We all have at least one. Maybe you have an author tracker set up. Maybe you check in on their website daily. Maybe you follow them on Twitter or are a fan on Facebook. But we all have at least one author that is on our auto-buy list. As soon as their newest work is announced it goes on our wishlist, assuming that we don't immediately pre-order it. The question is, who is yours?

It's a topic that has been in the bad of my mind for awhile, and certainly was on my mind when I started a discussion in the BlogHer Book Club about how I was getting excited about fall book releases. Many of those are "auto-reads" for me, but some are "auto-buys." I just hadn't thought of them in those terms until I saw Kailana's post on auto-buys. Auto-buy lists are fluid, as our tastes change so do our lists. As we discovered new authors the list gets longer.

It makes me think about my other 'auto-buys'. Alice Hoffman and Anita Shreve used to be on that list, but I don't buy them anymore. Some authors have been on my list for a long time: Isabel Allende, Douglas Coupland, David Adams Richards, Carol Shields (now deceased), Madeleine L'Engle (now deceased), etc. When those authors have new books out, I am there! I am big on Canadian authors. I buy Lori Lansens, Mary Lawson, Donna Morrissey, and a few more automatically. They are not as prolific as the ones I mentioned before, but they are really coming into their craft.

So, what's the difference for me between an auto-read and an auto-buy? An auto-buy is usually an author whose works I've read before and loved. Chances are that I read their book first from the library and then simply had to own it. I needed it on my shelf, where I can pick it up and revisit whenever the whim takes me. The author probably writes fiction, though oddly I'm more likely to buy non-fiction than I've never read before than fiction that I've never read before. (It's one of my personal quirks.) Sometimes an auto-buy for me is a new book by a first-time author who somehow crosses my path and has a concept that just speaks to me. I've rarely been disappointed in these books and the authors go on my auto-buy list. Sometimes it is just the books in a particular series, sometimes it is everything that the author has ever written.

My auto-read list generally contains books that I really, really want to read. But because I read so much I honestly cannot afford to buy all the books that I really, really want to read. If I only read a few books a year, I'd probably buy them all. Thank goodness for libraries. My auto-read books are books that sound really good, but I can wait the extra time I need before reading them (though I still haunt the library's "on order" lists to try to be first in line for them). I'm not worried about spoilers and my brain will not explode if I don't get to read it the second it comes out. Sometimes I get these wrong and something that I thought was a auto-read turns out to be an auto-buy. I normally discover this within the first weekend the book is out and people start blogging about it. On more than one occasion this has resulted in an emergency trip to a bookstore.

The lines between auto-read and auto-buy are pretty fluid for me. Authors go back and forth. Sometimes though, for no apparently reason, an author will just completely drop off both lists. At Magical Musings Liz describes it by saying "the love just isn't there anymore."

You’re so enamored with an author and then … poof. Interest is lost. Don’t know if its because there are so many books and so little time that you have to be more selective in your reading time, or what?

Authors themselves aren't immune from bunting someone off of their auto-buy list. Carol A. Spalding talks about an unnamed author on her own list.

She soared to the top of my auto-buy list, but with each sequential read, she has slipped a notch and with this last book, sadly, she has fallen to my don't-buy list.
This was a really odd experience.

At the All About Romance blog, Sandy muses on what makes a book literary crack, a popular term for those books we must read right. this. second.

Literary crack (the good kind) is a series of books that continues to suck you in no matter how pissed off you might get or disappointed you may be and, even though you may drop out of a series for a while, you know as sure as the sun rises in the morning that you’ll be back. Sooner or later, you need your fix and that, baby, is the definition of crack.

And it hurts so good.

What's your literary crack of choice? Who is on your auto-buy list?

Contributing Editor Sassymonkey also blogs at Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.