How to Acquire (and Give) Book Endorsements
A book endorsement (or ‘book blurb’) is a seal of approval. It distills the thoughts and feelings of an important reader into a brief (under 100 words) but powerful promotional tool. When provided by a reputable source, it can lend credibility to you as an author and be an effective way for readers to quickly assess if a book is right for them. Sometimes, it’s the eloquent little endorsement on a book cover or author website that finally convinces a potential reader to buy.
If that all sounds like music to your book marketing ears, you might be wondering how to start earning powerful book endorsements of your own.
To help encourage readers to pick up your (and your fellow authors’) books, we’ve outlined how you can solicit your own catchy quotes and write a persuasive endorsement of your own when it’s time to pay it forward.
How to Acquire Book Endorsements
If you’re a new author, you might feel like a small fish in a big pond. How can someone just starting out secure a meaningful endorsement that might move the needle?
Thankfully, with adequate preparation and diligence, you can find that glowing quote you envisioned for the front cover of your book (and then some).
Make a list of potential endorsers
Before you start blasting out some rapid-fire bullet points about who to contact, think about your target audience. An endorsement is used to appeal to your readers, so you need to speak to them in their language. That means approaching someone who is known to your target audience (or a reliable source regarding your topic) that readers can, in turn, associate with you. This can take the form of another author, a subject matter expert, or a respected media outlet.
You want to make sure the endorsement offers relevant social proof to potential readers. When it comes to individuals, not just any popular figure will bolster your credibility or build excitement about your book. For instance, you likely wouldn’t ask an architect to discuss the value of your psychology text (unless there is some sort of architectural angle involved). People need to trust the endorser knows what they’re talking about.
Know who not to ask
It should be noted that you shouldn’t be giving out books to regular readers for the purposes of writing endorsements. Endorsements should be reserved for those with credentials and status (as established above). If you share endorsements from just anyone, it can even harm the credibility of your author brand.
Likewise, asking family and friends to write you a blurb is not a good idea. A reader is looking for endorsements from someone they can trust, and a person in the author’s immediate circle isn’t going to cut it. You should also be wary of asking friends and family to review your book — in fact, some retailers like Amazon explicitly discourage the practice. Instead, put your efforts toward turning new readers into reviewers.
How to ask for the endorsement
Once you’ve accumulated a solid list of potential endorsers, it’s time to reach out. An endorsement is a meaningful and potentially time consuming task for someone to undertake, so you want to focus on them and make the process as easy as possible. Here are some tips to help you in this initial communication:
Craft a professional email that is both somewhat standardized for ease of replicability and personalized to convey that you're not just sending a message to anyone.
Demonstrate how your book connects to the endorser’s own work. Also, explain why their endorsement matters to you and your readers.
Give them plenty of advance notice and a timeline when you hope to get it for use in promotional materials and cover design.
The email should include everything they’ll need to endorse your book: an overview of what the book is about, a couple chapters that showcase the book’s strengths and mission, an image of the book cover, and anything else that might help an endorser recognize the appeal of your book.
In your responses, be sure to express your gratitude to those providing such a valuable blurb, let them know when the book will be published, and that they will be tagged on social media when the time comes. With a thoughtful, sincere, and strategic approach, you’ll start building positive endorsement momentum in no time.
How to Give a Book Endorsement
If you’ve been asked to write an endorsement for another author, congratulations! This doesn’t just mean you’re someone willing to convey praise and able to do so in a snappy quote; it means that your name and credentials might actually hold weight in a reader’s buying decision.
This is an important marketing assignment for the person enlisting your help and a chance for you to establish added credibility in your genre/field, so you want to ensure you’ve written an engaging endorsement that builds curiosity and helps the author sell their title. Before you write anything, ask the author to send any existing endorsements for the book (if possible) so you can highlight a unique angle about the reading experience. Then reflect on the most impactful moments, the reasons why they’re so powerful, and start writing down a page of all your feelings that can then be abbreviated into a few concise sentences.
