I'm not as familiar with the book scene as I am with the music scene, but I see a lot of similarities. Discovery is a huge issue, and takes a lot of effort.
I listen to a specific sub-sub genre of metal that gets no mainstream (even from "big" metal publications) attention. The best way I have found to come across new albums is to subscribe to really small labels that specialize in the genre of music.
Many of these labels are hobbies or part time jobs for their owners, but I find they do an excellent job curating music I'll be interested in.
The problem, is often subscribing and keeping up to date with these labels is really tough. Fortunately, for music, we have bandcamp.com which does a pretty decent job of this (although it takes some additional work [1]). If bandcamp.com went away, I don't know how I'd discover most of my new music.
I listen to a specific sub-sub genre of metal that gets no mainstream (even from "big" metal publications) attention. The best way I have found to come across new albums is to subscribe to really small labels that specialize in the genre of music.
Many of these labels are hobbies or part time jobs for their owners, but I find they do an excellent job curating music I'll be interested in.
The problem, is often subscribing and keeping up to date with these labels is really tough. Fortunately, for music, we have bandcamp.com which does a pretty decent job of this (although it takes some additional work [1]). If bandcamp.com went away, I don't know how I'd discover most of my new music.
Does the book scene have anything similar?
[1] https://blog.line72.net/2021/12/23/converting-bandcamp-email...