Discussion Time: Book Ratings

May 1, 2013 by Anya 28 Comments

Book Ratings

I’ve seen a lot of opinions about rating books and a lot of different strategies for how to deal with them. I recently decided to change my book rating system a little bit, so it seemed like a great time to discuss the various approaches to book ratings and for me to announce formally my new rating system (it’s on the About page).

5 Star Ratings

The most common system I’ve seen when book ratings are used is to rate how many stars you give the book. This is the system Goodreads and Amazon uses, so it is pretty easy to cross-post if you’ve already decided how many stars you are going to give a book. However, what exactly 3 stars means varies widely between reviewers (and possibly between the time of day/mood/etc). I previously had outlined for myself what I wanted each star to mean and it was something like this:

5 stars – amazing, go read it NOW

4 stars – pretty good, minor flaws

3 stars – many or significant flaws, still decent

2 stars – MAJOR flaws, read at your own risk

1 star – I really don’t think you’ll like this at all

That last one is my Minnesotan coming out ;-). I can’t really say that I hate a book, since I’m afraid of offending someone, haha. I’ve had that rating system about a year and found myself giving so many four and five star book ratings even though I didn’t think all of the four star books were on the same level. They just didn’t have many or significant flaws that I could point to. I decided I needed something that spread the top levels out a bit more, since I mostly read books that I’m at least fairly likely to enjoy. Then I was updating my backlog of reviews on Goodreads and let my mouse hover over their stars. This is the Goodreads rating system:

5 stars – it was amazing

4 stars – really liked it

3 stars – liked it

2 stars – it was ok

1 star – did not like it

Now, this might seem really similar to what I was working with before, but to me it’s a huge difference ;-). You can see the difference most strongly in the 2 star rating I think, since previously 2 stars meant that I didn’t like a book, but the Goodreads system has it meaning that it was “meh” but not horrible. The Goodreads system honestly was exactly what I was looking for. It spreads out the “liked” books into 3-4 rankings and shoves all the “didn’t like” rankings into one. I have very few books that I read and actually really don’t like, so this system works perfect for me and is what I’m now using. I certainly could have used more half stars or spread out to an out of ten system, but my categorical brain has trouble deciding once I have that many choices >.>.

Trait Ratings

I’ve seen a couple blogs declare that they don’t like deciding on star book ratings, and instead use “trait ratings” (I just made that label up). By this I mean calling out a book for having a great villain or awesome world-building or sizzling romance. Naithin of Once Upon A Time has a rating system like this where he gives books emblems based on different good traits the book possesses. I love this sort of system for immediately pointing out whether it would have something I’m a fan of (or not so much a fan of). I just haven’t been able to come up with icons and traits that work for me unfortunately ;-). I do still like having some sort of overall rating of whether the book was on the whole enjoyable I suppose.

In the end, book ratings (or lack thereof) are obviously a personal preference for your own blog. If you find it easier or more clear to use one system over another, go for it, it’s your blog after all! However, I think it’s interesting how varied even just the five star book rating system can be. I definitely have to check what 2 stars means for each blogger. This could also get a bit screwy for converting to Goodreads, since I personally did not adjust my rating when I used a slightly different qualification than Goodreads. Do you shift your rating to correspond to what Goodreads considers 2 or 3 stars? What book rating system do you use (if any!). Do you prefer it when a blog has some quick overall rating that you can glance at or do you just ignore it? If you don’t use a rating system, do you have a way of coming up with a star rating for Goodreads/LibraryThing/Amazon or do you opt-out?

Happy Reading!

-A

Filed Under: Discussion Tagged With: book ratings, discussion, rating system

4 Stars: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins Audiobook

April 30, 2013 by Anya 15 Comments

I’m thrilled to say that I’ve finally caught up and finished Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins! I was able to find a copy of the audiobook on my library Overdrive, woot! It was also excellent timing since it let me start Mockingjay right after finishing Catching Fire, definitely necessary ;-). Mockingjay is a spectacular conclusion to this already spectacular trilogy and a book I’m tempted to listen to again if I find myself low on audiobooks >.>. The narration is amazing for Mockingjay and Catching Fire (probably Hunger Games, too, but I only listened to the last two!). If you haven’t finished this trilogy yet, or want to reread it, I definitely recommend the audiobook! There will also be spoilers for the first two books!

