In this video, I discuss author blurbs—an essential tool in promoting your book and establishing reader expectations. Blurbs not only help convey the book’s appeal (be it twisty suspense, romantic elements, or exotic settings) but also connect potential readers with a familiar voice they can trust.
Hello, Jane Cleland here. The question is, “My publisher says I need blurbs. What’s a blurb?” A blurb is the short quote, a testimony. It is an endorsement that goes on the cover of your book, or it is part of a listing, which I call “praise pages,” comprising the first several pages of the book. The goal of blurbs is to inform and reassure the reader that this book has merit. And one of the ways they do that is by soliciting these testimonials from authors that the reader is likely to know and admire. And it is usually the author’s job to collect them. It is one of the reasons you go to conferences, for example, so that you get to know authors in your genre, and then when you need a blurb, you’re able to have people that you can ask.
Blurbs also might refer to reviews from a publication—a review from a publication—and they take a short excerpt from it and put that on the cover, or back cover, or praise pages. They help. They are informational in that they let the reader know whether it is particularly twisty, particularly suspenseful, particularly romantic, whether it is set in exotic locations. There’ll be a few little tag words or phrases that communicate a world of information from a reliable source.
Good luck with gathering them. If this tip had value for you, would you like it? Would you share it? Would you subscribe to the channel? It’s very helpful to us because it opens up features that let us make these videos even more effective, better for you. And I thank you very much for that.
*Transcripts are software-generated. To report any transcription errors, please use my contact form!
