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A blurb is a short promotional piece accompanying a piece of creative work. It may be written by the author or publisher or quote praise from others. Blurbs were originally printed on the back or rear
dust jacket The dust jacket (sometimes book jacket, dust wrapper or dust cover) of a book is the detachable outer cover, usually made of paper and printed with text and illustrations. This outer cover has folded flaps that hold it to the front and back book ...
of a book, and are now also found on
web portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayin ...
s and
news website An online newspaper (or electronic news or electronic news publication) is the online version of a newspaper, either as a stand-alone publication or as the online version of a printed periodical. Going online created more opportunities for newspa ...
s. A blurb may introduce a newspaper or a book.


History

In the US, the history of the blurb is said to begin with
Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among t ...
's collection, ''
Leaves of Grass ''Leaves of Grass'' is a poetry collection by American poet Walt Whitman. Though it was first published in 1855, Whitman spent most of his professional life writing and rewriting ''Leaves of Grass'', revising it multiple times until his death. Th ...
''. In response to the publication of the first edition in 1855,
Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champ ...
had sent Whitman a congratulatory letter, including the phrase "I greet you at the beginning of a great career": the following year, Whitman had these words stamped in gold leaf on the spine of the second edition. The word ''blurb'' was coined in 1907 by American humorist
Gelett Burgess Frank Gelett Burgess (January 30, 1866 – September 18, 1951) was an American artist, art critic, poet, author and humorist. An important figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary renaissance of the 1890s, particularly through his iconoclast ...
(1866–1951). His short 1906 book ''Are You a Bromide?'' was presented in a limited edition to an annual trade association dinner. The custom at such events was to have a
dust jacket The dust jacket (sometimes book jacket, dust wrapper or dust cover) of a book is the detachable outer cover, usually made of paper and printed with text and illustrations. This outer cover has folded flaps that hold it to the front and back book ...
promoting the work and with, as Burgess' publisher
B. W. Huebsch Benjamin W. Huebsch (March 21, 1876 – August 7, 1964) was an American publisher in New York City in the early 20th century. Background Huebsch was the son of Rabbi Adolphus Huebsch, who had immigrated to the United States from Hungary in 1866 ...
described it, "the picture of a damsel—languishing, heroic, or coquettish—anyhow, a damsel on the jacket of every novel". In this case, the jacket proclaimed "YES, this is a 'BLURB'!" and the picture was of a (fictitious) young woman "Miss Belinda Blurb" shown calling out, described as "in the act of blurbing." The name and term stuck for any publisher's contents on a book's back cover, even after the picture was dropped and only the text remained. In Germany, the blurb is regarded to have been invented by
Karl Robert Langewiesche Karl Robert Langewiesche (18 December 1874 in Rheydt – 12 September 1931 in Königstein im Taunus) was a German publisher. In 1902 he founded the Verlag Langewiesche in Düsseldorf, one of the oldest book publishers in Germany still operating. So ...
around 1902. In German bibliographic usage, it is usually located on the second page of the book underneath the
half title One half ( : halves) is the irreducible fraction resulting from dividing one by two or the fraction resulting from dividing any number by its double. Multiplication by one half is equivalent to division by two, or "halving"; conversely, ...
, or on the dust cover.


Books

A blurb on a book can be any combination of quotes from the work, the author, the publisher, reviews or fans, a summary of the plot, a biography of the author or simply claims about the importance of the work. In the 1980s, ''
Spy Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...
'' ran a regular feature called "
Logrolling Logrolling is the trading of favors, or ''quid pro quo'', such as vote trading by legislative members to obtain passage of actions of interest to each legislative member. In organizational analysis, it refers to a practice in which different o ...
in Our Time" which exposed writers who wrote blurbs for one another's books.


