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I "buy" mostly indie fiction. I refuse to pay the prices asked by traditional publishers for books that I have to liberate. Consequently, of the 1100+ ebooks I have bought, more than 1000 are indies.
Yes, a lot of indie books are junk -- poorly written, even more poorly edited and proofread (I just commented in response to one author's promotion of his new book that on page 2 of the sample, within a single sentence a child is born a boy and dies a girl, the transformation and death occurring within a few days of birth) -- but there are a lot of 4- and 5-star indie books available.
(When I say 4-and 5-star, I mean that is how I would rate them, not necessarily how others have rated them or will rate them.)
My method of finding these books is of necessity cumbersome and which is why the first book I read written by an unknown author I have to obtain for free. Basically, I download the free ebooks whose descriptions seem interesting or that are recommended here on MR. They get added to my TBR pile. When I start a book, I can tell within a few pages, certainly no more than 20 pages, whether it is a book worth reading. I would say that for every 5 or 6 books I start, only 1 is worth reading -- the others get deleted.
Books are deleted for various reasons. I have little tolerance for misuse of homonyms in the absence of an otherwise exceedingly well-crafted story. With a well-crafted story, I'll try to tolerate the use of where for were, seen for scene, and the like, but even then i have limits. If a story is poorly crafted, it quickly gets the axe, as do stories where the dialogue is so amateurish I wonder if the author thinks his/her readers have nothing more than a third grade education.
Yet with all this, there are some fantastic finds and when I find an author who has it altogether, I will immediately return to the Internet and buy their other books (in one instance, I read one free ebook and bought the author's 27 other ebooks). I've mentioned some of these authors before, but I'll mention them again: Richard Tuttle, Vicki Tyley, Tracy Falbe, L.J. Sellers, Shayne Parkinson, Michael Hicks, to name a few that I have found and whose subsequent books I have purchased. Finding these authors makes the cumbersome process worthwhile.
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