Snarky blog post
Over at Book View Cafe, I posted a rather snarky essay, "Hunting the wily cover blurb."
It's a little risky to write something like this, because people are bound to misread it. What a rotten person I must be, not to be willing to read new writers and help them out. Didn't established writers help you out when you were a pup?
They did.
I do too.
(I just finished reading a first novel by a new writer, which I thoroughly enjoyed; I'm trying to think up a scintillating blurb so the editor won't write back and say, "Can't you pump it up a little?" which is what usually happens. I'm just not enough of an SFX kinda girl to satisfy the current fashion for Spitzensparken! and Blinkenlitzen! I guess. And then there was the editor who solicited me for a blurb, then went out of the way to tell me they weren't going to use it because they didn't want the book infected with sci fi cooties. I would much have preferred a diplomatic silence.)
I hope most of the folks who read "In search of..." will notice that what I objected to, even beyond the mail-merge aspect of the email requesting my blurbage, was the writer's shining me on about being my biggest fan. It was clear from context (not to mention the fact that at least a dozen other writers got the exact same email) that he's never read a word I ever wrote. In fact he probably never even heard of me; he likely scoured SF author websites for loose email addresses and sent a copy of the email off to every single one of them.
Vonda
It's a little risky to write something like this, because people are bound to misread it. What a rotten person I must be, not to be willing to read new writers and help them out. Didn't established writers help you out when you were a pup?
They did.
I do too.
(I just finished reading a first novel by a new writer, which I thoroughly enjoyed; I'm trying to think up a scintillating blurb so the editor won't write back and say, "Can't you pump it up a little?" which is what usually happens. I'm just not enough of an SFX kinda girl to satisfy the current fashion for Spitzensparken! and Blinkenlitzen! I guess. And then there was the editor who solicited me for a blurb, then went out of the way to tell me they weren't going to use it because they didn't want the book infected with sci fi cooties. I would much have preferred a diplomatic silence.)
I hope most of the folks who read "In search of..." will notice that what I objected to, even beyond the mail-merge aspect of the email requesting my blurbage, was the writer's shining me on about being my biggest fan. It was clear from context (not to mention the fact that at least a dozen other writers got the exact same email) that he's never read a word I ever wrote. In fact he probably never even heard of me; he likely scoured SF author websites for loose email addresses and sent a copy of the email off to every single one of them.
Vonda