It's such a headache for authors to think of notable acquaintances and friends-of-friends to needle for blurbs for the back of their book. Arianna Huffington recently got caught in her blurb assembly line, offering the same one twice. Some authors firmly say no to everyone, shutting down their blurb factory. The NYT writes of a new company that lets you buy (or sell) a blurb—but authors should really just ask Thomas Pynchon. "Recently, Post Road magazine published [reclusive author] Pynchon's collected blurbs from the years 1966 to 2003 - more than two dozen in all." [NYT]