'The Yellow Books' by Vincent Van Gogh; oil on canvas
My reading for this month's ReadIndies event appropriately wraps up with a book that celebrates the art and craft of showing off a book to best advantage; it's an appreciation of how difficult it is to write a succinct and tempting bit of prose that captures a potential reader's interest, and a joyous reveling in words themselves. But the author brings a wider lens to her subject situating it within book history and the story of publishing.
Louise Willder has been a copywriter at Penguin for twenty-five years and estimates she's written over five thousand blurbs. She's a knowledgeable and funny guide to book livery through the ages. The book is organized into five sections with short, punchy chapters whose topics range from the different elements of a book's cover that work to set it apart and make someone want to pick it up, to how differently copy is written depending on what kind of book it is and the audience it's aimed at.
First of all for American readers, blurb has a somewhat different meaning in America and the UK; here a blurb usually means pre-publication praise for a book by fellow authors, while in the UK blurb has a wider meaning that also includes the copy that describes the book.
Willder discusses all the elements of what appears on the jacket and that are designed to work together harmoniously to present the book in a certain way: title, subtitle, design, review quotes, taglines, and book description. All this comes with problematical aspects too, such as the disreputable history of review quotes being cherry-picked entirely out of context or spoilers on books that shouldn't be spoiled. Author quotes can be a wearisome task in a writer's life, and at times outright refusal is the best response to a blurb request. There's a blunt letter from Ursula K. Le Guin when she was asked to blurb a certain book:
But I cannot imagine myself blurbing a book, the first of the series, which not only contains no writing by women, but the tone of which is so self-contentedly, exclusively male, like a club, or a locker room. […] Gentlemen, I just don't belong here.
The history of trying to entice readers into picking up a book (or scroll), goes back a long way, at least to Roman times when the abundant bookshops around the Coliseum would put up flyers on their frontages about the books they sold. In 1741, Henry Fielding wrote a mock quote from 'John Puff, Esq.' at the beginning of one of his books. Even George Orwell eventually succumbed to puffery. Though my eyes quickly slide past author and review quotes, there was one writer I always listened to when she praised a book—Hilary Mantel.
Happily, Willder believes a copywriter should actually read the entire book they're blurbing if possible, and she does delve into the interior of books, appreciating (and learning from), a good first line for the way they pull a reader into a story and set the voice; a copywriter might then mimic that voice for the blurb. The shape and rhythm of a book are also attributes she pays attention to, and in an engaging chapter she shows the underlying shape of copy, and the examples are printed in the shapes they're written in. Blurb geometry.
Unsurprisingly, Willder sings the praises of shorter, punchier blurbs that test a copywriter's skill.
Writing short, for whatever reason you do it, forces rigour, and it reminds you that words are a precious and powerful resource. Form both limits and liberates.
As a reader, when coming to a book I know nothing about, I prefer the more specific book descriptions used on jacket flaps on US hardbound books, UK blurbs sound too blatantly like pure advertising copy, though sometimes quite clever. Even the use of dreaded adjectives and adverbs clue me into whether it's a book I might want to read or steer away from. She also admits that something may have been lost when blurbs became so focused on the market and less idiosyncratic.
'Publishers sometimes underestimate the public taste for grainy authenticity and honesty.'
I especially enjoyed the chapters focusing on specific types of books and the different ways they are described. Classics can be especially challenging to blurb, and how do you talk about literary fiction enticingly where nothing happens without just stringing together a list of adjectives like 'luminous' and 'liminal'? The wonders of a good blurb found on children's books, and tropes used in copy for genre fiction. And there's serious joy to be found in the chapter about and scattered examples of, ah, quality-challenged blurb writing. For Edna O'Brien's Country Girls:
When Irish eyes are smiling, here's what's hidden behind them - a fresh, gay assessment of a world where the wolves still roam.
The book is generously peppered with examples, anecdotes, and quotes, and Willder does a stellar job in working in many different topics so they flow together well, but I would have preferred to read less about how human brains react to marketing generally, and more about her own and her colleagues' experiences. It's difficult to resist a book about books and this one takes a topic that might not seem all that enthralling at first glance, and turns it into a fascinating window into the larger world of books. It's a wonderful addition for a bibliophile's bookshelves. Do you also have a soft spot for books about books and favorites?
(Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A-Z of Literary Persuasion, was published by independent press Oneworld Publications in 2022.
It was read for the February month-long ReadIndies event hosted by Karen at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings and Lizzy at Lizzy's Literary Life. Oneworld was founded in London in 1986, publish many international titles, and aim to publish books that, "sit at the intersection of the literary and the commercial".)
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