You can tell a book by its cover: an analysis of blurbs

Abstract

In 1966, Clive Bingley described a blurb: A good blurb has a beginning, a middle and an end, a light style and a definite point to make about the content or purpose of the book, as well as an expression of the publisher's own confidence in its merits. This definition specifies that a good blurb contains at least the elements of book praise and book subject matter. Based upon Bingley's definition wide‐ranging and indepth analysis were carried out both within the blurbs of one book and between several books. The sample of books selected for the study were drawn from the fields of sociology, education and psychology and were analysed by the four elements of an analytical framework. Element one of the framework concerned the presence or absence of praise or subject matter in a blurb. Element two dealt with the substantive categories of these two variables. Element three related to a set of other blurb descriptors. Element four consisted of an additional set of variables describing the books of the sample. Combination of simple marginal and cross‐tabulational analysis with appropriate parametric and non‐parametric statistical methods were applied for analysing each element and the relationship of all four elements. The most salient finding was that the Bingley definition proved to serve as a valuable heuristic tool for blurbology, i.e. the scientific study of the blurb. Operationally this meant that no blurbs were found that lacked information concerning praise and subject matter. Further, it was found that praise was a ubiquitous phenomenon. It appeared in over 95% of the blurbs and was consistently high both within and between books. On the other hand, the appearance of other blurb content and descriptor variables was less frequent and more diffuse. There was no evidence of any systematic relationship between book descriptor variables and blurb content. Suggestions for objective and independent research testing blurb selling power were submitted.

Citation

Solomon Eaglstein, A. and Berman, Y. (1990), "You can tell a book by its cover: an analysis of blurbs", Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 42 No. 1, pp. 17-30. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb051156