Posted by Lale on 23/9/2009, 10:10:21, in reply to "Re: The Vicar and the backs of books"
174.115.190.162
: Because of the way I shop for books I usually don't even
: notice the blurbs on the cover, so it's unlikely that
: an endorsement would ever influence my decision to buy
: or read something.
Same with me. I buy the books that are recommended here, usually online. Or I buy classics whose names I have known all along and don't need any recommendation.
Once I have the book in my hand, I am very careful not to read the back cover, because they reveal too much.
In two instants, I covered the back covers with post-it stickies before giving these books as gifts to my friends, so that they would not prematurely learn the plot (Gabriel Garcia Marques - Death Foretold and Kurt Vonnegut Jr - Cat's Cradle). I need not have worried because they didn't read the books.
Something related to this topic happened just recently, so I'll share: A friend of mine just published his first novel. He is an older gentleman whom I respect and like, a professor of international politics, a very knowledgeable and wise man, witty, really a cool guy all around and I like him a lot. I had read the first few chapters of the manuscript before it was published but I wasn't able to finish it, so I couldn't provide a blurb for the backcover which he had asked for. When the book was ready for printing, he sent me the pictures of the front and back covers and I saw that the two blurbs at the back were listed as anonymous. I thought they were either made up by the author or by the publisher. I said "'anonymous' doesn't look good, why don't you put my name under one of them." And he said "You have to write your own blurb, because these actually belong to real people who do not want their blurbs to be printed under their name - or under anyone else's name, they want them to appear anonymous." How stupid. Well, I couldn't finish the book to be able to write a real blurb of my own, so the book got printed with two anonymous quotations. Obviously it won't have much chance outside of the friends and family circle. Small publisher... But it was either that or not publishing it at all.
