Blurb Your Enthusiasm: A Cracking Compendium of Book Blurbs, Writing Tips, Literary Folklore and Publishing Secrets

Product Information

The three mamaloshen terms were beshert (meaning “meant to be,” often as a descriptor of a loved one), tsuris (meaning “troubles”), and shanda (which is a good way to describe someone who gives tsuris to your beshert.) We love the words in books – but what about the words on them? How do they work their magic? Penguin Books blurb wizard Louise Willder joyfully divulges what those 100-or-so words can tell us about literary history, the craft of writing, authors from George Orwell to Zadie Smith, genres from children’s fiction to bonkbusters, cover design, the dark arts of persuasion and even why we read. She also answers burning questions such A book full of anecdotes from the author’s years of experience in publishing, shared with wit and passion - I can’t recommend it highly enough for enthusiastic readers out there. it can be easy to forget that a potential reader hasn’t read it: they don’t know anything about it. You can’t sell them the experience of the book – you have to sell them the expectation of reading it; the idea of it. And that’s when a copywriter can be an author’s best friend. I enjoyed it, it contained lots of interesting facts and was fun to read, and I trusted the author’s judgement enough to add three of the books she praises to my TBR queue.

Curb Your Enthusiasm review – Larry’s back, and funnier than Curb Your Enthusiasm review – Larry’s back, and funnier than

A joyful celebration of books – the perfect gift for bibliophiles, word lovers and anyone who’s ever wondered, should you judge a book by its cover? Louise Willder has worked in publishing as a copywriter for 25 years and she’s written more than 5,000 blurbs. She seems eminently qualified, then, to guide us on ‘the outside story of books’ (as the book’s own blurb puts it). This is a good description, as Willder doesn’t limit herself to exploring blurbs – there are lots of elements that combine to produce a book’s cover and most of them are touched on here. There are sections on all sorts of things, including various genres, what makes a good book within them and what makes a good blurb in each case. Willder is often enthusiastic, sometimes withering but always thoughtful and enjoyable to read. There are also some wider reflections on books and publishing, including an excellent section on sexism and how it affects perceptions and the presentation of a book. It’s witty and punchy, making a not-at-all-funny subject very readable. (And boy, did it make me think!) Which isn’t to say the season premiere, airing 21 years after the series premiered as an hour-long HBO special, won’t be considered an instant classic to many. Indeed, we now live in a world where Jon Hamm has spoken Yiddish on television, a true hallelujah moment for an admittedly small percentage of the world’s population, but a gift wrapped in a bow to Larry David’s most dedicated core. (We knew Hanukkah was coming early this year, but not this early.)

Table of Contents

First, an English/American translation. In America a "blurb" is a quote or remark by an author or celebrity that appears on a book cover. Stephen King is famous for blurbing many books. In England, a "blurb" is the description of the book that appears on the cover. This book is about the English kind of blurbs.

Blurb your enthusiasm | Books | The Guardian Blurb your enthusiasm | Books | The Guardian

Or this, talking about thinking one must enjoy “classics”: “My most important classics principle, however, is this: some of them are definitely better than others, and you don’t have to like all of them. Magical realism, the Beats and most ‘Great American Novels’ have never done it for me, and I am at peace with that.” Whether you agree with her taste here or not, that’s a sensible, humane and, for me, helpful and encouraging approach.

Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading

Willder has worked as a copywriter at Penguin Books for 25 years. During this time, she has produced blurbs for roughly 5,000 books. The American usage of the word “blurb” is for advance review quotes that fellow authors contribute for inclusion on the cover. I didn’t realize I used the word interchangeably for either meaning; in the UK, one might call such a quote a “puff.”

Blurb Your Enthusiasm by Louise Willder | Book review - TLS Blurb Your Enthusiasm by Louise Willder | Book review - TLS

