Shaved Meats, Piled High: December 2019
Twelve Blurbs a Blurbing
OK, here's how it goes: If you are lucky enough to get a book deal, chances are you will have to ask other writers to "blurb" you. Do these endorsement sell books? Not exactly, although there are certain individuals whose enthusiasm can change your life. (Waves frantically at Reese Witherspoon and Oprah; the latter was literally my neighbor, living one building over when my family lived in an apartment in Columbia, MD, 1974-1977.) In my experience, some readers can't tell the difference between reviews and blurbs.
But blurbs do generate enthusiasm inside a publishing house, especially for debut writers or a writer who's trying something markedly different in mid-career.
My first book was blurbed by two Edgar® winners, Margaret Maron and Julie Smith, both clients of my agent. Since then, I've had endorsements from quite a few crime novelists and unsolicited support from the likes of Stephen King, Anna Quindlen and Roxane Gay. So I try to pay it forward.
That said, books arrive at my UPS box every week, in search of blurbs. How to choose, whom to choose? And how to do it without losing all my reading time to books in search of blurbs?
One of the hardest things to do as a novelist is to hold on to the thing that made you a novelist -- the sheer, dizzying pleasure of reading, just-because reading, lost-in-a-book reading. I contend that the best reading almost makes us feel a little guilty. Shouldn't I be outside on this beautiful day? Does my family need me while I'm here in my bathtub, fingers and toes slowly pruning while I turn the pages?
And while reading for blurbs is pleasurable -- especially if you're smart about how you do it, more on that in a minute -- it is always dutiful. There's a deadline. And then you have to write a blurb, an especially tricky genre.
The past couple of years, I've been pretty stingy with my blurbs. I've prioritized my friends because my friends are all Charlottes -- good friends and good writers. I've taken hiatuses and gone months at a time without blurbing at all. But as 2020 loomed, I decided I should have a set policy and it's this -- I'm blurbing exactly 12 books in 2020, an average of one a month.
And two of those blurbs have already been done, a third one is about to be done (although I think I'm too late to make the cover, in which case I will tweet the hell out of it) and two more have been chosen. Then there's another book that's definitely on my short list after reading the agent's pitch. Oh, and one more I've been trying to get to, thanks to book maven Anna Quindlen, who does not blurb, but does make sure that good books get found. That leaves five slots. And there's a method behind my madness, if you will, a very conscious criteria that I prefer not to disclose.
Meanwhile, I need to draw up a dream list of writers I would like to blurb my first-ever essay collection. Sigh.
READ/READING: Little Secrets*, Jennifer Hillier; Coyotes of Carthage*, Steven Wright; Black Widow*, Leslie Gray Streeter; Royal Street Reveillon, Greg Herren; How To Be a Family, Dan Kois.
*Blurbed books, all terrific
REREADING: The Annotated Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (notes by Alfred Appel); Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O'Dell; Trick Mirror, Jia Tolentino.
ME, ME, ME: Lady in the Lake has shown up on some more "best of" lists for 2019, including Crime Reads, the Wall Street Journal and The Marshall Project.
I'll be posting my one-word resolution challenge on Twitter and Facebook before year's end and encourage you to participate. It's immensely fun to try to find one word that can encompass your ambitions for the coming year.
Laura Lippman
December 2019