announcement—specifically, that it was authors who had felt the responsibility and pressure to get blurbs. Maybe it was my company, or maybe children’s is different, but this was definitely considered part of the editor’s job. (For most of us, one of the worst parts of the job.) There were certainly authors who had connections and got their own blurbs or who wanted to do it, but most of the time, they expected their editors to ask for blurbs and were often disappointed and upset if we failed to secure them. If S&S’s announcement had said they wouldn’t use blurbs at all, I would be cheering. But if it just means it’s something that will slowly creep onto or back onto an editor’s plate, not so much. I’m so glad the conversation is happening, though!
It’s interesting you mention this, Diane, because I have a similar experience. At the nonfiction publisher I once worked at, it was the editorial team who secured blurbs, although there wasn’t any pressure on us to secure them for most titles.
And at the publisher of my current book, The University of Chicago Press, it’s the marketing team that asks and secures blurbs, although they do it entirely based on the information I give them. I’m still grateful they are the ones who ask, though!