This past weekend, I read Emily Tesh’s Some Desperate Glory. Not quite in one sitting—sleep was required, at one point—but in under 24 hours. I’d given myself permission to just read, to not do any of the things that were nagging at me, and I took that permission and ran with it.
The book is fantastic; you shouldn’t, by now, need me to tell you that. But a detail in the way it’s presented got me thinking about what a reader does or doesn’t want to know when they pick up a book. This is not so much a matter of what counts as a spoiler—an eternal debate in which I do not wish to embroil myself!—but what information is too little, what is too much, and what is just enough.
The description on the cover of Some Desperate Glory tells you something very key, very terrible, about what the story holds for its protagonist, Kyr. She is a teenage girl who’s been raised on a human separatist space station, every minute of her days regulated; she’s brainwashed and controlled and she doesn’t know any of this, because she believes. She wants to get assigned to a combat wing of the station, to make use of all the skills she’s been taught in the way she believes is most valuable. Instead, she gets assigned to Nursery, which is where women birth and raise the next generation.
This could, in a different world, be presented as a horrible reveal, a fate you don’t know is awaiting Kyr. But it’s right there on the back of the book, and that changes the way the book asks to be read. Nursery isn’t a shocking fate; it’s an inevitable one, in the sense that you know it’s coming, and therefore you dread it, constantly, until it happens. You’re meant to feel that dread, to think about where it comes from, and what this world is doing to its women, and how all of this has shaped Kyr into the hot mess of a person that she is. (I love her. But she’s also a pain in the ass tyrant with a lot to learn.)
Two days after I read Some Desperate Glory, I read Tajja Isen’s “The Case for Never Reading the Book Jacket” at The Walrus. “These days,” she writes, “I refuse to read the jacket copy in full unless I absolutely have to. Jacket copy offers neither an effective barometer for predicting what I love nor reliable protection from buying things I regret. It is reductive, misleading, and—I have decided—none of my business.”
The constant problem with jacket copy, if there is one, is that it can’t be for everyone—it can’t be for a reader who only wants to know the vibes; a reader who wants to know all the bad things and if there’s going to be a relatively happy ending; a salesperson trying to get a bookstore to stock the book; a casual reader wondering if this is their next favorite writer; a superfan who wants to know what to expect from a beloved author’s new book; and every other reader or potential reader under the sun. There are more specific problems—trends, clichés, overblown superlatives a publisher might put on every single new release—but the main one, the one there’s no getting away from, is that every reader wants something different.
What do you want to know, when you pick up a book? What makes you pick up that book in the first place? Something gets you before you even get to the words on the back, right? The cover, the author, the title, the section it’s in in the bookstore, the review you heard on NPR, the friend sending you frantic texts about how much they loved it? Would you pick up a book just because a friend loved it, even if it were a blank rectangle with no cover text, no title, no nothing—just the words inside? Do you want to know the microgenre it belongs to, the tropes it deploys, the character types, the kind of pairings?
Buy the Book
Bookshops and Bonedust
There’s no right answer, obviously. Even Isen eventually comes around to the fact that jacket copy is, for the most part, necessary: “To do away with jacket copy would be to exclude the segment of the reading population that encounters books that way, readers for whom knowing what a book is about helps them decide whether to give or withhold their attention.”
And this is what I wonder about: What else helps us decide whether we want to spend hours with a specific book? What happens when that jacket copy says one thing and the experience of the book is something else entirely? Which books have gone unrecognized because the copy didn’t speak to the people it needed to speak to? How is it that sometimes, against the odds of all the books published in a given year, a book still finds its way to the hands of thousands of just the right readers?
I don’t even know if I can answer these questions for myself: What do I want to know before I read a book? I want to know what in that book is going to speak to me. I want to know if it has SFF elements; I want to know if there are fairy tales in its genes; I want to know if there are women with swords, if aging isn’t viewed as a curse, if the sentences are going to draw me in or kick me out again. I want to know when “dark academia” is actually going to mean “school is a very real part of this story” and I want to know when I’m going to fall in love with every single member of an ensemble cast. I want to know if the goddamn dog is going to die, so I can not read that book. I want to know what happens at first, but not what happens in the end. I want to know if there is something in a book I’m going to absolutely love and I want to hope that there is something in a book that is absolutely going to knock me over and make me stare into space for ten minutes.
Cover copy can only do so much.
