What Makes You Take a Chance on a Book?
What is it that makes you download a book by an author you've never heard of?
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. From a writer standpoint, I'm trying to figure out why people buy or don't buy my books. Is it the title? The cover? The blurb? What mysterious thing is driving sales or driving them away?
Let's take Unequal for example. Sales of that book have been incredibly slow. Every time I hand someone a postcard for Unequal, they ooh and aah over the cover image. So, in that case, it probably isn't that. I think the blurb sounds interesting and like something I'd want to investigate further, but that's probably just me. I hand out these postcards and the oohing and aahing commences, but then I tell them the genre and their eyes glaze over. Dystopian might not be the target genre for people around here. Perhaps it's not the target genre for most anywhere. But I suspected that going in. Dystopian isn't everyone's cup of coffee.
As a reader, I've been thinking about what makes me download certain books over others. The cover grabs my attention, for one. Then I read the blurb. Then I read more about the author and some of the reviews and if everything lines up just right, I snag the book.
Except there's more to it than that because I've set certain constraints. Right now, it pretty much has to be free. And there's the 'new to me and underappreciated' thing. If I'm picking up a new-to-me author, the book has to have less than 50 reviews. More than that, 90% of the time I walk on by. Weird, I know, but that's where I'm at right now.
And the cover doesn't always have to grab my attention in a good way. I recently downloaded a book that's cover was... well, let's just say it kind of creeps me out and it's not a creepy sort of book. In that case, the title grabbed me and the blurb held me. But the cover did what it needed to do. It made me stop scrolling to read more.
So, here I am putting it out to all of you. What makes you stop and take a chance on a untried book/author?
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. From a writer standpoint, I'm trying to figure out why people buy or don't buy my books. Is it the title? The cover? The blurb? What mysterious thing is driving sales or driving them away?
Let's take Unequal for example. Sales of that book have been incredibly slow. Every time I hand someone a postcard for Unequal, they ooh and aah over the cover image. So, in that case, it probably isn't that. I think the blurb sounds interesting and like something I'd want to investigate further, but that's probably just me. I hand out these postcards and the oohing and aahing commences, but then I tell them the genre and their eyes glaze over. Dystopian might not be the target genre for people around here. Perhaps it's not the target genre for most anywhere. But I suspected that going in. Dystopian isn't everyone's cup of coffee.
As a reader, I've been thinking about what makes me download certain books over others. The cover grabs my attention, for one. Then I read the blurb. Then I read more about the author and some of the reviews and if everything lines up just right, I snag the book.
Except there's more to it than that because I've set certain constraints. Right now, it pretty much has to be free. And there's the 'new to me and underappreciated' thing. If I'm picking up a new-to-me author, the book has to have less than 50 reviews. More than that, 90% of the time I walk on by. Weird, I know, but that's where I'm at right now.
And the cover doesn't always have to grab my attention in a good way. I recently downloaded a book that's cover was... well, let's just say it kind of creeps me out and it's not a creepy sort of book. In that case, the title grabbed me and the blurb held me. But the cover did what it needed to do. It made me stop scrolling to read more.
So, here I am putting it out to all of you. What makes you stop and take a chance on a untried book/author?
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