How to find new authors you'll love (not just the ones everyone's reading)

Most book recommendations point the same way: the bestseller list, the books with thousands of ratings, the author whose last one you bought. That's fine for finding popular books. It's not how you find the author nobody's told you about yet, and some of the best reading is there.

Here's how to look further out, without wasting evenings on books that aren't for you.

Start from what you already love

Before hunting for new names, get specific about the old favourites. Not "fantasy", but what kind:

• The trope. Found family? Enemies to lovers? A locked-room puzzle? Tropes are the most reliable map there is, because they describe the shape of a story rather than its label. Book tropes explained has the common ones, and on Bervet every trope has its own page of books.
• The feel. Cosy or bleak, fast or slow, funny or serious.
• The heat and the content. How much romance, how much darkness, anything you'd rather not read.

Once you can say "a slow-burn fantasy with a found family and nothing too dark", you can find it, and so can anyone you ask.

Try before you commit

The quickest way to know if an author is for you is to read the opening. A first chapter tells you about the voice, the pace and the world in ten minutes.

• On Bervet, authors can add their first chapter free, read in a clean reader.
• Store sample pages work too.
• If you get to the end of chapter 1 and want to know what happens next, that's your answer. If you don't, you've lost ten minutes, not an evening.

Places to look beyond the charts

• Books listed by their authors. On Bervet, every book was listed by the person who wrote it, and "Most finished" ranks them by how many readers finish the free first chapter, not by sales or who paid.
• Advance copies. Authors give away early copies to readers before release. See how to become an ARC reader.
• Free and cut-price deals. Authors put books on offer to find new readers. Where to read free indie books covers the legal places, and Bervet has a monthly free and cheap page.
• Your library. Libraries lend ebooks and audiobooks free, and you can ask them to order a book.
• Other readers, not algorithms. Ask in a reader forum: "I loved X because of Y; what else does Y?" gets better answers than any "customers also bought".
• The authors you already like. Some recommend books they've loved in their newsletters. On Bervet you can follow authors and talk to them in their book's thread.

Keep track, or you'll lose them

The book you meant to try is the one you forget. Keep a list, even a rough one. On Bervet, "Want to read" saves a book to your reading list, and "Didn't finish" is there too, because not every try works out. More in keeping a reading list you'll actually read.

Give new authors a fair chance

• Read the first chapter before judging the cover. Indie covers range from brilliant to homemade, and neither tells you much about the writing inside.
• Tell them what you thought. A new author hears very little. A comment in the forum, a rating, a note that you finished it: it all helps.
• It's fine to stop. Not finishing a book isn't a failure. DNF: is it OK not to finish a book?

Find a book on Bervet, or browse by trope.