It’s spellbinding! Riveting! A triumphant tour de force!

BOOKS are about to become a little less “Spellbinding!”, “Stunning!” and “Compelling!”. Fewer still will offer a “tour de force” (whatever one of those might be). That is because Simon & Schuster, an American publisher, has decided to stop doing book blurbs, those saccharine quotes from other authors on the back of books, at its flagship imprint. They are, says Sean Manning, the company’s publisher, “very weird”.

Few will mourn them. The blurb (which in Britain is also called a “puff”) is an unloved literary tradition. It first appeared at the start of the 18th century and spread as printing presses perfected the modern dust jacket. The aim was to offer enthusiasm; instead, they were sometimes seen as suspect. Some authors scorned them; readers disregarded them. Blurbs are “disgusting tripe”, wrote George Orwell, in the sort of phrase that rarely makes it onto a cover.

Their tone is part of their problem. Blurbs are intended to be alluring. But their tenor of universal acclamation means that more often they are suspected of simply lying. “Right from the word go, people are suspicious,” says Ross Wilson, a professor of English at the University of Cambridge. With good reason, since blurbs are not quotes culled from impartial reviews but praise prised from writers (some of whom share the author’s agent or publisher). Look up the words “blurb” and “puff” in the dictionary, and definitions of both explain that their praise is extravagant.