Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
If you went to a bookstore, would you buy a book based on the back cover blurb, and not crack it open and read some of it? Probably not.
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I've never cracked a book open in a bookshop and read some of it. I've always done all my book purchases (when not based on recommendations from friends or prior reading of an author/series) based on "gut feeling", which amounts to looking at the title, looking at the cover, and looking at the back cover blurb.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but for some reason, I can't do sampling. I either read a book or I don't.
I've got 50+ samples downloaded since getting the Kindle, and I haven't read any of them. I just... can't. There's a psychological block in there somewhere; when I start reading a book, I start reading the book. I can't just read a bit here or there and then decide I don't want the book at all.
I have learned my lesson, after some really terrible self-published books, to the extent that I now take a look inside self-published books before buying (for paid books) - not to
read any of it, because I still cannot, but to skim it and check for the most obvious spelling or punctuation problems. With trad-pubbed books, I don't do that - either the blurb interests me or not; if it interests me sufficiently, I trust the book to not have any horrible issues with spelling, grammar or punctuation.
People are obviously different - I know people who always read the last page first, for example, and base their buying decision on that. I can't do that. I've tried, I actually physically
cannot open that last page (unless I've read the book before), because my hands refuse to do that.