Recently, I had the privilege of speaking with someone who is an authentic reader. What I mean by that is, she reads both paper and electronic-she reads in all sorts of genres(paranormal and fantasy being her favs, I think) and she reads A LOT.

When I sat down with her recently to pick her brain about what readers are looking at when they buy books these days, I think you will be interested to hear what she said. I am listing the sorts of questions I asked and what her answers were sort of paraphrased. I wasn’t trying to interview her, so this is what it SORT of went like:

Do you like stories that start out with action, or do you like world-building that sets the stage before the action gets going?
If there is more than a line or two of scene setting, or description, I skip over it.

When you buy a book, what do you look at to determine whether you are going to buy it or not?
Reviews. Then blurbs. Sometimes blurbs then reviews, but those two things have to really grab me. And I read ALL the reviews, good and bad. It’s getting really easy to tell the ones that are written by friends of the author versus real readers who actually have an opinion on the book.

Do you read indie books from self pubbed authors? Yes. I have found some really good books by checking out that feature on the Amazon page that says “people who bought this book also bought these”- that has led me to a lot of great books.

What attracts you the most when it comes to indie books?
Good reviews, a blurb that sounds like something I haven’t read before, and price. Price is the big gun. I won’t buy very many books that are priced more than .99 for an indie author. In fact – I look for free books from authors I do not know. If I get their first book free and it is good, then I will pay for the next one, but I usually will not pay more than about 2-3 dollars. Most of them have three to five books waiting on me and if I have to pay 2.00 for each of them, well, that is a lot of money and my budget is tight.

That was about all the info we shared, but it was golden to me. She also told me about Jeanine Frost and her Cat and Bones series. I am off to check it all out today. here is the link to Ms. Frost’s reading order list.