With increasing technologies and the introduction of ebooks, it is easier than ever to publish a book whether it is quality or not. The sheer number of books published every year does not make finding the right book easy! I don’t know about you, but I can’t count the times that I’ve been sucked into buying a book that I didn’t enjoy one bit! Luckily Leslie and Jessica of Grub Street Reads have come up with a solution! I’m extremely pleased to introduce Leslie of Grub Street Reads: A site designed to help us readers sift through the never-ending supply of books.
Save the Readers!
A Guest Post by Leslie Ramey
There has never been a better time to be a book lover.
There has never been a scarier time to be a book lover.
With more than 100,000 books born every year through big publishing houses, indie publishers and self-publishing, it can be a daunting task to find the right book to read. At the same time, we now how have access to more books than ever. The ease of self-publishing has given many authors the ability to share their works with the world in ways that would have never been possible just a couple of years ago.
It’s easy to see how overwhelming it can be to pick out a book to read and why it’s more important than ever that we become savvy book buyers. One easy way to do this is to educate yourself. Did you know that many book reviews on Amazon and Barnes and Noble are written by friends or colleagues of the author and may not represent a true unbiased review? I mean, who wants to say anything bad about their friend’s or family member’s book? So, while reviews can be helpful, pay attention to all of the reviews and not just the 5 star ones.
Another great tip is to download a sample of the book. You’ll only get the first 10-20%, but a well written book should be able to suck you in instantly. The samples are like test driving a book. You wouldn’t buy a car without firing up the engine. So check under the cover of your next book before you spend your money. 
There is one more way to tell if the book you are going to buy is up to par - check whether or not it has a Grub Street Reads Endorsement. An endorsement from our company (oh, did I mention that this project is the brain child of myself and my business partner, Jessica Bennett?) can guide you to a book that has met the high quality standards of our evaluation process.
Allow me to give you a brief tour of Grub Street Reads. As book lovers like you, Jessica and I were tired purchasing books that couldn’t sweep us up and carry us away. So, we took the situation into our own hands and developed an evaluation system to determine quality books. All great stories have a few things in common like well-rounded characters, engaging plots and a solid ending that leaves you satisfied or excited about the next book in the series. We took these elements and combined them with a few more key components of good storytelling, and wha-la, our evaluation system was born. Books that meet our evaluation criteria earn a Grub Street Reads endorsement, which is noted by our seal on their cover.
We want readers to give some of these unknown authors a shot, and this is one way you can trust that the story you buy is going to be engaging. Now, we don’t guarantee that you will love everything you read from our endorsed book library, because reading is very subjective, and our system aims to be as objective as possible. But we are confident that you’ll meet some great new authors and maybe your next favorite book.
Special thanks to Leslie and Jessica for this awesome guest post! Be sure to check out Grub Street Reads for more info!
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