Free Blurbs for Your Book!

 

Everyone needs a blurb for their upcoming book, but no one wants to go to the trouble of asking their favorite writers. That’s why at Real Pants, we’ve done this for you. Here are dozens of blurbs of all kinds, from all your favorite writers. Help yourself.

“You need these blurbs.” —Real Pants

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“[Book Title] is so shamefully beautiful that it hurts to read. [Author Name] draws you in page after page until you have nothing left but a finished book, a weird heart, and a dry mouth. It’s like watching your cat throw up on the carpet. It’s like trying to clean the carpet with only water.”

—Sarah Jean Alexander, Author of Wildlives

 

“[Book Title] By [Author Name] Is Just Right. Yessirree. It Hit It Hard And There Was Hope. It Bounced Back And Reflected Brilliantly. It Came In Humble And Left Triumphant. It Declared Itself In Song And Meter So Crystalline As To Have Shied Future Books To Silence.”

—Stephanie Barber, author of All the People

 

“I have not read this book. Yet it is the best book. If you don’t read this book, you will die. Well: you’ll die anyway. But why would you need me to tell you that? You don’t need me to tell you that, because you’re smart; you’ve got a brain. Or at least you’re smart enough to know that you have to die. ‘So fuck you!’ You can say that to me: ‘Fuck you, blurb person! You are merely a name on the back of a book. Why do I give a damn about a name on the back of a book?’ You can say that, too! ‘Why wouldn’t I just pick this mute book up and read the first few pages? Why do I give a damn about a name at all? I’ve got a brain, blurb hack. I know I’ll die. I need to read, though. And to think. So leave me alone.’ Yes. Good. I’m glad we cleared this up.”

—Ken Baumann, author of Solip

 

“[Book Title] is a book worthy of a blurb. Here is one.”

—Jensen Beach, author of Swallowed by the Cold

 

“Sensitive yet brutish, operatic yet intimate, [Book Title] pre-chews a charmingly irascible post-Millennial Weltanschauung and gently funnels its essence back to esurient readers with both intense drollery and disdain.”

—Molly Brodak, author of A Little Middle of the Night

 

“This book is very similar to art.”

—Sommer Browning author of Backup Singers

 

“It’s ya boy, blurbmane.”

—Blake Butler, author of 300,000,000

 

“This sure is a book.”

—Christy Crutchfield, author of How to Catch a Coyote

 

“Make no mistake about it [Author Name] knows how to write. Like really write. When you read [Book Title] you will relive all your failures of life and love, and [Author Name] makes you want to do them all over again, only with worse behavior.”

—Matt DeBenedictis, author of Congratulations! There’s No Last Place if Everyone Is Dead

 

“Like a still-breathing specimen pinned to the table with its own sharpened rib [Author Name’s] [Book Title] is a small miracle of rage, hope, and desperation. With unexpected grace (and all too understandable fury), [Author’s] characters love, hate, and copulate [or other multisyllabic verb] from page to beautiful page, all too ugly, all too human. This is a first novel so filled with life and pain, one’s desire to read more from [Author] is tempered only by a concern for his/her well being.”

—Jonny Diamond, editor of LitHub

 

“Lot of good tweets in here.”

—Giancarlo DiTrapano, publisher of Tyrant Books

 

“What if a book upended everything you thought you knew about our world? Well for you, sweet reader, [Book Title] by [Author Name] could absolutely do that. Because I don’t know you and I don’t know where you’ve been.”

or

“[Author Name] took the time to write [Book Title]: The least you could do is read it.”

or

“When I heard that the title of the new book by [Author Name] began with the word[s] [First Half of Book Title], I admit: I was more than a little skeptical. But then when I heard that the rest of the title was [Second Half of Book Title], I just knew [Author Name] and I were going to french kiss someday, with our tongues and everything.”

—Gabe Durham, author of Fun Camp

 

“This book is a spark in a dark place, a light in a desolate landscape. Unweaving the threads of love, family, loss, and disrepair, this novel pounds at the heart of humanity, screaming ‘Let me in, let me in.’”

—Sarah Rose Etter, author of Tongue Party

 

“I always felt [Author Name] was too good-looking to write something this brilliant.”

—Michael Fitzgerald, CEO of Submittable and author of Radiant Days

 

“I’m going to pass, because I say no to a lot of blurb requests.”

