Ask HN: How do you find good new ebooks? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you find good new ebooks?

I check Amazon Kindle deals, and even kind of peruse the listings on the kindle app, but there is so much, and so much of it seems like complete dreck, or just not up my alley. How do you find good recommendations? External apps, word of mouth, or just from looking really hard?

I love biographical stuff (but not everything interests me), Science and nitch stuff gets me occasionally (yes, even stuff like Malcom Gladwell), and I am a huge Science Fiction and Fantasy escapist, but (especially in SciFan) there is a huge influx of entry level(?, ish) authors, and most just don't seem worth the time let alone the 99 cents. Since there is no field for "real authors" how do I sort through the low end stuff; compound that with the fact that some of those are actually very good...

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I'm a sci-fi/fantasy fan too. I often find interesting new reading by researching one of the writers I know is good, and finding out the writers that they're friends with or who influenced them or who were influenced by them. For example, I like Alan Moore, who is friends with Michael Moorcock, so I'll give him a go. I like Richard K. Morgan and he was influenced by William Gibson, Poul Anderson and Bob Shaw, so I'll probably give them a go.

It's not the only way to do it, but it's one way. I would never have known about Richard K Morgan if a friend of mine hadn't been looking through a brick and mortar library one day, literally judging books by their covers, found one of his books and subsequently recommended it to me. But once I've found a good writer via whatever means, I usually find that you can follow threads from them to other good writers.

I would start by dropping the "e" part of your requirement. Don't look for good e-books, look for good books.

Then I would drop the strategy of looking mainly at the "deal" books, since at best there is a zero correlation to quality, and at worst a negative correlation.

That said, finding good books is a problem that people have been facing for decades if not centuries, and with mixed success. You've got to kiss a lot of frogs...

Talking books with people whose opinions you trust is a good start. Then there are internet forums dedicated to discussing books of different sorts. There are lots and lots of review sites. One strategy is to find a review site that positively reviews a book you know you like, then see what else that reviewer recommends.

You can also find a library and browse the shelves. Browsing, at libraries and at decent brick-and-mortar bookstores (RIP), is how I found most of the books that I ended up liking the most. Literally at least three of my favorite books in the world I had never heard of until I picked them up from a bookstore shelf (and two of them, I had never even heard of the author).

In a way, reading lists of e-books that are available, rather than going in via a search on an author or title you think you might like, is somewhat akin to browsing. The main difference being the extremely low quality of the ability to spot-read, that electronic bookstores offer. The ability to randomly sample a book's writing in 4-5 places is an immeasurable aid to finding a book you might like, in my opinion.

I browse goodreads to find new books.

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