Naked Books Come into This World, and Naked They Return

Before I bought, read, and loved Andrew Peterson’s book Adorning the Dark, I held the book and admired it. What I admired most—before even reading it—was not the cover, wonderfully and gloriously stunning as the cover is. What I admired most was that Peterson had sent the book into the world without a foreword, an afterword, or a single endorsement.

I stood there, puzzling and pondering, feeling a little like the Grinch, looking at every Who down in Whoville and mumbling, “It came without ribbons! It came without tags! It came without packages, boxes or bags!”

The book almost seemed naked. Even though I had bought it, I wondered how a book so improperly clothed would reach readers and how offensive it was that Peterson could be so comfortable in just his own skin while the rest of us want-to-be authors would feel so insecure.

This was the summer of 2020. Peterson’s book had been published the previous year by B&H. Surely I’ve read many books that came into the world without endorsements and forewords. But Peterson’s is the first book I consciously recall noticing the absence of endorsements and forewords. This was over five years ago, but I can remember exactly where I stood in my church office, how I stood looking out the window, and how I thought about what courage it must have taken him to make this choice.

I say “courage,” but let me be clear that I don’t really know. I don’t know Peterson, and I don’t know how the conversation with his publisher went. Courage is the virtue I like to think bubbled up from his faith in God. But maybe Peterson asked every famous person he knew, and they all said no. (I’m confident this didn’t happen.) Or maybe the publisher told him not to seek endorsements for their own reasons, as a kind of experiment. Or maybe forgoing endorsements was just an idea Peterson had because he’s concerned about how fleeting and shallow the praise of men can be.

I don’t know which combination of the many possible reasons it happened. But what I’m highlighting is that it did happen. I stood there, looking at the book and thinking how thankful I was that the decision had been made. Maybe, I wondered, if in the future more authors and publishers would follow their example. Maybe endorsements don’t move the needle on book sales the way publishers once thought they did.

At this point, I’ve read so many endorsements that I even know the tropes. I call one of them the “whether you” statement. “Whether you’re a single mother or a Wall Street tycoon, this book about the prophet Ezekiel is for you.” And it’s not just beginning authors who use them. They look different for established authors, but they too seek blurbs from organizations they hope will confer credibility with their potential readers, credibility they hope will translate into buyability. “A heartwarming book,” says the LA Times. “A must read,” says the Washington Post.

In the future probably everyone will read fewer endorsements, and tropes will become less obvious. Last January, The Guardian ran a story about how one major publishing company would stop the practice of endorsements on some of its imprints. Sean Manning, president and publisher at Simon & Schuster, noted the time and effort endorsements drain from everyone—authors, editors, agents, and publishers. New authors should be working on their craft, and established authors should be writing the next book. Manning even noted that the kind of favor-trading involved in blurbs “creates an incestuous and unmeritocratic literary ecosystem that often rewards connections over talent.” Yuck.

Another reason the trend of seeking endorsements is fading, particularly in a Christian context, is that publishers have had to scrap so many books because the authors of the forewords and endorsements have since discredited themselves. I think of the book Dangerous Calling by Paul Tripp, which addresses the many dangers, toils, and snares of pastoral ministry. Ironically, of the original five endorsements on the back cover, three of the men have been removed from pastoral ministry for moral failure. I also think of the images that circulated online years ago showing a dumpster full of books by Mark Driscoll.

For the last few years, I’ve chuckled at the annual “Christian Book Endorsement Awards” Adam Thomas posts on X. I have no idea how he gathers this information, but he somehow does enough research to bestow awards for endorsements in super quirky, humorous categories. At the start of the long thread in 2024, he reminds readers that the all-time record for the most endorsements is still held by John Frame’s Systematic Theology, which has an incredible 69 endorsements. He notes other categories, such as “Most Endorsements from Australians” and “Most Endorsements from Immediate family members.”

I laughed out loud when I saw who won this year’s “Most Impressive Endorsement-to-Pages Ratio” title. It was Will Dobbie’s short but helpful book, A Time to Mourn: Grieving the Loss of Those Whose Eternities Were Uncertain. I laughed because I was one of the endorsers! Apparently, there were fifteen others, which, Thomas tells readers, meant one endorsement for every 4.38 pages.

When beginning authors seek endorsements, whether they are aware of it or not, something like “cantilevering” occurs. A cantilever is a beam that extends from a structure but is supported on only one side. Picture laying a beam of wood across a tabletop. You can keep scooting the beam further off the edge of the table until nearly half of the beam hangs over the edge. You can push the beam even further off the table if you press down on the table-side of the beam to anchor it.

When I use the idea of “endorsements as cantilevering,” I mean that authors try to cantilever as far as possible through their social networks—their tabletop, if you will—to reach people further along in their careers. And if you have a friend who knows a friend, it’s like anchoring the beam on one side to extend how far you can reach. Sometimes you can reach far enough to get a great endorsement, and sometimes they are too far out of reach.

Most authors I know find the process all so stressful. About a year ago, I teased an author friend about getting endorsements for her next book. This time, she told me, the publisher didn’t want endorsements, which made her very glad.

The stress of reaching for the stars, however, isn’t the only dynamic that happens with endorsements, and it’s not always the main dynamic. There’s also the sweetness of friendships. Sometimes an endorsement becomes precious to an author, not because it will potentially sell another book or because it stokes the author’s ego, but rather because a dear friend of the author took hours to read his book and another hour to write something nice, and all that time and effort became an expression of kindness beyond words.

This is a long post to say that later this summer, when my first traditionally published book releases, The Restoration of All Things: How the Return of Christ Brings Promise for Today, the book won’t have a single endorsement or foreword. And just to be clear, I did try to cantilever toward someone to write the foreword. Even with the anchor of a friend of a friend, I reached too far and heard, “Thanks, but no.”

After that attempt, my publisher told me endorsements wouldn’t be needed for the book, and that made me sad. Sure, I was sad that I might lose some potential sales, and that scared me. So much fear swirls around the publishing wilderness that even strong relationships between authors and publishers can seem fragile, making it impossible not to be affected. So that kind of “will my book ever sell” sadness hit me.

Far more than a loss in potential sales, however, I was sad because for a dozen years I’ve been writing and making author friends, and it would have been a kindness beyond words to receive their encouragement.

And yet the longer I’ve thought about it, the less sad and the more thankful I’ve become. I’m not wasting my time chasing endorsements, and neither are more established authors. So there’s that. But beyond the time saved, I’m thankful for the sobering reminder that all books are like grass, here today and out of print tomorrow. Only the one book that needs no endorsements remains forever.

In a few months, the publisher will mail me my first box of author copies. Maybe I’ll post a video of me opening that box, a trope I might just embrace. Or maybe I won’t post that video and leave the sacred moment to be just that.

Regardless, one day my new, shiny book will go out of print. I hope and pray it’s not after the first printing. But all of that is in the Lord’s hands now. And it always was. Because—in truth—with or without endorsements, books come into the world and return as people do: naked.

* Photo adapted from Eduardo Barrios on Unsplash