About Books

With the new redesigned site, I’m going to change things up a little on the blog and focus more on writer-related stuff, since that’s what I get so many questions about. Hopefully, everyone will find these posts fun and informative. Sound good?

So today, I thought I would do the first of a couple of posts on cover blurbs, since that’s what I’ve been dealing with the past few weeks — asking other authors to take the time to read and blurb Spider’s Bite, the first book in my new Elemental Assassin series.

What’s a cover blurb? It’s just what it sounds like — a couple of lines on the front of a book cover by another author (or a magazine or a reviewer or whatever) that praises the book. Practically every book has one.

Why do books have cover blurbs? It’s all about marketing. Say you like Jim Butcher’s books, and you see his name in a blurb on another author’s book. You might think to yourself, “Hey, if Jim liked it, I might too.” Bada-bing, bada-boom, you go and buy the book. That’s the theory behind cover blurbs. It’s just a little something extra to entice a reader to buy that particular title.

Generally, the thinking is that the bigger (more popular) the author is who gives you a blurb, the better and more marketing oomph it will have. For example, anyone who can get somebody like Stephen King, John Grisham, or Nora Roberts to give them a cover blurb is sitting in high cotton, as my grandma would say. 😉

So how do authors go about getting blurbs? It’s all about who they, their agent, and their editor know. Some agents/editors will ask their other (perhaps better-known) authors to do blurbs. Some authors are friendly with best-selling authors higher up on the book food chain than they are and can ask for a favor. And so on and so forth.

How did I go about getting my blurbs? First of all, I went to the bookstore one day and spent about 30 minutes walking up and down the aisles, writing down authors whose books I’ve read and liked that were similar to mine. Or folks who write really strong female characters or great fantasy worlds or whatever I thought might be a good fit with the urban fantasy world of Spider’s Bite.

Then, when I’d compiled my list, I sent it to my agent and editor to see if they had any connections to any folks on my list. I also noted the authors that I’d met at conferences or e-mailed with or whatever. I also included some of my “dream” authors — i.e. the big-name authors that I would love to get a blurb from but knew that it probably wouldn’t happen just because they are so popular. And then, we went from there, putting out feelers, e-mailing folks, and whatnot.

I’m happy to report that I’ve gotten several awesome cover blurbs for Spider’s Bite. Several folks were gracious enough to read the book. I’m going to feature them and share their blurbs in a later post (hopefully sometime this week) when I get the final version of the cover art for Spider’s Bite.

Until then, got questions about cover blurbs? Ask ’em in the comments.