So maybe, like Isen suggests, sometimes you just skip it. Or maybe your reading time is so limited that you read every single thing you can about a book before you even look at the first words; maybe you want to know exactly what you’re getting into. Spoil everything, and then watch how the pieces all line up. Maybe it’s different for every book. Do you think about this? Do you know what you want to know?
Molly Templeton lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods. Sometimes she talks about books on Twitter.
Oof, I feel this one. You hit the nail on the head. Often I will look at a book cover, title, or jacket copy and come to my own assumptions and then file it away for consideration or just forget about it entirely, until someone else brings some salient detail up that just strikes a chord with me for one reason or another.
ex:
Me: Oh, here’s another sci-fi story about a farmer who discovers they’re the chosen one, I might read it.
Bookseller: Ooh! I read that one, the farmer is actually a time traveling con artist!
Me: Whaaaat?
Sometimes it’s the spoilers that make it interesting. I think is is why good booksellers and librarians are so important, they can get to know their patrons and present the book in its best light in a way that the jacket copy just can’t for everyone.
I want to know some key facts. Who the main character is, what’s the genre and therefore what narrative questions it will ask, how conventional I can expect the answers to be, what are the vibes. If the book is unconventional, I want to know what tropes it keeps and which it rejects. I need some idea of where the book is going to go so I know if now is the right time to read it.
I did not read the marketing copy for SDG and as narratively inevitable the assignment to Nursery was, it was still a shock.
I also don’t tend to check the copy for books by authors I read automatically. I probably know enough from social media chatter or the series or the cover to decide if I want to read it now or later.
I think a peek inside the book may be my biggest deciding factor. I remember buying Greer Gilman’s Moonwise (1991), almost in spite of its lush Tom Canty cover and the purple pseudo-romantic prose on the back cover. But the wonderfully weird prose styling (J. K. Rowling meets James Joyce) won me over.
I read the jacket cover–that’s essentially what the book descriptions are in Tor’s articles on books being published each month are, right?–but I also dip into the book to see how the author writes. If there’s a sense of humor, good; if the author seems awestruck at the awesomeness of the main character, whether badass or chosen one, no. It used to be that I would close the cover immediately on a book in present tense, but I have found it can be done well.
There was an old-book blog whose reviews were *consistently* indicative of whether I’d like the book (and by consistently I mean I cannot remember a time they failed even though I read literally dozens of the recommended books), whether or not the blog author liked the book (we have similar taste but not identical taste, so sometimes she’d throw out a “if you like [thing] you would probably like this book more than I did” and, conversely, she also noted elements she enjoyed but that I don’t (and I read a few of those books that she loved but that it didn’t sound like I’d love and… yeah, not my favorites).
I have yet to find another source as accurate, entertaining, and concise that matches my book preferences; I think part of it is the consistency, wherein you know that, say, if a dog dies, *this reviewer will tell you* including if the dog dies off-screen, and if a book hits a particular note (like “realistic difficulties presented with hope instead of exclusively despair” or “… no, there is no realism, it’s just fun”), it will also come through the review.
But there is no frame of reference, generally, for some adjectives on cover blurbs, since there are so many available contexts. Is this book “hopeful” compared to Star Trek, or compared to Mad Max? Is it feminist compared to Octavia Butler, or to Isaac Asimov?
That said, when the blurbs are *accurate* and also reference other books I’ve read, that can provide the frame of reference that’s so useful; sometimes the “cross between these four novels” is just a pileup of wildly-popular book titles as bait, rather than an accurate description, though, and that’s frustrating.
I do sometimes get intrigued by specific details, though, or characteristics (realistic [not fighting in a metal bikini] female leads over the age of 40 who are there to *do things* rather than to get fridged: yes, I will join that party unless otherwise contraindicated). But mostly, for me, covers are often not representative enough of the book to be anything but a fifth-string sub in the recommendation lineup; if I get all the way to looking at the book cover and I’m still significantly waffling, it *might* tip me over one way or another, but it’s rare that anything comes down to the book cover…
First, I don’t “pick up” new books, I borrow them from the Libby app (TBR ~150 and growing)
I rarely pick up a book without researching it unless it’s part of a series. I don’t do short stories, just novels and novellas. I look for genres. In my head I rank them SF + 2, F +1, Horror – 2, Romance – 1, YA – 1. I look for keywords like humor, snark, and banter.
What is most frustrating is when nobody mentions that this is the first in a series or a standalone novel. In Libby I have a tag for incomplete series.
I read jacket copy and apply the First Paragraphs Test. Are they interesting and well written, and preferably in the past tense (books written in the present are too hissy in my mind’s ear)? Do they pique my interest and curiosity? if not, why continue?
