Images of endorsements commonly found on books: "tour-de-force", "luminous", "powerful"

BooksFebruary 15, 2025

Brilliant and devastating: Are book blurbs anything more than a circle jerk?

Books editor

Claire Mabey explores the pros and cons of puff quotes on book covers.

In January, Publishers Weekly put out an article by Sean Manning – publisher of Simon & Schuster’s flagship US imprint – in which he said he’d “no longer require authors to obtain blurbs for their books”.

The “blurb” in this context does not mean the summary of the book on the back cover, as we know it here. Manning means puff quotes – endorsement quotes like “a gripping tour-de-force by a luminous new voice” attributed to a more famous author, usually printed on the cover. Endorsements are ubiquitous these days. Some books have pages and pages of them printed in the front matter before you even get to the novel that the famous people are so extremely enthused about.

In the article, Manning says he got thinking about the practice of blurbs after looking back at older, bestselling titles on his list (he mentions Psycho, Catch-22, and All the President’s Men among others) and noticing how none of those books had endorsements on their first printings. Those blurb-free print runs are in high contrast to the puff-laden novels coming out now. “While there has never been a formal mandatory policy in the eight years I’ve been with the Simon & Schuster imprint,” he writes, “it has been tacitly expected that authors — with the help of their agents and editors — do everything in their power to obtain blurbs to use on their book cover and in promotional material. I have always found this so weird.”

In general, Manning’s announcement was met with glee, relief and words to the effect of “about fucking time”. Such responses were mostly from writers delighted at the idea of not having to ask people (often authors they revere and would like to be as successful as) to spend hours of unpaid time reading their work with a view to spruiking it. (And facing the terrifying prospect of people agreeing to blurb then taking it back, like in this case.) American writer Christopher Buckley was so jazzed by Manning’s stance that he wrote a NY Times op ed – ‘The End of the Blurb. Thank God.’ – on the ego-crushing business of blurb-begging, and their duplicitous tendencies: “On the higher slopes of Mount Olympus, blurbs are a way by which the gods speak to each other in code, with the whole world watching.”

“It’s a circle jerk,” said teacher and writer Laura Surynt in response to my social media call out for thoughts and feelings about endorsements. “It [the blurb industry] feels a bit icky,” she explained, “a capitalist publishing machine / not actually about the writing but who you know.” Surynt wasn’t the only one: many people responded to say they ignored puff quotes; or were actively turned off a book if it sported an endorsement by a writer they didn’t like. Others expressed skepticism over the fact that endorsements were never going to express anything other than hyperbolic positivity about the work, so why bother.

But are endorsements pointless? Are they “weird”? If they’re not useful then why do so many books have them? It has been decades since Psycho (1959) and Catch-22 (1961) first saw the light of day. There wasn’t such a relentless stream of books being poured into shops then, there wasn’t any social media, none of the connective digital tissue that knits us together like fascia. Today, it’s a bold choice to go entirely blurb-free; a choice usually reserved for big names, hardbacks, and literary fiction. Like Deborah Levy, whose latest novel August Blue sports a cover as sparkly clean as the Aegean sea featured in it.

The cover of August Blue by Deborah Levy; and the cover of Everything I know about love by Dolly Alderton. — Blurb-free; and blurbed (the paperback edition of Alderton’s hit).

I have been asked to blurb quite a few books. I’ve said yes to all of the requests so far because I like to support authors and as an enthusiast with a healthy baseline of curiosity I don’t have difficulty seeing good qualities in a work. To me, blurbing is a lovely part of the publishing process. But it is time-consuming and there’s no remuneration for it. Several writers told me they’ve had to start declining requests for endorsements because, as much as they’d like to be supportive, they can’t afford the time. It’s a common downside to blurbage: for those writers with integrity who actually read the books, it’s hours of free labour.

Writer Rebecca K Reilly has experienced varying shades of blurbage across the New Zealand and American markets. When her debut novel Greta & Valdin was published in Aotearoa, her publishers used a quote from her Masters of Creative writing report (where she wrote the novel) because Reilly had never given the manuscript to anyone else to read. As a published author, Reilly has never been asked to blurb a book in New Zealand but did provide an endorsement for a friend’s poetry book once, “and people were weird about that to me because I’m not a poet. If the blurb industry in New Zealand is a problem, I do not know about it.”

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America, however, is another story. Over there, “proofs are a massive thing,” Reilly said. In New Zealand the publicity cycle mostly begins after the book comes out (the book is launched and publicity is lined up from that point on to make sure that the book is already on the shelves, ready for buyers to respond once they see the interviews and articles and social media posts). In the US, however, publication day marks the end of the publicity cycle. Before publication, Reilly had to fill out a form asking if she knew any celebrities (she didn’t) and her publishers sent the proofs to a long list of people. Reilly said she felt bad bothering them, “but I am the sort of person who thinks I’m bothering people by liking their posts or replying to their texts”.

