the quality of any body of work is incredibly subjective. take a look at any best-sellers list and pick a random book off it: chances are (if you're like me) that you'll think it was a waste of time after having read it. so then how do you find good content? 1) have friends with common tastes, and consult them. this becomes difficult if you're a millennial surrounded by peers who don't read. 2) find short-form blogs for which the sunk cost in deciding if you like them and want to follow them is low; expand into adjacent blogs & writers. blogs don't link to each other quite like they did in the past (e.g. webrings), so this almost always puts you back into some form of social media for the aggregation (reddit), and those aggregators quite often degrade/drift over time. 3) follow the algorithm. the only platform i've found that's semi-decent at introducing me to new, quality, creators is YouTube (or TikTok, but that's a substantially different genre).
books are cool, but if any of the above tracks with you, the barrier to entry is actually a lot more substantial than the other forms of media we're accustomed to (tv shows, video games, etc). writers shoot themselves in the foot by writing massive tomes that take 800 pages to say what could have been better communicated in 200. introductions are the epitome of authors totally losing track of what the value they provide is -- and yet new authors still include them freakishly often.
books are cool, but if any of the above tracks with you, the barrier to entry is actually a lot more substantial than the other forms of media we're accustomed to (tv shows, video games, etc). writers shoot themselves in the foot by writing massive tomes that take 800 pages to say what could have been better communicated in 200. introductions are the epitome of authors totally losing track of what the value they provide is -- and yet new authors still include them freakishly often.