Who has control over the summary?

Some of my pro friends got to write it and then it got tweaked by Marketing.

Many times, Marketing wrote it.

Depends on the house, I think.

These are very important sales tools. Publishers are well aware of the fact that many, perhaps most, books are bought by consumers after being drawn to them by the front cover and subsequently reading the copy on the covers and flaps. It's a special type of writing that most every publisher leaves to the expertise of their marketing department.

They're frequently done by marketing. On the other hand, if you've written a strong query/synopsis, your publisher might want to steal some of your verbiage.

I read the query to WAKE linked in Query Letter Hell, and while at Barnes & Noble the following day, happened to find the book on a table. The back cover copy was almost verbatim what was in the query.

But mostly, it's done by the publishing house, and I'd be suspicious of a house that wanted you to write your own.

My editor writes mine. Though mine for INVINCIBLE SUMMER was taking largely from my PM announcement, which was written by my last agent.

My editor wrote mine, though she was awesome enough to go back and forth with me a few drafts until we were both (as well as marketing) pleased with the result.

My editor/publisher/sales and marketing team wrote my first one, but it looks like they're using the one I wrote for book two. (though this could still change I imagine) But they sent it to me to tweak.

Sometimes they use whatever your agent sent them when they queried (with tweaks of course), which is often a rework of what you sent the agent when you queried.

I think many cases it's a collaborate effort spanning a long time frame Bits taken from here and there and brought together.

Marketing writes mine, and then my editor and I tweak it.

The production editor wrote mine, and then it's sent to me to tweak, and then it's sent to marketing to tweak again. Out of 3 books so far, the first two were pretty much solid on the spot. On the 3rd one, my editor said "This is kind of weak, see what you can do to it" and I ended up rewriting about half.

LOG said:

The one that'll presumably go on the back cover or inside cover of your books.
Do you get to write it all out, or is it like the title and it's in someone else's hands?

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With large publishers, the cover synopsis is almost always written by the marketing department, as it should be. This is a good thing.

For my US editions (which are all at HarperCollins), my editor & I co-write the cover copy. I'm not sure if this will be different with the adult book.

Some of my overseas editions use ours, but others are written in-house for them. At least one of my books had cover copy overseas (not telling where for propriety's sake) that made me laugh aloud.