Grammatical errors in jacket copy are immediately disqualifying, as are inaccurate word choices, anachronisms and repeated grammatical errors in the text. And the characters need to be people (of whatever species) taken seriously by the author, not puppets manipulated to complete the plot or make a point.
Though many people enjoy black humor, I don’t, so I avoid it when possible. And I’m always grateful for reviews that warn me of cliffhangers, as I hate to worry about characters’ fates for extended periods.
First thing I look for is some indication that the book is part of a series or intended to be part of a series (i.e the book is currently the first of an intended series and the publisher/author/cover editor etc haven’t bothered to mention the fact). If the cover doesn’t say, I automatically put it back on the shelf.
Any blurb that mentions the chosen one helping some royalty save their city/kingdom from the apocalypse, gets ditched (especially if there is a hint of romance – not my thing). It sounds exactly the same as every other book on the shelf. Boring/generic covers usually don’t get noticed, they blend into the crowd. Books involving magically teenagers that can miraculously do anything and everything and know it all, also get put back on the shelf.
I usually borrow my fiction because there are simply too many badly written books and also too many that are simply not my thing. I buy non-fiction more often because I go back and re-read those for reference. Non-fiction blurbs also have the decency to tell you exactly what the book is about, and most have useful chapter headings so you can get a better idea if the contents is what the reader is looking for.
Gech, good question.
I do read cover blurbs most of the time. I hunt for quotes of people whose recommendations I trust, for one. For two, I hunt for what the book is about, but in a really general sense.
If you tell me the plot of the entire book, or, hell, more then is covered in the first chapter or 3, I will hate you afterwards and the likelihood of me buying another of your books goes down fast. Same with really forcing your opinion/way the book should be read/genre babble.
Other then that…I also sometimes pick up books for their titles, single words in titles, fancy covers, or pretty binding. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to it.
I am certainly not going to pick up a book on the basis of the front cover. There are things I need to know.
First, and this is key, and you never know, the odd publisher might be reading this, if it’s set in yet another dystopia, it will go straight back on the shelf. If I want to read about a worsening dystopian hell I will read the Guardian. I don’t want a steady diet of Monk and Robot, for all their good points, either, and I don’t want a rehash of old tropes, but I do want a new story, well told.
I know people who have more or less stopped reading science fiction because of the disturbing preponderance of dystopias, and I certainly have a mental list of authors I won’t go anywhere near again. I know the world is going to hell, but I would get a lot more out of stories set in worlds where people have solved these problems. I realise this is more difficult, because you have to be specific about the kind of world you want to live in rather than pointing out the flaws of this one.
A book like that, reviewed by someone I respect and whose preferences tend to coincide with mine, is likely to be read.
Failing that, some nice people being nice to each other is always welcome, even if they are in straightened circumstances (preferably not a surveillance nightmare in the middle of ecological collapse).
@5: Yes! There are reviewers I can trust to tell me enough that I can make a good decisions, reviewers whose … enthusiasms … I allow for, and reviewers who see so many things in books that I don’t see (or miss things that I see) often enough that I just pass over their reviews (or at least take them with a large grain of salt — and a slice of lime, and a shot of tequila). I’m glad they’re publicizing books I don’t like — it would be so boring if everybody liked the same thing, and sometimes they hit something I do like — but I tend to skim their articles. That’s talking about real reviewers; in the library, I’ll weigh flap copy (which I consider marketing rather than reviewing) against the book length when deciding whether to try an author I don’t know, and whether I know/{,dis}trust any of the endorsing authors on the back, and consider not just the story description but the setting (i.e., does it involve any of my several interests?). (I have to keep looking for new authors; current authors do retire or worse.)
@7: I distrust my perception of first pages, and have liked several books that started slowly; accordingly, I tend to skip tor.com first-chapter(s) articles. Whatever works….
@11
indeed, whatever works.
Note that I require first paragraphs to be “interesting and well written”, not speedy and/or action packed. A really skilled writer (take a bow, e.g. U.K. LeGuin) is welcome to take all the time they like.
I try not to read anything that could be a plot summary (partly this is due to my reviewer experience), and blurbs do nothing for me. But I like the illustrations, and I like the author bios.
