Book Blurbs
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A Book Blurb for Every Occasion
The book blurb is an essential aspect of a book’s marketing, one that many authors have extreme disdain for. RealPants offers a satirical solution: fill-in-the blank book blurbs for any book.
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Ban “Bravery” from Book Jackets
David Ulin at the LA Times makes interesting argument for retiring the word “brave” from jacket copy. Citing its overuse and the seeming dissonance of describing literature as brave in the face of countless acts of bravery in the world beyond…
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A Blurb of Beauty
At Book Riot, Amanda Diehl brings an optimistic anecdote to the often-bleak conversation on the value of book blurbs (typically rife with accusations of corporatism, cronyism, and empty praise). If the form can rise to the artistry of Margaret Atwood’s…
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Never Judge a Book by Its Blurb
Book blurbs are the new books covers. And at the Guardian, Nathan Filer says you shouldn’t judge a book by either: Cover blurbs aren’t reviews. They’re advertisements. No space for balanced, nuanced positivity. Nothing can be interesting; it must be…
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The Ancient Art of the Book Blurb
Book blurbs—and the controversies surrounding them—go back as far as Thomas More, who gathered a bouquet of them for Utopia. Ben Jonson blurbed Shakespeare. Ralph Waldo Emerson blurbed Walt Whitman. But do they really mean anything anymore? Click through to find…
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The Ethics of the Book Blurb
Are there political advantages to writing book blurbs? Are there ethical lines writers shouldn’t cross? Scott Esposito of Conversational Reading weighs in using Nicole Krauss’ positive, to say the very least, blurb of David Grossman’s To the End of the…