Goodreads | Amazon | LibraryThing

Title: Mockingjay
Author: Suzanne Collins
Length: 9 discs
Genre-ish: Dystopia YA
Rating: ★★★★☆- awesome plot, weird ending

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she’s made it out of the bloody arena alive, she’s still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what’s worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss’s family, not her friends, not the people of District 12. Powerful and haunting, this thrilling final installment of Suzanne Collins’s groundbreaking The Hunger Games trilogy promises to be one of the most talked about books of the year. – Goodreads

Strengths:

I loved that Mockingjay departed from the “games” plot line that has been in the last two books. Obviously there aren’t any Hunger Games to participate in now >.>.
We finally get to see much more of the real Panem and the Capitol in Mockingjay, beyond what we peeked at in Catching Fire.
The character developments in Mockingjay were heart-wrenching and compelling. We got to know Gale much better since he’s finally able to be around some, and there is just a lot to find out about all the characters that didn’t play major roles in the first two books.
The plot twists! The last third of the book confused me greatly at times for other reasons, but the plot twists made it all better :D.

Weaknesses:

Without going into too much detail, I really didn’t like parts of the ending. The commentary they made on all the preceding events (and deaths) was just horrible. I’ll discuss more at the end ;-).
Some of the character deaths seemed arbitrary and unnecessary. Yes, they pulled at my heartstrings, but was that the only point??
Love triangle drama… :(

Summary:

I had a couple of reservations about the ending of Mockingjay, however I am very glad that I finally finished The Hunger Games trilogy. It was an epic and wild ride. I am now even more excited for the movies to come out so that I can relieve the adventure all over again :D. Anyone who loves epic adventure, compelling writing, and a great dystopian world should definitely finish this trilogy. While you’re at it, try to find a copy of the audio version and let your ears smile, hehe!

SPOILERY DISCUSSION!!!

All right, I just had to briefly discuss that ending. It’s now been about a month unfortunately (I’m getting better at reviewing right away!), so forgive me and gently correct any messed up details. When Coin and the group start going on about having a Hunger Games with the Capitol children, my chin dropped. I seriously got so many icky feelings about what that conversation said about history repeating itself. Then the whole assassination was crazy, and probably for the best given the conversation previously, but also a bit confusing. Anyone have any insight they can lend to make me feel less confused/icky about the rebel leaders? Or do you think that was the whole point?

Remember to subscribe for weekly reviews of awesome books!

- A

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Filed Under: What A Story - Book Reviews Tagged With: collins, discussion, dystopia, four stars, heroine, mockingjay, trilogy, ya

2013 Bookish Goals Update

April 25, 2013 by Anya 12 Comments

Bookish Goals Update

So I made a couple of goal lists as far as book and blogging are concerned for 2013, and it’s about time I checked in on them ;-). First up are the goals from my Top Ten Bookish Goals list:

1. Read 60 books - According to Goodreads I’m well on my way to this goal and probably should increase the goal since I’m 17 ahead I think…. That will be even farther ahead once I’m through with classes and have a read-a-thon for myself ;-).

2. 3 Older Sci-fi/Fantasy - Hmmmm…. Well I read Dealing with Dragons and the first two books of The Wheel of Time series. I realize I started the first one in December 2012, but it still counts right? I’ll read another just to be fair, haha.

3. 2 Contemporary - I read The Elephant of Surprise and Geography Club. They aren’t quite the contemporary I was planning on, but still totally count :D. I probably will try one more, but I’m pretty sure I prefer my books with dragons.

4. 1 Steampunk - All right, I need help here. Does Clockwork Angel count as steampunk even though there is no steam? I was picturing this being more of a fantasy/sci-fi set in Victorian with crazy inventions, so that would count…. Thoughts?

