Once upon a time, there were only two ways I discovered new books.
One was to visit the home of new books—the book shop. You remember, the actual physical shop where books were sold. The other was to visit the school library, or the public library. I visited the school library most days, especially in winter or when it was raining. I travelled to and from school by bus, and realised I could stay dry and warm in the library while waiting for the bus. The best part was that only a couple of other kids had worked that out, so the librarian was happy to lock up and leave us inside.
Then I discovered mail order books, but they had to come from Australia and postage was expensive, so I didn’t do that often. Then I moved to London, Jeff Bezos invented Amazon, and my world was much larger.
My bank balance … not so much.
I still mostly buy from Amazon (especially ebooks), but the store is now so big that it’s hard to browse—not like in the old-fashioned book store. It’s easy to find the book you want if you search by title or author, but there are too many choices.
I tend to find new books a couple of ways:
Via NetGalley
I review books, and I get most of my review copies from NetGalley. I can search just those publishers I’m interested in, which makes it easy for me to keep track of what’s new in Christian fiction (from those publishers, at least. Not every publisher is on NetGalley).
Recommendations from Friends
We discussed this a couple of weeks back. Yes, I follow several other book bloggers, and am often introduced to new books and new authors through their posts. I also participate in the weekly First Line Friday meme, which features 20+ Christian novels each week.
So now I’m spoiled for choice!
