What turns you off while browsing?

Weird flashy names that sound way too trite and cliched - like a P I named 'Stone Barrington'

female MC's that are described as spunky

anything that features an MC that is dead and the story is told from their POV.

talking animals

vampires -

I will only pick up books with interesting spines. I'm terribly biased when it comes to covers and titles as well. I like clean designs, simple fonts, bright colors. Anything besides that will make me put the book back on the shelf.

d&f.

Vampires (any genre)

A Fantasy set in medieval-like times that isn't actually Historical

Unintelligible writing when I flip open the book

On the inside front pages: Cover quotes praising the author's work instead of a snippet

Covers that are too bright, too colorful, or that have way too much going on.

Some of the titles that are too cliched or simply idiotic

If the first page begins with something like "It was an extremely cold, and dark night, and I knew something was going to happen..."

Mary Sue and Gary Stu's...

Anything Tolkien like [yes, I know, my 9 year old is in awe of The hobbit and is looking forward to reading the rest of the series, unfortunately that's a series that I don't particularly like]

Harry Potter like books

DWSTXS said:

Weird flashy names that sound way too trite and cliched - like a P I named 'Stone Barrington'

female MC's that are described as spunky

anything that features an MC that is dead and the story is told from their POV.

talking animals

vampires -

Click to expand...

I read the first two and was cheering with agreement, but my WIP includes the last three So I hate you.

It's a satire, btw

I'll add a few: amateurish writing. Too repetitive or overly-explaining things (). Trying to sound literary and coming out purple.

I know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover...but I do. The cover and the title. Then the blurb on the back.

I think I read a book with a Stone Barrington. It wasn't bad.

But what turns me off is, if I pick it up and read the first page and it doesn't figuratively grab me by the throat. If I'm not absolutely in love with the writing or the character by the second page, I put it back.

Crime novels with 'psycopaths' on the loose.

How about some motives guys?

Garish and cheesy covers. Loud obnoxious music in the bookstore, of the sort you get assaulted with at any Best Buy electronics store.

caw

Blurbs with too many Capitalized Nouns. Any non-essential physical description of a character in said blurb. (If you have to tell me the protagonist is falling in love with a sexy redhead, that usually bodes ill.) Pull quotes from authors I don't like. Too many exclamation points. Blurbs that are nothing but pull quotes of praise instead of telling me what's in the book. Blurbs that start by recapping the awesome things that had already happened in a previous book.

Covers with anyone in leather pants. The author's name being a lot bigger than the title on the cover. (Books with very long titles get a pass on this.) "Book X of the Y series" where X != 1. (Though if the book looks cool, that just means I'm going to go look for Book 1 first to see if it looks interesting on its own.) Pictures of space marines looking manly. (If there's a picture of a space marine looking womanly, I'll at least check out the blurb.) Pictures of women wearing highly impractical clothing and striking porn poses.

In the first few pages: the protagonist being exceptionally full of herself. (If your first two pages are telling me how the protagonist is suffering terribly, but sneering on all those miserable cowards who aren't putting up with the suffering as well as she is, I am not reading further.) Clunky prose. Anything that sounds too Dan Brown. (World-renowned <insert profession here> <insert name here> <insert dramatic action here>...) Teenagers acting like whiny gits. Adults acting like whiny teenagers. God damn dream sequences. Any explanation of why the protagonist is just the coolest thing since sliced bread and beloved by all.

...it's sort of a wonder I ever buy books at all, at this rate.

I'm reading a novel now, on my Kindle, that is SO bad it's damn near laughable. I stopped reading, then I decided to keep going, just to pick apart all the crap writing.
misspellings throughout. Overwrought purple prose.
it's hilariously bad. I won't say the name of the author or title, but really, it is BAD.

"Girly" covers. Yeah, yeah, I know. Silly, isn't it? But if it's got a pink cover with some girl on the front carrying shopping bags and she's wearing heels and what not, you can bet there is no way that book is going home with me. I have on occasion read girly books, but that's either because a friend gave them to me or I ordered them online. Sorta funny, because I have no problem carrying underwear through a store at all haha.

I read mostly YA and midgrade, and I don't know if this is something you see in adult or not, but--no flap copy. Random House and its imprints are especially bad about this. Either they have nothing, or a few lines from the book (but not particularly interesting ones), or they have editorial praise for a different book by the same author. But nothing to say what this book is about.

Whenever I find a book like that, I put it right back on the shelf.

An author (invariably male) who introduces every single female character by mentioning what her breasts look like. (This is a LOT more common than you might think.) I got a book for Christmas that does this, and although otherwise it's fairly good, that alone ensures I won't seek out anything else by the author.

litgirl said:

I read mostly YA and midgrade, and I don't know if this is something you see in adult or not, but--no flap copy. Random House and its imprints are especially bad about this. Either they have nothing, or a few lines from the book (but not particularly interesting ones), or they have editorial praise for a different book by the same author. But nothing to say what this book is about.

