Welcome to my Friday Five Challenge
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?
Here we go…… in two days time its the Summer Solstice so I looked at books about this subject.
Synopsis
A volume which draws on the evidence of goddess worship and symbolism to present an explanation that reveals Stonehenge as a temple in honour of the goddess and her eternal fruitfulness, rather than an observatory or the product of complicated mathematics.
From the Author
The annual fertility celebration of the Marriage of the Gods
The ordering of the stones signify yoni and womb of the Earth Mother and allows her midsummer fertilisation by the Sun/ Sky Father to be witnessed by everyone inside and outside of the monument.
Price; £8.00 hardback or Paperback second hand issues from 1p + postage – not available for Kindle
First Edition printed 1997
Number of reviews; 1 x 5*
BUY or PASS?……. Pass
Analysis
I thought I’d try a topical book and I do like the mystery which surrounds Stonehenge. My search threw up few books which were what I was looking for and this one was the cover that came close to my pre-conceived idea of a book I wanted.
Sadly the book was written a number of years ago and doesn’t look updated. I think if I was really looking for a book on the subject because I was researching it I might go for the second-hand copy option, but there wasn’t enough in the book description or the reviews to sway me to part with my money at the moment. I expect I could find more up to date information in a Google search of the internet.
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Rosie Amber 
Shame it’s not more up to date, the cover is great, I can see why it attracted you, but I’d pass too.
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Yeah – looks a bit weak! Me too. Very topical!
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That bit from the author would put me off! It’s a fascinating place though.
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Interesting point. Something not in our vocabulary not that long ago, “…doesn’t look updated…” My, how our thinking has changed. Makes me smile.
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Marketing has to be about keeping up with the game unless you want to dip out.
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Exactly. Goes to show how the game has changed and therefore marketing.
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Having said that, they may be many reasons this author’s work stays as it is.
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I was just talking to another author about it. I just came across a book description that had in the editorial reviews a very negative review by Publishers Weekly. The cover is good but despite that terrible review in the description, the book was number 1 in its category. I wondered if people didn’t understand the review or didn’t care (it’s the first thing one sees reading the description and I couldn’t understand why anybody would include that). I can’t even begin to understand how it works.
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This fun challenge is throwing light on all sorts of eye opening points which authors need to think seriously about. The on-line buying public Do look at book covers, DO review book descriptions, DO read reviews and ALSO have a book budget at the back of their mind. First impressions really DO need to HIT the spot. I sit on the fence with editorial reviews and quotes from “famous” people about a book, it still doesn’t mean they bought or read it by choice. Give me a review from someone who has read the book from cover to cover and gives a convincing piece of what they thought about the book.
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Hi Rosie, I came across your blog through Alison’s FridayFive Challenge. I loved the concept so much that I stopped by to check out the place where it started. 🙂 So glad to have come across your blog.
Can’t comment about the book that you shared as I don’t know much about this particular topic. Nonetheless, FridayFive is an interesting, fun challenge. 🙂
-Shantala
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Hi Shantala, thanks for dropping in, feel free to join in with the challenge on Fridays, open to anyone, especially bloggers. Just use the hashtag and if you tag me @rosieamber1 or @TerryTyler4 on Twitter we’ll help share.
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Thank you so much Rosie. I will try and post today itself and will tag you. 🙂
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Good analysis, Rosie. Even though the cover was what you were looking for, it just doesn’t sound like it would live up to your expectations.
@dino0726 from
FictionZeal – Impartial, Straighforward Fiction Book Reviews
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