Words of wisdom (sort of)

On blurbs

Sorrentino: That’s a measure of success? I thought that was a measure of access.

Strauss: A lot of it is logrolling. You can trace the genealogy of a number of literary cliques by paying attention to who’s blurbing one another’s books. All the same, when I got a quote for my first novel from Joyce Carol Oates—whom I’d never met—it wasn’t only flattering, it was extremely helpful: not only with the reader, but with my own publishers. They saw it as validation of their faith in me.

Maazel: I think blurbing is a terrible part of the business and I look forward to the day when it gets phased out as a way of generating enthusiasm for a book. It is humiliating trying to solicit blurbs, and I don’t think anyone enjoys writing them, either. It’s true that a sales department armed with praise from Stephen King will have something to package, but also: how dreadful. Because it puts a lot of great books that were unable to attract a fancy blurb at a disadvantage.

NEXT: SELLING LOTS OF BOOKS »

The authors

Jonathan Ames
Essayist (I Love You More than You Know) and novelist (Wake Up, Sir!)

Tao Lin
Novelist, poet (Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy), blogger

Fiona Maazel
Author of Last Last Chance

Ed Park
The Believer coeditor and author of Personal Days

Christopher Sorrentino
Author of Sound on Sound and the NBA-nominated Trance

Amanda Stern
Curator of the Happy Ending Series and author of The Long Haul

Darin Strauss
Novelist (Chang and Eng and More than It Hurts You)

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Time Out New York / Issue 669 : Jul 22–30, 2008

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Comments

1. Posted by anonniemuss on Sun, May 10, at 08:49pm

   This is an interesting feature and that makes it all the more annoying that it is chopped up into tiny bits and pieces over 8 pages. It's maddening to read and I can't understand why a publication would discourage readers this way. I am not a regular reader of this website and I am not coming back because of this.

   Flag as inappropriate

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