Quote:
Originally Posted by simonroyle
And surprisingly, to me anyway, that puts you in with something like 97% of the reading population of the world. Not sure of the exact number, but the simple fact is that most people buy books exactly like you do.
That's how bookstores "used" to work.
One thing I think we'll see before too long. Audible book trailers as an embedded file with the book. Then you won't even have to read the blurb.
An appealing cover
An appealing voice
"Hi Sweatpea, I see you you're attracted to me. Well let me tell you a little bit about myself ... firstly, I'm a bit of a square, I mean, you know, I'm a book - we are squarish. Hey, Sweatpea come back, where you going?"
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Well yes, that's how I used to work also, mostly, because:
- when I walked into a bookstore, I knew a pre-selection of books had been made for me and that I could expect a minimum quality from the books on offer
- inside the bookstore, I could read the blurb
and a few pages to get a feel for the book
With the advent of Amazon and its huge stocks of books you would not find in a bookstore, and even more with the advent of electronic publishing, the pre-selection is gone. Basically, what Amazon does is keep trying to sell me books that it thinks are "similar" to the books I have already bought. Which can be fine, up to a point, except that I don't want to read "similar" books over and over again.
So, for me, online reviews and recommendations have replaced the role of the bookstore people who made the selection for me. Not exactly replaced though, because I have to make the selection myself now. I have access to a great many more books, but I have to work more to extract the ones I want from the mass. I think, on the whole, I have gained more than I lost, but it's a completely new way of looking for and selecting books to read. It took me several years to work this out. Maybe I'm slow
