To prevent 'judging a book by its cover,' you must 'not misread or allow others to misread the preliminary information'
Unread stories—have you ever avoided one because you held a different image from reality and thought, 'This must be this kind of story, so it won't suit me'?
Have you ever read that story later, realized you had misunderstood it and regretted it, thinking, 'I should have read this sooner!'?
Even though you don't know the content yet, you form an arbitrary image and pass over 'a story you could have actually loved'—this so-called 'judging a book by its cover' is the 'natural enemy' of novel content, causing a loss for both readers and authors.
To prevent 'reading decline' (the decline of reading printed material), we must also somehow deal with this troublesome bias (preconception).
Readers form negative images from 'misreading'
What is necessary to not do or allow 'judging a book by its cover' is to prevent 'negative images' caused by 'misunderstandings'.
If you have ever judged a book by its cover even once, you probably have experience with this, but...
To 'judge a book by its cover' means that you hold a 'negative image' of that story.
If it is not a misunderstanding at all and it truly 'does not suit you,' then it cannot be helped, but...
(There are genres with obvious 'landmines,' such as erotica or gore. Things that are 'physiologically impossible' will never suit your tastes no matter how hard you try.)
Because you misread the information, don't you think it is too sad and a waste to hold a negative image?
To prevent 'judging a book by its cover,' we must first prevent this 'misreading of information' and 'holding a negative image that does not match the reality'.
■ 'The image held by the reader' and 'the actual content' are different things
Everyone, have you ever imagined 'this story must be this kind of story' from a book's title or synopsis?
...And how often was that 'correct'?
Among them, aren't there times when you thought, 'It was completely different from what I expected!'?
Readers expand their imagination on their own based on 'words' and the 'atmosphere of the wording' included in the title and synopsis.
However, that image is not necessarily correct.
Rather, since the 'person reading' and the 'person writing' are completely different 'separate human beings', isn't it a miracle that the image matches perfectly without the slightest difference?
Personally, I think the 'trick to finding interesting novels' is to not imagine the content from the title.
I believe that one should, as much as possible, stop making 'arbitrary assumptions' based solely on 'preliminary information' like titles or synopses.
No matter how much you imagine, that is merely 'your own internal imagination' and not the actual content of the novel.
For example, can a story that exceeds the reader's imagination really be imagined before reading it?
(If you could imagine it, then at that point, it 'cannot exceed your imagination'.)
It is the height of 'wastefulness' to judge a 'story that exceeds imagination' based on your own 'pre-reading imagination' and decide to stop reading it.
In reality, you cannot read every novel you encounter, so the act of 'choosing which stories to read' is inevitable, but...
Even just having the awareness that 'this story I almost passed over might actually be interesting...' should increase the probability of finding an 'interesting novel'.
■ When looking at others' reviews, you should only pick up 'objective information'
When deciding which novel to read, don't some of you refer to reviews written by others?
However, there are points prone to misinterpretation hidden here as well.
When you actually read reviews, opinions like 'I was tricked by other people's reviews!' appear with quite a high frequency, but...
(I see this often, especially in book reviews on Amaz○n.)
Aren't people forgetting the fundamental truth that everyone has different tastes—the absolute basics of human nature?
What is 'interesting!' to 'someone else whose tastes and preferences differ from yours' might be 'boring!' to you.
And conversely, a work that others panned could be a 'masterpiece' to you... that is entirely possible.
Impressions expressing 'emotions'—such as 'interesting,' 'made me cry,' or 'made my heart flutter'—are 'subjective information' that varies from person to person.
If it is a review from 'someone whose tastes and preferences match your own,' it is helpful, but otherwise, it is completely unreliable.
If you want to use reviews as a reference, the points you should look at are 'objective information' that is not swayed by personal taste.
The relationship dynamics (childhood friends, age gap, forbidden relationships, etc.), world-building, character types, and so on...
You should identify the 'objective information' regarding whether the work contains 'elements you can enjoy'.
(Though, if you dig into those details too deeply, you might end up stepping on unexpected spoilers, so it's a high-difficulty task for those who dislike spoilers... ← Since some reviews are considerate of spoilers, while others contain them normally...)
■ People who can't read numbers are the ones most easily swayed by them
I think there are quite a lot of people who use rankings, numerical values, or star ratings as their criteria when choosing stories to read.
That is their own personal 'preference,' so I won't say it's bad, but...
It's precisely those people who often don't care at all about the 'reliability' of those rankings or numbers...
Recently, 'fake #1 rankings' in the advertising industry and 'shill reviews' on e-commerce sites have become issues (← Given that sites like 'Sakura Checker' for 'identifying shills' are becoming popular, I think 'the world is coming to an end...')...
Perhaps such 'fraud' exists in every industry and circle, doesn't it?
'Numbers don't lie, but people lie with numbers' is a saying, but...
Being swayed by falsified numbers is the worst kind of 'waste of time.'
