Whatever happened to blurbs? You know, that short, salesy, spoiler-free summary of the book on the back cover? I remember them, and it’s definitely not a Mandela effect because my old books have them. How come newly published books don't have blurbs anymore? It's forgivable for classics or anthologies not to have them, but even books relatively new to the market don't have blurbs on their physical copies anymore.

My book shopping routine looked like this:

I would start with the bookshelf nearest to the entrance. I’d crane my neck sideways, checking each and every spine on the bookshelf. When there's a book that I’m interested in or that is aligned with what I'm looking for, I'd take the book out. I’d read the front cover, the title, and the author. Then, I'd flip to the back cover. I would then read the blurb. If I like it, I’ll carry it with me while I look for more books, checking all the shelves of the entire bookstore before heading to the cashier (if I have any books in my hands by the end of the trip) to pay for them.

It was only recently that something deviated from the entire routine: the blurb reading was gone. Being an INTJ who was so stuck in their routines, I hated this interruption. Instead of reading the blurb, here are some of the additional steps that I have to take in order to decide if I’m going to buy the book or not:

I would realize that there was no blurb at the back, only reviews from people I don't know or voices I don’t trust enough to take their word for it. I would then pull out my phone from the bottom of my bag and open up the browser. Typing in the title on the search bar, I’d notice that the first entry would almost always be Goodreads. I’d open that up and finally see the blurb, without first seeing the five-star reviews and a pop-up asking me to sign up. If I'm peeved enough for having to go through the entire experience and not even liking the story, I'm not going to bother with the next book that doesn't have a blurb at the back anymore.

I first thought it was because of the pretty cover art. Covers nowadays are beautiful to the point of being extravagant. Publishers would even release limited edition covers and other flairs for the collector bunch. However, we all know that the spine will first catch our attention, then the front cover.

They could be funneling all readers through Goodreads as a sort of marketing strategy. But Goodreads, as a website, is shit. The UI sucks, like it was made using Internet 2.0. In this strategy, both offline and online experiences are unpleasant. Any friction along the buying experience would be enough to discourage a buyer from pushing through with the purchase. The idea of making a reader go online to research if the book they believe will help them disconnect is worth it was ironic.

The reviews on the back cover are also not helping me in cementing my decision to purchase the book. Although maybe it was effective for someone else. It might be for someone whose first brush with the book was in social media – TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, the likes. Even Goodreads is at least a social media page. You can comment on other people's reviews and even like or dislike the review. Maybe publishers are expecting more people to come from social media. Watch all the short-form content, be part of a book platform, read all the reviews from Goodreads first, before finally going to the bookstore and picking up the book. It worked during the pandemic, but now more people are back to shopping in stores. Also, a lot more people are realizing the negative effects of being chronically online, but the blurbs are still nowhere to be found.

Let’s look at the reviewing system. Anyone who has remotely worked on creating a scaling system (mine was my experience as a psychometrician) knows that a good scale has to make sense, i.e., what could any point in that N-point scale mean? I could go on with the qualities and tests that make a scale rigid from a psychometric perspective, but we're going to make it simple.

Here are some questions to ponder:

1. What does any point in the Goodreads 5-star scale mean? Is 1 shitty? Is 3 good enough? Is 5 award-winning? What does “award-winning” mean? Is there a consensus about these terms? Are the users reminded of what each of the terms means every time they use the rating scale? To think that there are a lot of award-winning books that are scored lower than 5 means that it’s a mess.

2. How do we arrive at the scores? Is it average? Is it median? Could it be something else that could represent a more thorough review of the data? If it were average, then the rating system might be losing some of its information through the cracks. Sure, they're showing the median, but there was no profile or demographic of those who scaled it. It’s still a stone's throw away from making an educated guess when looking at this data objectively.

3. Is the scale calculated through questions, like a survey? Or does the rater click on the stars that they feel the score should be? (It does.) There are people who raved so much about a piece of media but rated it low. How do we make sure we’re on the same page?

Aside from the fact that constructing a rigid, scientific, objective rating scale is a lot of hard work (and may not be a pleasant experience for those who will use the rating scale), I really don't like taking in any reviews of any kind in any form. I feel like we're too complicated to rely on a stranger's opinion (with their entire life experiences, mental state, and preferences) about something. Instead, let me have a go at it, and you should too.

I know what you're thinking upon hearing my rant about why going to Goodreads is bad for the reading experience. "But it's subjective."

And I agree, that's why blurbs are important. It gives us the freedom to subjectively judge if the book is for us or not.

As much as I don't trust review sites, I also don't trust the review quotes on the covers, along with whatever list of bestsellers the book was included in. No one would shoot themselves in the foot and put a negative or a neutral review on the book itself. But a wise buyer would also look at the negative reviews in order to decide if it’s worth their hard-earned money in this economy. What I do I look at negative things other people have said about the book and see if that's something I can live with. The reviews on the cover also came from other authors of the same genre, and that’s hardly a difference in opinion. The only time I felt compelled to pick up a book because of a review was when I saw a comment from one of my heroes. Even with that, I didn’t like the book after reading it.

However, I see a deeper problem with not putting blurbs. It's as if the publishers were hiding something from potential readers, like maybe the story itself. It could be a lukewarm plot, or a plot we've already seen before, and it has the same elements as everything else in the bookstore. It could also be a plot that shares everything else trending on social media. A plot that we've already seen before, but was rebranded as a "retelling". It's as if they were luring us with the reviews, telling us that we should trust them enough to give them our hard-earned money. "See, this was raved on by this famous person." "This renowned publication has this book on their best seller list." It’s as if we don't need to think about anything else anymore (like an algorithm). But then you go home, you read the book, and think you've read this before somewhere. It leaves you feeling that you’ve wasted your money on something that didn’t even satisfy you.

Overall, let's not think the same way a home appliance manufacturer would think. Strategies like these could work well in a home appliance, a machine whose core function remains the same regardless of what brand or model you buy. By then, the reviews will be all about the bells and whistles.

Books, however, are all bells and whistles. So, give us the most unique thing about it on the back cover and let us be the judge of it. The best books are honest, and they always tend to pull the right people without needing reviews.

I'm not saying all books without blurbs suck. The entire thing is subjective. What I'm saying is, looking it up is an additional step to take, and we're not all convinced by a marketing tactic masked as an objective review.

Bring Back the Blurbs

5/12/2025