The other day I was introduced to a link that took me to a website called BookBub.com. At first it seemed too good to be true, but after looking around and carefully examining the site, I think I found an interesting source for finding new books to read.
You can skip to the payout if you don't want to read about my experience with the site...
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I've been a picky reader. When I find an author and story line I like, I love the reading experience. But I've also had terrible experiences blindly grabbing books from Amazon's Kindle Library.
I have also not been very fond of Amazon's search function. It's easy enough to find books that have sold a lot of versions. It is also easy to find well rated books, but when you sort on ratings, sometimes you get results that include one to ten votes of excellent. To me, ten votes is not enough to commit money to.
SO I've been in a rut. OK, it's been a good rut actually.
First I read through all of indie author Peter Cawdron's work. He's a writer whose science fiction is also an easy to grasp learning experience.
Through him I discovered and met another indie writer, Hugh Howey, and read his Wool series. What an amazing series. Hugh can weave quite the world around his stories and the Wool series is excellent. But one of his one-offs, IZombie, for me, was a truly shockingly good entertaining read.
Through Hugh, I met Matthew Mather and his work. Mather's background in cybersecurity, computational nanotechnology, weather prediction systems and social intelligence research, to name a few, helps lend a scary edge to his tales of techno-doom that are unrivaled. One of his early books, CyberStorm, is an amazing read.
Both Hugh and Matthew have pending film contracts for some of their work.
But once I had perused all that these authors have to offer, then what? I've been lucky enough to have had Hugh or Matthew point me to a few books over time and right now I am in the middle of reading The Extinction Cycle series by Nicholas Sansbury Smith.
The Extinction Cycle is about a new kind of threat, one creepier than zombies and faster than cheetahs. And it's a fun, fun read.
But beyond the recommendations I either take a stab and get lucky or lose time I will never get back.
But the other night I believe I hit on a process that will partially eliminate the blind stabs at entertainment or the sad functionality of Amazon's search engine.
The Payout:
I found BookBub.
BookBub asks you what kind of books you read, then points you to free or incredibly cheap versions of the kinds of books you read.
What I like about BookBub (so far), is that once signed up, they'll send you a daily email of something free or deeply discounted.
You can filter your results by best-sellers, genre, and even kind of eReader version you have so they focus their emails to you in that category of book medium.
The other great thing I really really really like about BookBub is whether you wait for the emails or peruse the site yourself, some of the descriptions of the recommendations will tell you about the reviews of the books. Meaning, like for myself, I ended up choosing a few books because BB told me that a particular book has over 400 or 700 four-star reviews on Amazon.
BINGO! Finally finding results for popular and well-rated book titles.
In less than 12 hours I had 3 books waiting in my reading queue. Crap!!!
But what's the catch Bruce? Ah, thought you'd never ask.
There is a catch, but it's a simple one...
Usually the books are at a discounted price or even free, but they're usually books that are part of a series. One book I snagged is Book 0, of 9! But hey, if you like reading the work by the author, then you now have nine more books in your future!
So there you have it... BookBub.com. Check it out or if you are already getting the email service, chime in below and let everyone know how it has worked out for you.
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