In a case of insiders recognizing that stuff they think is important isn’t really viewed as valuable to consumers, the publisher of Simon and Schuster books announced their writers will no longer be required to solicit blurbs from other writers.

If you are wondering what blurbs are, you aren’t alone. In a totally non-scientific survey at a book seller the NY Times article writer conducted, 18 out of 20 people responded they didn’t know what it was. Once they were told, they said blurbs didn’t impact their buying choices as much as the summary of the story on the book jacket/cover. Those that buy books online said they place more importance on what other buyers have written about the book.

And in fact, there is no data that the blurbs help to sell books at all. Like their customers, shop owners interviewed for the story said that other than some really recognizable names, they hadn’t seen customers pay attention to blurbs.

Blurbs are basically words of praise that other authors have given to a book. Most authors don’t like soliciting those blurbs because it is time consuming and potentially humiliating if someone you admire refuses you. Not to mention the whole process cultivates a bit of an incestuous quid pro quo environment.

In his statement, Sean Manning, the publisher of Simon & Schuster said:

A number of authors are issuing sighs of relief while others are hoping this practice becomes more widespread.

This story resonated with me because about six hours before I saw it I had picked up a book related to arts management and after scanning the nearly two dozen blurbs, muttered that none of those giving blurbs really had any relevance for me. If I was thinking that as an arts insider, it was a lesson to me to consider how little things I did think were important might mean to audience members.

Colleen Dilenschneider and the folks at IMPACTS Experience laid out some interesting data about audience sustainability for different types of cultural organizations. (subscription required) They look at negative substitution trends as well as the engagement cycle for different types of cultural entitites.

If you are asking, “Okay, so what is negative substitution,” IMPACTS explains it like this:

Engagement cycle is how the average time between when a person first visits an organization and when they return. For exhibit based organizations, this is an average of 24.7 months. However broken down by different disciplines it varies. For aquariums it is 23.8 months; art museums it is 24.1; Children’s museums it is 29.7 months.

Similarly, for performing arts organizations the engagement cycle is 28.5 months, but for symphonies it is 28.7 months and for theaters it is 25.8 months.

They break down these rates for 11 different organization types in the article. These examples are just a sample.

Negative substitution rates vary for each of the 11 types as well. For aquariums the substitution rate is .991; art museums is .955, children’s museums is .92; symphonies is .907 and theater is .946.

As an example of how these two numbers come together in a relevant way, here is an example using the general exhibit based substitution rate of .982 and engagement cycle of 24.7 months:

They provide a similar breakdown for each of the 11 organizations if you want to see the trends for your particular corner of the cultural landscape. Some of the numbers become a little sobering. For example, an orchestra serving 1 million people in 2025 might expect to be serving 822,600 people at the end of the second cycle in 66.2 months.

Seth Godin recently made a post that set off all sorts of thoughts in my brain.

I was going to say it checked a lot of boxes for me, but that is the title of his post and it felt a little repetitive.

His first point about audiences not making it easy to learn what boxes they need checked reminded me of an Arts Hacker post I made which mentioned the “5 Whys” technique often required to drill down to discover root causes and motivations. This is because the first answer you often receive often just reflects a surface understanding.

Godin’s point about everyone not having the same boxes and that great work finds emotions, stories and possibilities dovetails with a lot of what Ruth Hartt espouses for marketing the arts in a way that responds to audience needs. Many of the marketing message examples she uses resonate with a desire to de-stress, have a sense of harmony, spend time with family and friends, and other things people may want out of an experience.

Among the most effective ways to communicate that you offer those sort of benefits is through messaging and images that tell stories and evoke emotions. To some extent using this type of messaging may help audiences create new boxes to check–or rather validate that their root needs from an experience are worth verbalizing more frequently rather than concealing.