BUY or PASS? Young Adult Romance #FridayFiveChallenge

 

Welcome to the ‘Friday Five Challenge.’

Would you BUY or PASS if you had only a thumbnail image and five minutes to decide?

Welcome to the #FridayFiveChallenge. The original idea comes from Rosie Amber, and you can join up at https://rosieamber.wordpress.com

The rules are laid out at the end of this post if you fancy having a go.

Here is my contribution for this week:

I read an interesting blog the other day about finding your readers. The article told me about the top social media sites frequented by the teen audience I seek for my young adult fantasy. The first was YouTube, and then Instagram and thirdly Tumblr.

The list didn’t come as any surprise. The three teens living under my roof are always showing me YouTube videos, and telling me about an ‘awesome vlogger’ they just followed on Instagram. So, I thought it was about time to ‘get down with the kids’ and connect with my target audience – yes, I joined Instagram!

There are YA book bloggers, readers, and authors galore on this platform. I hope they don’t abide by the same two-thousand follower limit as Twitter do because I may have gone a bit follow-friendly.

As I scrolled through the thousands of book covers on display I saw this and just had to investigate it for the Friday Five Challenge:

Nowhere But Here by Katie McGarry

Before you get too excited about the cover, I logged on to Amazon.co.uk and found an alternative version:

BLURB:

The long awaited all new series from the #1 bestselling author of Pushing the Limits

Emily likes her life the way it is…

Doting parents, great friends, good school… But she’s curious about her biological father – the one who chose life on the road over being a parent.

When a reluctant visit to him turns into an extended summer, one thing becomes clear: nothing is what it seems. Not her secret-keeping father and not Oz, the dangerous boy who can help her understand her family’s deepest secrets.

When Emily’s father asks Oz to keep her safe, Oz knows it’s his chance to prove himself. What he doesn’t count on is Emily turning his world upside down.

And Oz is everything Emily isn’t supposed to want… but sometimes the road you fear is the one that leads you home.

My Analysis:

I love the first cover. When I saw it, I stopped scrolling and clicked through to the book bloggers Instagram page. It made me want to find out more. The typography is bold and eyecatching, and the image tells me to expect a romance, but with the possibility of a bad boy rather than a softy. The blurb confirms my suspicions and intrigues me even further.

I don’t like the second cover, this is one I would scroll straight past and assume a wishy-washy romance, it doesn’t have any of the grit from cover number one. On further investigation I realise that cover number one is for the American audience and number two is for the Brits! Oh, I can feel an entire blog post brewing on that subject.

The Stats:

The book has 497 pages, and the Kindle price is £4.99. There are thirty-four reviews on the UK site, the majority are four and five stars. One of the two star reviews just spoke about preferring the author’s other series over this one. There are one hundred and thirty-two reviews on the U.S. site (49% are five stars).

Here is an example of a four star review from Amazon.co.uk:

As a massive ( and rather obsessive!) Sons of Anarchy fan, this book immediately jumped out at me. A YA Sons of Anarchy style book with biker gangs, motorbikes, a bunch of badass biker boys and a whole load of biker drama? Yes, please! The first instalment of Katie McGarry’s Thunder Road series didn’t disappoint, and it totally delivered, exceeding my expectations over and over.

Honestly, as I started reading I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did but as the story progressed I was just drawn in deeper and deeper to the world of Snowflake and its complicated but loveable inhabitants. NOWHERE BUT HERE was such a fast paced, mystery filled extravaganza, filled with juicy secrets and destructive lies. It was definitely a fun filled ride.

The first cover, the blurb and the enthusiatic audience would sway me to buy, but I would sulk every time I looked at the British cover. So, it’s a PASS from me but I will add it my ‘maybe’ pile for the future. 

Nowhere But Here – buy your copy from Amazon.co.uk:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00OY276BG

From Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Nowhere-but-Here-Thunder-Road/dp/0373211422/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Take a look at who else has taken part in the Friday Five Challenge:

Rosie finds a Cobra in the Bath! – https://rosieamber.wordpress.com/2015/10/09/would-you-buy-or-pass-fridayfivechallenge-cobra-in-the-bath-by-miles-morland/

Cathy looks at a classic Michael Morpurgo – http://betweenthelinesbookblog.com/2015/10/09/fridayfivechallenge-buyorpass-why-the-whales-came-by-michael-morpurgo-childrens-rosieamber1/comment-page-1/#comment-2799

Bev takes a look at Science Fiction – http://baspicer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/welcome-to-my-fridayfivechallenge.html?showComment=1444472927537#c5195779033508222451

Barb looks at the cost of bringing up children (I think it came under the ‘horror’ genre!!) http://barbtaub.com/2015/10/09/bill-for-child-production-fridayfivechallenge-from-rosieamber1/comment-page-1/#comment-139008

What is the Friday Five Challenge?

In today’s online shopping age, readers often base their buying decisions on small postage stamp size book covers (thumb-nails), a quick glance at the book description and the review. How much time do they spend making that buying decision?

AUTHORS – You often only have seconds to get a reader to buy your book, is your book cover and book bio up to it?

The Challenge is this… IN ONLY FIVE MINUTES…

1) Go to any online book supplier,

2) Randomly choose a category,

3) Speed through the book covers, choose one which has instantly appealed to your eye,

4) Read the book Bio/ Description of this book,

5) If there are reviews, check out a couple,

6) Make an instant decision, would you BUY or PASS?

(then write a little analysis about your decision)