Really well written and enjoyable Lots of interesting examples and the history of blurbs and titles. And full of other bookish delights. Very enjoyable.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Written by a professional copywriter who really knows her stuff, this is an immensely interesting book about all aspects of publishing (including cover design, marketing etc), taking as its focus the difficult job of attracting the widest range of readers using just 100 or so words, keeping as close as possible to the tone and spirit of the author.

‘Blurb writing is ventriloquism.’
‘If you’re a writer, it’s all about finding your voice. If you’re a copywriter, it’s usually about expressing someone else’s. One is an art; one is a craft (or if it’s an art, it’s the art of imitation). You just have to listen.’

The section that struck me most comes towards the end, discussing gender bias in writing reviews and the question of whether readers really tend towards male or female authors and ‘male or female subject matter’.

‘I think Rebecca Solnit nails it when she says ‘a book without women is often said to be about humanity, but a book with women in the foreground is a woman’s book’.

‘The authors Jonathan Franzen and Jennifer Weiner have been duking it out over the issue of seriousness since 2010, with Weiner criticising the ‘Franzenfrenzy’ that greeted the publication of his novel Freedom. In her eyes, women writing about domestic situations were seen as limited in their appeal, but when Franzen ‘writes a book about a family … we are told this is a book about America’.’

A book full of anecdotes from the author’s years of experience in publishing, shared with wit and passion - I can’t recommend it highly enough for enthusiastic readers out there.

With thanks to Oneworld via NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC.

After producing them for 25 years, Louise Willder has written a book all about blurbs, those 100 or so words so important in persuading us whether to read a book or not. She has lots to say on the subject, taking us through a history of the blurb before offering guidance on how to write snappy copy, complete with frequent examples of howlers and gem. All of this is delivered in a chatty, discursive style packed with literary anecdotes. There’s a particularly pleasing section on puns, for which I share her weakness. A thoroughly enjoyable read for book lovers.

I absolutely loved Blurb Your Enthusiasm. It was a recommendation and I wasn’t sure I’d be all that keen, but it’s fascinating, laugh-out-loud funny, very perceptive and completely compelling.

Louise Willder has been a copy writer for over twenty years and really knows what she’s talking about. She has read a huge number and a vast range of books, and both her knowledge and her engaging love of books shows through consistently. She is quite brilliant on the use of language, I think, quoting some excellent examples and analysing what makes good writing in a variety of contexts. She also has a very clear-eyed view of publishing and isn’t reverential where she thinks pomposity or pretence needs to be punctured.

There are sections on all sorts of things, including various genres, what makes a good book within them and what makes a good blurb in each case. Willder is often enthusiastic, sometimes withering but always thoughtful and enjoyable to read. There are also some wider reflections on books and publishing, including an excellent section on sexism and how it affects perceptions and the presentation of a book. It’s witty and punchy, making a not-at-all-funny subject very readable. (And boy, did it make me think!)

Most importantly, the book is immensely entertaining; I couldn’t wait to get back to it, which is by no means always the case for me with non-fiction (nor always with fiction, come to that). It has pointed me to a lot of things I really want to read – always a good sign – I laughed regularly and thought a lot. I highlighted far too many passages to quote here, but just as a sample, Willder quotes lots of pithy book comments by others. I really liked Margaret Atwood's 6-word story: "Yearned for him. Got him. Sh**!" and the summary of Crime And Punishment: "Man talks about an axe for three chapters. You put down the book never to return." (I have twice struggled to about page 150 of Crime And Punishment before losing the will to live...) Or someone's translation of adjectives in book blurbs:
"Charming: there's a child in it
Heartwarming: a child and a dog
Moving: child dies
Heartrending: dog dies."

Or her take on the sort of Literary Fiction where nothing really happens: “You know the kind of book. They win prizes. There generally isn’t much in the way of a plot. Or if there is, it’s something along the lines of woman goes away and finds herself, someone thinks about an event from their past, or sad middle-aged man has an affair – or even just considers said affair and doesn’t go through with it.” Followed a little later by “... Thomas Pynchon’s notoriously ‘difficult’ (in other words, mainly read by show-offs) novel Gravity’s Rainbow…. I wonder how many people have read it and then not told anybody they’ve read it? Zero, I suspect. Because the point of books like these is that they are an Iron Man literary challenge, and once you’ve been macho enough to read them you can boast about it.”

Or this, talking about thinking one must enjoy “classics”: “My most important classics principle, however, is this: some of them are definitely better than others, and you don’t have to like all of them. Magical realism, the Beats and most ‘Great American Novels’ have never done it for me, and I am at peace with that.” Whether you agree with her taste here or not, that’s a sensible, humane and, for me, helpful and encouraging approach.

