I’ve recently started diving into publishing as a hobby/side gig. It got me to see the other side of things when it comes to books, and it’s quite the craziness.
The first thing I came to realize is how much I rely on word of mouth to select my books. Things like ads, author interviews and usual marketing stuff means nothing to me. But if I see a book listed in a post when searching for a specific genre or topic, or a friend recommends it to me, it almost always immediatly goes to my reading list.
So as I focus on getting my story published and read, I wonder if I should invest in anything other than word of mouth.
So, I wanted to hear from you guys. How do you usually put a book on your radar? How would you like to discover new books?
Usually word of mouth - but that can be either from people I know (friends, fellow online people), or sometimes it might be buzz from the media. Usually that’s in the form of CBC’s Canada Reads. I don’t often pick things up based on retailer suggestions.
Canada Reads is such a good book recommendation pipeline. It’s the nerdy superbowl of our country.
If it’s fantasy I’ll almost always just read it as long it’s not clearly a YA book (not that there’s anything wrong with it).
For other genres it’s mainly centered on Goodreads reviews (with a grain of salt of course).
Word of mouth, NPR interviews/segments, or if I flip through it and I vibe with what little I can skim. Also if it’s non fiction and especially historical non fiction about something I’m interested in I’ll def read it.
A good portion of my library is hand me downs from my in-laws. Luckily they are really cool people and have good taste.
I pretty much exclusively do the WRONG thing and judge a book by its cover.
Oh yes, that has caught me once or twice too! Was not a bad experience, though, proving the old saying wrong!
I just figure that if they put effort into making/getting a nice design, they put effort into the writing.
Mostly word of mouth and reading online reviews. r/suggestmeabook and r/weirdlit were great resources for me as well.
Since I primarily read via the library, I’m not really worried about “wasting money” on books I wind up not liking, so I can be more adventurous with reading new authors I’m not sure about.
When I see a book mentioned enough times in contexts generally aligning with my tastes (also depends on how much I trust the context: an ad will have near-zero impact, a direct recommendation from a close friend will have high impact, for a review it depends), I decide to give it a try.
As for your situation, you’d benefit from having a reviewer with good taste and solid reputation. It might be quite a challenge, but it’s probably worth it once you’ve made sure your book doesn’t suffer from trivial flaws. Or, if it’s just a hobby, you might choose not to bother, or to have more practice first.
Short-stories is how I discover new authors right now. Either through a collection or free on the web.
Having the book available through an early reviewers program (that’s how I’ve discovered a couple of author I didn’t know of), having the book on sale (there are many sites which pick on books that are on sale) or promoting the book through social media (TikTok seems to be very popular right now).
Word of mouth for me too (including reccs from booksellers at my local) – which I guess from a publishing perspective, begs the question, where does the word of mouth chain start?
I’d say it comes firstly from family and friends, where it usually stops at for the average author. After that, I’d say it comes from finding its place in groups that have a shared interest in the topic/genre, perhaps? Still trying to figure that question out too.