Are Book Blurbs Worth the Effort or a Tradition That “Rewards Connections Over Talent”?

By any measure, I’ve been pretty successful at getting book blurbs across my ten published books. Deepak Chopra. Tony Robbins. Adam Grant. They have all done book blurbs for me in the past and with my last book Non-Obvious Thinking, we went out big on blurbs—collecting more than 50 of them from a collection of visionary authors, business leaders, innovators. It was time consuming, humbling and according to a new article from this week’s NY Times, maybe a total waste of time.

According to Sean Manning, the publisher of Simon & Schuster, “Trying to get blurbs is not a good use of anyone’s time … favor trading creates an incestuous and unmeritocratic literary ecosystem that often rewards connections over talent.” It’s hard to argue with his point about blurbs being mostly about connections, but in my experience, they do make a difference. Yes, it can be a herculean effort to gather them—and it sucks when you get declined. But there are a few reasons why I think they are still worth it and will continue recommending that our authors collect them (and I’ll continue doing so myself):

1. Blurbs send a signal to readers who may be unfamiliar with an author that a book may be worth reading because others they respect endorsed it.
2. Blurbs can help authors connect with influential endorsers who may be more inclined to share a book when their name is also on the back cover.
3. Blurbs can be wonderful fodder for social media posts (a main reason why we went after and secured more than 50 of them for our book).
4. Blurbs that are part of the metadata for a book profile listing on Amazon and all other platforms can help with SEO and discoverability.
5. Blurbs can be a signal for media considering coverage for a book of how much momentum/endorsement a title has and whether it’s worthy of coverage.

Clearly, I’m in favor of blurbs for books, but there’s a broader argument here about whether endorsements in general are worthwhile. What do you think? Are blurbs just an inflated indication of connections over talent, or are they a worthwhile way to demonstrate that a book (or anything else) is worthy of consideration?