For the past few months, publication has been consumed in discussions about its constant topic: blur, breathtaking little testimonies from other writers appearing on the back of the book's cover, everyone writes. I don't like it, please.
One big author and one major publisher announced that within weeks they were promoting each other. As a result, the resulting conversations piqued the publication. Along the way, it provided a new lens on who can access influence and resources in an increasingly unstable industry.
The authors traditionally aimed to procure blur before the book was accepted by publishers and went through the editing process, before it was confirmed, typed, and printed. At that point, a combination of authors, editors, and public relations officers would contact other authors, ideally famous authors, read the manuscript, and go to the back of the published book. I ask you to write.
People asked to promote the book are closely connected, former teachers, MFA classmates, fellow authors under the same editor, and sometimes it is a cold pitch for publishing heavyweights. there is. (Stephen King sometimes blurs suspense novels, and whenever he does, it's a big deal.) Either way, these blurs act as a kind of sympathetic magic, and some authors can't help but say Go down the gauntlet of publications, which means renting an established brand to another brand as a new book.
The author has been blurred for a long time, but the current conversation began in December. Bestseller author Rebecca Mackay has posted to Subrack that she has been taking a break from her propagandists for at least the next two years. She finds that reading unpublished manuscripts and promoting them accounts for more time she has allocated for her reading and writing, and that it is enough to justify her time and energy. I can no longer do it.
“As of this fall, I had about 5-10 requests a week, and I'm sure there will be more people out there,” Mackay wrote. “I think it's important for writers to understand this when they try to procure blur.”
A few weeks after Makkai's newsletter, Sean Manning, publisher of Simon & Schuster, published his own propaganda anti-swearing manifesto. “We believe that blurring things that are extremely harmful to what is the ultimate goal of our industry is extremely harmful to making the best possible book. ”, Manning wrote in an essay from the publisher. “It takes a lot of time to make a great book. Blurry doesn't work at any time.” What's more, he says, is essentially a kind of chronism to promote, and “to be talented.” He claimed it would reward the connections surrounding it. So, as the Manning continued, Simon & Schuster no longer requires the author to get the book blur.
He further argued that promoting is essentially a kind of chronism and “rewards connections around talent.”
It is not entirely clear what this policy actually means. Manning says that S&S will continue to use the blur they receive, but “there will be no longer an excess of time spent on outreaching during advertising.” This will allow publicists and editors to continue to demand blur on behalf of the author or to market other efforts to attract attention to the book, such as promoting one of the increasingly few outlets offering book reviews. There's room for it. (By the way, Vox has a recommended newsletter for books to subscribe to.)
Nevertheless, the publishing responded shockedly to Manning's presentation. All the original Sacakks issued essays one after another in oath.
“I have seen many anti-promotioners from bestsellers and award-winning authors take over the years, reaching where blurbs no longer helped their careers. Novelist Lincoln Michelle wrote, they can feel a bit “pull the ladder behind you.” “What's refreshing about Manning's article is that it was written by a publisher who is actually in a position to change things,” Michelle included a platform for suggestions to reform the blurb. This includes the requirement that the promotional text be reserved for writers who are not benefactors. “There's no reason why bestseller and award-winning authors need blur for their new book,” writes Michelle. “Save the blur for a midsister and debut.”
“Seeking blur is a really rough process,” writer Johnny Diamond meditated. “I don't know if they'll be useful in any way in terms of sales, but with the long throws they write and promote books, [blurbs] It provides an opportunity to remember the writers themselves who can breathe and write.
All that worries about blurbs is a lot of fear about the state of the economy of publishing. As discussed in detail in the 2022 lawsuit blocking the merger between Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House, modern corporate publishing has as much resources as possible for the lucky few books that we expect to sell very well Rely on publishers to save money. After these books break the pie, there is mere scrap left in the books that are expected to be sold. The blurry blur you can get for free is one of the few benefits that many writers can feel they can rub together themselves whether they can rely on publishers for marketing and promotional firepower It's one of them.
“If the blur is gone, we don't often pick up slack,” James Forta worried with the litob. “In my eyes, at least, it's going to work towards paper with a comprehensive feature surrounding many gaps in existing systems that are public. Publishers spend a lot of money on marketing and promotion, and only a few If you only spend the title of the cleavage, it makes sense for the author to spend a lot of money and hire their own promotional team. Why not land a famous blurb? Which is more fair?”
The economy of blurbs is so dysfunctional that you can't always rely on these blurbs to lead you to the pile of unread books and the way you want them.
Who knows if blur is so useful to the average reader, but they are extremely useful to their true audience. It is people who read professionally and don't have time to carefully evaluate all the books that cross their paths before them, defeating them. Bookstores look at the blur to know which books are worth shining in the spotlight. Ju judges of the awards see blurred to determine that they are blurred. As a book critic, I receive dozens of pitches per year for literary novels about sad young women. It is physically impossible for me to read all of them. But if one of them has a note from Lauren Groff saying that she thought the writing was good, I'm sure I'm writing that book in a book in that genre.
Again, the economy of blurbs is so dysfunctional that you can't always rely on these blurrings to lead you the way you want and piles of unread books. Some writers have a reputation for promoting everything they are sought, so ultimately their support comes to mean nothing. (Long before Neil Gaiman's stigma, I knew his blurbs meant that the book was bad.) Even more selective authors have given the full focus and attention to the author's It's rare that you'll get blurred after you brush it. As Mackay said in her essay, sometimes the blur appears to exist as if the author of the book in question simply tells us where he got the MFA.
The blur is time-consuming and exhausting at every edge of the process. It's about recruiting and writing. They reward the well-connected mediocrity at the expense of talented unknowns. They are so fulfilling and omnipresent that they cannot guide their readers to the type of book they are looking for. Nevertheless, publishing is a very unstable industry, with blurbs arriving in the sense of a magical shield.
An uneasy author may not have control over the book's marketing and promotional budget, or the number of reviews they get, or whether someone writes a profile about them. But they can be reached by God to get the best possible blur. For now, at least, the propaganda context economy is waiting for reform.
