Blurb Your Enthusiasm: A Cracking Compendium of Book Blurbs, Writing Tips, Literary Folklore and Publishing Secrets

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Writers, then, mostly stay clear of blurbing their blurbers. But is there something more subtle going on? When Ellis called Frey's book "a heartbreaking memoir", was he making a reference to Dave Eggers' memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius? Possibly not. But I'll come to Eggers' book in a moment: I think it's the most lavishly blurbed book I've ever seen. Constructing an effective blurb is a task that many independent authors can find daunting – and it is a task that the editors helping them may find a challenge, too – so this book may be a great resource to recommend for help, advice and inspiration. But to be an editor is to love books, to want to make them the best they can be, and to want to see the authors we work with succeed, and Blurb Your Enthusiasm is ideal for us: people who love books, who find them interesting, and who would happily spend hours thinking about how covers work. This is an enthusiastic and opinionated review of the world of blurbs. She skewers lazy blurbs. "Moving", "compelling", "brilliant", etc., are empty words that add nothing. Good blurbs latch onto one or two specific things that explain why you should read the book. Spoilers do not belong in the blurb. The tone of the blurb should match the tone of the book. A humorous blurb works for a humorous book, it does not work for a serious literary novel. Willder has worked as a copywriter at Penguin Books for 25 years. During this time, she has produced blurbs for roughly 5,000 books. cancel culture’ is in itself a problematic phrase. but if I were to dip a toe into the culture war, I would come down on the ‘think before you censor, or even censure, if it plays into the hands of a libertarian’ side. why make life easier for your enemies?

Blurb Your Enthusiasm: The A-Z of Literary Persuasion by Blurb Your Enthusiasm: The A-Z of Literary Persuasion by

john yorke: ‘the shape of all stories; the enduring pattern of how someone is found by being lost.’ You wouldn't think you could get a whole book from just talking about blurbs, but actually they make for really interesting discussion. I enjoyed this, though I am not usually a big non-fiction fan. Being about books though helped with that & I enjoyed all the interesting facts and snippets of blurbs and author thoughts about blurbs, publishing insights and funny examples.

I couldn’t resist Louise Willder’s Blurb Your Enthusiasm when it popped up on NetGalley many months ahead of publication. That wordplay, of course, only added to the attraction. Willder’s book is all about those 100 or so words, so important in persuading us whether to read a book or not. She should know, she’s been writing them for twenty-five years.

Blurb Your Enthusiasm by Louise Willder | Waterstones

If you’re a writer, it’s all about finding your voice. If you’re a copywriter, it’s usually about expressing someone else’s. One is an art; one is a craft (or if it’s an art, it’s the art of imitation). You just have to listen.’one of the first tactile books for children was pat the bunny , 1940, which featured different textures inside, and was advertised with the great line ‘for whom the bell tolls was magnificent – but it hasn’t any bunny in it.’ it can be easy to forget that a potential reader hasn’t read it: they don’t know anything about it. You can’t sell them the experience of the book – you have to sell them the expectation of reading it; the idea of it. And that’s when a copywriter can be an author’s best friend. They’re just a few words on books. But what are blurbs really doing (other than trying to twist your arm)? This book is all about those 100-or-so words that take seconds to read but can make a world of difference – and what they tell us about literary history, the art of writing, authors from George Orwell to Zadie Smith, genres from children’s fiction to bonkbusters, cover design, the dark arts of persuasion and even who we are as readers. PDF / EPUB File Name: Blurb_Your_Enthusiasm_-_Louise_Willder.pdf, Blurb_Your_Enthusiasm_-_Louise_Willder.epub There are sections on all sorts of things, including various genres, what makes a good book within them and what makes a good blurb in each case. Willder is often enthusiastic, sometimes withering but always thoughtful and enjoyable to read. There are also some wider reflections on books and publishing, including an excellent section on sexism and how it affects perceptions and the presentation of a book. It’s witty and punchy, making a not-at-all-funny subject very readable. (And boy, did it make me think!)

