George Orwell called blurbs “disgusting tripe.” What do you say?
By Janice Harayda
A publisher who was trying to promote a book once asked the late novelist Beryl Bainbridge for a quote about it. “Just say whatever you want,” she replied. Few novelists might allow publishers such liberties. But blurbs lend themselves to a host of questionable practices, as George Orwell understood when he called them “disgusting tripe.” Authors trade blurbs. Editors pressure writers they edit to provide them for other writers they edit. Commercial services sell blurbs to authors who have no obligation to disclose that they paid for the praise on their dust jackets.
What’s ethical and what’s not? On Saturday I’ll be speaking about the politics of blurbing and reviewing at the Biographers International conference in New York, and I’d love to know your answers to the questions below. On the following survey, a “blurb” means “praise solicited by an author, editor or publisher before the publication of a book” (not praise extracted from a review after it appears). Please answer any or all of the questions that interest you in the Comments below or tweet them to me at @janiceharayda. Thank you!
Is it ethical for authors to:
provide blurbs for books they haven’t read?
trade blurbs with other authors?
charge a fee for providing a blurb?
accept non-cash favors (such as sex, gifts or meals) in exchange for blurbs?
provide blurbs for authors edited by their editor or represented by their agent?
solicit blurbs from friends, relatives or other groups?
provide blurbs for books they dislike in order to help a friend?
Is it ethical for editors or publishers to:
ask authors whom they publish to provide blurbs for other authors they publish?
add exclamation points or other punctuation to blurbs?
take blurbs out of context in ads – for example, by using only a few words from a long blurb?
Is it ethical for journalists and bloggers to:
quote from a blurb without saying who gave the blurb – for example, by using phrases like “has been compared to” without saying who made the comparison?
review books for which they provided blurbs?
You may also want to read “Backscratching in Our Time,” a long running series on One-Minute Book Reviews that calls attention to authors who praise each other’s books in blurbs or elsewhere.
Janice Harayda is an award-winning journalist and novelist who has been the book editor of the Plain Dealer in Cleveland and a vice-president of the National Book Critics Circle.
(c) 2013 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
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