—Molly Gaudry, author of We Take Me Apart

 

“This is a real … book. I … love … book.”

or

“I WILL ruin you if you put my name on this doddering smut. Don’t fucking test me.”

or

“Move over, The Crying Game. This is the new best art.”

—Amelia Gray, author of Gutshot

 

“I read [Book Title] by [Author Name] with great initial intensity and then, as I kept reading, with increasing self-loathing, for I became surer, with every page, that I would never write a book as lovely, as true, or as pure, as this. I have stopped writing, now. I will never publish again. What is the point?”

—Karl Taro Greenfeld, author of The Subprimes and Triburbia

 

 

“[Book Title], by [Author Name], is a great book for people who hate literature.”

or

“[Book Title], by [Author Name], made me so happy I went blind.”

or

“[Book Title], by [Author Name], is, physically, a solid, not a liquid. Or a gas.”

—Lindsay Hunter, author of Ugly Girls

 

“If Stephen King read this, he’d regret the eight or nine times he’s said ‘If you miss so-and-so, you’re missing a treat.’ Yes, this is the one that truly deserves those worlds.”

—Gabino Iglesias, author of Hungry Darkness

 

“[Book Title] is like that scene in Predator, when the guy played by Jesse Ventura uses that crazy-ass electric machine gun to mow down the forest when the predator is hunting him down. I felt like that, like the forest. Or maybe like Jesse Ventura. Or maybe Jesse Ventura’s character was already dead by that scene and it was Arnold, or some other actor, using the crazy-ass gun that Jesse Ventura had had when he was still alive. I don’t remember all that well. This book is GOOD.”

—Jamie Iredell, author of Last Mass and I Was a Fat Drunk Catholic School Insomniac

 

“Reading this book is like reading the hush of the crowd right before a Criss Angel performance.”

—Kristen Iskandrian, author of Mother, Motherer, Motherest

 

“Finally! [Author Name] has provided a distillation of human thoughts using the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet. On top of that, he[she] has manipulated the letters into pre-existing English language words. Some letters were used hundreds of times. Some just a handful. Whoa. The words were printed onto paper using a kind of ink that I am unfamiliar with but could easily read. It circles around a certain muddy, charming urban vagueness.”

—Amy Lawless, author of My Dead

 

“The poems in this book are like elephants doing the hula-hoop. The poems in this book are like raccoons attempting to join the rat race. What I mean is that the poems in this book are like baking a cake in the shape of a banana and feeding it to your frenemy’s pet chihuahua. These poems are an orchestra comprised of piccolo trumpets, kazoos, and subcontrabass flutes. These poems are such delighted oddities they’ll rot your brain with a pithy wink and slick smile. I kid you not, buy this book! You’ll be left brain-dead and begging for more.”

—Steven Karl, author of Dork Swagger

 

“Who wouldn’t want to read this book?”

—Michael Kimball, author of some books

 

“Brave…. Stunning….Very Nearly Unreadable…..A Triumph.”

—Samuel Ligon, Author of Among the Dead and Dreaming

 

“I like blurbs! someofthetime. Cuz family tree, shows influence, points even if high noise-to-signal, in hindsight can show a mantle passing, historical clue to company. O course no doubt often also horse shit. Which is why [Book Title] is the blurbiest booble boob blarb blarb ever. A tourest de forsestestest. Beckett.”

—Eugene Lim, author of The Strangers

 

“[Book Title] is a momentous award selected by Pittsburgher poet Gertrude Stein. Gertrude Stein is the president of the Lost Generation and literary innovator and many friends of Faulkner, Hemingway, Marilyn Quayle, all the post-Darwinian sorrow in the bosom of the Nuclear Age writers drinking wine, painting Picasso, sell paintings and food very cheap while laughing and living! (One of my many girlfriend is named Peggy after Peggy Guggenheim, for example {She nicknames me POW!!}) [Author Name] would have been glowing to sit in the Paris café and help Hemingway pick a puppy from a window. All artists must say I am new but others have come before me to disorder the early sorrow in verses. Lineage is respect. [Author Name] has gapped the bridge between the generations.”

—Sean Lovelace, author of Fog Gorgeous Stag

 

“I met [Author] outside [His/Her] [House/Apartment] once. Purely by coincidence. We made small talk. [He/She] said they were working on this book. I asked to see it. They went inside and came back with this magnificent manuscript. It had a strange glow to it, even though the sun was out. I asked if it was something to do with the paper, and [He/She] said no, it was something to do with the words.”