In the end, the US edition of Greta & Valdin got most of its blurbs through her agent’s network. Since then, Reilly gets so many requests for book blurbs that her agent has to screen them. In general, she’s happy to endorse if she’s interested in the premise of the book and the writer is like her, “outside the main centres of publishing”. But her openness to blurbage has curtailed her reading life: “I haven’t read a book I’ve chosen myself in a shop or at the library for two years. And I feel terrible when I agree to read a proof and it gets sent across the world to me and it sucks. Also my autistic brain struggles to write anything that I feel is even mildly untrue or exaggerated so I spend a lot of time thinking of potential blurbs like ‘this book is competently written’ or ‘a lot was attempted here.’ I will only submit a blurb if I’m truly committed to the success of the book.”

Such integrity is not always the case. The internet is rife with suspicion that some authors quoted on covers didn’t actually read the novel first. Whether there’s truth there or not, though, is somewhat beside the point. The question is: are blurbs valuable? Why are they there?

The front and back covers of Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly. — The front and back covers of the US hardback edition of Greta & Valdin, nicely blurbed.

To writers, blurbs can be a godsend. I can attest that receiving blurbs for my own novel gave my quivering ego a mega boost when pre-publication doubt and anxiety had properly set in. Forthcoming short story writer Michelle Duff said that as a new author, having a couple of quotes from established writers she admires makes it feel “like someone has my back”. To help her when she’s having trouble writing, novelist Josie Shapiro turns to Canva to mock up book covers with invented quotes from her favourite authors on them. “One of my made up quotes right now is ‘Brilliant and devastating’,” says Shapiro. “How cringe is that but also it’s like a dream to be described that way.”

And for so many it is just that: a dream. More than one debut New Zealand author told me that, for them, getting endorsements was a hellish proposition as they didn’t feel like they knew anyone well enough in the book world to ask, which left them feeling like outsiders.

Reader-responses to blurbs range from love to loathing. For some, the circle-jerk nature of blurbs is actively off-putting. Others find them useful: one reader shyly told me she was afraid she used them to navigate her way around what to read next, with blurbs from writers she liked helping her decide what book to go for. Blurbs can certainly help contextualise the unknown. Even if the words don’t matter the kind of writer the blurb is attributed to can signal tone, genre, a sign of what to expect. Reilly says that as a reader she would be more interested in picking up a book “if an author whose work I respected had endorsed it, but at the same time we have no way of knowing if authors are totally willing to risk their reputation to say ‘brilliant and luminous’ about any old writing or if they just know each other from a social scene we’re not part of.”

In the end, Manning’s article in Publishers Weekly is far from a call to ban the blurb. He’s hedging as much as anyone else: “this isn’t to say that we will outright refuse to include blurbs on our book covers and in promotional materials. If a writer reads a book because they want to (not because they feel beholden) and comes away so moved by it that they can’t resist offering an endorsement, we will be all too happy to put it to use.”

Keep going!

The cover image of The Falcon and the Lark by Neville Peat against the backdrop of Otago scenery.

The Falcon and the Lark is one of Neville Peat’s 56 books.

BooksFebruary 15, 2025

The falcon on Taieri Ridge

Neville Peat

Guest writer

The Falcon and the Lark is one of Neville Peat’s 56 books.

Neville Peat is the 2024 recipient of the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in nonfiction. He’s written 56 books, mostly on natural history; this excerpt is from The Falcon and the Lark: A New Zealand High Country Journal, first published in 1992.

The falcon wintering on the Rock and Pillar Range has lived quietly and reclusively for a couple of days. She has fed on rabbit – the rabbit she caught napping on the mountain’s lower slopes where the tussocks thin out. Fully grown but not fully wise to the ways of predators, the rabbit had been waiting at a crouch for the morning sun to release the grass from the grip of frost. It neither saw nor heard the attack. The falcon dived out of the sun, a silent missile. For attacking winged quarry, the bird tended to sound the charge – a lusty, deep-throated scream: “Kek-kek, kek-kek, kek-kek, kek-kek!” Against the rabbit, though, she merely flew with all the speed she could muster. Maybe the falcon realised there were times when advertising did not pay: a rabbit could escape into a burrow.

The rush of air coincided with the burying of talons deep into the rabbit’s back. In a reflex action the animal rose to its feet and lunged forward half a metre under the weight of its attacker whose wings were outstretched for balance, tips drooping. But that was the only move the rabbit made before the black bill scythed into the fur behind its head, bit, twisted and stilled all movement.

Satisfied the rabbit was dead, the falcon ripped hungrily at the fur and flesh, and swallowed each bite with head up and eyes alert to anything which might disturb her feeding. She ate her fill. This did not dispose of all the meat on the carcass, though, so she quartered it and flew off with a hind leg, her destination a rock crevice where she frequently cached food.

Now, having started the day bathing and preening, she inspects the cache and hauls out a decaying rabbit leg. It is not very appetising; the falcon is accustomed to fresh meat.