John Clute is doing something very interesting — he calls it “Annals of Vandalism at the British Library”. (Fairly soon I believe it will be a book with a different title.) He is objecting to the BL practice of discarding all dust jackets, and he has compiled a set of over 100 books, from the past century or more, and he shows the dust jacket and jacket copy, and discusses its value — sometimes primarily the illustration, sometimes the particular way the author is presented to the reading public, sometimes the way the jacket copy summarizes a book, or what aspects of the book the copy emphasizes.
It’s all quite fascinating, and I do like to have the jackets, and to be able to consult them after the fact. Especially when you can see that a certain reviewer (as I caught the once famous Harriet Klausner having done at least once) didn’t red the book but reviewed it based on the dust jacket. (She had failed to realize that the names of the main characters had been changed at some point, and that the dust jacket was wrong.)
I want a general synopsis and some basic facts (setting and protagonists). I absolutely do not want clips from reviews or famous peoples’ opinions. If there is no summary and only opinions and reviews (which seems more and more common), then I will most likely not get it unless I have gotten the information I want from another source. But that will still add negative points to my opinion right off the bat. It just irritates me no end when there is no summary or blurb at all.
I like reading the jacket, but I also like doing more than that. I have something that my mom taught me and we call it the Two Page Test. So, generally I approach a book like this;
– Cover: This is my reader sin, but this tells me the vibes through art, if the publisher cares enough about it. (Incidentally, it’s why I’ve been reading more 80s / 90s fantasy, because some of them have these really beautifully ornate covers, like Mercedes Lackey.) But sometimes the cover has different vibes than the actual book so then…
– Jacket: Minor info about specifically the conflict and characters. I’m definitely a genre reader so that’s super helpful information to me to sort of figure out where the book might fall. But the most important thing for me to tell if I’m going to enjoy a book is whether or not the author’s style is going to gel with me (I’ll read anything if the author’s voice is good) so…
– Two Page Test: I read the first two pages of the book. If I feel like I want to read a third then probably the book is good enough to check out! Even if the first two pages has me kind of ambivalent, generally I feel that the beginnings of books are where authors struggle the most so the rest of the book may likely improve.
I’m not a spoilers person. I like being shocked and horrified by books (re: does the dog die / the Nursery fate you mentioned). The absolute peak of book reading is feeling like you got gut punched by the author because you fell in love so deeply with the weave of the world they wove, and the threads of characters they made. For me, anyway. I like books in the way that your parent might tell you a story before you go to sleep, or a camp counselor might tell you a story next to the campfire. I like feeling like the train tracks are being built as you go – like who knows what could happen next? I don’t !
When I’m deciding on a book, many times I am drawn to the title, then the cover, because these indicate what general genre the book is being marketed in. I have deep-read in specific genres that have changed over time [There was a wonderful mystery store that grouped their books by subgenera: cozy, police procedural, paranormal, etc etc]
After decades and decades of reading, I have (finally) sussed out the meta-code marketing-speak used on many book blurbs. “A lyrical retelling of [insert fairytale]” = twee; “…dismayed to find the handsome son of her family’s mortal enemy…” = romance; “…The social scene at [Wizard School/Work/Mountain] is the pits. Between the in-fighting and explosions, it’s hard to find a date, let alone a bride.” = humour, potentially witty [I will read further down the blurb/front flap for more info.]
The plot construct must be fresh, the characters interesting, the potential relationships among the characters non-stereotypical. I also look to goodreads: overall rating of 3.7 or higher, and read the 3-star reviews to see *what* they did/n’t like and see if those “flaws” align with my tastes.
Does the dog die?
I very rarely read the jackets. I buy by author, and find new authors by reviews, normally in Locus, but also reviews by Liz Hand in other places when I can find them. I also trust reviews by Adam Roberts & M. John Harrison, but don’t often run into them. The last book I bought based on the cover was Perdidio Street Station.
I hate spoilery jacket covers.
Adjacent tangent. I watched Giant (James Dean’s last movie) because I wanted context for the oil drill scene. I wish somebody would have stopped me. It’s a 3+ hour movie and that oil scene is the LAST scene- the movie is mid. Plot is plodding. Script is stilted. Heavenly acting by all. I hadn’t realized I already knew the ending and didn’t need the context as much as I thought I needed. That’s why I hate spoilery jacket covers- if I already know the ending why do I need to bother with committing my time to a possibly meh experience. No thank you
I admit that covers can be an influence in my book choices, but as I head into my seventh decade I find myself getting suggestions less from the actual cover/blurbs and more from recommendations from friends, and reviews by members of Library Thing. I was introduced to Hammond Innes, Robin Hobb, and Lois McMaster Bujold by other readers at that site. I became hooked on Laurie R. King’s Holmes/Russell series through the suggestion of a friend though mystery is not a genre I generally care for.
