I realize this must sound naïve, but if I see a book with a quote by, say, Stephen King on the front extolling it’s virtues, does that mean he really read it? Or is it a pleasant fiction and it’s slapped on with his permission?
I’ve always believed he really read it! I also believe he and I have different opinions about what constitutes a good book (his own work excepted).
I’ve had “science journalists” ask if they can slap my name on a quote extolling some new innovation they’re writing about, but I cannot confirm whether this practice extends to books.
The publisher asks the blurber to blurb, and sends a pre-publication copy for review. Smaller press and self-publishers might ask writers or fans they know to blurb. Or blurbs might be picked up from reviews.
Example: I recently reviewed a book in an online publication, and now my review is excerpted in the publisher’s distributed materials. The author then asked if I’d review another of their books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads. I’m not Stephen King, but I did read the books.
If Stephen King’s name is attached to a quote that says “This is the best book of the year!”, then Stephen King actually said that. Why he said that is up to him: Maybe he actually read it, maybe he’s friends with the author and wants to help them out, maybe he says something like that about every book anyone ever asks him about. But he’s not saying it because the publisher paid him to.
Well, that’s a relief. I was cynically expecting someone to come in here and say “My firm pays best-selling authors for blurbs.”
(But do check and make sure it wasn’t Steven King’s "best book of the year!”)
Really? How do you know that?
Maybe he doesn’t actually get a cheque for services rendered, but a bit of quid pro quo for his next book. Maybe he does red everything “they” send him and diligently writes quotes when asked. Or maybe it’s a useful source of income for an author whose pension needs a top-up.
That would be highly unusual. I’ve never heard of an instance where anyone was paid for a blurb.
He doesn’t need quid pro quo. Dude’s shopping list would be a best-seller. He is getting something out of it, though. Plenty of reading material that few others have access to. He’s a book guy.
He couldn’t possibly, not and have time to do his own reading and writing.
I worked for Weird Tales for a summer in college. Our editor in chief was George Scithers. Mr S was a member of the Trapdoor Spiders ( a small club of close friends that included Isaac Asimov). His mail would often overflow with free pre-release copies of books wanting him to read and blurb. I still have a few. So, I have no problem believing that Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and such have assistants who throw out most of the free books and pass on promising ones to the boss to read and blurb.
Literally. Several years ago, a rare book dealer wanted a very large amount of money for a small notebook of King’s, most of which consisted of arithmetic problems he wrote out for his daughter.
As Chuck said, actual pay for blurbs is unheard of. Not only that, but doing so would cause a giant scandal when - not if - it came out. I’ve never heard of such a scandal and I follow the business pretty closely. As for quid pro quo, c’mon. Stephen King sells a few million of his own books. Putting his name on a new author who may sell a few thousand would being in less than the change under his sofa cushions.
King is a great “get” for blurbs. Everybody knows his name and he’s written enough about the field for people to trust his taste. He seems to blurb a lot, but that may be influenced by his getting disproportionately noticed. Maybe he blurbs just a couple times a year. Has anyone ever counted?
One of my favorite columns in Spy Magazine was one called “Logrolling in our Time”, which matched quid pro quo book blurbs from authors. I think King was featured from time to time, but that was a long time ago, and even then he certainly didn’t need it. Still, it was funny reading [unfortunately I can’t find a link to an online version].
There might be some informal quid pro quo agreements between individual authors, or it might just be that the authors have similar tastes, and like to write the same kinds of books that they like to read. The publisher isn’t involved in that, though.
From the publisher’s point of view, it’s easy: They have a long list of people they send out advance review copies to. Some of those people don’t bother reading the book, and hence say nothing, and so the publisher doesn’t say anything. Some of them read the book, but consider it unremarkable, and hence say nothing, so the publisher still doesn’t say anything. Some of them read the book, and dislike it, and say so, and maybe it ends up on the reviewer’s own blog, but the publisher still doesn’t say anything. And some of them read the book and love it, and those, the publisher puts on the cover. So long as they get a half-dozen good reviews, they don’t care what all of the other reviewers say, and all it cost them was a few copies of the book (which might even be digital copies, these days).
Anyone who’s prestigious enough that it’d be worth trying to bribe them, would also be prestigious enough that their price to bribe would be too high, and even one unsuccessful bribery attempt would be a huge scandal for the publisher. They’ve already got a pretty good thing going; no need to upset that.
That happens because authors are often asked who to send copies to for blurbs, so they mention authors who they know and admire.
I read a bunch of genre books a few months ago, and most of the names on the blurbs were completely unknown to me. But the “author of” lines indicated writers in that same genre. I assumed friends/acquaintances of the author of the blurbed book.
I remember that. Spy was great for a time.
Also totally unfair to everyone. King blurbs a lot of horror because his name wouldn’t mean as much if he blurbs a Algerian gay romance. I bet inside that field, the authors wind up blurbing each other often, because who else would readers find authoritative? Basically, Spy picked authors who were similar enough to one another to make their blurbs worthwhile. Maybe it was logrolling or maybe it was just common sense.
Blurbing one’s friends goes way back, of course. The Algonquin group were always being accused of logrolling by their enemies in the 1920s. Yet they also were very supportive of new writers and outsiders, as King has been and as most of Spy’s victims were.
I think I’ve heard somewhere, also, that King does a lot of reading. Most authors probably read a lot, but from what I’ve heard, King doesn’t spend time on anything else at all but reading and writing. And when he reads a book that he particularly likes, well, it’s no surprise that he says so; we all do that. It’s just that, when he says it, people pay attention.
In On Writing he said he reads 70 or 80 books a year. That was a while back, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he still reads at that pace.