Question of the day: What are your thoughts on blurbs? I'm an unpublished author but the more I hear about blurbs, the more nervous they make me...I have to actually ask other authors to review my work for me?
Well, since you asked, I'll voice what is likely an unpopular opinion, but that's never stopped me before. :) And that is this: I HATE blurbs - hated asking for them, hate being on the receiving end of being asked (more on that below - it's not how it sounds), hate the nepotism that comes along with them, hate that the industry expects authors to round up blurbs and that these blurbs somehow make a book more worthy or lucrative.
Have I made that clear enough? :)
Before I'm accused of not being a team-player, let me explain my reasoning. To begin with, other than for a debut author, I'm not even sure how much blurbs matter. I don't really think that, for all the anxiety they cause, they sell books. (I'm sure others disagree.) I think they do help get your marketing team excited, and that may translate to getting the sales team excited, but at the end of the day...do they make or break anything? I say no...though again, others may say yes. I've posed this question here and to others in the past, and I really don't think the number of readers who buy a book due to a blurb equals anything more than a fraction of sales.
As an author who has asked for blurbs in the past, I can confirm that this process is excruciating. As if getting published and facing rejection after rejection isn't hard enough, you're still not done: you are then expected to go out to your peers and ask them to read your manuscript and pray that they don't reject you. You try not to have hard feelings if they do (or if they ignore you), and when they do, you may take it personally. When someone is kind enough to indeed blurb you, it feels like the greatest victory in the world. But that we need this validation, and that authors are expected to endure seeking this validation, kind of sucks. I truly think that asking for blurbs is almost humiliating for an author, for lack of a better word. Like Sally Field, begging to be liked. (Please note that this is my perspective from having gone through it, NOT because I think authors SHOULD feel humiliated for asking - very big difference.)
As an author who is often asked for blurbs, I can also confirm that the process on the other side of the equation is no more enjoyable. What I mean by that is that I'm THRILLED to help other authors - I hope that much is clear, and I'm THRILLED to take a look at someone's ARC. But then the pesky problems set in: what if you "know" this person (with Twitter, blogging, etc, these days, the networks are wide and tangled) and you don't like their work? What if you offend someone, unintentionally, by not having the time to get to his/her book? What if you're simply taxed from having a 10-book deep stack on your nightstand and want to be selfish for a few months and solely read for pleasure? What if you blurb one author who knows another author whom you didn't blurb? It's equally tricky - and exhausting - on the other side. Again, this isn't me saying I'm not happy to blurb or take a look at ARCs, it's just me saying that it's a complicated process and one that I wish none of us had to endure.
So to answer your question, unfortunately, I think that there is anxiety for ALL parties when it comes to blurbing, and no one really likes it any more than anyone else. I wish the industry could come up with some other way to distinguish one book from another (notice I didn't say one GOOD book from another, because half the time, I swear, people just blurb their friends' books, whether or not they're good), but since they haven't, I'll return to that 10-book stack on my nightstand and try to ensure that one debut author whom I really think deserves wild success gets my endorsement. Having been on both sides of the coin, I don't know what else to do.
I'd love to hear from you guys out there: blurbs, yay or nay? Anyone want to share his or her experience from whichever side of the process you're on?