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?

Why Should People Read Fiction?

I see things all the time about the questions we ought to be asking ourselves as writers.  Questions we ought to know the answers to.

For instance, who's your target market?

I'm all like "I don't know... people who read?"

The other night, the question "Why should people read fiction?" was presented on FB. 

I'm all like "No clue." If someone came up to me tomorrow and asked me why they should read fiction, I'd probably be like 'if you don't already read it, I can't help you'. 

Or if they asked me why they should read my books in particular, I'd begin by asking them questions instead of giving them a straight answer.  "Do you read fiction?" Check.  "What kinds of books do you like to read?" If they name any of the genres I write, I'll give them a bookmark, point out which books meet their specifications, and let them decide.  If they still asked why they should read MY books instead of someone else's, I'd probably stare at them blankly.  Or maybe blurt out the answer, "because they're fun".  Which isn't really an answer when you think about it. 


The answer to why I read fiction changes with the time of day, my mood, current events, life, etc.  It's an escape, it's a stress reducer, it's research, there's nothing on TV, something pissed me off and I want to forget about it for a while, I'm procrastinating... 

Maybe that's why I can't come with an answer for someone else. 

:shrug:

Do you have an answer?  What would it be?

To Print or Not to Print?

Ah, therein lies the rub.  Whether it's more marketable to offer works in paperback or to suffer the slings and arrows of only going ebook.  Or something.

As I approach release day for Blink of an I, I'm once again questioning whether to offer a work in hardcopy as well as ebook.  Supposedly, having a hardcopy version available lends validity to the ebook.  I'm not sure about that.  I know plenty of people who only have their books in eversion and they don't seem to be hurting for sales.  And I have hardcopies of all my books so far, but they don't seem to be doing much for my sales. 

It'd be nice to have some hard data on the subject, and there might even be some somewhere, but I'm not in the mood to go looking for it.

It's not like putting a hardcopy version out there is that hard.  A pain in the butt sometimes, but not hard, per se.  A little more formatting, a print cover.  It's a little more expense, too, with purchasing proof copies, etc.  But not enough to make it totally out of the question.

Which still doesn't answer my question.

If I put out paperbacks, I could offer them as contest prizes.  But so few people enter my contests, I'm not really seeing any good come out of those.  The one person here who regularly enters has already won a copy of this book anyway - in eversion.

If I have paperbacks, I can hand sell them.  Except my hand sales are so down, I don't even bother trying anymore.  I could give them away to people I know...  Yeah, that's not really happening lately either.  Being a hermit has its downside.

Lazy me says 'just put this one out ebook only'.  Publisher me says 'put them both out so you cover all the bases'.  Not sure who'll win.

What do you think?

If I do put out a paperback version, it won't be out for at least a month after the ebook, because of shipping proof copies, etc.  

Any Questions?

I would usually put a post like this up at Outside the Box, but since I do have followers at The Writing Spectacle who don't follow here, I'm putting it there yesterday and here today.   If you've already read it / commented on it there, you can ignore this.  Unless you have further ideas, then have at it.

You see, I'm working on the final book in the Once Upon a Djinn series.  And I want to wrap everything up, if I can.  (Not that I'll never write another genie book, but I want all the questions from books 1-3 answered in #4 so readers can leave feeling satisfied.)  To that end, I was wondering what burning questions readers would like to see answered in this final book.

Now, yes, the book is already written.  All the way through.  And I finished the first edit pass last night.  But I might've missed something.  I don't think I did, but there's always the chance I'm wrong.  This is your chance to tell me what you're dying to know.

Yep, there's always still a chance I won't have wrapped something up to your satisfaction.  Them's the chances we take when we read a book, don't ya know.  But I'm trying.

To help, here are a few things I know for certain I have addressed...

- Zeke's disappearance in book 3.
- the cliffhanger at the end of book 3.
- the mysterious glimpse Jo was given into the future in book 2.
- the ultimatum the other supernaturals gave Jo in book 3.
- what happens with Reggie?
- the disappearance of Hans

Anything else?  I'm sure whatever we don't catch now, JC will catch when she gets her hands on WHTF.  But I want to know what you're thinking.

If you have any non-genie related questions, you can ask them now, too, if you want to.  I'll answer what I can.

Acknowledgments

This morning, I got to thinkin'.  Does anyone read the Acknowledgements anymore?  Did they ever? 

I mean, I know sometimes other writers read that section, if they're looking for an agent or a cover artist or an editor.  I know people close to the author read them to see if they're mentioned.  Sometimes, I'll read the ones in my friend's books to see who they thanked.  But, for the most part, as a general reader, I don't read them.

And I do it even less than I used to because with ebooks, the book opens up at the first line of the book (Chapter One or Prologue or whatever), and it takes actual forethought to scroll back and read them.  I usually just dive right in.  I'm more likely to read them in hardcopy.  They're right there as I turn pages to get to the story, so why not glance at them?  Right?

If you pick up a copy of Up Wish Creek and read the Acknowledgements, you might notice something.  Well, you might notice if you've already read In Deep Wish's Acknowledgements.  They're almost identical.  I read the previous Acknowledgements and all of it was still true, so I left it.  It's not that I'm not grateful to the people who help me, but since I'm a hermit, there aren't that many people to thank individually. 

I've started putting a Special Note right after the Acknowledgements, pointing people to other books in the series, but that's something a reader would have to scroll back for, too.  :shrug:

So, your turn to chime in.  Do you read the Acknowledgements?  Do you read the other front matter of a book?  What about the back matter - About the Author, or Other Books By?