Would You BUY or PASS? #FridayFiveChallenge Cobra In The Bath by Miles Morland

Welcome to my Friday Five Challenge

Get yourself a cuppa and give yourself 5 minutes. (Use your own pic or copy mine or anything else like a clock/ stopwatch etc)

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)

This week I searched books under the “Indian Ocean” theme as I’ve been watching a TV series about the ocean.

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

Book Description

Miles Morland is an adventurer. He was born in India to a naval father and a dangerously glamorous mother. When his parents divorced, Miles followed his mother to Tehran, which they had to leave in a hurry, and on to Baghdad, which they also had to leave in a hurry after the 1958 revolution. His early years were filled with desert journeys, riots, perilous near-misses, and adventures worthy of Kipling, after which he was sent to England for a ‘proper’ education.

Later, following years of shouting down a Wall Street telephone, Miles threw in his job, bought a giant motorbike and set off to discover things in places others did not want to go. Deported at gunpoint from Romania, saved from assassination in Ethiopia by a lucky plane crash, riding an Enfield Bullet through Ooty and following Che over the Andes – Miles has a knack of finding trouble.

Brilliantly observed and told with unique humour, Cobra in the Bath will have you crying with laughter and scared out of your wits.

Price; Kindle price £10.04 or $15.49

Number of pages; 385

Number of reviews; 13 Amazon.UK ( many from readers who have reviewed little else), a 1* with a very useful review.  1 from Amazon.US with a 3* luke warm reception.

Would I BUY or PASS? …..PASS

Analysis

I chose the book cover for the motorbike and the snake. Easy to see it’s a travel memoir and I quite like reading about other peoples adventures from time to time, in places I probably wouldn’t travel myself. The book description looked good, plenty of land covered with many stories to tell. A very quick dip into the reviews revealed too many glowing 5*’s that needed little search to find many of these readers have reviewed little else. I found the 1* and 3* reviews the most helpful. This is now a risk buy for me and at a very high kindle price, too much of a risk today.

Here are links to other #FridayFiveChallengers

Shelley has gone for #YA #Romance – http://shelleywilsonauthor.com/2015/10/09/buy-or-pass-young-adult-romance-fridayfivechallenge/

Cathy went in search for #Children’s books – http://betweenthelinesbookblog.com/2015/10/09/fridayfivechallenge-buyorpass-why-the-whales-came-by-michael-morpurgo-childrens-rosieamber1/

Barb has been weighing up the cost of kids – http://barbtaub.com/2015/10/09/bill-for-child-production-fridayfivechallenge-from-rosieamber1/

Bev went for a Post Apocalypse which has an added bonus of being #Free on #Kindle – http://baspicer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/welcome-to-my-fridayfivechallenge.html?showComment=1444405665429#c6618357408994892467