Death of Blurbing?

I don’t know if any of you have been paying attention to the fluff up that has been going on in the publishing industry, but it’s been pretty big news in certain circles. Blurbing. Yeah, those little reviews authors write for each other that show up on book covers and web sites.

Last December, author Rebecca Makkai wrote on her Substack that she was taking a two year hiatus from blurbing: it had been taking up the time she wanted to spend doing her own reading and writing.

A few weeks later, Sean Manning, who is the Publisher of Simon & Schuster, said in an article in Publisher’s Weekly they will no longer require their authors to obtain blurbs.

This is huge. Both as an author and a reader.

Sarah J. Williams, one of my colleagues on Bluesky summarized it neatly: “As an author I won't miss it, but as a fellow reader I want book blurbs. They help me pick out books that I want to read.”

It’s true. When I see an author I love has blurbed a book, I am much more likely to buy it.

That said, getting blurbs for my own book was a truly terrible experience and affected my opinion about several authors I loved based on how they handled my request. Not good. Not something I am eager to repeat.

Only time will tell if this is a blip or a death knell. I feel like I’m winning and losing, either way.