The People Are All So Nice Here!

(what it’s like to request blurbs)

As soon as my publisher had the digital ARC of Tell Them You Lied loaded onto NetGalley and an ETA for bound galleys, my editor and agent and I made a list of all the writers we wanted to ask for blurbs. It wasn’t a crazy long list, but many of my writing idols were on there, most of whom I’d never met or spoken to. And really, every single person on the list, whether they were a New York Times bestseller or not, seemed like a moonshot to me.

We put the names into an Excel sheet and divided them up. CeCe would reach out to some,* my editor would reach out to others, and the rest was up to me. I’d heard that asking for blurbs is awkward and embarrassing, and it’s not mandatory. No one at the publishing house was going to ask me about the authors on my list. I could wimp out. I could tell myself I’d done enough. I could protect my ego and stay quiet for fear that my idols might laugh in my face.

But come on.

I couldn’t actually do that. I’d come this far. I’d lived through plenty of criticism and rejection and silence and ghosting. What was a little more? What was the worst that could happen?

So I reached out to the writers on my list, mostly via very casual-like Instagram DMs, and guess what?

HOT TIP FOR ANYONE 40+ : do not hit return before you check what you’ve written. It’s not how you make a paragraph. Instagram sends the message when you hit return, and you can’t write more than one message to someone who doesn’t follow you. OOPS.

Save one person, all the writers I wrote to responded. And everyone who responded said they would read the book. No one guaranteed a blurb or that they could meet my deadline (December 1), but no one laughed at me either. That was enough for me.

My agent and editor had gathered yeses as well (with CeCe on outdoing us both; thank you CeCe, you are a force of nature!). By October, our Excel sheet was full of addresses and contact info, and my ARCs were on their way to some of my very favorite writers all over the country. It was surreal.

Even more surreal: in November, the blurbs started coming in. They were all so nice—thoughtful, engaged, smart. I was blown away, mainly because this whole process had gone so much better than I thought possible.

My main takeaway — everyone was so nice.

I’ve been thinking about this for a month or so now. Why so many successful writers were so willing to say yes to me, a nobody—and what I’ve come up with is that once upon a time, each of these writers had been in my place. Every single one of them started off somewhere. They all know what it’s like to be new here, on the brink of their debut. Because of that, they must have been able to empathize with me and my nobody-ness.

What a beautiful, full-circle feeling it must be, I thought, to be asked for a blurb.

*framing this*

Just a few days after my realization, I got an email from my editor. He was wondering if I’d be willing to blurb a book coming out from my publisher next summer.

I told him the truth: I’d be honored.