Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Have you tried looking a bit? 
But seriously, some people in this thread make it seem as if great books just magically appeared in front of their eyeballs with the old system. When the truth is that they've always had an external "system" to help them choose books--whether it was best seller lists, displays at their favorite bookstore/library, recommendations from friends/bookclubs, reviews from newspapers/magazines (or just plain online research). A system they spent a lot of time and energy developing. A complex system that has become almost transparent and effortless to them.
So I GET that people might be loathe to alter or step away from that system (or develop a new one). I really do. But that in no way means that it's impossible to do so (with very successful, repeatable results). Or that such a new system could become just as effortless/transparent as the old one in time.
There's a difference between "I don't want to" and "it can't be done (and no one should want to)."
"It's all rubbish" is negated with the first indie book you find that isn't. |
I don't expect everybody to follow suit but my first reaction to an intriguing book on Amazon is to click on the author's name to see their full catalog. Then I check to see how deep the catalog is, how are the other titles reviewed, and the publication dates of the earlier works. Odds are an author with a ten year history is probably at least half descent. Or Tom Clancy.
Failing that, much of that info can be found through Google, Bing, or Wikipedia.
Finding good reads is not hard at all.
One trick I figured out way back when I was educating myself about SF is to take the author names out of a popular/well reviewed anthology and track down their works. For the teenager I used to be that meant the campus library card file and writing the publishers for copies of their consumer newsletter/catalog. Today that means going online--a lot easier.
Brain surgery it ain't...