In the first place, rankings and numerical values on novel posting sites fluctuate rapidly depending on timing.
If exposure increases, the numbers jump up all at once, but they drop if it decreases.
(This is a phenomenon known as 'new arrival boost' or 'completion boost.' Depending on the site or strategy, there seem to be other times when boosts are likely to occur, but I'm still in the middle of researching that, so I can't say anything definitive.)
Is it really okay to use numbers that increase or decrease depending on the presence of 'exposure' as a 'measure of how interesting something is'?
(By the way, there are also periods when 'favorites' and 'bookmarks' are more likely to increase (they are generally the same as the boost periods). Since it's hard to get them to increase if you miss this window, it seems this is a world where timing and strategy really matter...)
As I wrote in the review section above, what is 'interesting' to others is different from what is 'interesting' to you.
Can you really find what is 'interesting' to you through rankings and numbers assigned by 'others who are not you'?
Rather than trying hard to discern numbers that you don't even know if you can trust, isn't re-examining your own 'tastes' and 'preferences' a much shorter path to finding 'interesting novels'?
■ It is the 'user's eye' that creates a 'world where hard work isn't rewarded'
When you operate multiple sites and blogs, data on 'search terms' naturally gathers, but...
There is a search term I've been curious about for a long time: 'honest people get the short end of the stick'.
(This is not just about this specific wording; if you include similar phrasing, the number becomes quite significant.)
If you just honestly keep making high-quality things, someone will eventually find them and you will be rewarded...
Is that world just a 'fairy tale' from a distant era, and is the current era a world where 'those who do dishonest things without getting caught are the winners'...?
(Looking at examples like the fraud by a certain car repair company that was the industry leader, it really feels unbearable, doesn't it...)
I believe that "if you can change the cause", you can change the current situation.
However, that "cause" is extremely troublesome and difficult to improve...
To put it bluntly, it is the user's "eye for quality".
For example, if users were all people who chose things without looking at "quality" or "content" at all and only looked at "numbers"...?
It would naturally become a world where "those who win are the ones who inflate their numbers, even if they have to fake it," wouldn't it?
Conversely, if users had actually been looking at "quality" and "content", even if numbers were faked, "truly high-quality things would be able to conquer the world."
I say this with self-reflection, but since entering society, I have been made to realize time and again how "careless" users are and how "haphazardly" they look at things.
Even though they choose things "haphazardly" based on "vague images" or "numbers whose reliability is unknown," users surprisingly do not doubt their own "eye for quality".
Perhaps, in order not to regret their choices, they are trying not to think that "my eye for quality might have been wrong."
However, a "lack of an eye for quality" will certainly corrode the users themselves.
In a world where "those who can successfully deceive users are the winners," only deception techniques develop, and quality is increasingly "neglected."
"Honest creators" who can make high-quality things retire because they "weren't rewarded," and "truly good things" disappear from the world.
And users who were deceived into choosing things will likely give up without noticing anything, saying, "It's not that it's incredibly good, but since everyone else is rating it highly, there probably isn't anything better than this."
"A world where hard work isn't rewarded," "a world where honest people are made to look like fools"—have you ever thought about what that is "made of"?
The answer is "people." It is the "human eye" that cannot see the truth.
Conversely, the trick to creating a "rewarding world" is for "people to properly" look at things."
It is about looking at things as they are, flatly, without judging them based on 'superficial information' or 'arbitrary images'.
And it is about discerning things with 'your own eyes,' not through the 'opinions of others'.
■ To cultivate a 'discerning eye,' you must learn more 'ways of looking at things'
Even if you say you will 'discern things with your own eyes,' it is pointless if your 'eyes' are covered in scales.
To have the 'scales fall from your eyes'—that is, for your previous strange preconceptions to disappear and for the truth to become clearly visible—you must learn ways of looking at things.
This does not mean that learning just one excellent 'way of looking at things' is enough.
Things look different depending on the angle.
It is about knowing as many as possible of the various 'ways of looking at things' from every angle.
In my own small way, I also share such 'ways of looking at things' from time to time ↓.
It is likely not straightforward to get users who do not doubt their own 'discerning eyes' to learn new 'ways of looking at things'.
Furthermore, those on the side of 'wanting to successfully deceive users' will never agree with 'making users smarter'.
(Even if you manage to deceive them and make a sale, it is ultimately a 'transient' and fleeting thing. As long as users do not become smarter, there is no way to be truly 'rewarded' anyway...)
Even so, I want to live in a 'rewarding world' rather than an 'unrewarding world'.
I want to live in a world where 'substance' is properly recognized, rather than a world where 'superficiality' and 'pretense' are celebrated.
I want to live in a world where 'you can succeed by sticking to what you believe in,' rather than a 'world where you cannot succeed unless you deceive others'.
My own information dissemination is still clumsy, and it may be that what I share is of no use to anyone...
I just think that I do not want to live a life where I 'know what I should do' but do nothing, only to lament that 'the times were bad'.