Quote:
Originally Posted by Manabi
If you're doing that solely based on the synopsis on Amazon's site, and not the sample of the book, that's highly unfair to the author. Unless the book is self-published, the author does not write the synopsis. It's entirely out of their hands and is done by the publisher. Here that means Amazon wrote the synopsis, quite possibly it was done by Jack Butler, their editor who provided additional comments on the book, which are also on the store page. Publishers like to make comparisons to other successful books because it helps sales.
I went with One Word Kill myself, because I like science fiction and it sounds somewhat interesting to me.
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That's fair, but with six book choices, I need some criteria to narrow down my choices and I try to not use genre for the first cut.
I apologize if my original post sounded dismissive; it wasn't meant to be, but I find this trend unhelpful and frustrating. As I am *not* a regular science fiction reader, the comparison and the light synopsis following was unpersuasive. I was left thinking it was meant for fans of the referenced works and not for casual readers who want to experience something new.
What little I know of those two works, combined with the synopsis, had me moving on, but with so little to go on, the book might not be like what I'm thinking at all.
Thank you for reminding me of the samples; I haven't looked at them in a while since they are always the beginning of the book (are they still that way?) and I prefer my samples from somewhere in the middle, once the story is up and running, to get a better feel for what it's all about. Still, they are a resource that I should take advantage of, when I'm torn between a couple of titles whose descriptions are less helpful than I'd like.