I love all that and loved the book. (And anyway, anyone who says that Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker is a masterpiece, that her new favourite detective is DI Manon Bradshaw and that Sue Townsend is a stone cold comic genius can Do No Wrong in my view.) Blurb Your Enthusiasm is a real gem and anyone with any interest in books will enjoy it immensely, I think.

(My thanks to Oneworld for an ARC via NetGalley.)

This book is perfect for anyone who loves books - book worms, writers and budding novelists alike! With a fun, informal tone, the author takes what could be quite a dry subject and turns it into a really readable guide to the history of blurbs and why so much rests on the copy writer's shoulders! Really recommend!

A book about books is always going to catch my eye and a book about how books are made and sold is even more of a hook.
I loved the insight into how books are marketed and how the blurbs on the back are written to draw you in as a book consumer.
This isn't as niche as you'd think and I can see it being sold as a gift book at Christmas

Witty, amusing and knowledgeable about all the tricks that go into packaging and selling the book as product. From cover designs to blurbs, shoutlines and puff quotes, Wilder has been in the business for twenty years and knows what she's talking about. What's lovely is that she's still enthusiastic about her trade and her book is filled with great and not so great examples of what she's talking about to our vast entertainment.

I might have been in this book.

There, that's the voice, the tug and the intrigue nailed – just as it needs to be in reviews, perhaps, but definitely in blurb pieces of copy on the back of books (or on the foremost inner flap of the paper surrounding a hardback, if you can afford to even look at those these days). I'll have to explain that yes, as a reviewer, I have had a line taken from a review emblazoned on several of one author's paperbacks; I was quoted within a mahoosive seller, my words disappearing just about the same time I found the sequel to be utter shite and my praise of the first misguided from the get-go; and I have suffered the ignominy of the copywriter's cut and paste, where each and every slightly useable word has been torn of its actual meaning, and crammed into something sounding positive with the same awful noise you imagine Dawn French getting into PVC makes.

But to kill me off and return to the book, this is a guide to the entire world of copy writing, from someone who has worked on it for years and certainly knows her stuff. Here is how to do it – the rules, concision and so on worth thinking of each time you try and turn 600pp into a hundred words. We get shown how blurbers' responses to Jane Austen have changed with the market of every edition in mind, and what it means to work on every genre, from romance to horror to Enid Blyton. Throughout the book remains a thoroughly chatty (ie footnote-heavy and authority-disguising) one, dipping here and there, seldom settling on one topic at a time, as if we were in a bookstore full only of blurbs and were moving round it all and getting the whole lesson in small, paperback-cover sized chunks.

It's never a small matter, we're informed at the start – the thirty seconds or so we engage with each book while riffling through a store's stock, checking the cover art, the font size, the "have I read any of hers before?" self questioning and the perusal of the blurb, before turning to some other potential purchase. It's not just the unknown unknowns of publishing responsible – before Stephen King spent his entire life reading and writing puff quotes for his young equivalents, we're told T S Eliot wrote far too much copy to allow him any time to write anything else. If you think it's a passing fad, or just guff for guff's sake, that's probably the fault of the blurber, and the importance in reducing books ad absurdum can be seen by the fairly recent habit shall we say less reputable publishers have of getting their blurbish tagwords embedded in the title of books on amazon.

You might as I do presume this is potentially dry – it isn't. You might not like the flitting style, and the jump from footnote to subject to new subject to new quote and back again. But if you just pause for an instant and realise how blurbs are employed to get you closer to the contents of the book (without giving all of the game away), so the contents of this get you closer to books as a whole, of whatever kind you wish. And that's what you should come here for.

It also would appeal to reviewers on my level – I know at least one who says she cannot hope to emulate the blurb so cuts and pastes it for every goodreads entry. The punchy first sentence, the second person approach – a lot of ways to be concise and impactful can be learnt from these pages. But I'll shut up before I prove myself unable to obey the lesson.

Don't be fooled by the title and blurb!
This isn't about blurbs ... well, alright it is. But it's about more than just that and amounts to nothing less than an impassioned love letter to the world of books in general. Author Louise Willder has worked in publishing for twenty years and knows a lot about books, what sells and what doesn't and this thoroughly enjoyable book is choc-full of interesting facts and choice titbits of knowledge about the world of books and how they are sold.
She gives some examples of terrible real-life blurbs which have genuinely been used e.g. for a recent edition of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: "Mom's fishing for husbands - but the girls are hunting for love" and other blurbs which, in contrast, do their job perfectly: distilling the essence of the book into a few sentences while still leaving you thirsty for more.
She also discusses first lines (Stephen King is a bit of a star here), why titles and covers matter, Anglo-American differences, why blurbs and the world of publishing are often sexist, when and when not to do puns and much more. The book is funny and readable throughout.
In short, Louise Willder loves books and in shows. If you love books too, you'll love this.