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A luminous, brave, and unputdownable article about blurbs

Or just some honest talk about the weird process of blurbing

Here’s George Orwell in the 1930s discussing how readers are turned off by “the disgusting tripe that is written by the blurb-reviewers ”: Novels are being shot at you at the rate of fifteen a day, and every one of them an unforgettable masterpiece which you imperil your soul by missing. I’ve seen many anti-blurb takes over the years that were from bestselling and/or award-winning authors who, having reached a place where blurbs no longer helped their career, decided the practice should end. But the fact that celebrities can sell books without blurbs and famous journalists can cull press quotes from years of media coverage doesn’t really tell us anything about what an unknown memoirist or midlister novelist or a debut short story collection writer can do.

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