Blurb, Anyone?
Remember those 1 liners or phrases that you see on pretty much every book that praises it to the skies? “Terrific book…witty and thought provoking”. “Combines readability with meatiness”. The publishing industry calls them blurbs. I used to wonder how the first edition of a book could have any blurbs? How had anyone managed to read it before it was published? Well, the answer is kind of obvious. As Scott Adams described it: “A typical blurb process might involve picking some famous authors in the success field and asking my publisher to ask their publishers to ask the famous authors to 1) Read my book, and 2) Write glowing reviews.” Adams felt this process was wrong and too made up. Which is why he decided on a new approach for his own upcoming book, How to Fail Almost Every Time and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life . He decided that he would allow readers of his blog to come up with blurbs for his book before the book was released! But wait a minute, surely his ...