Blurb requests

Prominent writers can receive large volumes of blurb requests from aspiring authors. This has led some writers to turn down such requests as a matter of policy. For example,
Gary Shteyngart Gary Shteyngart (; born July 5, 1972) is a Soviet-born American writer. He is the author of five novels (including ''Absurdistan'' and ''Super Sad True Love Story'') and a memoir. Much of his work is satirical. Early life Born Igor Semyonovich ...
announced in ''The New Yorker'' that he would no longer write blurbs, except for certain writers with whom he had a professional or personal connection.
Neil Gaiman Neil Richard MacKinnon GaimanBorn as Neil Richard Gaiman, with "MacKinnon" added on the occasion of his marriage to Amanda Palmer. ; ( Neil Richard Gaiman; born 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, gr ...
reports that "Every now and again, I stop doing blurbs.... The hiatus lasts for a year or two, and then I feel guilty or someone asks me at the right time, and I relent." Jacob M. Appel reports that he received fifteen to twenty blurb requests per week and tackles "as many as I can."


Parody blurbs

Many humorous books and films parody blurbs that deliver exaggerated praise by unlikely people and insults disguised as praise. * ''
Monty Python and the Holy Grail ''Monty Python and the Holy Grail'' is a 1975 British comedy film satirizing the Arthurian legend, written and performed by the Monty Python comedy group (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin) an ...
'' – "Makes Ben Hur look like an Epic" * ''
1066 and All That ''1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates'' is a tongue-in-cheek reworking of the history of England. Written by W. C. Sellar and R. J ...
'' – "We look forward keenly to the appearance of their last work" The ''
Harvard Lampoon ''The Harvard Lampoon'' is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876 by seven undergraduates at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Overview The ''Harvard Lampoon'' publication was founded in 1876 by seven undergraduates ...
'' satire of ''
The Lord of the Rings ''The Lord of the Rings'' is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's boo ...
'', titled ''
Bored of the Rings ''Bored of the Rings'' is a 1969 parody of J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings''. This short novel was written by Henry Beard and Douglas Kenney, who later founded '' National Lampoon''. It was published in 1969 by Signet for the ''Harv ...
'', deliberately used fake blurbs by deceased authors on the inside cover. One of the blurbs stated "One of the two or three books ...", and nothing else.


Film

Movie blurbs are part of the
promotional campaign An advertising campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an marketing strategy, integrated marketing marketing communications, communication (IMC). An IMC is a platform in which a group of peo ...
for films, and usually consist of positive, colorful extracts from published reviews. Movie blurbs have often been faulted for taking words out of context. ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' reported that "the blurbing game is also evolving as newspaper film critics disappear and studios become more comfortable quoting Internet bloggers and movie Web sites in their ads, a practice that still leaves plenty of potential for filmgoers to be bamboozled. Luckily for consumers, there is a cavalry: blurb watchdog sites have sprung up and the number of Web sites that aggregate reviews by established critics is steadily climbing. ... Helping to keep studios in line these days are watchdog sites like eFilmCritic.com and The Blurbs, a Web column for ''Gelf'' magazine written by Carl Bialik of ''The Wall Street Journal''." ''
Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
'' wrote in an "Explainer" column: "How much latitude do movie studios have in writing blurbs? A fair amount. There's no official check on running a misleading movie blurb, aside from the usual laws against false advertising. Studios do have to submit advertising materials like newspaper ads and trailers to the Motion Picture Association of America for approval. But the MPAA reviews the ads for their tone and content, not for the accuracy of their citations. ... As a courtesy, studios will often run the new, condensed quote by the critic before sending it to print." Many examples exist of blurb used in marketing a film being traceable directly back to the film's marketing team.


References and sources

;References ;Sources
The story of Miss Belinda Blurb
at wordorigins.org
Original dust jacket
at the Library of Congress


Bibliography

* * (Includes bibliography)
"'Riveting!': The Quandary of the Book Blurb"
''New York Times'', March 6, 2012


External links

* {{books Book design Book terminology Book publishing Promotion and marketing communications it:Libro#Quarta di copertina