Once upon a time a blurb was a short description of a book on the flyleaf or the back that told you what the book was about. Over the years the blurb has turned into something much less helpful. What passes for blurbs today are short endorsements of a title, usually by other authors. They often include words like “brilliant” or “heartfelt” or “tour de force”. Nowadays gushing single-sentence guff counts as a blurb.

But modern blurbs are a waste of space, time, energy, eyetime. I’ve thought this for a long time and have mourned the loss of proper back-of-the-book summaries of stories. Now in a move author James Folta describes as “dazzling” publisher Simon & Schuster is dropping the requirement for authors to provide blurbs.

You’ll see at least one blurb on most books, but some have many, many supposedly authorative people offering effusive praise for a title. I managed one blurb for The Draftsman (thank you John Walsh), a debut novel. But successful authors are pushed to come up with as many as possible from names as lofty as possible. Why? Do readers really care if someone thinks a book is written in “effervescent” prose, or if it’s just “impossible to put down”? Or if the author has created a “tour de force”? It might as well be a tour de france or a divinely juicy sandwich you can’t stop chomping on. And should prose be effervescent at all? A nonsense all of it.

What authors want is readers and what readers want is a short summary of what the book’s about. How hard is that to get? What’s maybe more interesting is why publishers think that a bunch of mostly meaningless peer comments are of interest to readers. Is there a belief that if Salman Rushdie or JK Rowling has been arsed to supply a blurb for a book, that potential readers will be induced to cough up and buy the thing? Actually maybe that’s it. Perhaps publishers believe that readers are sheep, inclined to follow the lead of authors they respect. And that’s just silly. So many of the multiple blurbs splattering today’s fiction and nonfiction are written by people most readers have never heard of, because they are produced by the cognescenti of the book scene. It’s another example of the cosy closed world of friends of friends of agents or of colleagues in publishing who might be flattered to be asked. Or who are helping out as insurance for the future. Maybe it’s about protecting the exclusive inner shrine that is is today’s publishing business.

Harvesting blurbs is a soul destroying task for authors and their lexical supply chains. Far better to spend the time on more imaginative forms of promotion, working with alternative distribution channels, massaging the egos of booksellers and librarians and the trade press. Even writing the next book. Anything has to be more rewarding than blurb collecting.

Simon & Schuster’s “dazzling” move is a first, at least a first by a big name publisher. Sean Manning, Simon & Schuster’s president and publisher wrote in Publishers Weekly he’s “decided that beginning in 2025, the Simon & Schuster flagship imprint will no longer require authors to obtain blurbs for their books.” He also said that “this kind of favor trading creates an incestuous and unmeritocratic literary ecosystem that often rewards connections over talent”. This is spot on for an industry that trades on its history as nurturers of the contemporary socio-political et al voice. It’s all very precious, a cosy, protected space. 

More likely Mr Manning has made his decision because he recognises that it’s a waste of salaried peoples’ time collecting blurbs and that they really make little difference to potential buyers. He surely also understands that in today’s oversaturated market, publishers don’t need such unreliable tools to sell books. And besides AI can generate all the tempting whimsy you could possibly want, along with all manner of fictitious author identities, life stories and of course books. And who amongst readers will really care if the next Jilly Cooper title was AI generated. Jilly might but I bet her fans would be thrilled to get the next Rivals, say Rivals II or maybe Rivals: next generation? They’d buy it blurb or no blurb. And as to the AI thing, they just won’t care.