That's a difficult one to say definitively as I've only written the one book currently. But with Gold in the South, I did quite a bit of research, taking notes from each book read (otherwise I'd just forget it all), and then referring back to those notes when I actually wrote the book.
The writing process itself is fairly straightforward. I had a reasonable idea of what I wanted to say, and achieve, every time I sat down in front of the computer. The writing is relatively easy once you have those overarching ideas in your mind. I'd write for several hours each day and try and finish whatever section of the book I had in mind. It was always linear, in the sense that I wrote each chapter successively, as it appears in the final book.
It has to be said though that that first period of writing is very much the first draft. It went through substantial revisions, both for style and content considerations and particularly for grammatical / editorial conventions. As it was my first book, I did have to go closely into the actual mechanics of what is/is not acceptable in a book. It was quite an education.

For Gold in the South, I did it myself! It's serviceable I think, though if the book provides sufficient funds I'll approach someone with more visually creative juices than myself. Some people are just able to originate great designs. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them!
I'd like to think that people don't 'judge a book by its cover' but, from my own experience, it's pretty clear that they do.

That's a tough one, and probably impossible to answer. As I sit back in my chair right now and look up at my bookshelf, immediately in front of me, left to right I can see from authors K to T. So, to pick out 5 from these. I remember being very affected by Primo Levi's If This Is a Man, his memoir from the concentration camp. He doesn't lay anything on too thick (he doesn't need to, of course) and is very matter of fact about the experience. This just adds to the impact of the book.
Moving along. Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer is next. This just blew me away when I first read it as a young man. But I was somewhat under the grip of Existentialism then, so whether I'd feel the same about it now, I don't know. One day I'd like to go back and read many of these books, but now is not quite the time.
I've got a few more of Miller's books (including the Rosy Crucifixion Trilogy, which I haven't read, I confess), before coming to my third choice, Nabokov's Lolita. Again, I read this many years ago and the thing that I was particularly impressed by was the quality of his prose.
Moving along the shelf, and caught between the 7 Harry Potter books - none of which I've read - and two mighty volumes of Shakespeare's collected plays - not read much of either, shamed to say - is W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants. Like most books I seem to read, if you are asked me about its plot line or what happened at the end, I'd be hard pressed to give you an answer, and it is the same with this one. However, what I do recall from all my books, is how satisfied they made me feel after reading, and this one in particular I look back on with a strong sense of 'this was worth reading'. It's a slim volume, covering just 4 lives, but it's beautifully written. I think that in particular was what I took away from this book.
Finally, and maybe unfairly jumping past Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, my bookshelf ends (or rather there's a plaque obscuring the remainder of the books) with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, broken down into seven individual books, which I suspect is aimed at younger readers, though I do recall reading it first 20 years ago in one large volume. As much as anything, the book is an achievement, in that the man has created a whole world as background to his book i.e. a global history of Middle Earth as well as its own language. Writing Gold in the South (I shiver to mention my own humble offering amongst these more worthy titles but...) one becomes aware of the importance of having a clear backstory for both characters and the scene that you are setting. I was fortunate in being able to draw on real history for the scene, whereas Tolkien had to invent the whole thing. It's really incredible, and I remember thinking so at the time of reading. The writing, too, is spot on and he also knows how to keep the story moving, a key quality as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, those are just a glimpse from my seat and I hope I have managed to successfully side-step this impossible question.

I'm a cheap skate so tend to buy from the charity shops. This means that the choice is fairly eclectic and just depends on what people have brought in to the shop. One day it could be a novel, another a biography, a history book, some other type of non-fiction. Needless to say, as my main reading time is before bed, the key criteria is that it needs to hold my interest.
Also get the Economist, in order to keep up with current affairs. Though I'd be lying if I said that I manage to read it from cover to cover each week!

I don't have an e reader. Always read hard copy. I don't seem to possess an I-phone, or similar, either.

A mess.

I grew up in a small village in rural Norfolk but went to boarding school from 11-18, so never really fully think of myself as being a 'country lad', though in older life I must confess to feeling more comfortable in the countryside as opposed to the city/town. I think you're on to a hard task trying to pin down how your formative years influence your writing. I haven't always written things, and wasn't anything special at English at school. I just started writing a diary when I was 18, and set to take a year's gap year, and that diary writing has continued ever since. It's something I always go back to, but couldn't put my finger on exactly why.

As I say at the back of the e-book, I've always wanted to have a crack at writing a novel, but a) always lacked a window of time/opportunity - I seem to have been on the treadmill of life since 18 - and b) never really had a cracking idea to write about.
However, this summer saw a series of events which opened up a bit of free time. Free tie is maybe not the best description, but suffice to say that I wasn't being employed by someone or, more normally for me, wasn't busy with some personal project of entrepreneurship. Anyway, I realised I could have a couple of months in which to write an extended piece. I wasn't sure what.
I think that I surmounted point b) by just coming to the realisation that the actual stories of most books is relatively simple e.g boy meets girl, falls in love, that love thwarted by something, overcoming of obstacle, boy and girl reconciled, happy ending, kind of thing, and that the key is how you go about revealing that basic story. Always to bear in mind that the reader doesn't know what's going to happen and are hard wired to want to know. That is what the writer needs to trade on.
Anyway, this is what I tried to do, pulling in my interest in Spain's civil war, my own relationship with Spain (my wife's Spanish), and linking it to Bernard Diaz's account of the fall of Montezuma. Result: Gold in the South.