Dear O’Abby,
I have a book releasing in late 2020 and my publisher has
asked me to see if I can get other authors whose work is similar to mine to
blurb my book. I have reached out to
literally hundreds of authors through their agents and publishers and not one
of them has agreed to write a blur for me.
Do you have any advice about how to get blurbs? And are they really important to getting
sales?
Any information you have would be helpful.
Sincerely,
Blurbless
Dear Blurbless,
Blurbs can be a useful marketing tool, but they are only as
good as the authors who give them. A
positive blurb from a recognized name can lift the profile of a book and signal
to readers who are fans of that author that this might be a book they’d enjoy. For
a non-fiction title, a blurb from an expert in the field you’re writing about would
be a great endorsement that the book is relevant to people interested in the
subject.
Getting blurbs is not easy, especially if you’re a new
author without many contacts within the writing community. If you have an agent, they might be able to
help you get in touch with other authors they represent, if they write similar
things to you. Your publisher may also
be able to help, although the fact they have asked you to do this alone does
ring a few alarm bells for me.
My best advice is to be as polite and concise as possible
when approaching potential authors. Don’t
spam them with endless emails if they don’t respond to you. Don’t get bitchy if they come back to you
with a ‘no’. Thank them for their time
and move on.
Remember that these are busy people and you’re asking them
not to just write a couple of nice sentences about your book, but to actually
read it so those sentences hold some weight.
Not everyone reads quickly so asking someone to read your book could be
asking for a significant time commitment.
Authors who might already be juggling a day job, family, book deadlines
and other commitments may genuinely not have the time to read and blurb a novel.
A glowing blurb from that unpublished writer in your
critique group or your high-school English teacher won’t do much to lift your
book’s profile, so if that’s all you can generate, you’d be better off going
out without a blurb.
Blurbs are not essential by any stretch of the imagination
and if you can’t get anyone with a ‘name’ in your genre and category to blurb
it, your book isn’t destined for failure.
Getting good reviews on Amazon and other sales platforms is far more
important in terms of selling books so my suggestion would be to stop looking
for writers to blurb your book and save your energy until you have ARCs to send
out to reviewers.
Good luck with the release!
XXX O’Abby
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