As you refine your words, consider these few bits of writing advice for an effective endorsement:
Open with a compelling line
Like any piece of writing, your endorsement should have a compelling opening line that immediately resonates with the interests of target readers. While the positioning of this line might not matter when it’s excerpted for something like the author’s book cover, there are many other scenarios where your blurb is used in longer or full form (like an author website or retail listing).
Be wary when crafting this particularly attention-grabbing line that it is not over the top to the point where people dismiss it for sounding too good to be true, paid, or insincere. You should focus on making it a pithy but realistic impression of the book.
This endorsement of FriesenPress author A-M Mawhiney’s Spindrifts is a great example that sets the stage for the positive, meaningful story that resides in its realistic future setting:
“Spindrifts tackles the hard questions of our time while gracing the reader with real characters, complex family relationships, and a vivid and highly possible futuristic setting. Our own time of pandemics and climate change are projected into a future that is consistent and believable…”
— Anne M. Smith, author of A Canoer of Shorelines
Be specific
If someone reading your endorsement doesn’t have any idea what it’s about – let alone whether they want to read the book – you’ll need to be more specific. Generalities and common phrases, although simple shortcuts to explain more complex ideas, make it feel more like you're reciting these words and filling in the blanks rather than giving an honest appraisal of the reading experience.
Here’s an excerpt of an endorsement from one FriesenPress author to another, offering exciting and specific details that would entice any fantasy reader to consider P.L. Stuart’s The Last of the Atalanteans:
“Epic narratives give rise to fabulous plotlines, devious characters and incredible worldbuilding that sets the scenes for fantastic battles. The incredible descriptions with such vivid details make you feel like you are right there in the heat of battle…”
— Sean R. Bell, author of The Secret of the Sword
Demonstrate the author’s credentials
Mentioning that a fiction book is an award-winning, international bestseller is important, but it’s especially crucial to provide relevant credentials for a nonfiction book.
As the worth of the nonfiction book often comes from its credibility, it is invaluable to have an influential person's approval to reassure the target audience that the book will deliver on its promise.
Here’s an example of an endorsement that reinforces FriesenPress author Dr. Gordon Wallace’s authority on the subject of aging and mindfulness in his book Moonlight Serenade:
“Dr. Gordon Wallace has put together a combination of profound ideas and advice about aging, disarmingly simply described…He reveals an extraordinary level of insight into existential crises such as illness and grief. I benefited from reading this book, and I heartily recommend it to everyone approaching their later years."
— Lionel Corbett, M.D., Jungian Analyst and Co-Editor of Jung and Aging: Possibilities and Potentials for the Second Half of Life
Make comparisons to well-known titles
Finally, an effective method to set expectations for a new book is by making comparisons to other titles and authors. Highlighting the similarities between a new author’s book and beloved established media can help attract fans seeking related titles and reassure them that there’s something familiar to be found in the pages. However, be mindful that the comparison is both appropriate and doesn’t make the author come across as too derivative.
Here’s a great example of comparison used in endorsement of FriesenPress author Hope West’s book The Once Upon A Time Of Now:
“…The spirit of Winnie the Pooh, Alice in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia meets Indian mythology resulting in an unlikely fusion that showcases profound spiritual wisdom…”
— Tova Olsson, author of Yoga and Tantra - its history, philosophy and mythology
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The marketing potential of book endorsements is powerful and vast. You should now not only be able to write a compelling book endorsement, but be equipped to earn valuable blurbs for your own titles. Once you’ve got a well-crafted blurb of your very own, it’s time to put it to work.
A full endorsement will be around 50–100 words. Assess it for certain phrases that you can quote in their entirety or break down into manageable excerpts to suit various mediums such as: Amazon, marketing materials, your author website, and the book itself. By optimizing these purchasing touchpoints, you can better pique your potential readers’ attention and help sway their buying decision. Happy blurbing!