After week one on the Authonomy site Golden Dawn has risen from #3306 to #2176 in the rankings. This is, I guess, progress of a kind.However I am beginning to suspect that moving up the charts depends not only on the quality of the text submitted for the community to evaluate but also on skills and ruses familiar to those who are seriously into social networking.
If there are people out there cleverly gaming the results it would explain why there are more than a few titles high in the rankings which are... dare I say... badly written.
Who am I to judge? For at least the past eight years I have read not fewer than two trade paperbacks per week... with a preference for the genre I would term thoughtful thriller. I feel absolutely disqualified to judge books which belong to other genres... comedy, violent noir, science-fiction, chick-lit... But I would claim to know my thrillers (although I do find the label quite inadequate).
Books Corner in Abu Dhabi was my source in the Sandlands, in Munich Hugendubel has an excellent branch devoted exclusively to English-language books. From time to time I find a back-cover pitch enticing, only to find the book itself disappointing. But there are also times when I find myself delighted by a book which far exceeds the expectations aroused by the pitch.
I look forward to such serendiptious discoveries on the Autonomy site. I always tend to see the glass as being half-full.
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