Would you BUY or PASS? #FridayFiveChallenge #Urban – Wildside

Welcome to my Friday Five Challenge

Get yourself a cuppa and give yourself 5 minutes.

In today’s online shopping age, readers often base their buying decisions from small postage stamp size book covers (Thumb-nails), a quick glance at the book description and the review. How much time do they really spend making that buying decision?

AUTHORS – You often only have seconds to get a reader to buy your book, is your book cover and book bio up to it?

My Friday Five Challenge is this….. IN ONLY FIVE MINUTES….

1) Go to any online book supplier,

2) Randomly choose a category,

3) Speed through the book covers, choose one which has instantly appealed to your eye,

4) Read the book Bio/ Description for this book,

5) If there are reviews, check out a couple,

6) Make an instant decision, would you BUY or PASS?

(then write a little analysis about your decision)

Here we go…this week I chose a random word first “wildside” then a category from the options offered for this word, I chose URBAN..

I found The Wolves of Craywood by V.J Banis

Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

What a stunning book cover

Book description

Dark tragedy strikes the three Cray brothers: two girls have been brutally torn apart by vicious beasts, and the countryside around Cray Manor blazes with the legends of the werewolf. No one believes that a man could have caused such horror.

Gaye reluctantly answers her sister Susan’s call for help, not wanting to see the man she’d once intended to marry. When she learns that Susan blames Walter Cray for the killings at Craywood, it seems as if the world is collapsing into insanity. Nightmare follows nightmare, and soon Gaye herself is marked for death!

Can anyone stop the Wolves of Craywood?

Kindle Price; £2.23

No. Pages 296

NO Reviews.

I’ve time to take a “look inside”.

Would I BUY or PASS? ……..PASS

Analysis

So I was completely hooked by the wolves on the front cover – I watch wildlife programmes and I like wolves on the screen. But I needed to remember this was in the URBAN section, and the book description said “Werewolves”. Not a problem, I read paranormal, this sounds quite edgy, not too much in the book bio to go on.

The price is just about reasonable, under £2 would make it more appealing and less of a “risk” buy.

Then I read the rest of the info in the book description space, which told us about the author.

“V. J. BANIS is the author of 150 books, including classic gothic romances and major historical novels, many of them being reprinted or published by the Borgo Press imprint of Wildside Press. His most recent work is Longhorns (Carroll & Graf). He currently lives and works in the Blue Ridge region of West Virginia.”

Wow! 150 books, I got quite excited, was this a gem find? I had plenty of time this week as I’d quickly selected this book, so I checked out the list of books by this author on Amazon, and book after book after book had NO reviews. SERIOUSLY? Who is buying these books? Or where is he selling them? He had the odd review, but 150 books and no reviews on a major selling platform.

So for my last two minutes, I took “A look inside” I rarely do this, the opening scene wasn’t too bad, then we went on to dialogue and there were lots of He said/ she said, he asked/ she asked. Good authors have moved away from this, good editing will remove it too, for me that was the point at which my decision point came and I chose to PASS.

A shame, I was really taken by the cover, the rest slowly let me down. Authors need the backing of reviews to tempt the online buyer.