Julia asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

Curious about blurbs; are they done at the agent, editor or publisher level? Solely a marketing decision? Do authors seek them out from other authors? Have you ever declined a blurb-ee? Is a sentence or phrase suggested to the blurb-er? If you're willing to share how Anne McCaffrey's "Boy, Can She Write" &/or how your blurb for Peg Kerr's The Wild Swans happened, I'd love to know. Thank you!

Lois McMaster Bujold
Blurbs are solicited at all three levels. I have in the past, when my books were in the production stage, had my editors ask me for a list of likely candidates to send pre-publication copies to for remarks. It is up to the editors to decide which of the ones they then get back to put on covers. I don't think anyone ever suggests what to say to the blurber, but since space on a cover is tight, it's common to select just the most useful-looking phrases from whatever has been offered.

My indie ebooks don't require blurbs on their "covers", though we recycle old ones onto the vendor pages where appropriate, or new ones taken from professional reviews. (Which are another source: Publisher's Weekly, YALSA, and Booklist are all names-to-be-recognized, especially by purchasing librarians.)

Anne McCaffrey's nice blurb came through Baen, with whom she had a close working relationship. (It may have been on the back of a postcard she'd mailed from her Mediterranean vacation, but I don't remember for sure.) Peg Kerr was in a writer's group with me at the time, so I'd already read the book in manuscript, making that one easy.

I decline requests for blurbs all the time these days, rather shamefacedly as I benefited from them in the past, but I have eye issues that curtail my reading time. So I'm rationing it for either, first, work on my computer, or second, whatever is left goes to things I've chosen, usually on my tablet. Enlargeable fonts, yay!

Ta, L.

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