…and I’m talking about the blurb on the back cover (or inside the front cover) of a book.

Okay, I confess, I normally charge into a bookstore on a quest for a specific book by a favourite author. But while I’m there I’ll invariably get side-tracked and pick up a second book…and then another. Often I’m drawn to those books by the name of a favourite author–and sometimes it’s someone I’ve never read. I might have heard about the book. Or it might be a brand new author for me. And that’s when I’ll turn the book over to read that tantalising blurb.

If something there calls to me, I’m probably going to buy it. So I’m easy  :lol: And I love those back-cover blurbs. But I’m not alone. Abby Gaines recently blogged about something similiar here.  

And this all reminds me of a very interesting experience I had the last time I saw my local bookseller. She fished out the latest book on my must-have list. I’m a Linda Howard fan. I adore Mr Perfect. Open Season lives on my keeper shelf…and I nearly cried after reading Cry No More. And now Death Angel was in front of me. Only problem was it’s a hardcover. $52 worth of hardcover.  All my other Linda Howard’s are paperbacks… and my bookshelves are the perfect height for paperbacks. Hmm. So now the question became how badly did I want Death Angel right- now-at-this-very-moment?

Because it’s a hardcover, I flipped open the dustjacket searching for the blurb…and things got really interesting.

“Don’t read it,” ordered my bookseller.

“Don’t read it?”

“Don’t read it!”

“I always read the blurb. Does it contain a spoiler?” Man, we all hate those.

“Um…no.”

“Then why can’t I read it?”

“Because it summarizes the first third of the story…and then you’ll know exactly what’s going to happen.”

Okay. So I stood there and stared at Death Angel.  And turned it over. And stared at the gorgeous image of Linda Howard on the back. I wanted that book. But $52 is a lot to spend on a book I know nothing about…and I need to know something before I buy it at that price. Especially because it’s never going to be able to live on a shelf next to all my other Linda Howards.

It sounds crazy doesn’t it? We all know I’m going to buy that book…my bookseller definitely knows I’m going to buy it…the only question was at what price? Hardcover or softcover? And I had to read the blurb to find that out.

The whole incident certainly brought home to me how important the back-cover blurb is to me-the-reader in getting me to shell out extra cash.  In some weird way it’s my safety net–a guarantee that I’m in familiar territory.

So, does anyone else out there suffer from a back-cover blurb fetish? What do you love about blurbs? What do you hate about them? Or don’t you care much for them one way or the other?

Tessa (whose latest blurb can be found here)