Buying Blurbs for Your Book

How low can one go? Aimed at self-published authors, Blurbings LLC offers to be the middle agent for buying glowing quotes for a book, As most of the publishing industry acknowledges, the practice of getting blurbs (“scratch my back, and …) is murky at best – and so reports Rachel Donadio in the New York Times today.

The money quote comes from Eric Simonoff, a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, “There is a yawning gap between the obligatory blurb (‘This is a fine debut novel’) and the over-the-top selling blurb (‘Good God! Drop everything and read this book now!’).