The modern world is stuffed to the gills with free ebooks. Everywhere you turn you find more and more of them pouring out of every nook and cranny. How do you, as a reader, sift your way through this endless sea of works to get to the real gems? Here are my five tips that will assist you in finding your next great free read!
1. Start with what you’re in the mood to read.
The first place to get started when looking for your next great read is its genre. What are you in the mood to read? Mystery? Fantasy? A biography? Doing this will at least cut your search down from the millions of ebooks into the tens of thousands. From here you can narrow your search further by going into sub-categories. Do you want a biography on a celebrity, a dead president, a rock star, etc? Using these sub-categories will help you to narrow your search results into the thousands. Fear not! The following tips will serve as a map to your next literary treasure.
2. Go ahead and judge the book by its cover.
We’ve all heard it before. It’s what’s on the inside that counts. Years ago, this was still the case. As times and technology have changed, our way of organizing and scanning products has changed with them. When you look for a good book it’s okay to sort out the contenders from the pretenders by the book’s cover design. Some things to consider for this are: Is the cover catchy? Does it look professional? Narrowing your search by the most appealing covers should get you down to under 100 titles. Anymore, a picture is worth a thousand words, or in our case – around 75,000 words.
3. Use the book blurb to your advantage.
The book blurb, or synopsis, is the teaser information that is supposed to give you as a reader the crux of the book in a nutshell. Unfortunately, a lot of the blurbs out in circulation now days are nearly as long as the books themselves. This is yet another way that you can further hone in on your next great read. A professional book blurb should be no longer than 300 words. If it is droning on and on then you should probably avoid that work. This should get your results down to around 25 works.
4. Check out the Author’s Bio.
Another great way to find a great book is to look into who wrote it. On Amazon.com, this information can be found by clicking on the author’s name, or by simply scrolling down the page of the work in question. Things to look for in this section are: what other books have they written? Have they won any awards? Have they been published in other media?
5. Where’s the social proof?
Once you have scanned the blurbs and bios, your final tip for shortening the prospect list is to look for who else has read it. How many have read the book? What did they have to say about it? How had it been reviewed? Who has it been reviewed by? Where is it ranked overall, or within its own genre? It should be noted that not every great book will be ranked high on these lists. Sometimes it takes months or even years to get a work reviewed. Taking this step, however, will help you weed down the competition because it has proven its worth to the public.
By now, you should have two or three free ebooks to select from setting right in front of you on your reader. The choice is yours. Make it a good one.![]()
1. Start with what you’re in the mood to read.
The first place to get started when looking for your next great read is its genre. What are you in the mood to read? Mystery? Fantasy? A biography? Doing this will at least cut your search down from the millions of ebooks into the tens of thousands. From here you can narrow your search further by going into sub-categories. Do you want a biography on a celebrity, a dead president, a rock star, etc? Using these sub-categories will help you to narrow your search results into the thousands. Fear not! The following tips will serve as a map to your next literary treasure.
2. Go ahead and judge the book by its cover.
We’ve all heard it before. It’s what’s on the inside that counts. Years ago, this was still the case. As times and technology have changed, our way of organizing and scanning products has changed with them. When you look for a good book it’s okay to sort out the contenders from the pretenders by the book’s cover design. Some things to consider for this are: Is the cover catchy? Does it look professional? Narrowing your search by the most appealing covers should get you down to under 100 titles. Anymore, a picture is worth a thousand words, or in our case – around 75,000 words.
3. Use the book blurb to your advantage.
The book blurb, or synopsis, is the teaser information that is supposed to give you as a reader the crux of the book in a nutshell. Unfortunately, a lot of the blurbs out in circulation now days are nearly as long as the books themselves. This is yet another way that you can further hone in on your next great read. A professional book blurb should be no longer than 300 words. If it is droning on and on then you should probably avoid that work. This should get your results down to around 25 works.
4. Check out the Author’s Bio.
Another great way to find a great book is to look into who wrote it. On Amazon.com, this information can be found by clicking on the author’s name, or by simply scrolling down the page of the work in question. Things to look for in this section are: what other books have they written? Have they won any awards? Have they been published in other media?
5. Where’s the social proof?
Once you have scanned the blurbs and bios, your final tip for shortening the prospect list is to look for who else has read it. How many have read the book? What did they have to say about it? How had it been reviewed? Who has it been reviewed by? Where is it ranked overall, or within its own genre? It should be noted that not every great book will be ranked high on these lists. Sometimes it takes months or even years to get a work reviewed. Taking this step, however, will help you weed down the competition because it has proven its worth to the public.
By now, you should have two or three free ebooks to select from setting right in front of you on your reader. The choice is yours. Make it a good one.
