Quote:
Originally Posted by Xanthe
My red flags:
Front Cover: - A close-up of a naked male chest
- When all the book titles in a series start off with the same word
- Authors who only use a single name on the book cover
- Images of alien beings with cat-like heads
Back Cover Blurb: - When blurb consists of three sentences and nine author recommendations.
- When the blurb describes what you should feel when reading the book, instead of what the book is about.
- The male protagonist is listed as working with a beautiful and brilliant female (fill in obscure specialty) (fill in foreign nationality)scientist to solve whatever the danger is
- The blurb includes the words "hot", "sizzling", "tantalizing", "sexy"
- Authors who list the names of their pets in their bios
Other Red Flags: - The main character is a female age 16
- The story is set in an academy for children with special paranormal talents
- Main character is forced by circumstances to work with an ex-spouse or an ex-lover
- When the description of the main character matches the photograph of the author
- A young teenage boy, either orphaned or raised by relatives, who has to undertake a great quest
- Characters who immediately fall into lust before the 25th page of the book
- Law enforcement personnel/private investigators with a drinking/drug problem and/or a dead partner
- Any character named after a spice or sweet
- Any book with all characters having plain vanilla WASP first and last names
- Misspellings on the first few pages
- Family sagas involving a young woman/man coming over to the US from Ireland to work as a servant at the turn of the 19th century
- 50-something woman, newly divorced, with adult children
- Non-fiction books where the footnotes/citations are so numerous that they disrupt the reading experience
- Books with either tiny type or large margins
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These gave me a giggle.
I'm with you on "sexy" appearing in the blurb. In fact any description in the blurb that emphasises someone's appearance usually gets me to click away. If the most important thing an author wants to tell me about a main character is that they are: gorgeous, sexy, spunky, alluring, buff, "fit", muscle-bound, pretty, handsome, hubba hubba or anything comparable, it's quite likely the book is not for me.