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Originally Posted by lumpynose
I agree but unfortunately for me what makes a book enjoyable has become very narrow; the author has to care about the main character and make me care about them. Or make them interesting and have humor. I'd say that at most about 10% of the books I get from the library fit this criteria; looking at how many stars it has on Amazon or Goodreads hasn't helped or only helps minimally.
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Personally I don't like reviews or online recommendations, where I don't know the reader.
Luckily I have so much backlog (mostly physical books), that I rarely find myself looking for new authors. The ones I do come across, are purely by accident or recommended by friend or family (and BookBub ... see later).
And it seems I was pretty good at picking books, certainly physical ones (at least so far). I have several books in series by authors I have or had never read ... that's confidence for you.
With new authors, point of contact would have been title and cover, then the price (or vice-a-versa), then if okay the blurb. If I thought the blurb was okay, then I would open the book to some middle portion at random, and read for a bit. If I liked the style at that point, then I would buy.
Or the price may have been why I looked at all ... most new authors for me, coming from sales tables.
At this point, most of my collection probably qualifies as new authors, even though I bought the book a good while ago, even decades ... that's how far behind I am.
And strictly speaking, I do obtain lots of new authors now, mostly on a daily basis, but generally only freebies from a BookBub daily email.
I actually read one of those for the first time the other day ... one out of about two thousand I have obtained so far ... my wife has read a few though ... cozy mysteries.
Amazon must hate me ... ha ha ha ... all those freebies, and I have only read one so far ... it did lead to two sales for the same author though.
Aside from that, I would probably hate to be starting out as a reader now ... so much to choose from ... and where do you start? Harry Potter most likely ... then where to from there? Decisions decisions ... based on what? Probably movies.