Whenever I find a book like that, I put it right back on the shelf.

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I hate when you can't figure out the summary of the book! I've come across quite a few myself where the places usually reserved for a blurb just have some ranting about how great the book is, or "from the author of blah blah blah." I'm trying to figure out what the book is about people!

I avoid:

At the bookstore:

Thin books - I can just get them at the library and see if I like them. If I really like it, I probably won't be skimming it over in the bookstore now would I?

At the library:

Thick books - I won't have enough time to read them at my pace.

At either:

Covers that tell you everything you need to know about the story through images. Especially when they are entirely loud, busy and crowded with colours. I like it simple and minimalist. Patterns and solid colours are good.

Anything with Private Investigators. I just know that they are going to harken back to something really archaic and fear what's coming up; a total lack of zeal for anything coming up. Usually American-centric too in the same vein as Heinlein.

Anything that is a romance or romanticist. I like my spec-fic where the "boy" doesn't get the "girl" or the "girl" gets the "boy". (In quotation marks to leave room for the ability to interchange genders where one sees fit.)

Character-driven epics. I can handle short stories and short novels that are character driven but anything that's long and character-driven just screams long-windedness to me and makes me shrug at the characters.

Those pages that say "Error 404."

Oh, you mean the old-fashioned kind of browsing.

I try to "keep an open mind" about titles and covers, though covers usually indicate genre and there are some I'm just not interested in. There are several big-name authors I've tried to read, but haven't made it through one of their books yet.

The cover of "Einstein's Bridge" says "A novel of hard science fiction" which turned me off because you shouldn't have to SAY it's hard SF (also it was saying redundantly it was "A novel of ... fiction"). I'll read it and decide if it's hard. I had it hanging around for six months after getting it (I think it was from paperbackswap, and I forget where I found the title and what initially got me interested). When I finally did read it I REALLY enjoyed it.

If the title or a recognizable I've-read-before author or even the alleged genre gets me interested at all in a book in front of me, I try not to let anything else bias me against it, even endorsments by JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer. I open it up, page through, read a paragraph here and there and see if it really interests me. DJ flaps can be misleading because I might like the premise of the book but then not like the author's actual writing.

DWSTXS said:

Weird flashy names that sound way too trite and cliched - like a P I named 'Stone Barrington'

female MC's that are described as spunky

anything that features an MC that is dead and the story is told from their POV.

talking animals

vampires -

Click to expand...

The talking animals thing was done well in "Animal Farm," but I guess that wasn't so much about talking animals.

DWSTXS said:

I'm reading a novel now, on my Kindle, that is SO bad it's damn near laughable. I stopped reading, then I decided to keep going, just to pick apart all the crap writing.
misspellings throughout. Overwrought purple prose.
it's hilariously bad. I won't say the name of the author or title, but really, it is BAD.

Click to expand...

Care to at least name the publisher, especially if it's one we'll recognize? Is it also available in hardback/paperback? Enquiring Minds want to know how it got published.

Teh only thing about a book that turns me off is bad writing.

As shallow as it is-bad covers

Idiot shop assistants following me as I look for titles I want / need immediately raises my anger - to the point where I couldn't (even if I wanted to) buy anything. There are some book shops which assume everyone is going to be stealing their books... Really, really annoying.

What turns you off while browsing?

The cellophane wrapping on the magazines...

kaitie said:

I hate when you can't figure out the summary of the book! I've come across quite a few myself where the places usually reserved for a blurb just have some ranting about how great the book is, or "from the author of blah blah blah." I'm trying to figure out what the book is about people!

Click to expand...

I agree. If I pick up a book that doesn't have a summary on the back (or on the inside dust jacket flap if it's a hardcover), it's going back on the shelf. I don't care how many glowing reviews it got; if I can't figure out what it's about, I'm not going to buy it.

Cartoon covers also turn me off. Yes, I do sometimes judge books by their covers.

Descriptions of how sexy one of the characters is.

Mentions of shopping.

Fantasy novels that sound like they were written from a Mad Libs template - same plot, different characters.

The Victorian time period, unless the book looks really interesting otherwise. Just my personal preference.

"In the tradition of [an author whose books I don't like]"

ClaudiaGray said:

An author (invariably male) who introduces every single female character by mentioning what her breasts look like.

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Some female authors do this too, and it either turns me off or brings out the snark in me. The latest such example was where the hero noticed the heroine had "a pair of well-shaped breasts". Me : Oh good, you wouldn't want her to be a uniboob.

Stupid titles
Creepy/embarrassing covers (once I pretended to be fourteen in order to use a book token. The book I wanted to get was 'Giovanni's Room', and it had a topless man lying in bed, so they might start to question me age there)