Have been wondering how different it must be to publish and read books in bigger languages, Finnish is spoken by 6 million people and the amount of books being published is kind of overwhelming for me still. Do your local bookstores carry local novels or is there more competition of readership nationwide and globally etc? Does it show in how books with very specified topics get picked up by publishers or how they get found by readers? Like novels touching on the specific trauma of maybe 20 000 people etc. This wondering was brought to you by the national book prizes today, the winner of the nonfiction award had started looking into his family history and into the circa hundred people who stayed behind in Karelia when it was won by the Soviet Union. Do you stumble across these more specific books or do you have to dig yourself to find books past the western canon and global bestsellers? Kind of a naive question but I’m genuinely curious!
Everyone is going to be different, but I (an English speaker) keep an eye on best seller lists, award winners (particularly the Booker and Pulitzers), and regularly get newsletters with new books coming out. Of course I am going to miss a huge number of books. But there’s only so many you can read.
I also deliberately carve out some time to read traditional English language classics. I happen to really like Charles Dickens for instance.
Over the years I’ve developed some favorite authors so I’m always looking for new books from them.
If there is something super specific I’m interested in then I would research on-line, go to an actual book store (I happen to have access to Powell’s, one of the best bookstores in the US), amazon, etc. And do my best to sort through reviews and author information to get what I’m looking for.
As someone that reads in English I keep an eye on different imprints.
For example, if I ever get another urge to read naval history I will go find books put out by the service academy press. They often publish niche first hand accounts. For other subjects I watch different colleges and universities. They often announce when their faculty are publishing or when the school is. I found some very interesting Holocaust accounts that way compiled by a local professor from child survivors in the region.
As for fiction it’s a game of finding an imprint that speaks to you or finding a reviewer that has very broad taste. For example, Jo Walton promotes a wide range of things in her monthly column at tor.com.