Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A-Z of Literary Persuasion

Blurb, a word of fairly recent origin, sounds rather sloppy…if not a bit impish, which speaks of its origin. Spawned by chance from a dust jacket description in the 1930s, the term has come to embrace a seductive yet succinct description of the book that will appeal to the shopper and trigger a purchase. Penguin Books copywriter Louise Wilder describes the demanding skills essential to succeed as a blurb writer who is challenged to script a scenario that will hook the reader and induce a purchase while using a minimum of words, without adjectives and few if any, adverbs. Such selling pitches, or blurbs, can appear as book titles, comments inside book sleeves, and certainly on the back covers. Filled with examples of favorable and unfavorable blurbs from Roman times to the present, the reader examines the language construct by which words are used to arouse interest and sell the product. Read the delightful examples of both successful and infamous blurbs across the ages. The quotes and practices of famed authors such as Orwell, Stephen King, Tolstoy, Dickens, Atwood, and so many other familiar authors enrich the delightful and entertaining readings of literary persuasion.