APBP Article Oasis

Famous Blurbs Work Famously For Would-Be Authors

Anyone who’s written anything with a view towards recognition knows how tough it is to get the attention of either publishers or agents. Of course, print-on-demand is easy to deal with and companies offering that service will solicit you — but that doesn’t necessarily get you into the bricks and mortar bookstores. Furthermore, traditional publishers are increasingly leery about taking on the risk of printing for a new author.

Consider the blurb. Defined by Webster as “an advertisement or laudatory announcement”, it’s been around for almost a hundred years and is still widely used in the world of publishing. Moving forward in the dictionary we find the word “logrolling”, partially defined as cronyism or mutual favoritism among writers, editors or critics in the form of reciprocal flattering reviews. That phrase is even older than the blurb, going back to an eighteenth century competitive sport in the timberlands of a new country.

Simply knowing this brief history of book endorsements doesn’t help if you’re unknown and unpublished, no matter how brilliant and ambitious you may be. Fortunately, there is now an online resource that might be able to help. www.myfamousname.com is a community website for people blessed or cursed with the same name as someone famous. Many of them are available for endorsements and testimonials, so here’s your chance…

Apart from sending your manuscript on with a glowing endorsement from the namesake of a living famous entertainer, athlete or politician, you could enjoy the backing of log dead literary luminaries such as Shakespeare or Dickens. Obviously, for undiscovered writers, blurbs must be solicited and accepted before work is submitted for publication. So…go after a namesakes. Approach them early and often and they might take the time to read your entire book. Just remember, namesakes are real people, they can pan instead of pander!

Some people consider blurbs by famous people a type of ‘bait and switch’. Whether bait and switch, hook and reel, catch and critique or attract and assess, they work, and are a respected tool used by the biggest and the best in the publishing industry.