How to Get Blurbs for Your Book
How to get blurbs for your book — this has been my recent focus. I’ve wondered how, if I should, and if so whom I dare ask to take the time away from their own writing. I shied away from it for months. But everyone says blurbs, or short testimonials, help book buyers decide if they want to buy a book. Buyers see them on Amazon, on the back cover in a bookstore, and they can be used in social media posts.
In the end, I decided I wanted three authors whose books I admire, and whose subjercts related to mine, for my novel, The Renaissance Club, which comes out next January (2018).
Naturally, I turned to my best research assistant, Google. Happily, I found some excellent articles on how to get blurbs for your book. I found even more — why an author would want to write a blurb, how to ask (letter samples), and how to create the right list of authors for your novel. First world problems, yes — those of a happily about-to-be-published writer. Still, I sweated through some sleepless nights over how to, and how to sustain my optimism following rejections.
How to Get Incredible Blurbs for Your Book
This article has incredible details and explanations — just about everything you need to know — how to get them, why you want them, and how to write an author you like and ask for one. Especially good in this one is the way you should compile a list of the best authors to blurb your book. For example, even if I could get Stephen King to write me a sentence or two, his name on my book would not sell to my potential readers. Okay, maybe his book on writing is universally loved, but horror and my genre don’t exactly mix.
How to Get Book Blurbs from Famous Authors
The thing I like best in this article is the good sample letters requesting a blurb, plus the fact that it never hurts an author to have her or his name seen on the back cover of a good book. Different ways to write your request letters — it all boils down to how are you related to this writer, even if you don’t know them personally? What have they written that makes you want their endorsement? In my case, I selected authors of women’s fiction, time travel, and love stories that are more mainstream than romance formula (though I can enjoy a good romance! But mine isn’t the formula).
A wonderful and generous author tells why she provides blurbs for many authors who approach her — paying it forward. If all authors realized that we are a community, things would work so much better for us all.
In the End
How to get blurbs for your book? In the end I made a good list, authors I admire and who have written books that relate in some way to mine — and Igot three wonderful authors to agree to add a testimonial!!! Three exclamation marks, one for each author, each of whom I very much admire. So now, if ever I’m asked, I will do at least three for others, following Tess Gerritsen’s lead. Because if I can do anything to help another author, I will. I will make time, if I possibly can. Maybe not every time asked, but as often as I can, because writing is hard and we need to always support one another.
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