What We're Writing: Jenn is Blurbing

 Jenn McKinlay: Okay, so when I originally wrote this post I was officially out of contract, waiting to see if they publisher was interested in any more books from me. After fifty-plus manuscripts, you never know. I could have worn out my welcome. 

Well, I'm happy to say that yesterday I signed a contract (for something new that I can't talk about yet) so I remain employed, which I'm sure the Hooligans' colleges appreciate. So, what am I writing? Since I've been in the upside-down/in-between for a couple of months, I've been working on proposals, blurbs for other authors' books - so many blurbs! - articles, blog posts, you know, all of the things we authors write in addition to our books.

I could talk about any of the above for they all take huge amounts of time, but I want to focus on author endorsements. These are not easy for me. I tend to write long and I think blurbs need to be short (no one has time to read these things) but they also need to be accurate. Describe the book enthusiastically but don't give the plot away. Very, very, tricky. 

So here are a few of my recent book blurbs, and I want your honest opinion. Would any of these get you to buy the book? Or at the very least peak your interest? And do author endorsements matter to you at all or no?

Not for nothing, but there's a lot of pressure to gather endorsements and if y'all don't actually notice them or if they don't influence you to buy a book, well, that would be a relief actually. 

Ali Brady's UNTIL NEXT SUMMER beautifully captures everything that's magical and marvelous about long summer days, away camp, best friends, first kisses, finding your people and the place of your heart. When the Chickawah camp is placed in jeopardy, our protagonists try everything they can think of to save it. Rarely have I been so completely invested in the outcome of a story. In a word, it's Chicka-wonderful! Hey, if you know, you know and if you don't know you need to read UNTIL NEXT SUMMER! --Jenn McKinlay

"Ellen Byron's newest mystery series is a laugh out loud, make you snort, tale chock full of oddball characters in the delightfully rustic setting of an old motel. Come for the laughs, stay for the puzzler of a mystery that will keep you up entirely too late, trying to solve it." --Jenn McKinlay

Star Struck is a delightful addition to McCown's Hollywood Mystery series! With her years of experience in the industry, McCown crafts a zinger of a whodunit with all the glitz and glam a reader could want, along with a twisty turny mystery that readers will devour." --Jenn McKinlay

Confession: I have only bought one book because of an author endorsement and I hated it. I've never given them so much as a glance ever since. Shocking, I know.

Rhys has a weekend gripe!

RHYS BOWEN:  A writer’s life does not always run smoothly, as I can attest at this very moment. We work hard to write the best book possible and then everyone else works equally hard to make us feel it is the worst thing we have ever written!

I am thinking this because I am in the middle of copy-edits. This is the stage of the book when the story is in place and it is up to one person to find any flaws or inconsistencies in the storytelling—which they always do. In this book my copy-editor is obsessed with the depth of the snow.  “You said it was a light dusting of snow.  How wet do her feet become? And here it’s a layer of snow. Is that more than a dusting?

And obsessed with the fact that the house doesn’t have a phone.

“How will they be able to summon a taxi with no phone?  Wouldn’t it be easier to have a phone?  They could call the police easily if they had a phone etc etc.

The point being that not many ordinary people had a phone in the 1930s and if they wanted to make a call they would send a servant over to the big house on his bike.

And obsessed with the fact that the older woman should be Darcy’s great aunt and not aunt. Every aunt is highlighted. I am a patient person, but I did ask my editor if I could title my next book “How to murder a copy-editor.”

I have to add, in her defense, that she has been really thorough on anachronisms. Not allowed to use scenario or a dozen other really useful words.

So that is one of our little trials before the book comes out. And when it is published the next trial is reviews. Every review is only one person’s opinion, right? It shouldn’t matter that they hated the book. But it does. In the past reviewers were professionals like Hallie who knew what they were talking about. Now, with Amazon providing anonymity, anyone can write a rotten review. I get lots of reviews of Amazon so among several thousand there will be some really bad ones. There are the crazy one star reviews:

I ordered this on Kindle and it hasn’t arrived yet. One star.

As if that was the author’s fault?

For In Farleigh Field I had men who were angry that it was described as a WWII novel and nobody got blown up on every page.

