Welcome to my Friday Five Challenge
(Original idea from Rosie Amber at https://rosieamber.wordpress.com/)
Get yourself a cuppa and give yourself 5 minutes.
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, and any other details.
5) If there are reviews, check out a couple,
6) Make an instant decision, would you BUY or PASS?
Today I decided to look at the Travel category but I wasn’t looking for a guide book. I was immediately drawn to this cover as I love the seaside and who can resist a signpost.
I have always enjoyed Bill Bryson’s journey books and the description of Walking Away make it sound equally stimulating. It is a follow up to Walking Home but is set on the south-west coast of England. Simon Armitage is a poet and his journey takes him from one gig to another. The book description says that he is a troubadour, “making his own personal Odyssey with poetic reflection and personal wit.”
Recently published, there is only one review which is 5 star. DoveGreyReader describes the book as, “an astute and intuitive look at the landscape with the quirks of the English understood, spotted and mixed in but in the best possible way.”
BUY or PASS? At £6.99 for the kindle, I won’t be buying this at present but I shall look out for it in a bookshop where I can turn over the pages before deciding.
Rosie’s latest Five Minute Challenge
Lizanne lost in a good book 
That’s pretty high for a Kindle book and I’d want to see the hard copy as well. But it appeals to me as I love the south west coast.
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PS love the cup of coffee!
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Yes love the coffee cup picture. I like the book cover as you say the sign post works well, but there are many such travel books, I’ve read the one about travelling with a fridge around Ireland – Hilarious. This one sounds a bit wishy washy from the description, a drifter, not sure there would be enough to interest me in just the SW coast. Price definitely too high to be competitive.
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And opening the first page tightly printed text with no paragraph breaks!!
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No, I wouldn’t buy, either – I don’t think you need to go anywhere else after Bill Bryson, too many of these try to emulate him and are never quite as funny, and 6.99 for a Kindle book is ridiculous.
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