What in the 7th Moon of Saturn does this have to do with Space Exploration or even Science Fiction, you ask? Actually, it’s easy. Let me explain….
A book’s cover acts as a gateway, drawing potential readers in. In today’s market, the more the cover image looks like a movie poster, the better. This involves the layout, the design, colors, fonts—the whole enchilada. And smart book designers know how to follow popular trends—boy, do they! What self-publishers (and some publishing houses) don’t do as well is to produce enticing book blurbs that are not book reviews.
According to Wikipedia, a blurb is a short promotional piece accompanying a creative work. It may be written by the author or publisher or quote praise from others. Blurbs were originally printed on either the back of the book or on the inner flaps of a book’s cover.
They come into use in the mid-19th century but the actual term “blurb” is first seen on a humorous book in 1907 called, Are You a Bromide? In this book the author labeled a dull person as a "Bromide" contrasting them with a "Sulphite" which is the opposite. Bromides referred to either the boring person themself or the boring statements made by that person.
A blurb on a book can be any combination of quotes from the work, the author, the publisher, reviews from fans, a summary of the plot, a biography of the author, or simply claims about the importance of the work.
Writing a good book blurb is an art. Sometimes publishers in the old days had specialists who wrote them, although an editor often did the job. Personally, I like writing them. For the “plot-type” of blurb, you must condense the book’s story down to just a few short sentences then pull out the exciting parts and weave it all together into a sort of mini-story.
I have learned a lot about writing book blurbs from pulp-era magazines. Each story in an issue often had two blurbs, a longer version in the table of contents and another, often different and shorter, seen at the beginning of the story alongside the title illustration (See above in the “My Name is Mayhem” image.) In some cases, a story blurb served as part of the magazine’s cover design. We see this on the covers of Unknown Worlds in the 1940’s. Unknown Worlds was a sister publication to Astounding Stories and featured pulp fantasy stories.
Some magazines had better blurbs than others but all presented plots to readers in bite-sized enticements. Startling Stories has some of my favorite blurbs—whoever wrote them did a great job. You can find intriguing blurbs in the Detective magazines as well.
Here are some excellent book blurbs from the pulp era:
“The notorious Moon Man was dead—officially. He had faked his death to save his father—the police chief—and the father of his girl from the disgrace of dishonorable discharge. But now the Moon Man had to come back. Some tremendous power was forcing him to forget the chief, forget Lieutenant McEwen, and forget the girl he loved. Some power was compelling him to play the role of the lowest of two-legged rats. And the first step of that path was marked by a dying man whose jaws were locked on a horrible secret.” (“Mark of the Moon Man” by Frederick C. Davis, Ten Detective Aces, 1934)
“That weirdly spinning little mystery wheel of doom lured Ravenwood, stepson of mystery, and the despairing Mavis Lattimer, to hideous death beneath the crushing weight of a speeding car—without a living person in the driver’s seat. And this terror-freighted horror vehicle outmatched Ravenwood’s every strategy, so that his only hope was to use a cryptic parable of the East to trap the Phantom Juggernaut.” ("The Phantom Juggernaut" by Frederick C. Davis, Secret Agent "X", October 1936)
“The Hollywood script writer wanted a vacation in the Elysian Fields—but the magician was a sloppy workman. He landed in the world where dreams were designed—” (“Design for Dreaming” by Henry Kuttner, Unknown Worlds, February 1942)
"When the Earth's crust cools and the sun goes out, what will become of mankind? And--what will mankind become?" ("Ultra Evolution" by John Russell Fearn (as by Polton Cross), Startling Stories, January 1948.)
“When the first moon rocket fell back to earth with a flash, Keith Winton found himself catapulted into a world that couldn’t be—a fabulous globe where men in jalopies were space masters!” (What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, Startling Stories, September 1948.)
Here are blurbs I have written for my own books:
The Cyber-Threshold war left empty cities and broken bodies scattered across the face of the Earth. Cyber tech was outlawed and new technologies advanced along different lines, utilizing living crystal technologies. In time, mankind spread to the stars.
Two hundred years later, the colony world of Lucen 5 receives a shipment of contraband blue dust impregnated with nanobots. Inhalation transforms a human being into a cyborg.
Police Captain Sam Mercury races to find the source of the deadly dust before all mankind succumbs to cyber-infestation.
ONLY IN DREAMS IS LUCY TRULY AWAKE! One moment, Lucy Dean slept peacefully in a Seattle hotel. The next, she stood paralyzed beside a silver portal in a far-distant future. Unbelievably, she recognized the place...from her dreams!
A strange and menacing figure approaches. He explains that the only way for Lucy to regain her true memories is to go through the Time Portal. She cannot resist, or even speak, as her body vanishes, layer by layer.
As death looms, Lucy must face an unbelievable fact — that her previous life has been a lie and the truth lies in her dreams — which may not be dreams at all…
STALKED BY ANCIENT EVIL! When Kurt Larson’s hovercraft crashes over old Los Angeles, he and a band of refugees search desperately for an unblighted source of power before it's too late. But heat and lack of water aren’t their biggest threats. The old city is home to mankind’s greatest foes, an ancient evil known as The Corrupted One. Long ago, she had ruled the city and from her fiefdom spread a contagion to the entire world. Did she still exist? Kurt Larson was about to find out.
INCORRUPTIBLE is in the same timeline as LANDSCAPE OF DARKNESS.
Do you have a favorite book/story blurb? I’d love to know what it is! Be sure to leave it in the comments below.
This is the Rocketeer signing off for today.
The Man Who Was Thursday.
Although it's its own blurb.
Same with good old movie promos. I'm thinking 70s and 80s mostly. Like little versions of the movie, without giving it ALL away.