Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
Full promot: Things That Make Me Instantly NOT Want to Read a Book (what are your immediate turn-offs or dealbreakers when it comes to books?)
So, looking at the opposite from last week, the things that will totally put me off from picking up or reading a book, and maybe the odd thing that’ll make me DNF one, too. Of course, I won’t be including specific examples here. I’ve stuck to seven, largely because outside of these there’s very little else I can think of that would make me not want to read a book!
May 30th: Top Seven Things That Make Me Instantly NOT Want to Read a Book
Bad Covers
Yeah, a poor cover can really turn me off a book as much as a good one will draw me in. And you know exactly the kind of covers I mean – ones that have difficult to read fonts, or look like someone has copied and pasted different things into Paint, and I’d include AI generated ones here, too! I know with publishers authors right now may not always have a choice, but self-published authors most definitely do. If there’s no pride in the cover of the book, why would there be pride in the interior?
Author’s Poor Social Media Behaviour
I should have mentioned last week, but the way an author acts on social media absolutely influences my decisions on reading books. If I see someone who speaks up for the right things, or interacts regularly, or just seems like a positive presence, and I like their social media output, I end up wanting to read their books. On the other side, if I see a writer harassing or speaking negatively about reviewers, throwing tantrums over reviews, harassing others, being bigoted, constantly QT’ing to start arguments or sending their ‘fans’ to smaller accounts, it really puts me off ever reading their work.
Lack of Editing
Seriously, if I pick up a book and it’s full of errors, poor writing, incorrect grammar, I’m putting that book down. Errors will always slip through the net, but if it looks like the author didn’t care to get it right, I don’t care to read it.
I’ve Seen the Same Thing Too Much
Thinking of when I go through my Goodreads Want to Read shelf for the Dreaded TBR posts, one of the things that’ll instantly make me remove the book is if I’ve read a similar thing way too much. See: the huge amount of zombie books that were basically “one lone/small band of military men fight way through infested city”.
Didn’t Like Author’s Previous Book(s)
Sometimes you just don’t fit with an author, and that’s fine. Depending on why I didn’t like a book, I might give the particular author another chance, and maybe even two, but if after a couple of books I still feel meh towards their work, I’m not going to read any more. Life’s too short!
Heard Bad Things
This doesn’t happen overly often – I don’t normally check out reviews a lot if I’m debating whether to pick up a book, but if I am on the fence I’ll maybe have a look. Or if I’ve seen another reviewer talk about a book and the stuff they highlight as negative is stuff I don’t like either, I’ll skip over it. Sometimes I will check reviews if I’m on the verge of DNF’ing, in case maybe others preserved and it does get better. If reviews indicate that’s not the case, I’ll stop reading.
Publishers
I mentioned in my previous post how there are some publishers I know put out a lot of good work, and I’ll read most of their stuff, but the reverse is true, too. This leans more towards indie publishers, but especially in indie horror we’ve seen time and again some publishers who act as poorly as some authors I mentioned above. This might be doubling down when they mess up, misusing reviewer details, constantly platforming authors who have prove themselves to be ‘bad apples’. Don’t get me wrong, the indie world is full of brilliant, fantastic publishers who strive to do their best for all, but then there are some who, it feels like, set up as publishers purely because they love the power/gatekeeping aspect, or simply because as (usually but not always) old white men, they want somewhere they can publish their fellow old white men, just because. There are definitely red flags I can identify more easily now, and it makes me stay the hell away.
There we have it – seven reasons I’ll avoid or put down a book. What about you – anything in particular that’s guaranteed to put you off reading something?
Unwrapping Words 