More Recent Comments

Thursday, March 02, 2023

"You like me!"

The endorsements for my book are in.

One of the last steps in publishing a book is to collect endorsements—favorable statements from famous people who urge you to buy the book. These short endorsements will appear in the front of the book and on the book jacket (dust jacket). They may also appear on various websites in order to promote sales.

The trick is to sent the book out for review to as many people as possible and hope that one or two will like it well enough to say something nice. I'm pleased to report that there were, indeed, a few people who liked the book well enough to endorse it.



The title of this post is from Sally Field's acceptance speech on winning the Academy Award for best actress in 1985. She said, "I can't deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me!"

5 comments :

Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...

Were there any reviewers who got mad or didn't like it?

Larry Moran said...

@Mikkel

I don't know. The publisher takes care of endorsements. I send them a list of people who I think might be suitable but I don't know who they will pick or if they will choose others. All I see are the blurbs that will be published with the book and those tend to be quite flattering.

I assume they just ignore all the bad comments and keep trying until they find someone who will write something good. It's a good idea to give the publishers a very long list.

Arlin said...

Larry, I'm sure I will like your book but I didn't send an endorsement. I got an email from the publisher which said basically we're gonna send you this expensive book for free if you'll just say something nice about it, and they sent it to my official gov address so obviously my only response is to say sorry my dudes I'm a civil servant you can't bribe me like this.

Larry Moran said...

@Arlin

So that's how they do it! I've never been asked to endorse a book - not even your book.

So, you can't be bribed with a $40 book; is there an upper limit to the bribes you will refuse? How about a $200 book? :-)

John Mattick's book is free online. Did he ask you for an endorsement?

John Janis said...

Speaking of endorsements, I just ran into a "shoutout" for your older book, and also Sandwalk , in the reference list for Nick Lane's 2022 book Transformer (Krebs cycle):

"Laurence A. Moran, Robert Horton, Gray Scrimgeour and Marc Perry, Principles of Biochemistry, 5th edn (London, Pearson, 2011). One of the few biochemistry textbooks that deals with evolution in a serious way. Larry Moran also writes an excellent, hugely informative and good-humoured blog, Sandwalk (named after Darwin’s walk at Down House). Strongly recommended; and do take a look at his blog."