Welcome to Tuesday Book Chat.
This is where we encourage book lovers to answer our bookish question of the week. As we are a faith-based group the questions refer mainly to Christian fiction or non-fiction.
Today’s question is:
How do you find books set in a specific location?
We look forward to hearing your thoughts. Please join in the conversation by commenting on this post or on the blog post shared in our Australasian Christian Writers Facebook Group. Remember to comment today on Tuesday Book Chat to enter the giveaway.
Let’s chat!
When I was doing a challenge looking for books in different states of America I googled and found a Christian site. I think it was called fiction finder, back then as the books were listed in different ways. Genre, location, subject etc, found some of the states I was struggling to find this way. I did find some sites with books from a country but had no order, they had both fiction and non-fiction. I used the site as a last choice, my first was to ask my friends online. Now I would ask in a group like Avid readers or another Christian group. I also check out the lists on Goodreads. There are some amazing lists there.
Recently I asked chatgpt and it was very helpful. I could ask can you suggest some Christian books set in South Australia and it will give me a list. Then can ask more specific questions to narrow it down even more.
The good thing about sites like Goodreads, Fiction finder is they are free to list for authors. I don’t trust sites where authors are charged to list a book when there are so many free options online.
Your turn.
I look forward to reading your comments here or at the FB group.
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Hi Jenny, This is an interesting question. When I was co-hosting a podcast that focused on Christian contemporary romance (CCR) niche, we did episodes that covered all 50 US States. It was really hard to find CCR settings for some of them and I developed my go-to list for finding specific setting locations:
1. Avid Readers of Christian Fiction Facebook Group
– Facebook groups have great search functionality.
– Sometimes I’d search in our own Australasian Christian Writers (ACW) Facebook Group because we have many years of Weekend Book Fun archived group posts that include book links. I’ve also searched for books in Christian Writers Downunder (CWD) Facebook Group.
2. Ask my own specific location question in Avid Readers of Christian Fiction Facebook group if my initial searches didn’t find anything.
– There are 1000’s of Christian fiction readers who actively participate at different times in the Avid Readers group. If they can’t provide any suggestions, then it’s unlikely I’ll find a book set in that specific location anywhere else.
3. Goodreads – search the lists on the site.
4. Group blogs – including Australasian Christian Writers (current blog plus the original Blogger site we set up more than a decade ago) and Christian Writers Downunder blog.
– I use the website search functionality to see what shows up. Often settings aren’t easily searchable because they’re not named in the book title or subtitle or book description. Blog posts tend to include more specific information on the book content. Reviewers often mention the setting in their blog post book reviews.
I find the Fiction Finder website search functionality clunky, from a location/setting search perspective. Where Fiction Finder is useful is for finding books that address social issue topics that are categorised in their lists eg. alcoholism, substance abuse, domestic violence.
AI searches are amazing in what they can find. I wish they’d been available when I was looking for obscure books on niche topics for StoryChats.
My personal opinion is that AI searches have made the whole concept of a book listing website obsolete.
Book listing websites where authors pay to list their book are a well known 20th century junk marketing scam ripoff. Readers weren’t visiting these websites to find books last century, and now we have AI, social media, BookTok, etc. these old fashioned book listing junk marketing websites are the dinosaurs who will eventually disappear forever—assuming authors are smart and don’t get conned by these dodgy scams.