Blurb Your Enthusiasm | Louise Willder | 9780861542178 Blurb Your Enthusiasm | Louise Willder | 9780861542178

I understand that the American Federal Trade Commission requires me to state that I received a free review copy from Oneworld Publications via NetGalley. However, my opinions are my own and are unbiased. Which isn’t to say the season premiere, airing 21 years after the series premiered as an hour-long HBO special, won’t be considered an instant classic to many. Indeed, we now live in a world where Jon Hamm has spoken Yiddish on television, a true hallelujah moment for an admittedly small percentage of the world’s population, but a gift wrapped in a bow to Larry David’s most dedicated core. (We knew Hanukkah was coming early this year, but not this early.) Wilder is brilliant. She offers examples of stunning blurbs – generally, these show, not tell, and are pithy, presenting a ‘tell me MORE’ sum-up without spoilers or dry and overloaded detail about plot or character, And she gives samples of the pits of blurb – for example, the cliché ridden oversell, the overweighty comparison of an utterly drab novel to something else, stratospheric ‘if you liked THAT you will love THIS, based purely on some similarity in setting of place, time, or general subject matter Or her take on the sort of Literary Fiction where nothing really happens: “You know the kind of book. They win prizes. There generally isn’t much in the way of a plot. Or if there is, it’s something along the lines of woman goes away and finds herself, someone thinks about an event from their past, or sad middle-aged man has an affair – or even just considers said affair and doesn’t go through with it.” Followed a little later by “... Thomas Pynchon’s notoriously ‘difficult’ (in other words, mainly read by show-offs) novel Gravity’s Rainbow…. I wonder how many people have read it and then not told anybody they’ve read it? Zero, I suspect. Because the point of books like these is that they are an Iron Man literary challenge, and once you’ve been macho enough to read them you can boast about it.” Cecilia Stein, editorial director, acquired world all language rights from the author, with publication slated for September 2022.Louise Willder certainly makes a 5 star splash with her smart, joyful and knowledgeable non-fiction debut with its insights and history of the publishing industry, more specifically on the book blurb, the writing of which she has decades of experience, all of which she relates with wit, charm, warmth, with the occasional acerbic comment. If you love books, are in the publishing industry, are an author, a would be writer, or a book reviewer, then this is not one you should miss out on. Willder identifies the critical qualities that underline the thinking that goes behind the 100 words of blurb, citing a plethora of real life examples across literary fiction, classics, across every conceivable genre and non-fiction, the good, the bad, the ugly and the downright unhinged. The blurb works in a symbiotic relationship with the cover, title, first line of the narrative, to persuade, and/or manipulate, distort, or deceive through the use of the dark arts to get us to want and buy that book. So I think blurbing serves a purpose, if you know how to read it. Some blurbs are over the top, such as when a blurber feels flattered, or when he is unconsciously seeking good karma. But I don't think many people want to be blamed by readers for making them read bad books. The authors Jonathan Franzen and Jennifer Weiner have been duking it out over the issue of seriousness since 2010, with Weiner criticising the ‘Franzenfrenzy’ that greeted the publication of his novel Freedom. In her eyes, women writing about domestic situations were seen as limited in their appeal, but when Franzen ‘writes a book about a family … we are told this is a book about America’.’

Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A–Z of literary persuasion - CIEP Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A–Z of literary persuasion - CIEP

there’s a bit in the chapter titled “ventriloquism” that would be good for teaching the analysis of syntax but it’s too long to write out here Or this, talking about thinking one must enjoy “classics”: “My most important classics principle, however, is this: some of them are definitely better than others, and you don’t have to like all of them. Magical realism, the Beats and most ‘Great American Novels’ have never done it for me, and I am at peace with that.” Whether you agree with her taste here or not, that’s a sensible, humane and, for me, helpful and encouraging approach. A delightful bibliophile’s miscellany with a great title – not just for the play on words, but also for how it encapsulates what this is about: ways of pithily spreading excitement about books. The first part of the subtitle, “An A–Z of Literary Persuasion,” is puzzling in that the structure is scattershot rather than strictly alphabetical, but the second is perfect: from the title and cover to the contents, Louise Willder is interested in what convinces people to acquire and read a book.

This is a book lovers book, it is a love letter to all things book. I loved it. Being super bookish it was a book made for me and my follow bookworms. I think Rebecca Solnit nails it when she says ‘a book without women is often said to be about humanity, but a book with women in the foreground is a woman’s book’. Similarly, Wilder is impatient with a new Kurt Vonnegut blurb that “gives little clue as to what the book is about,” when anyone who has read Vonnegut knows that that’s the least interesting thing about his novels (and, arguably, most novels) anyway. The fact that the blurb captures the voice and spirit of Vonnegut is far more important — to readers anyway, if not to unit-floggers. A joyful celebration of books – the perfect gift for bibliophiles, word lovers and anyone who’s ever wondered, should you judge a book by its cover?