Back-of-the-book blurbs: 4 tips on how to approach
And mine's backstory
Again, for these purposes, please understand “blurb” to mean a testimonial for your book.
In my writing life, second to waiting for the first feedback I ever received from a critique group, asking for blurbs was the most nerve-wracking. Me? Ask Dorothy Allison? The chutzpah!
It’s gonna take some chutzpah.
“Why should anything be easy?”
—Anybody’s Yiddishite grandmother
It takes believing in your book enough to request a blurb from the preeminent author(s) in your field.
In my case, that meant asking Dorothy Allison. (The best ask-time is six to eight months prior to your book going up for pre-order. These are busy people.)
I found Ms. Allison’s agent, sent him an email with my standard query letter adjusted to request a blurb. He replied, asking for my first 10 pages and a one-page synopsis. He forwarded the request, which came back with a, “Yes.” I mailed off the ARC.
(Advanced Reader’s Copy; or: galleys. I will write about those in a time-TBD post.)
On a number of levels far sadder than Ms. Allison not being able to ultimately blurb As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back, she had to bow out. As her tragedy relates to my minor request: by the time I heard she was no longer able to participate, I was over my fear of asking for blurbs: Sue William Silverman, Andrea J. Buchanan, Anna Quinn, Anne Leigh Parrish, Ronit Plank. And Jamie Ford.
I contacted National Book Award judge Jamie Ford (not yet an NBA judge; “merely” the author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter & Sweet—which remains one of my favorite novels) because the hotel on which he based Hotel is located in Seattle’s International District. Each week, when my younger son was kicking ass and taking names at his Kung fu class, I strolled past Panama Hotel on my way to the Japanese import & grocery store, Uwajimaya, to buy onigiri for dinner.
Each time I passed the Panama, thoughts of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter & Sweet choked me up—and that story is exactly what I wrote to Jamie as the opening graph of the blurb-adjusted request I sent him. Right down to the onigiri.
TMI?
Perhaps.
A rare novel that shows how easily childhood trauma can be internalized, normalized, and distort our coming-of-age. Alle C. Hall puts us inside that headspace then takes us by the hand and walks us through a maze of globe-trotting dissociation to a better, more hopeful place. An outstanding debut.”
It’s perfect. An endless “thank you” goes out to Jamie.
Bonus: shortened to, “A rare novel. An outstanding debut,” Jamie’s blurb looked oh-so-great on my site and Amazon pages, as well as on all sorts of letters to:
media
bookstores
conference committees
conferences where I might teach
other potential blurters.
So, go for it. If you’ve signed with an agent, or even attempted to, or written jacket copy, with some adjustments you have the requisite:
Query letter
opening paragraph adjusted to honestly express enthusiasm for their work;
if someone is referring you, put “Referred by (famous writer)” in the subject heading.
Word documents to attach:
10 pages: as little as you can get away with and still give a taste of what you have to offer;
a one-page, single-spaced synopsis for the remainder of the book; and