Sharon's Muse.... Let's chat over coffee while I ponder some things
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Sharon's Muse.... Let's chat over coffee while I ponder some things |
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Name::Sharon Cullars
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Sunday, May 07, 2006 The power of the blurb The art of a good blurb is a delicate balance between hyperbole and reality. The reality may be that a book is a decent or above decent read. The hyperbole however will pronounce it "a literary masterpiece that will melt your heart even as it moves your soul." Most readers know to read between the lines of book blurbs and advance quotes that are, of course, worded to attract the reader's eye. Think of a carnival barker if you will: "See the world's smallest woman. See the galaxy's strongest man. Read the universe's greatest author." Even if blurbs are old hat and rife with overstatements, a book is basically naked without any. And readers have come to expect them. An interesting example of overstatment would be David Eggers' advance rave for Daniel Handler's Adverbs. Eggers writes "Adverbs describes adolescence, friendship, and love with such freshness and power that you feel drunk and beaten up, but still want to leave your own world and enter the one Handler’s created. Anyone who lives to read gorgeous writing will want to lick this book and sleep with it between their legs." Hyperbole much? OK, how many of you would lick a book, then place it in the cushiony regions between your thighs? Show of hands. (Note, if you do this to my book, please keep that fact to yourself). Because we know there are many things more suited for a place between the legs...and it ain't books. As Craig Pyette, associate editor at Random House of Canada, points out, it is not the hyperbole that catches the potential buyer's eye but rather the comparison value. If the quote is coming from an established author, then that author's audience will most likely give the new author a try based on his word alone. There's the value. So, you can have Joe Nobody exclaiming, "Roger Rabbit's new book is superlative beyond compare," and compare it another book with a Stephen King quote claiming "This is a really good read." No hyperbole in the second case, but guess which book is going to move? Usually, the smart thing to do is to get someone already established in the same genre. With Again, my editors garnered good quotes from two erotic/romance authors with an already established reader base, Angela Knight and Shannon McKenna. McKenna uses the phrase "endlessly sensual" and Knight says "deliciously erotic" to describe Again. Hyperbole? Maybe. But hey, who am I to argue with authors who know their books? Per CBC.ca.com.
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