Suggestions for Exploring the eBook Cosmos

When we walk through a library or a bookstore we can be overwhelmed by the number of books populating the shelves. While treading down the aisles digesting blurb after blurb on the back jacket of every good book that catches your eye, we think to ourselves: "I'm never going to be able to read everything I want to." While this can be a disheartening thought, the idea of just how vast our libraries and book shops have grown isn't so daunting compared to the eBook library.

Physical bookshelves are finite. We could trek through the mystery aisle in only a short walk and turn the corner into the horror aisle. While the aisles in book shops and libraries ended, on the Internet they don't.



The online library is infinite. There's always another page, another author, another recommendation, another good book to read. Online outlets monitor your purchases to inundate you with thousands of books they think you'd love based on their autonomous algorithms. The avalanche of books can be so much that it might turn you off of finding your books online.

Thankfully, these online libraries can be organized and sorted through with a precision and speed that was never really achievable in a library or bookstore. You can filter by a lot of different topics to narrow your searching, but there are still enormous amounts of content available.  So how do you choose? How do you find a new author? How do you not get burned? How do you find that diamond in the rough?

Here's what has worked for me. People. User reviews are the tipping point for me on if I buy a book or not. I could be on the fence about a certain book, but if the reviews are mostly negative I won't waste my time.  Of course, user reviews aren't the final say (after a time my wallet usually has the last word), but they are integral to every online book purchase I make.

Now there are such things as paid positive reviews or just your plain ol' "this author is trash" review. You have to navigate and recognize the ham-fisted reviews from the ones with actual substance. One course I take to recognize if the reviewer has legitimate qualms or is an Internet troll is if the review is about the author or the book. If the author is the one being attacked maybe the novel isn't terrible so much as something the author wrote offended the reviewer's personal feelings.

Another tactic is purposely reading reviews from both sides of the spectrum. Pick out a review that has a low rating and read it. Does the review make legitimate claims? Such as plot holes, bland characters, or lack of conflict. Then pick out a positive review and see if the reviewer thinks this novel has merit or if they think it was a good buy only because it was on sale.

Reviews are a double-edged sword, but much like a sword, when wielded properly you can fend off the enemy. In this case, the enemy is the cosmological horde of novels on the Internet. While daunting, the online library is a magnificent never-ending gift that we utilize to find new worlds and insight.  Happy reading!

Actual photo of a cosmological horde of novels