Of course, one has to draw the line somewhere, and Willder would like to see fewer shopworn adjectives on book covers, specifically ‘luminous’, ‘dazzling’, ‘incandescent’, ‘stunning’, ‘shimmering’, ‘sparkling’, ‘glittering’, ‘devastating’, ‘searing’, ‘shattering’, ‘explosive’, ‘epic’, ‘electrifying’, ‘dizzying’, ‘chilling’, ‘staggering’, ‘deeply personal’ and the ubiquitous ‘haunting’. You wouldn't think you could get a whole book from just talking about blurbs, but actually they make for really interesting discussion. I enjoyed this, though I am not usually a big non-fiction fan. Being about books though helped with that & I enjoyed all the interesting facts and snippets of blurbs and author thoughts about blurbs, publishing insights and funny examples. So I think blurbing serves a purpose, if you know how to read it. Some blurbs are over the top, such as when a blurber feels flattered, or when he is unconsciously seeking good karma. But I don't think many people want to be blamed by readers for making them read bad books. always ask yourself, what’s really going on here? Why should anyone care? And how do we make them care?” there’s a bit in the chapter titled “ventriloquism” that would be good for teaching the analysis of syntax but it’s too long to write out hereI pulled out my copy of Jim Crace’s Quarantine to see how Willder managed to write a blurb about a novel about Jesus without mentioning Jesus (“a Galilean who they say has the power to work miracles”)! This is, then, an easy sell - though it's hard to fault the number of entertaining snippets, whether from history, books themselves or the experiences of other blurbists that Willder crams in. This is a book to savour. Having said that, I'm not sure it's a book that is best read from cover to cover as I did, because after a while it can feel a little samey. The book is dividing into many short sections (though it's not an A to Z in the conventional sense, despite the subtitle), and I suspect it would be perfect as a loo book, or for short train journeys, taking it in a chunk at a time. I remember working with one author who always wanted to put question marks at the end of statements in his titles, e.g. britain: a democracy? when used this way it gives off the air of a student essay, or an anachronistic 1940s ‘whither germany?’ energy. the question mark: a useful ally? I think Rebecca Solnit nails it when she says ‘a book without women is often said to be about humanity, but a book with women in the foreground is a woman’s book.

Blurb Your Enthusiasm | Oneworld

The author does a stellar job of taking us through the history of publishing and the development of the blurb, the authors who hate it, those who burn it, the hyperbolic nature of Americans and the French who have a habit of avoiding the commercial nature of it. Highlights include the changing blurbs to attract new audiences to classics such as Jane Austen and the reflection of society's norms and expectations when it comes sexism and sexist tropes in books and publishing, the derogatory comments about women writers and their areas of focus, where men write on what really matters, for everyone, whilst women write for women! Do not be surprised if after reading this, you find yourself venturing into reading a genre you normally avoid, and wanting to read a pile of other books that you had not anticipated, that is how good this is. Writers, then, mostly stay clear of blurbing their blurbers. But is there something more subtle going on? When Ellis called Frey's book "a heartbreaking memoir", was he making a reference to Dave Eggers' memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius? Possibly not. But I'll come to Eggers' book in a moment: I think it's the most lavishly blurbed book I've ever seen. George Orwell worried over his blurbs in detail with his editor, and his original description of Nineteen Eighty-Four as “the history of a revolution that went wrong” is still used on many editions today. The Italian author Roberto Calasso, who beautifully dubbed the blurb “a letter to a stranger”, wrote hundreds of blurbs for the publishing company Adelphi, and even produced a book of them. TS Eliot noted “what a difficult art blurb-writing is”, and sweated over countless blurbs for Faber – although I doubt his interpretation of Robert Graves’s The White Goddess as “a prodigious, monstrous, stupefying, indescribable book” would get past a marketing department today. Cecilia Stein, editorial director, acquired world all language rights from the author, with publication slated for September 2022.

Books by Louise Willder

specificity is key. vague waffle, in fact most description – whether of a character or the book itself – should be avoided. Louise Willder certainly makes a 5 star splash with her smart, joyful and knowledgeable non-fiction debut with its insights and history of the publishing industry, more specifically on the book blurb, the writing of which she has decades of experience, all of which she relates with wit, charm, warmth, with the occasional acerbic comment. If you love books, are in the publishing industry, are an author, a would be writer, or a book reviewer, then this is not one you should miss out on. Willder identifies the critical qualities that underline the thinking that goes behind the 100 words of blurb, citing a plethora of real life examples across literary fiction, classics, across every conceivable genre and non-fiction, the good, the bad, the ugly and the downright unhinged. The blurb works in a symbiotic relationship with the cover, title, first line of the narrative, to persuade, and/or manipulate, distort, or deceive through the use of the dark arts to get us to want and buy that book. cancel culture’ is in itself a problematic phrase. but if I were to dip a toe into the culture war, I would come down on the ‘think before you censor, or even censure, if it plays into the hands of a libertarian’ side. why make life easier for your enemies?