Blurbs Quotes

Most best-sellers are written for readers who are willing to be passive consumers. The blurbs on their covers often highlight the coercive, aggressive power of the text - compulsive page-turner, gut-wrenching, jolting, mind-searing, heart-stopping - what is this, electroshock torture? ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Of all the depressing abuses of language in business, there is none that gets me so incensed as the rampant overuse of the word 'passionate' in company slogans, marketing blurbs, mission statements and on the sides of vans. ~ Tom Hodgkinson

The best young writers are convinced they need blurbs from famous writers before an editor will even read the first page of a manuscript. If this is true, then the editorial system that prevails today stinks. And let's start reforming it. ~ Diane Wakoski

You don't even know these people in your blurbs. Most of them are dead and Stephen King is probably going to press charges. We're really going to need to increase your visits. - MY CURRENT SHRINK ~ Jenny Lawson

Younger writers are always looking for "blurbs," one of the few words that sounds exactly as awful as the crime it's describing. ~ Brian K. Vaughan

Walking rapidly - or even slowly - through a gallery is equivalent to browsing through a bookstore and reading the blurbs. ~ Wendy Beckett

The etiquette of blurbs means it's not hard to not blurb something (if it's not by a friend, or student): everyone knows how many books you're deluged with. You can just say you never got to it. ~ Jim Shepard

I have done extensive research and, almost universally, found that the people who view my blurbs and observations as "anti-family" are dicks. ~ Jim Gaffigan

I've stopped going to see art films because every critic gives them four stars and say things like 'masterpiece,' 'spellbinding' and 'mesmerizing.' I mean, they're doing that with my film, but I don't want to use those blurbs. Critical reviews aren't worth too much anymore because just about every film can get one or two of them. ~ Terry Zwigoff

New York is the place where they bind books and write blurbs and arrange the publicity and print the galleys ... But Chicago is the place where the book is lived out before it is bound and the song is sung before it is recorded. ~ Nelson Algren

He had referred to blurbs as the blood diamonds of publishing. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

The endorsements on books aren't entirely impartial. Unbeknownst to the average reader, blurbs are more often than not from the writer's best friends, colleagues or teachers, or from authors who share the same editor, publisher or agent. They represent a tangled mass of friendships, rivalries, favors traded and debts repaid, not always in good faith. ~ Rachel Donadio

Writing blurbs for books means you have to read the book, and it cuts into the business of bookselling. So every time I get a blurb from a bookseller, I try to write a thank you note. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

The blurbs on the flyleaf, written by leading American historians, were fulsome, praising the book for shedding light on a forgotten chapter in colonial history. ~ Teju Cole

Before publishers' blurbs were invented, authors had to make their reputations by writing. ~ Laurence J. Peter

Blurbs don't work anymore!" was another. "You should make sure that the quotable lines of dialogue in your book never exceed a hundred and forty characters!" seemed at best debatable. ~ Scott Westerfeld

Look at the news stand, you know? I mean, it's a cacophony of famous people or people who want to be famous with blurbs all around it, and it's supposed to be, you know, that's supposed to be creativity in journalism. My God, it's unbelievable. It's shocking. ~ George Lois