Are bad blurbs a good thing?

[ApK]

There is a saying about movie marketing:
"If you only have have 30 seconds of good footage in the whole movie, put it all in the trailer."
The idea is that you need to get them going to the theater and buying tickets. Be a good side show barker, get them in the door.
If they don't actually like the movie, well, you already have their money.

Were I asked to give advice to someone with lousy English skills who wanted to write and publish a book in English, my honest advice would range from "Learn English first" to "Get a ghost writer or collaborator to help you tell your story."

But some people just plunge ahead regardless. They get 100,000 words down on paper (no small accomplishment in itself...not only do I doubt I could write a novel, I doubt I could type one) and maybe there is even a good story in it somewhere. Maybe not.
But it's so badly written that it's painful to read and serves to perpetuate all the negative stuff in self-publishing's reputation.

Should we be grateful that these same writers apply the same horrible writing to their promotional blurbs?

That serves as an instant filter, warning people away, and hopefully the resulting poor response might turn the author on to the idea that there may be a problem, and maybe they'll eventually accept that the problem is their writing.

But when I read these awful blurbs, I'm sometimes tempted to tell these people: "For goodness sake, have someone fix the grammar and spelling in your blurb! You need to get them in the door!"
I'm tempted to point them to some of the threads in this section showing how good writers put so much time and effort into crafting their blurbs.

But I don't, because the bad blurbs are my early warning system. They save me the effort of having to seek out a sample and the mental trauma of having to read it.

So, what do you think? Are bad blurbs good?

ApK

Note: In case anyone was wondering: yes, this is a rant after having read some blurbs recently. Not saying where or for what books.
I just don't have my own blog or a Facebook page to rant on.

[gmw]

I'm wondering if you should have posted this in the General subforum, as the gist seems directed at readers rather than writers. That is: it's good for readers when blurbs are so bad you can pass over the book quickly and move on (assuming the cover hasn't already made you do so), but from a writer's perspective there's never anything good about a bad blurb (unless you manage to do something so bad that it gains lots of attention from around the world and has people buying your book just to see if the content could possibly be as bad as the blurb - but somehow that doesn't seem likely).

Your bit about movies certainly rings true. There are many movies where it seems the only good bits were the bits you had already seen in the trailer, and often not looking as good anymore when the scenes are surrounded by the rest of the dross.

[cromag]

I use blurbs as my "gate" as well. If the author can't be bothered to capitalize the first letters of sentences or his/her name, if words are misspelled, if punctuation is misused (or absent), if the grammar is ... creative ...

Well, I move on.

[crich70]

I think a blurb is the 1st hook that a writer has the use of in drawing my attention to their book. If the blurb doesn't catch my interest then neither will the book itself, and if even on a subconscious level I'm thinking,"This writer didn't write a very good blurb how can I know that the book will be any better?" I'm likely to put it back on the store shelf and reach for another author's work. After all no one wants to waste their money on junk, and a badly written blurb makes even the best crafted story look like junk to the potential reader.

[HarryT]

An interesting point. Yes, I do think a blurb is a good "filter". Spelling or grammatical errors in a blurb are a sure sign of a bad writer. One only has to look at posts here on MR to see that (at a rough estimate) a good one third of people don't know how to use "its" and "it's" correctly, despite the reasonable assumption that, as a reading forum, members of this forum might be expected to be more literate than the population as a whole.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by cromag

I use blurbs as my "gate" as well. If the author can't be bothered to capitalize the first letters of sentences or his/her name, if words are misspelled, if punctuation is misused (or absent), if the grammar is ... creative ...

We're lucky if people can even SPELL the word "grammar", the number of time I see it written as "grammer" .

[crich70]

Originally Posted by HarryT

An interesting point. Yes, I do think a blurb is a good "filter". Spelling or grammatical errors in a blurb are a sure sign of a bad writer. One only has to look at posts here on MR to see that (at a rough estimate) a good one third of people don't know how to use "its" and "it's" correctly, despite the reasonable assumption that, as a reading forum, members of this forum might be expected to be more literate than the population as a whole.

I think that sometimes you also have to take into account that English might not be a person's first language though as well. I see it all the time in fanfiction. Sometimes it is laziness on the part of the poster I imagine but sometimes it's also a matter of them not knowing the correct word or tense of it simply because they aren't a native speaker of the language. That's one aspect of distance that the web erases I think. You're over in England and I'm here in the Mid-west U.S. and yet we can see what each other has posted within minutes (if not seconds) of it going up. So it's easier to forget that not everyone is fluent in English.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by crich70

I think that sometimes you also have to take into account that English might not be a person's first language though as well. I see it all the time in fanfiction. Sometimes it is laziness on the part of the poster I imagine but sometimes it's also a matter of them not knowing the correct word or tense of it simply because they aren't a native speaker of the language.

