We Need to Destroy the Blurbing Industrial Complex

In 1856, an obscure-ish writer, frustrated by the non-recognition of his newest self-published oeuvre, took matters into his own hands. He sent copies of his book of poems, unsolicited, to the literary luminaries of his day. One luminary, Ralph Waldo Emerson, replied with a polite thank-you note.

“‘I greet you at the beginning of a great career.’ —Ralph Waldo Emerson” was quickly appended—in blingy gold letters—to the back of this book.

This is widely considered to be the first book blurb in the English language, as we’ve documented on the site before. Without it, perhaps Walt Whitman and his Leaves of Grass might have stayed obscure forever (Emerson, however, objected to this manipulation of his private correspondence). Besides poetic genius, Whitman had the marketing instinct of a P.T. Barnum; of course, today we think of him as an American bard, but at the time, he also penned his own blurbable reviews, anointing himself the “American bard at last!” pulling off what Jerome Loving, in his biography Emerson, Whitman, and the American Muse, viewed  “as a slick promotion scheme, done by a man with little sense of propriety.”

Blurbs, the quoted testimonials of a book’s virtues by other authors, are now so ubiquitous, readers expect them, first-time authors stress about getting them, booksellers base orders on them. A blank back cover today would probably look like a production mistake. But while readers heft books in their hands and scrutinize the praise, it should be noted that blurbs are not ad copy written by some copywriter; they are ad copy written . “Ad copy” might be a bit harsh, but maybe not. The “flap copy,” the wordage on the inside flap of the cover of a hard cover, is written by the publishers, to tell potential readers what the