the blurbing game

It's so funny to think that those little quotes on the backs of books are so fraught with politics and insideriness and all kinds of ickiness. And sometimes they're not, but all too often, blurbing—as the practice of one author saying nice things about another author's book is called—is just one giant game of insider baseball. (Is there even such a thing as insider baseball or did I just make that up?)

I don't think I realized this with my first book because I had beginner's luck. I wrote You...