Down with ‘unputdownable’: Is there a case for boycotting book blurbs?

Explosive. Searing. Volatile. That’s how Sean Manning felt about the prattle on every second book cover. Even those he’d published, where a novel looked naked without such blurb cliches as uproarious, urgent or unputdownable.

Who needs stories, if the modern book could rivet, haunt, rollick or sweep? Enough with the guff, thought Manning, who wasn’t really explosive after all. Just jaded. Fed up. Writing in Publishers Weekly, he said his Simon & Schuster will “no longer require authors to obtain blurbs for their books”.

A publisher from Simon & Schuster has banned the book blurb.Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Bold? Maverick? Life-changing? The publisher’s remarks certainly stole my gaze, though we should define terms before embarking on this gritty epic. To most Australians, a blurb is the promo slug on a book’s flipside. Often written by the writer themselves, filtered by the marketing team, the pitch teases the book’s contents, the genre and inbuilt question, just as a bottle of detergent pledges its powerful formula and superior results. That’s a blurb, or what most non-Americans know as a blurb.

For Manning, however, a blurb also means the support quotes that fellow authors will supply. Where Stephen King says “you won’t sleep a wink” or Zadie Smith envies a “lyrical tour de force”. By my reckoning, these grabs are less blurbs than logrolls, or logroll quotes. The slang alludes to the mutual benefit of two authors, or lumberjacks, kick-stepping a waterborne log in the same direction to keep the bookish realm afloat.

I’ve done a few logrolls in my time, just as I’ve cadged the deflected limelight of writers higher in the food chain. It’s a karma model. Big fish traditionally look after little fish since the biosphere may invert come the next monsoon, seeing you scrounging any endorsement you can find.

Never again, in Manning’s mind, his publishing house eradicating venal approvals for good. Or at least those quotes exacted via cronyism and market leverage. If a literary lion loves a new release independently, then great: let them share that love. But only then, otherwise the hype circle serves nobody, Manning argued, creating “an incestuous and unmeritocratic literary ecosystem that often rewards connections over talent”.

As bookworm and writer, I’m torn. The reasons we buy Novel A versus Novel B are subtle. Of course, we think we’re immune to jacket design and spin, but the right prompt from the right luminary may nudge you towards an unfamiliar author. As customers vacillate among new releases, words count. A rhapsodic there. A nuanced here. While wrong adjectives are deal-breakers, the right ones spell ker-ching.

A few years back, say, I tweeted about my portal phobia. The minute I see “portal” in any blurb, the novel goes back on the shelf. “Saga” is another turn-off. Life is too short for sagas. Overnight, the post went viral, proving every would-be reader has their red-flag term. For Leigh Sales, it was sorcery, “with medieval a close second”. Cartoonist Cathy Wilcox can’t abide by zany, in tune with author Zoe Norton Lodge’s whimsical.

Tapestry. Edgy. Unflinching. My post showed how sensitive we are to blurb-ese, whether that’s found in the traditional squib or the logroll gush. High among the no-go suspects were harrowing and holistic, coruscating and romp, numinous and Oprah.

Here’s hoping Sean Manning knows what he’s doing by ditching the collegial ballyhoo. Get it right and he’s an industry saviour. Stuff it up and the results will be far-reaching. Seminal. Earth-shattering.

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