Arctic Light

Hey, reader-type people, I have a question for you! In thinking about how to promote my books, I've been thinking about where I actually get book information from: personal blogs, author's twitter, ads, Amazon recommendations, "just saw the book on a shelf", etc. Last night I sat down and made an actual list for all the recent books I've read, but I'm just one person. More data is better!

So, if you think back to the last book or two that you read, or that you bought (either one), and tell me where you found out about that book, that would be very useful! Actually, the more of your recent books you can remember that information for, the more helpful it'd be -- but I know that's difficult, because I can't even remember what I was reading more than a few books ago. And, if it's a book you picked up because you always read that series/author (which came up for me a number of times), can you remember why you started reading them in the first place?

FWIW, my recent "why did I pick up this book?" reading list looks like this:

- I know the author
- book got a glowing recommendation on a non-review (i.e. general interest) blog I read, and sounded interesting
- downloaded this one as a free Kindle promotion, after hearing people on my flist talk about the TV series based on it
- I know the author, again (different author)
- latest book in a series I've been reading for awhile (can't remember when or why I started reading it; all I remember now is that I got the early books from the library)
- local author I started following on Twitter because I'm trying to follow more local authors; he talked about his newest book a bunch on his Twitter & eventually I got interested enough to pick it up
- latest in a series I'm following; started reading because a friend recommended

And that's the point where I started forgetting what I'd actually been reading recently, though I may wander around the house a little later staring at my bookshelves.

There is exactly ONE time I can think of in my whole reading history that I bought a book directly based on an ad -- it was Frances Hardinge's first book, and the ad was just too impossibly intriguing for me not to want to read it. ("Imagine a world where all books are banned!") Usually it seems like the vast majority of my book reading has a lot to do with word of mouth -- people I know lending me books or recommending books to me, people on my various social media talking about books, people I know who write books talking about their books (and one thing making this list really impressed upon me is that the more someone talks about their stuff, the more likely I am to buy it ... which is directly counter-intuitive to me because I actively try not to spam people with this stuff, but, er, at least for me, it seems like I not only don't mind at all when people talk about their various projects -- it's interesting! -- but the more they talk about it, the more likely I am to be eventually intrigued enough to buy it). There's also a fair amount of "looking at the nearby books on the shelf" that goes on when I'm in a bookstore or library; I distinctly remember that I started reading the Vorkosigan books because I'd been spending a lot of time in the book section of the campus bookstore sneakily reading sections of books because I was too poor to buy them, and after I'd snuck in on about four different occasions to read the next couple chapters of "Mirror Dance", I finally had to admit that I really needed to buy that book.

So what about you? Do you remember specifically where you heard about the last couple of books you read or bought, and what made you interested enough to read it?