— Spencer Madsen, author of You Can Make Anything Sad

 

“The author of this book is awaiting your response on LinkedIn.”

—Amy McDaniel, author of Collected Adult Lessons

 

“This book made me re-think everything I thought I knew about food. Or work. Or time.”

or

“When it gets rolling [Author Name’s] text feels like one of those old carny rides at county fairs, when you’re not sure it’s supposed to be moving that fast but there’s nothing you can do about it.”

or

“The tense dialogue of [Author Name’s] colorful inhabitants will grab you by the little yellow hairs and you’ll have a helluva time wrenching your attention back to your own life’s mundanities until you’ve read every word. But when you do, you won’t be able to get the sound of these characters’ gravelly mutterings and shrill verbal tics to stop rattling about in your mind.”

—Megan McShea, author of A Mountain City of Toad Splendor

 

“[Author Name’s] [Book Title] evokes the raw emotion a dude using karaoke to get over a really bad break up. Are you ready for these words to trample through your insides and live inside of you? [Book Title] has no point of no return. Its labyrinthine narrative and rhythm will make your heart race and your palms sweat. [Author] is ruthless in their execution of [literary thing] and grants no mercy to the faint of heart.”

—Sade Murphy, author of Dream Machine

 

“[Book title] is a significant contribution to literature. [Author Name] is the voice we all have been waiting for.”

—Gina Myers, author of Hold It Down

 

“This book is boring boring boring boring boring boring boring.”

—Zach Plague, author of boring boring boring boring boring boring boring

 

 

“A deceptively enjoyable book.”

—Adam Robinson, author of Adam Robison and Other Poems

 

“I thought the world was already a pretty great place because of all the gravity and paved roads, but now it’s even better because [Author’ Names] [Book Title] is in it. And while it’s true that reading this book made me forget about paved roads and gravity, when I finished, I remembered them again, and also I remembered reading this book.”

—Jarod Roselló, author of The Well-Dressed Bear Will (Never) Be Found

 

“This book is the pony you were promised but don’t deserve.”

—Jim Ruland, author of Forest of Fortune

 

“[Book Title] by [Author Name] seems sensational. I’m screaming.”

—Lucy K Shaw, author of The Motion

 

“[Author’s name]’s latest is an archive of the fresh, fierce language of our time, an excavation of our dear, sad, solid, and collapsing lives, and a much-needed pebble in the shoe of our culture. It’s there, worrying us, staggering us, and reminding us to pay attention to the things we try so desperately to ignore, but should not today, tomorrow, or ever ignore. We need this book. We’re lucky to have it.”

—Matthew Simmons, author of A Jello Horse, Happy Rock, and The In-Betweens

 

“[Author Name]’s [Book Title] is a searing indictment of end-stopped, masculine rhymes; never has the confluence of ‘mad’ and ‘sad’ been so apt, or so wicked.”

—Maureen Thorson, author of My Resignation

 

“[Author’s name, misspelled] is the greatest writer in the history of western civilization.”

—Mike Topp, editor of Stuyvesant Review

 

“[Book Title] by [Author Name] used letters that can be found in the alphabet.”

—Laura Van den Berg, author of Find Me 

 

“[Author Name] writes like dogs bark.”

—Andrew James Weatherhead, author of The Kids I Teach

 

““It’s a well known fact that every book by [Author Name] is an improvement in one way or another, making [Book Title] the best book by a writer on the verge of something even better.”

—Colin Winnette, author of Haints Stay

 

“[Book Title] is as mystical as it is practical. [Author’s] manual will serve us deep into the millennium.”

—John Dermot Woods, author of The Baltimore Atrocities

 

“[Book Title] is a big-hearted and resplendent book. A long, full-throated cry into the darkness, seeking to revel, to reveal, to remain.”

—Adrian Van Young, author of The Man Who Noticed Everything 

 

“When I reach for the morning and the morning slaps me down, I reach instead for [Author Name’s] [Book Title]. If life is a sugar cube in a bowl of vinegar, [Book Title] is a canoe with a cupholder. Want to stop naming your woes? Then start naming your whoas. Name them [Author Name].”

—Mike Young, author of Sprezzatura