One of the perks of being a writer at an imprint with a large publisher is the opportunity to receive advance reading copies (ARCs). Basically, I can ask my editor for Berkley books which are coming out soon and get free reads. (She has yet to deny me any request, and my literature-loving heart rejoices over that!)
Beyond
the ARCs for my own pure enjoyment, a recent writerly duty I’ve discovered is
the creation of author blurbs. It’s essentially a praise quote of someone else’s
work. For example, I blurbed Olivia Blacke’s Killer
Content cozy mystery (coming February 2021) and labeled it as an
“immersive whodunit.” See entire quote below:
I
find it hard to condense the great elements of a novel into a few expressive
sentences. However, since I’ve done several of these now, I do have a few go-to
tricks:
·
Genre: I try to
reference the genre so readers know what they’re getting
·
Theme: Using the
book’s themes, I like to create a matching quote
·
Characters: I often refer to the protagonist or side characters
to give people a sense of who they’ll be journeying with throughout the story
·
Heart: Since I have my
own view of what I loved about the work, I insert my unfettered opinion on
things that spoke specifically to me
·
Adjectives: To entice
readers, I like adding in descriptors that tantalize them to purchase the novel
I’m
no Gary Shteyngart, who has written
numerous blurbs and even had a blurbing documentary about him. (He also blurbed
himself on Twitter:
“Gary
Shteyngart’s blurbs are touching, funny and true. This is a blurber to watch.”
— Gary Shteyngart.) Despite
my newness at blurbing, though, I have enjoyed taking on this authorly task.
Do blurbs affect your reading choices? If you wish, give an example of
one that caught your eye.
