I haven’t had time yet to read more than the first dozen pages or so, but it’s already clear to me that my novel Infoquake is a far, far better book.

How do I know that? Well, The Color of Magic only has three pages of blurbs inside the front cover — in large type, no less — while the Solaris edition of Infoquake has four and a half. The upcoming trade paperback of MultiReal ups the stakes considerably, with over nine pages of blurbs inside the cover. Nine and a half pages! By my reckoning, that makes Infoquake somewhere between 50% and 216% better than The Color of Magic.

Of course, by this standard I’m still playing catch-up to Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind. If you open up the mass market paperback for Pat’s debut, you see page after page of ecstatic blurbs and reviews from folks like Orson Scott Card and Robin Hobb, explaining why they would gladly burn the world’s last copy of Crime and Punishment if only to feed the fire that’s keeping Pat’s feet warm for twenty minutes. (I’m not saying this to be mean-spirited; it’s awe-inspiring stuff. We all love the guy who’s a scrappy loser, but less frequently admitted is how much we love the guy who’s an overbearing success. A part of me wishes that Pat was eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer this year. I would have loved to see him win by an overwhelming, blow-out margin. Remember how cool it was to watch The Return of the King take just about every Oscar in existence?)

Okay, back to the blurbs and review snippets. To quote Triumph the Comic Insult Dog: I kid! I kid!

We all know that this inside-the-cover blurb stuff is really just a marketing game that the publishers play. We all know that the presence of a ton of laudatory quotes might — might — signal the presence of a worthwhile book, but the lack of these quotes doesn’t mean the book is lacking in quality. We all know that the number of mouth-foaming quotes you find on the jacket or inside the cover serve one purpose and one purpose only: to sell you a book.

Nonetheless, it works. There are plenty of readers out there who claim that review snippets and author blurbs are totally meaningless and don’t impact their purchasing decisions. I’m not one of them. I utterly depend on compelling review snippets and/or blurbs from sources that I trust when I decide what to buy. Because to me, seeing a page of quality reviews and blurbs indicates several things:

• The blurbing authors thought highly enough of this book to have their name slathered all over it, knowing that it’s going to be used specifically for promotional purposes.
• Discerning, thoughtful critics liked the book enough that they took the time to think up a clever way to phrase their feelings about it, knowing that it’s going to be etc. etc.
• The publisher believes this book will appeal directly to readers like me by highlighting critical praise for the book and not putting one of those cheesy mini-excerpts on the first page.

(As an aside: I find those miniature excerpts on the first page of mass market paperbacks incredibly condescending. I’m sorry to report that if your book has an excerpt like that, your publisher has just dramatically decreased the probability of me buying it. Why?

1. Because you’ll usually find the most sensationalistic, cliffhangery passage of the whole book there, whether it’s germane to the plot or not.
2. Because the folks that package the book often take liberties with the author’s grammar and/or punctuation in these excerpts.
3. Because often these snippets give away crucial plot points or color my reading of the story.
4. Because they’re usually printed in a large font that screams, “Hey! I know you’re already headed to the checkout line, but I’m hoping this tiny irrelevant snippet of suggestive kinkiness, frenetic action, or lobotomized ideamongering just might be enough to inspire you to make an impulse purchase!”)

So ever since I saw the final typeset version of MultiReal with the nine and a half pages of review snippets, I’ve been ((way) over)analyzing it in my head. What does this say about my writing? What does it say about my career? Should I be proud that so many people had so many nice things to say about my first book? Does the book exhibit a Napoleon Complex by trying to show off so much? Should I mention on my blog that I wanted to include a lot of the positive comments from bloggers, as a way to show my respect and gratitude to the blogosphere for being so generous? And if I do mention that, am I being defensive?

And I’m also wondering: will these blurbs influence people’s buying decisions? Pretend you know nothing about me or my writing, and you stumble across MultiReal and its panoply of impressive-looking blurbs and review snippets in your local bookstore. How much would these pages impact your choice of whether to buy the book or not?

Nick Sagan, author of Idlewild, Edenborn, and Everfree, screenwriter for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager, and former child ambassador to the universe on the Voyager Golden Record, has read and blurbed my novels Infoquake and MultiReal. Here’s what the esteemed Mr. Sagan has to say:

David Louis Edelman’s vision of the future is so alive and full of energy the pages are practically buzzing. Wonderfully intricate with smart, satisfying complexity, Infoquake and its sequel MultiReal serve up a world where mindbending technologies promise a freedom nearly as endless as the Machiavellian ambitions of those who would control them.

Blurbs don’t get much more sophisticated (and laudatory) than that. Together with the existing blurbs from Robert J. Sawyer and Peter Watts, the front matter for MultiReal is going to look pretty nice indeed.

I first met Nick almost exactly twelve months ago, at least year’s Penguicon (you know, the one before open source breast fondling). We spent an afternoon dishing and drinking, and then drinking, and then drinking some more. After that, I think we did some drinking. By the time evening stumbled blearily around, we had talked so much that I think I was ready to take a bullet for the guy.

My deepest thanks to Nick Sagan for this. Now y’all go out there and buy some of his books, y’hear?

Well, here’s a concrete example. In one of my blogs about my World Fantasy experience, I mentioned that I had finally met Hugo Award-winning SF author Robert J. Sawyer (author of Hominids, Rollback, and many others). Rob and I were both in a group of about ten people who dined at the local pub on the first official night of the con. And then I got a chance to talk with him face to face for a few minutes at the Tor party on day 3. I said on my blog that Rob was “very generous with his time and advice.” What I didn’t mention at the time was that he agreed to read my upcoming novel MultiReal for a possible blurb.

Today, Mr. Sawyer has come through. Here’s his blurb for MultiReal, and boy, it’s a beaut:

Just when we thought cyberpunk was dead, David Louis Edelman bursts on the scene with defibrillator paddles and shouts, “Clear!” If there’s any web more tangled than the World Wide one, it’s the Byzantine networks of high finance; Edelman intermeshes them in a complex, compelling series. This DOES compute!

Damn, I love this. I’m bursting onto the scene! With defibrillator paddles, no less! And I even like the cutesy “this DOES compute” at the end, complete with exclamation point. I think this one’s going to be riding high on my books for years to come, provided you all keep my career going for years to come by purchasing multiple copies of my books.

There’s nothing quite like a colorful blurb from someone who really knows how to give a good compliment. Take, for instance, one of my all-time faves, written by Wallace Stegner for the great Robert Stone: “Stone writes like a bird, like an angel, like a circus barker, like a con man, like someone so high on pot that he is scraping his shoes on the stars.” Then there’s Thomas Pynchon’s famous blurb for his old buddy Richard Fariña: “This book comes on like the Hallelujah Chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch, I mean strong, swinging, skillful and reverent — but also with the fine brassy buzz of irreverence in there too.”

Including Sawyer’s blurb and the one by Peter Watts, I’m now two steps closer to achieving my goal of getting praised by every single Canadian on the planet. Robert Charles Wilson and R. Scott Bakker, you’re next!

And thanks again to Rob Sawyer.