Challenge: Reasons To Buy

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews.)

Prompt: What makes you pick up or buy a book?

Honestly? Recommendations. I follow a big chunk of authors on Twitter, not to mention interacting with a lot of readers. So I see people promoting their work, and if it looks like my kind of story I go check it out. Or I'll see somebody (frequently after reading an ARC) promote somebody else's book, and think, Oh yes! There are also a few authors whose work I'll buy just on the strength of other things they've written, and of course The Next Book In A Series I've Been Enjoying is always a compelling argument. It doesn't have to be Twitter, either -- I've bought books based on authors talking about the ideas that went into them on John Scalzi's Whatever, or reader recommendations from Jennifer Crusie's Good Book Thursdays, and similar venues.

I don't tend to read a lot of book reviews, especially on Amazon, partly because I don't always trust that they're real reviews the way I do if they're somebody I follow on Twitter or know in meatspace. Mostly, though, it's because if I'm not sure about a book, I can read through the first couple of pages and usually get a pretty decent feel for the writing style, general level of editing/proofreading, etc. 

So my sequence is generally: 

1. Recommendation
2. Blurb
3. Sample text (if I'm still not sure)
4. Purchase/don't purchase

How about you?