But my favorite awful review for In Farleigh Field was from a person who said I knew nothing about England, nothing about British aristocracy or how they spoke. Actually I’m married to a member of the British upper class. I stay with his family in large country houses. We have a favorite relative called Puff and a cousin called Sir Ferrers Vyvyan.   When I showed John the review he was so angry he was going to find the person and hunt them down!

But that’s the trouble. The writer is powerless. And I have to remind myself about all those bestselling books that got rotten reviews, or worse still, were turned down by umpteen publishers. 17 rejections for J K Rowling. More than that for Mary Higgins Clark. And Walt Disney was fired because he lacked creativity. And Einstein was told he was hopeless and would never amount to anything.

So it’s reassuring to know that critics are often wrong, isn’t it?

On the other end of the spectrum are the wonderful writers who give up their time to read and blurb other writers books. They make generous comments and help sales. I am often asked to blurb these days. I will only blurb a book I really like and have turned down books that I thought might offend my fans (one took place in a S&M scene in a bordello. Uh--no thank you)

Occasionally I have agreed to blurb a book I don't reeeeely love. That's hard, isn't it?  "A brand new take on Victorian England?  A fresh approach? The story leaves one thinking? or just "Wow. What a book!"

meaning

what a book. Thank God there isn't another one like it. And it leaves one thinking thank God it's over.

So I thought I'd close on a positive note by sharing this list of blurb terms with you:

Authors; what is your favorite publishing gripe? Readers: do other writers' blurbs make you pick up a book?

Rhys on Blurbs

RHYS BOWEN: When people ask me what I’m reading right now, I always have to say it isn’t a book I have chosen to read, it’s a book I’ve been asked to blurb. Unfortunately I have become the go-to blurber for any historical novel written between 1850 and 1950. If a book written in that time period comes out, you’ll probably see a quote from me on the cover.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to do this. I have benefited from some wonderful blurbs myself from top writers. Thank you Lee Child, Louise Penny, Charlaine Harris, Laura Lippman, and the Reds.  I think it’s a task that I should embrace. The only  negative is that I don’t get time to read books I want to. I do try to be quite ethical in my blurbing. I always read the book. I let the editor know, ahead of time, that if I find anything wrong in a book I won’t endorse it. And you’ll be amazed how often I find things that make me wince: in one book the lead character came out of the Savoy hotel and “took a cab to a less salubrious part of London under Charing Cross Station.”  I actually laughed. It’s about a hundred yards down the Strand, and certainly not less salubrious. I used to walk it every day when I was working for the BBC at Bush House.

This was a writer who had never been to London. I have had authors who address the butler as Mr. Soames when the butler is always referred to by his last name only except by other servants. I had a character who took a degree in ornithology from University College London. This gave me a good chuckle as I’m a graduate and nobody offered me a degree in ornithology!

The worst howler was a character coming from Yorkshire into Victoria Station. Anyone who knows London realizes that trains from Yorkshire come into the north of the city (King’s Cross, actually) and Victoria is on the south. Sorry. That book didn’t get a blurb.

I was thinking about the amount of time I spend reading other writer’s books and I decided I could perhaps make it into a very lucrative career. A blurb from Rhys for a fee. It would create a table of fees, based on the enthusiasm of the blurb.

For ten dollars: This was an okay book.

For fifty dollars: I enjoyed this book.

For a hundred dollars: This was a good book.

For a thousand dollars: Wow! This was the best book I’ve read this year.

Okay, before you send me books, I was joking.

And if I get a book I really don’t like but have agreed to blurb? A really bad book? What do I do then?

This was a book unlike any I’ve read before. I couldn’t wait to finish it. So different.

OR

Wow. What a book!

(Again I’m joking. I would never endorse a book I thought was bad. My name, my reputation will be on the cover of that book). However sometimes I have agreed to give a quote to a friend or a friend of a friend. Awkward. I once had a book to blurb that finished with the bad guy getting strangled by a boa constrictor. I said, “Comes to a really gripping conclusion.”

So I am interested to know: have you ever picked up a book because it has an endorsement from a favorite author on the cover?  And fellow writers: how do you handle blurbing a book you really don’t like?

I have to go now. There is a book waiting to be blurbed on my desk.