I spend about 2hrs on the road everyday and have picked up a habit of listening to books. Over the past 4yrs, I have listened/read an average of 40 books a year.
I am a reader who reads purely for entertainment, so it’s mostly horror, crime, travel, thriller, sci fi genres.
So when I start searching for a new books, i usually depend on Goodreads and Google for recommendations. And there are so many reccos that I generally just chose a book which has a cover which sort of connects with me.
So while there are some initial level of filters and search words I use, the final selection is pretty much based on the cover. So I am literally just judging a book by it’s cover and reading.
Even among authors whom I like, I end up reading a bit of summary but summaries always sound good for most of the book. So I just see which one has the most intriguing cover.
How is everyone else tackling this ?
Covers are generally meaningless and just follow design trends. Look at the history of covers for any reasonably famous novel that you hold in high regard and tell me covers mean anything.