Yes, I agree. After I posted my comment to Angie, I did reflect on the fact that the first chapter isn’t always indicative of a good read, it’s kind of–I don’t know, when you think that it’s the first three chapters that are usually the best part of the book before it completely falls apart. Or some books start off pretty bad and get good so, yeah, it’s a catch-22 for me.

I gotta join you because I was lucky that I had AOL and someone pointed in the right direction…

Umm… good reviews/word-of-mouth do work for me, but not immediately — I mentally note down the author/book and may get it some time later (and then usually regret not buying sooner!).

I do use Amazon recs, but it is a bit hit-and-miss. I’ve discovered some authors I absolutely love via Amazon (e.g. Sharon Lee/Steve Miller’s Korval series), but equally there have been some DNFs!

What works for me is now a combination of the above, if I see someone’s name mentioned enough times (whether via Amazon recs, reviews, etc), I Google for an extract, and then if I like the extract, I’d buy it.

Sometimes I wonder how I bought books before the internet…

I’d like to read the first chapter if I can or a good portion of it. It’s just enough to give me a feel for the narrative voice and style and I know almost immediately if I’d want to read further or not.

I have that book, but it didn’t pass my first page test when I picked it up to start reading, so I put it down, hoping to come back to it in a different frame of mind.

Here’s a question for you about excerpts. We’ve talked about the length of excerpts before at Samhain, because like you said, you can’t page through an ebook. Would you like a longer excerpt (we offer 1000–1500 word excerpts now)? Do you prefer an excerpt from the beginning or a good highlight? And what about seeing the whole first chapter, or at least a good portion of it? These are all things I wonder about, in making the decision to buy or not easier for the reader.