A photo of a kārearea sitting on the branch of a tree. — A kārearea / New Zealand falcon (Photo: Tony Wills)

She tosses the fragments about with her beak as if annoyed to find the cupboard all but bare. Then she wipes her bill against the rock, methodically, each side of the beak in turn. It is a gesture commonly associated with feeding, called feaking. In this case it may signal a hunger unsatisfied. She must hunt again. Within the hour.

Without doubt she could find prey on the face of the mountain or around the summit, another rabbit even. But this morning she has Taieri Ridge in her sights, the opposite side of the valley. Perhaps she recalls a hunting success in conditions similar to those of today. A breeze is wafting out of the northwest, a tailwind to Taieri Ridge, hinting of a gale by afternoon. There is some high cloud but no rain in sight.

Her objective is in clear view – the Crater, specifically a splash roost not far from the volcanic formation. This is still within her territorial limits, although in the winter season, fending for herself, she feels free to range outside the limits.

She pushes off from the rock crevice, content to glide a little before picking up speed with some quick wingbeats. By and large she cannot sustain a glide as long as a harrier on account of her higher wing loading. The short wings/long tail configuration of the falcon is designed for speed and manoeuvrability; the harrier, with long wings and a relatively short tail, specialises in soaring and gliding. Accordingly, the falcon transits the valley by combining a bit of gliding with bursts of powered level flight.

Having launched from a point high on the mountain, she flies well above the valley floor and the disquieting, though not intimidating, activity of humans and their machines – above, too, the quartering patrols of an occasional harrier. If people below notice her flight at all at this hour, with the sun new born, they will be inclined to think they are seeing a high-flying harrier, although they might wonder at the swift and direct nature of the flight, uncharacteristic of the wheeling harriers. It is the difference between a scheduled flight of some duration and a local sightseeing tour.

Little escapes the notice of the falcon despite her altitude. Her eyesight is thought to be about six times more powerful than that of humans. She observes movements as large-scale as the first feeding-out of the day on farms, someone ploughing before breakfast, and household coal smoke bending in the breeze; and movements as subtle as a pair of grey ducks sneaking along the river bank beneath leafless willows, and two white-backed magpies standing motionless on the white backdrop of a frosty paddock. Nothing below her is to be feared. But there are things to be wary of. She will not go out of her way to provoke a mob of magpies, whose aggression she respects. Nor will she lock talons with a harrier without good cause.

On this fine winter’s morning she fancies smaller, more customary prey – the birds of the open fields, which flock in number on the gentle western slopes of Taieri Ridge. She is overhead a few such flocks on the plains north of the township but resists an indiscriminate swoop on them. Her hunting methods are founded more on discipline and strategy, and known air space. Usually this means attacking from a roost.

On course for her roost near the crater, the falcon loses height gradually in bursts of gliding. She crosses the river and catches sight of noisy activity beside some buildings where yarded sheep are being driven into a shed by humans and dogs. There is no slacking of her flight, however, which from this point begins to meet the rising ground of the ridge. She sees her roost four kilometres ahead and within a few minutes has the familiar buttress beneath her feet, her pulsing breast feathers the only sign of exertion.

The rock face beneath where she now stands, enjoying the respite, is splashed white with her uric acid, the evidence of repeated take-offs from this roost in the past. She knows the lie of the land around here intimately. Opposite her is the crater, a shallow bowl about 250 metres in diameter, rimmed with volcanic boulders. In the centre is a small lake, obscured from her view.

From a distance the crater appears countersunk into the surrounding expanse of schist, its volcanic lips seemingly all there is to show for such a remarkable anomaly in the landscape.

At closer quarters, though, it impresses as the crown of a hill flanked on every side by stream-filled gullies which give it an identity separate from the surrounding country. These encircling gullies provide, for a raptor, scope for some cut and thrust in a chase.

Photo of Neville Peat, Lynley Dodd and Apirana Taylor. Recipients of the Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement 2024. — Left to right: Neville Peat, Lynley Dodd and Apirana Taylor – recipients of the Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement 2024. (Photo: Neil MacKenzie, courtesy of Creative New Zealand)

The falcon waits, statue still, eyes full and unblinking. Although upright on her roost she produces no silhouette because the rock outcrop extends above her. Her camouflage is convincing. You need to be looking straight at her to distinguish her dappled front from the folds and variegations of the rock.

A flight of yellowhammers, frisky, gregarious birds in winter, approaches the crater area from the lower slopes of the ridge. There are 20 or more of them. The group moves as one, rapidly, but individually the birds move with dipping, looping movements as they close their wings momentarily. They fly in prospect of food – seeds and insects. The hay of winter feeding-out is a favourite target and good pickings may also be had around ponds and streams. The crater lake is a destination this morning.

The falcon has them in sight but not for long. They are obscured by the crater hill. Then they top the rim and descend into the bowl where they are again obscured from the falcon’s gaze. But she knows their habits, knows where they will land.

Now she indulges in two small but distinctive movements – first, an alternate kneading and clutching of her feet, a sign of keenness, then a bobbing of her head, which helps stir her blood and sharpen her wits. She assesses a flight path.

Suddenly she departs the roost, defecating the moment her feet are airborne. The rock face below is a smidgen whiter.