Do any of you all follow Binge Reads on Facebook or Instagram? It's a new social media reading community.

I have to say, when I think of what type of book marketing really "works" on me, Binge Reads is the first one that comes to mind. I've never read J.R. Ward or Jim Butcher, who are the two authors most recently featured on Binge Reads, and now I totally want to. There's something about the way our friend Colleen and her team of Penguin marketers teases out little snippets of the prose that makes the books sound really intriguing.

You know who else is really good at this? BC member Jessica Hawkins. From the moment I saw her Twitter feed of teasers for her Cityscape series, I knew I was going to need to buy and download her book.

I will check it out.

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The only thing that influences me to investigate a book is a thoughtful, well written review.

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It could be a review so laudatory about the prose style . . . “Howey’s supple, muscular writing is the icing on the cake.”  . . . that I am sucked into reading a genre that generally does not thrill me. Catherynne Valente is another SF writer I would read enthusiastically. I love her fantasy/fables. Haven't gotten to her SF yet, but I will. I also pay attention to the source of the review. The name Kirkus used to mean something. Does it still? I’m not at all sure. What hooks me, above all else, is to read a few pages and judge for myself. Bookstores work swell for that.*sigh* That doesn't help e-books. It comes back around to intriguing mentions, consisting of a bit of plot, a bit of flavor and an indication that better than average verbal acuity and agility might be involved.

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Kudos for style hook me more that those for plot. And, dear Lord, let there be no typos or unfortunate phrasing in the review. I dismiss many a comment on Amazon for that reason. If you can’t write a decent paragraph, I don’t put any faith in your judgment.

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Bestseller lists? Numbers, legions of fans, mean nothing to me at all.

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Okay, I've looked at Binge Reads. These are announcements, no synopsis, giving a hint of a beguiling approach and/or prose style.

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The teaser bit, "Whatever she had, he wanted . . ." from Dark Lover, if that's the best that can be pulled out of this book, it is definitely not for me. 

--edited by Mimi Speike on 4/10/2014, 7:18 AM--

You know, I'm reading what I wrote above, and I'm saying to myself, You jerk. When you fall flat on your face with your own book, maybe you'll climb down off your high-horse.

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Hell, anything's possible.