The Importance of Author Blurbs

On the Freakonomics Blog, they have been talking recently about the importance, or lack thereof, of author blurbs. At first, I was thinking that I can't recall ever reading a book based on an author blurb printed on a book, but then I remembered this. But this is the issue for me: I read the book because of what John Green wrote about it rather than the fact that he (supposedly) endorsed it. I put "supposedly" in there since Dubner points out that it is sometimes the editors writing these blurbs. I don't know, I honestly don't usually find the blurbs very helpful. But like I said, if the blurbs are well-crafted, then I guess they can be influential. Certainly I am much more likely to read a book endorsed by an author in an interview or on their blog.