Author and Rock Plaza Central musician Chris Eaton wrote about scores of people online and offline who share his name in Chris Eaton, a Biography. Over at The Believer, he interviewed another writer with the same name and a small Internet footprint.
How many people share your name online? In this encore edition of the Morning Media Menu, Eaton shared advice for making a genuine appeal to a writer, artist or musician when searching for blurbs.
Press play below to listen on SoundCloud. We’ve collected a few excerpts from the interview…
Eaton explained his simple approach to blurbs:
I wasn’t terribly comfortable with the whole process. I hate asking people for favors, and blurbs come down, to some degree, to a favor. I tried to seek out people that I didn’t know very well. People whose art I valued. I said: “I like what you do in music, and there are some ways I think this is similar. Would you agree to read it and provide me with what you think of it?”
Eaton concluded:
I reached out to artists too, I thought it would be interesting to see what they thought. Probably half my blurbs were from musicians. Charles Spearin from Broken Social Scene, and Jim Guthrie [from Royal City] and Nat Baldwin from Dirty Projectors. There are writers, a few critics, I wanted to get as broad range as I could. Really, I just asked people: “Would you like to read it?” And thankfully, people like to read. They were all looking for another good book.