Yes! I got out in the morning again. It was a good walk.
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How do I discover books: (sort of in order) ($9.99 is my upper limit for an e-book but will never pay the same or more that any form of paper book)
In the past I spent a lot of time in bookstores but no more.
If you or any other authors I read recommends something I get a sample.
I browse Amazon first for authors I read, understand I usually already know about when there next book is due in advance. I hate to admit it but I look for Cover Art I like with a nice blurb. Other than authors I read I never buy a book outright, I always get a sample first. I usually look through the recommended for me by Amazon. I will often look at books I have read and look at the people who bought this also bought list (think Amazon tinkers with this a lot not for the good). As for reviews I will look at a five star and a one star or lowest and at the total number of reviews. Some days I will just sample 10 books I have not read and see if I find a gem with pot luck. The sample has to catch me or I dump it. I will sample books friends recommend but I seldom find anything that way I am to picky I guess or have the wrong friends.
How I discover books: Unless a book is recommended by you or someone on another podcast or an author I already know releases a new book, I use Amazon as my sole novel-finder (ebooks only). However, I find their “my recommendations” to be very bad. I still check it, but it almost never leads me to a new book. The “also bought” feature WAS very nice, but now it generally keeps me in a big loop of novels that all of the same people have apparently bought. I spent many hours trying to scan through all of the previously released science fiction works through Amazon’s (rather inadequate, IMO) browser and had some luck, but it wasn’t worth all of the work. Now I check the new science fiction releases every day, usually more than once. This way I can be reasonably sure that I’m at least reading the titles of the books I’m most likely to be interested in.
If you’re looking for more detail after that… I’ll just copy what I wrote up the other day.
If the title or cover of a book seems interesting, I check the price. If the price is $5 or less, I definitely continue investigating. If the price is between $5-7, there is a small chance I will look into it, but if it is any higher there is zero chance. If things are looking good so far then I will do to the details page and (before even reading the description) I will try to determine the length of the work (in words, pages, or if nothing else size). If it is clearly not a full-length novel or seems too short of a novel for the price, I will not buy it. The only exceptions I make to this rule is when I am looking for a specific short story or novella.
If, after all of that, everything is still looking good to me, I will read the description. Assuming the description makes the book sound interesting, I then look at the reviews (if any). I generally take the average rating at face value if there are more than 10 or so reviews. If less, I’ll scan the reviews themselves and make some quick judgments. I then look to see if the author has any other published works, which may positively affect my opinion if they have (a series is always a plus) or may not affect my opinion at all (I’m not afraid to try a new author).
Finally, if everything on the Amazon page (I read on a Kindle) has passed my “test,” then I will download the sample.
I go through pretty much the same process as John and Tony, but I also look through the recommendations at Goodreads as well. I look for the authors I like, and then look though the “also bought” recommendations, and then follow the also bought recommendations on those books as well. I usually have to go through 10 or 20 recommended books to find one that appeals to me. But I’m okay with that. It’s just part of the limitations of an algorythm based upon only an “hated–> really liked” scale. There’s no way that can pick up on the more subtle things I liked about the story.
Sometimes I will go through Amazon’s sub genre’s for the best-selling or highest rated, and look for something that looks interesting.
One thing that would be really great is a list of your recommended books. Sometimes I hear you mention a book, but I don’t remember later, or I couldn’t quite catch the title. Thanks!
I have to admit, honestly, that I’m not consuming that much purely new works these days. Most of my reading has come to be fanfictions of StarGate, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Naruto, Love Hina, Hikaru no Go, and assorted others. However, I read fairly rapidly – Quarter Share is a 2 hr or so read for me, so when I get to concentrating, I can go through books very quickly. Before the Internet and access to fanfiction, this lead me to exhaust the local library, and my book-buying budget very rapidly, and I got into re-reading books I had already read, even several times.
That being said – I tend to run my raids on an author, more or less working through their complete available bibliography, then working out from there. If the author has collaborated with another author, those authors get checked. Prefaces and author’s notes often mention influences – those get investigated. Recommendations of friends also get taken, and investigated, but that’s always an ongoing process.
Usually, when I go to Amazon, I’m looking for some specific title or author. From there, I might get entranced and wiki-walk through the recommendations and also-boughts, but as I just got a tablet and loaded it with the complete Baen Free Library and the Baen CDs (in mobi or epub formats, as available), so I’m reading and re-reading for quite a while to come. (Of course, there’s also the raids on Project Gutenberg that are needed – lots and lots of classics to be checked on!)