[beAbU]

I'm extremely wary of anything written from 2024 onwards by lesser known authors.

I've spotted a book once in the wild that actually had a ghibli-style piss-tinted cover image, which was a dead giveaway, but it's not always so clear cut.

[chrsw]

2024 is a good cut-off. I use these additional heuristics. Bad cover art. Not from a real publisher or not from an author that hasn't published before 2024. I hope that real books that just happen to slip through the cracks, that are also genuinely good books will eventually surface as easily findable somehow. Maybe that's wishful thinking, I don't know.

I know one thing. It's grim out there for publishing and real humans who have something good to say but don't have a popular voice.