Nothing drives me crazier than author quotes. I hate asking for them, and probably 95% of the people I have asked for them have ignored me completely, which serves me right because I don’t give quotes to 95% of the people who ask me for them. The whole practice is a mass of desperation and bad feeling and you’d think it would just collapse in upon itself except for one thing: It really does generate sales.

The author quote is that sentence on the cover that says “A great read!” followed by the name of an author the publisher hopes you recognize and like. The real gets are Nora Roberts, Stephen King, John Grisham, and that ilk, but enough people want Jenny Crusie that I end up with stacks of manuscripts growing surly in the corners of my living room. I take them because I WANT to give author quotes. I want to help other people, it makes me feel warm all over, and besides that, it’s good for me to have my name on other authors’ book covers. It makes people think I’m somebody. They look at the cover and think, “Well, I’ve never heard of Jennifer Crusie but her name is right there so she must be famous,” and there goes my name recognition, up a notch.

For this reason, some of my friends are Quote Whores, and I say this with affection because they’re good people who like giving other authors a boost in sales. “Don’t send me the book,” they tell people, “just put on ‘I loved it!’ Melinda Q. Whore.” And everybody wins, the author, the quoter, the publisher . . . Well maybe not the reader. Continue reading →