I certainly take that into account when reading the forum, and I'd never (well, not often ) criticise someone's spelling or grammar on this forum. I probably wouldn't want to read a book they'd written in English, however.

[VydorScope]

DISCLAIMER, I am one of those people that Harry likes to talk about all the time (as in I constantly mix up its and it's). It is (see what I did there ) okay, does not bother me one bit.

Forum posts are extremely informal English and by far most people do not even do a single pass proofread over them. Forums are closer to common speech than English class writing.

That aside, when SELLING my work - that is a different ball game. I know my weaknesses and have two editors fix them. Mistakes still make it through, but that is true of all books.

As much as people claim otherwise, blurbs sell books. The normal shopper notices your cover and title first, your blurb second, the sample third. The amount of care an author puts into those things directly drive their bottom line. So if the blurb is bad, that is an indication of the amount of time they spent on the book itself. Pretty much the only time I would buy a book with a bad blurb is on a recommendation from someone whom I trust.

There are always exceptions, but in general if the blurb is bad, so follows the book. So I guess in a way that makes it a good thing, but I prefer not think a person doing poorly as a good thing, so I will hold to it is a bad thing - and a sign that the author needs help to really shine.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

[...] Mistakes still make it through, but that is true of all books. [...]

I always feel so much better when I notice mistakes in big name books by big name publishers. (Not sure whether the appropriate smilie for that should be or .)

A little off-topic, because this wasn't in a blurb, but one I'm re-reading now has what is described as an autogyro shooting through a pass at "a hundred and twenty kilometers a second". It may be science-fiction set well in the future, but that's still a pretty impressive speed even for an advanced autogyro. This book was co-written by three famous sci-fi authors and published through Orbit, so that glitch passed a lot of eyes.

[Anna Drake]

Another purpose a blurb serves is to attract a target audience. So if the blurb displeases you, you may not be the reader the author is after. There are many shades to this game.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Anna Drake

Another purpose a blurb serves is to attract a target audience. So if the blurb displeases you, you may not be the reader the author is after. There are many shades to this game.

Yes. This is one of the hardest parts, you want to make sure you blurb attracts your audience, and repels those that are not your audience.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I certainly take that into account when reading the forum, and I'd never (well, not often ) criticise someone's spelling or grammar on this forum. I probably wouldn't want to read a book they'd written in English, however.

That's it exactly. Forum posts are light extemporaneous conversation. But promotional blurbs are intended to sell the quality of your work. Like a cover, but even more so because it's an example of the same art form you are trying to sell. If your ESL skills are weak, write in your mother tongue and find a skilled translator.

The reason I posted here rather than in general, by the way, is that I hoped to couch my rant in a veil of marketing advice and a sense of concern for the craft.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by HarryT

..., despite the reasonable assumption that, as a reading forum, members of this forum might be expected to be more literate than the population as a whole.

This forum is has MUCH more literate members than some other forums ;-). This is one of many things I like here. Literate, polite, well informed, thoughtful posts with very few trolls and flamewars.

By the way ... I wonder, how many members here have English as their mother language. For me, for example, English is a third language (used to be fourth).

To return to the thread topic: I think that bad blurbs are a time-saver. But, for books that are *that* bad, you do not need to read past the first couple of pages.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by kacir

This forum is has MUCH more literate members than some other forums ;-). This is one of many things I like here. Literate, polite, well informed, thoughtful posts with very few trolls and flamewars.

By the way ... I wonder, how many members here have English as their mother language. For me, for example, English is a third language (used to be fourth).

To return to the thread topic: I think that bad blurbs are a time-saver. But, for books that are *that* bad, you do not need to read past the first couple of pages.

Another good point. A glance at the opening of the book (if not encased in plastic or something) can also lead a reader to buy or put down the book depending on how well it's written. I think Apk has a good idea too in cases where English for example isn't a language a writer is fluent in. In fanfics the equivalent of the translator is the Beta reader and I have a feeling some don't have such a reader with how errors creep into their texts. As for how many of us have English as their 1st language, I really don't know. I know it's my 1st language and in fact I don't speak any other fluently.