Established Author Just Writes Own Blurb Praising His Latest Novel
Take It From Him, It's Really Good
Instead of spending all this time and effort finding someone to write a blurb for the paperback release of Stephen King’s Fairy Tale, Scribner just figured they would ask the person who knows the novel best: the author.
Who better to hawk the book than the man himself?
“Yeah, this might be a little gauche,” said Jonathan Karp, CEO of Simon and Schuster, the parent company who owns Scribner. “But we figured his fans were going to buy this novel anyways, so whatever.”
Karp is right. The novel has done very well in sales and wound up on several best of 2022 lists. Simon and Schuster predict sales will only do better once the paperback is released this spring.
Scribner president Susan Moldow had requests in with other famous authors like Barbara Kingsolver and Neil Gaiman, but when they didn’t respond within 15 minutes the company felt like it had to pivot.
“Besides,” said Moldow, “readers of King’s work might not even be able to recognize another author other than maybe Clive Barker or R.L. Stine, but we suspect they’ve both been dead for years.”
“Why go through all that trouble when you literally have The King of Horror sitting right there and on contract?”
King normally wouldn’t have agreed to such a lazy marketing stunt, but like his publisher company, Moldow and Karp agree he’s been phoning it in lately, too.
“All one has to do is actually read recent King novels like Billy Summers or Gwendy’s Final Task and you would be able to infer that he could give a shit about the product anymore,” said Moldow.
“I mean, look at the formulaic Fairy Tale itself. It’s basically just a rehash of previous King plotlines and tropes,” added Karp.
We contacted King for his reaction to this sort of pessimism from his publisher, but King confirmed all of their cynicism with some added apathy of his own.
“They asked if I would write a blurb and I threw something together. I didn’t even realize it was my own novel at first. I just figured it was some other new writer aping my style,” revealed King.
“At this point, it would just make sense for me to write something that would make the book more appealing. In fact, just having my name on the book a second time would probably attract readers.”