# Two questions



## Rosemary Fryth (Jan 20, 2012)

So far I've had decent sales on my heroic epic fantasy trilogy eBook, however it puzzles me as to how people have found or chosen my book to read in the first place. I'm especially puzzled given that my covers are very much a home-made job (an artist mate is in the process of creating new covers for me).

Being an independent author means that I don't have the vast resources of a publicity department behind me, and must do all the promoting and marketing myself. The best promotions seem to come from Amazon itself, with my books showing up on the 'What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?' list. 

Q. So I ask you, a brand new author presents a book to you to read. What will inspire you to choose a new author over established authors with a host of reliable titles behind them?

Amazon has a seven day returns policy on eBooks which means that some who want to abuse the system, could buy, download and read a book, and then return it getting their money back (I believe there are long term consequences from Amazon for repeatedly doing this). Personally I don't understand the concept of returning eBooks. In most cases Amazon provides you with 10% of the book to read free, and I would have thought that you would have a fair idea of what to expect in the quality of writing/characterisation/readability etc from the first 10% of the book.

Q. If any of you have returned eBooks, why did you do so?


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## AnyaKimlin (Jan 20, 2012)

I've never returned an ebook, but I am happy to read a new author, to be honest I never really give much thought to who the author is when I am choosing a book.  There are only a few authors I read repeatedly.


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## Anne Lyle (Jan 20, 2012)

I pay little attention to whether an author is a debutante or a veteran - all that matters to me is that the premise of the story appeals and the quality of the writing is up to scratch (by _my_ standards - there are plenty of bestsellers whose quality makes me wince!).

However I mostly discover authors via word-of-mouth, on places like this, rather than random chance - perhaps because I avoid buying from Amazon unless I have no other choice. So I'm not really in your target demographic - sorry!


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## Vertigo (Jan 21, 2012)

1. Mainly word of mouth. Recommendations on the chrons have introduced me to most of my recent new authors, some just starting out, but actually I'm not too worried if they are new so long as they are recommended! I have also tried new authors from the author recommendations on Fantastic Fiction. I first got into John Scalzi by downloading a free ebook from his website.

2. I have bought a *lot* of ebooks and have never returned one. I would never take a paper book back into the shop because "I didn't like it" and would probably be laughed right out of the shop if I did. I figure if I make the decision to buy and then don't like it then it's my fault for not researching it well enough eg. samples (actually I rarely read them) so it's my fault anyway


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## dwndrgn (Jan 21, 2012)

Have never returned an ebook and only one paper book (returned it the next day when I realized I already owned it - yes, oblivious IS my middle name, how did you guess?).

I get so many different recs from so many different places, I couldn't give you a trend.  However, my current favorite place is on Goodreads.  Since I know my friends' reading habits - what they like and not via Goodreads, when they put up a new book they are interested in, I might just check it out.  In those cases, the covers don't make a difference.

However, when I check out the 'people also bought' lines under books I'm interested in, the covers ARE important in drawing my eye to a book.  The the title.  Then the heft of stars (though I also often ignore those and just head directly to the reviews themselves) and then if I'm interested, I'll check out the reviews.

Does that help?


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## Jennifer Cthulus (May 6, 2012)

Vertigo said:


> I would never take a paper book back into the shop because "I didn't like it" and would probably be laughed right out of the shop if I did.



I actually tried that (on a lark) with a record store and a CD years ago.  Meredith Brooks might have had a catchy tune on the radio, but her album was so bad that I felt like I should at least attempt to get my money back.  The record store unsurprisingly declined to provide a refund, but did offer to buy the disc from me as used.

Prior to reading this thread, I genuinely had no idea that Amazon offered such a refund, and I'm going to go against the current here and say that I think that it's actually not a bad idea.  I paid for an ebook several years ago that was so incredibly bad (worse than even the most typo-ridden self-published books that I've read hard copies of) that it put me off of buying ebooks altogether unless they were also available in a physical format.  So this refund possibility helps to address that sort of hesitation.


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