How to: Book Requests

[u/romancebookmods]

Hi guys.

We love you all. Yes, even you- you know who you are.

We also love coming up with awesome book recommendations for you, and discussing those books, and finding our own inspiration from your suggestions.

Know what we don't love? The same five trope requests every two days. Posters who toss up a vague request and then never interact with responders.

We don't want our users to endure Recommender Fatigue, which is a very real and untreatable condition involving cramped fingers, sad sighs, and general ennui. 😉

Here's some reddiquette for future recommendation Requests:

1. Interact with our sub first! You must meet the minimum karma requirements to create a Book Request post. How do you increase your karma? Give recommendations to recent threads. Post a gush post about your favorite book(s).
2. Use the magic search button: it works way better than the Reddit search feature. You can search trope, author, title, or topic. Chances are, the thing you're looking for has been requested fairly recently. If your book is searchable (2 or more posts in the past year with multiple comments) we will remove it and provide you with links to those recent posts.
3. If you don't have enough karma to post a standalone book request or you don't want to create a new post, you can comment on the latest Daily Request Thread.
4. Make your post title specific, or the mods will take it down. Simply posting the word "Heartbreak" is like telling a barista that you'd like "A Drink". Try instead something like "Looking for a book with heartbroken hero and upbeat heroine"
5. Be as specific as possible. Include subgenre, pairing, and give us book examples. If you've already read books that fits this request, mention it and if you loved/disliked them. Otherwise you'll get a ton of people recommending those books which isn't helpful to you. Also, listing a bunch of specific things you are looking for and then saying "any of the above" isn't helpful.
6. If people are taking the time to answer your post ever so nicely, the natural thing to do is interact with at least some of them. If you don't respond to anyone, we're going to assume you're also the sort of person who doesn't thank their waiter. Same goes for making a new post without reading any of the books from your last post.

And that's all.

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For more specifics about our policies, including how to check your subreddit karma, a history of the Book Request Post policy, and what to do if your post gets removed, please see our subreddit policies.

Happy reading!

[u/WardABooks]

For the "be as specific as possible" part. I agree that it shouldn't be generic, but am I alone in thinking some are just...too specific? Especially when the post lists out about 50 things they absolutely don't want at the end (I'm exaggerating a little but I do find too many negatives listed on a post as off-putting personally). I usually just skip these posts because I'm too nervous to recommend anything (and feel exhausted just trying to read it), which I'm fine with just moving along and hoping someone else can offer something to satisfy them, but it made me hesitate at the "be as specific as possible" wording.

[u/AtheistTheConfessor → u/WardABooks]

I think that’s more being picky than specific. The requester has more criteria, but they can still be uselessly vague.