Blurb blahs

I'm supposed to get people to write blurbs for the back of my book. You know the kind of thing: "Weber's trenchant insight into the human condition left me for days in a state of emotional priapism so intense, I had to call my doctor." I can't believe anyone buys a book based on the blurbs, unless maybe an author you really admire signs off on the work of another writer.

I don't know anybody in writing. I've asked one person I remember from graduate school if he'd do it, and he agreed, but then in the same breath said he'd be unavailable until after the deadline. I asked some of the other editors at my literary journal, and none responded. It's probably a lot to ask of people who already volunteer to read a lot of literature for free. If I were a better self-marketer, I'd ask one of my advisors from grad school, who are reasonably big names, but I feel like it would be annoying to them to do, and they'd either say no or say yes unwillingly.

I can't bring myself to do the legwork to get someone to do these, not when I think it's such a borderline dishonest bit of advertising anyway. Has anyone ever put something like "Weber's bloated prose is equaled only by his pretentious syntax" on a book cover? Of course not. They're always positive, and so they're meaningless. Blurbs are always more inflated than a community college's grading system.

In the end, I'll probably keep bugging people from the magazine until somebody caves. I'll get this done, but it's another indicator to me that if being a writer involves a lot of energetic self-promotion, I'm not cut out for it.