@19 I hate spoilers of any type.
One of the things I came to learn with time is that most people, writers, editorials etc don’t know how to write about pop culture without going into the two extremes of either being spoiler-ish or just giving a Netflix-like blurb “this action movie from 1992 was directed by X”. Ok this is a rant, but I cannot stand the lack of ability to, yes, talk about even established pop culture without jumping into spoilers. What is Psycho about? About a woman who carries a lot of money, guilt and trouble and finds more than she was asking for (for example).
I end up reading books just blindly following recommendations without not even knowing what they are about, which is a complete gamble and usually teaches me that they all end up sticking to tropes, but it makes it fun for the first 50 or 100 pages when you slowly see what genre and tropes they belong to. Ended up doing the same for films. Hell, I even do the same for games and music.
I’ve come across and read many books whose jacket copy was vastly different from the text between the covers. Sometimes, that’s because the blurb and synopsis were ordered by the publisher before the book was complete. No matter the reason, I hate when it happens. I’ve even read a few whose covers had nothing to do with the story. On one, the dog on the cover was the completely wrong breed from the dog in the tale. (That pissed me off, let me tell you!) But I need jacket copy. I want to know the vibes, the tropes, and the gist of the story. I read pretty wide across genres, and I’m getting pretty tired of Elven/Fae/Human romantasy already. It’s been around for years, the buzzword is only starting to catch on now. It’s time we do something different with our fiction, AND our jacket copy!
I used to be drawn in to new authors by covers – does it have a horse? Does it have a well-drawn horse? Or dogs? Nowadays, I’m happy to find a cover which doesn’t look like clip art from a 1950s ad agency. Quotes from The New York Times, etc. don’t tell me anything. While I don’t need to know if the dog dies or if there is more than bodice-ripping, since I’m a s-p writer, I appreciate something telling me and try to do my readers the same courtesy. Do I get enough hints I might like the main character/s? If there is romance, is there enough story of things other than romance to keep me from pulling my hair out? Is there snark and dry humor. Do the sex scenes actually have sex in them? Can I read around the terrible parts (aka Thomas Covenant moaning on and on) to see a beautiful world and people and creatures in it worth saving? Using the aforementioned TC as an example for us older readers – is there a warning before I dive in? If the main character starts off as a whiney, hot mess, does he or she get better over time? I’ve found some great reviews through Tor. I’ve also found that things like ‘lesbian necromancers explore an ancient spaceship/citadel’ means very different things to different people.
When I’m at the bookstore or on the seller’s website, I have to read the description (and maybe as many reviews as possible if that’s an option). Something in my psyche won’t let me put money towards the book until I’ve reasonably determined that it’ll be either a good fit for me or a good fit for my bookshelf (but that’s a whole other conversation). But once the book is somehow in my possession, I don’t let myself re-read the description before opening the book; I force myself to trust where my mind and heart were when I bought it.
This is great for me because I can get an idea based on the cover and what I remember from when I obtained the book (which could be from forever ago), but otherwise, I’m giving myself over to ignorance. I get to decide what the book is about as I read it rather than let that experience be dictated for me by the publisher’s blurb. A book I would have otherwise thought was an interdimensional romp? It’s still that, but I’m also able to pick up on some gothic vibes that intrigue me and make the story feel richer. And completely misremembering what a book is supposed to be about? That’s a recipe for fun too.
Like one of the other commenters I read a lot of books from my library’s Libby app so I often don’t see the jacket. I am usually searching for a specific title or author or keyword. If I am browsing at the library I do find endorsements from similar authors a good indication of the general vibe of the book. As for spoilers, the only one I want to know is if there is domestic violence or abuse of children I do not want to read it. I do read horror so I don’t know why I am so upset by this one topic but the older I get the less I can handle reading any domestic violence or child abuse even if the abuser is drawn and quartered at the end.
On the other hand a monster tearing people including kids limb from limb is not at all something I mind. And I do enjoy tragic endings. Make me care about characters and then rip my heart out giving them a sad ending …. That actually is a very cathartic book ending for me.
Author, cover, title, author blurbs, genre (because I’m generally a mood-based reader), then maybe the first few lines of jacket copy. Author and cover are my top two. Jacket copy is the last consideration for me. I have a list of automatic buy authors, and I love to know what my favorite authors are reading to discover new authors. For new authors, I like to read their websites or socials or essays/articles to get an idea of who they are as people, which gives me an idea what sorts of stories they’d tell in their fiction, before I buy or borrow their book. But I’ll always give more weight to a recommendation by one of my favorite authors than a review or marketing copy.
