(no subject)

[erastes]

I know that I've mentioned it before, but really. BLURBS! Why does no-one care for the blurbs?

Why do people not treat them as if they were as important as the book itself? In a way, they are MORE important, because sometimes they are all the prospective buyer has to gauge whether or not they will pick the book up off the shelf and put it in their basket, or whether they will bother to click on the link and find out more.

This morning I read SUCH a stinker I couldn't believe what I was reading, missing commas, pronoun confusion, not even telling us the name of the Main Protag until half way through the blurb, vague references and none of it made sense. It's such a shame that people don't take them as seriously as they need to.

*considers starting 'I'll write your blurb' business.* /rant

Nice News! I've been invited to attend the London Literary Festival in June/July for an event that James Lear is organising: Dirty Books. Don't know when or where, yet, and I rather think I'm going to be grilled heavily about "OI you, WOMAN, why you writing about us gay men?" so I'll have to gird my loins and get a lot of stock answers under my belt. Hell. I know why *I* write it, who knows why other people do? Why do people write about elves when they aren't elves!?

More to the point, is anyone else planning to go?

And why aren't I still getting any comment notifications?

Comments

[zamaxfield.livejournal.com]

Oh, hello. Hot button. I've wondered all along why men wrote about women when they weren't women. I wonder if Flaubert had to defend himself for not being a bored housewife. Can you picture it?

Think about Jack London, surrounded by wolves...

I have to say, I love blurb writing, I just pretend I have organ bridge music in the background and it makes all the difference.

Give James Lear a wavity from me, like he cares, but I'm still laughing from 'Back Passage'.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I know - it seems to the only genre that people get all hot under the collar and I really don't get it (particularly as men have been writing about women as sex objects since... well, since they could write.)

I don't like writing them, but I will get them beta-ed, and looked at by others and treat them seriously and that something that most people don't do. They just think they aren't important.

I will. It was a great book.