Maybe I’m an oddball, but I LOVE book covers, especially the covers from back when artists were paid to paint them. I miss those. I’ve bought dozens and dozens of books only because I loved the cover and title. (Did I always love the story beneath those covers? Nope, and I’m okay with that.) Though, I can’t stand when the cover does not accurately depict a character as described by the author. Dark-skinned becomes light-skinned. Shapely becomes bean pole. Androgynous becomes distinctly masc or fem. Orange cat is black. Dog is a different breed. A cityscape when it’s set in a rural area.
Every once in a while I’ll come across a contemporary book cover that evokes those same feelings for me, but it’s rare. I’m not much of a romance reader, but have you seen what those covers have devolved into? Caricatures really. It’s sad, at least for a cover lover like myself. I hope publishers devote more time/money to hand drawn/painted (by human artists!) book covers in the future.
The OP is why I love the fic tagging at the Archive of Our Own.
In print: I flip to the end, because I already know that happy endings are fictional, okay, that’s why I read fiction. Give me a bittersweet ending if not a sweet one. If everybody is miserable or the monster wins or whatever, I put it back on the shelf. It’s OK if I know the end of the story before it starts, if it’s told well enough that I am eager to know what happens in between.
I often look up a book in print to see whether somebody has spoilered it for child death, rape, other forms of torture, despair-entrapment-body horror themes, or gore, which I won’t read.
Ohhh, this is a really good question. I’m kind of anti-book jacket/back of book myself (even though I have a hard time resist reading them) because I STILL have a grudge that Sharon Shinn’s ‘Archangel’ back of the book copy CLEARLY spells out what I am reasonably sure the author intended to be a big twist in the worldbuilding. In fact, I’m fairly sure the twist isn’t even made explicit in that book.
Even one of the Sevenwaters books I read recently (Heir of Sevenwaters) kind of calls out a big plot element in the summary and while it’s not exactly a twist in that it is what sets off a lot of the plot, I still feel it would have been more fun to have been shocked by the occurrence as it does happen several chapters in.
So, I really don’t want to know plot elements – I love being surprised along with the characters. Sometimes there is something to be said for knowing a looming thing is hanging over them, but I figure if the author wanted that, they would make it a framing device or a flashback or something like that.
As for what I want to know, I don’t know…a vibe, I guess? A general knowledge of the tone and genre and themes, and if I will find it affirming? What premise is it exploring or questioning? I do find covers tend to draw me in, for better or worse.
But I guess, no, I don’t want to know if the dog dies, I want to be devastated and shocked when it happens.
On the other hand, depending on my mood, I may seek out particular authors/similar authors where I know their books have a general ‘shape’ and what will probably be a happy ending. So I guess in that case, I would want to know that.
There have been a few books that threw me for a loop in terms of graphic violence or rape, and I guess I wish I would have known I was in for THAT kind of book, but at the same time…I hate spoilers. And I can always decide I just don’t want to continue. There are very few books where I feel I truly wasted my time and wish I hadn’t.
Really for me the best thing to do is read the first few pages and see if I sink into the world and story or click with the characters.
First: title, which vibe or intriguing idea it might present
Second: author, is it an author i like, giving a plus, or a new author
Third: jacket cover summary: is it in the micro genres i like, with hopefully a new approach, then it warrants next step:
Four: reviews, mostly from Goodreads, i try to find the extremes, they point mostly the best and worst aspects; if the good aspects attract me and the bad parts do not bother me, i am game
Shortcut: when i am outvoted during my book club pitch sessions, i try the chosen book; sometimes i am pleasantly surprised, sometimes my gut feeling was correct, but overall my scope has widened by unknown authors.
These days I never spend time in bookstores, and my contact with new physical books is limited to what I discover in Little Free Libraries. However, I subscribe to a couple of newsletters featuring ebook deals, and have discovered my least favorite type of “jacket copy”: the one that tells you absolutely nothing about the book itself, but only what reviewers have said about it or what its themes are. I have never once bought or picked up a book based on what its themes are. I want to know what the story is — not all the details, obviously, but, in broad strokes, what it’s about. That’s what I need to know before I invest my money and/or time, and it seems like that’s what book blurbs are increasingly ignoring in favor of telling me that this book is like some other book I haven’t read either, or that it’s “an exploration of what it means to be human”.