5. Fewer Review Books/Specific Ones - I’m totally succeeding in this goal! While I’ve still been requesting books from Netgalley and publishers, they have been ones that I’m not sure I will get and am really excited if/when I do. I’ve also in general been giving myself a break on the backlog of review books I still need to read until I’m done with classes for the semester.

6. More from my favorites - This I’m still not doing great on. I wanted to fit more of my favorite authors’ older work in around all the latest and greatest releases, but I’ve been very release crazy so far. I still haven’t read The Way of Kings D: .

7. Reread - Yeah, not going to happen…. There are so many new books that I want to read and there isn’t anything I really want to reread. Maybe something will strike, but so far I’m okay letting this one go.

8. Reading Speed - I think that this has improved. I’ve certainly been reading a book in 2-3 days more often than not (when I focus on one), so that makes me happy. I’ve been able to get ahead on reviews and get some ARC reviews ready for their release dates long in advance. This definitely helps keep the stress off!

That’s it for now! There are two more lists of goals that I’ll probably check-in on at some point, but I’m feeling pretty good about how this year is going :D. Did you make any new year resolutions for your books? How are your goals going?

-A

Filed Under: Discussion Tagged With: discussion, goals 2013

Why Does Google Hate Me?

April 17, 2013 by Anya 27 Comments

Why Does Google Hate Me?

Honesty time, ya’ll. I cannot figure out how to get on Google’s good side. I have read the SEO guides and I have the SEO plugin for WordPress. I follow the optimization guidelines for my posts, making sure that the images have the keyword (usually book title and/or author name) and linking to all of my reviews statically on the Reviews page so that Google’s crawler can find it. But I hear about the number of search hits that many bloggers get each day and I scratch my head at my search visits and ask why does Google seem to hate me??

My Jetpack SiteStats reports 1-5 visits from search terms everyday. My general impression from other bloggers talking about the importance of SEO is that they get a lot more of their traffic from search engines. Now I could be completely off base on that impression, so my first question is do you get a similar number of search engine hits? More? Less? You don’t have to give exact numbers if you don’t want to obviously, I just would really love to know if I am as below average as I feel like I am ;-).

Is it my keywords?

Now, I’ve also been trying to think up some possible solutions for what is going wrong. It is entirely possible that I am coming up with bad keywords that are just too competitive. I know that there are tools out there for finding good keywords, but I have never found a way to do this that works for me. For one thing, I generally don’t want to use something besides the book title for reviews. Do you research good keywords before/after writing a post and change your post to fit them? What do you use as keywords for book reviews?

My backlink numbers?

The other problem I am suspicious of is the number of backlinks that I (don’t) have. I try to comment as much as I can (though that’s a whole other problem) and the links you leave in comments help your inbound link numbers right? I have read that Google uses the number of links that lead to your site/post to decide whether to include you in search results, however I’m worried that comment links aren’t counted…. Does anyone know that for sure? Beyond just comments, though, I haven’t been able to think of a good way to get more backlinks without really annoying people, haha. Do you have any suggestions? Do you worry about your backlink numbers or don’t even think of them?

Something else?

Those are the only two things that I can think of that I am not doing well, however I would love to know if there are other SEO strategies that you are using and I am forgetting about. Tell me your secrets :D.

-A

Filed Under: Discussion Tagged With: discussion, seo, why does google hate me

Multiple Covers and Titles for Books

April 10, 2013 by Anya 23 Comments

Multiple Covers and Titles

I have a bit of a gripe this week. What is it with the same book having not only different covers for different countries, but also different titles?? I understand that for publishing in different countries the way copyright works is that there generally needs to be a new cover. Also, if the book has been translated, the title needs to be translated into something that makes sense and appeals to speakers of the new language. An interesting example of this is Jim C. Hines The Stepsister’s Scheme:

The German cover seems a little ridiculous to me (in terms of female body proportions), but it’s holding on to the three heroine idea from the original cover. The title translates directly into “Three Angels for Armand” where Armand is the prince that needs rescuing in the story. While I’m not a huge fan of the change of focus for the title (since the stepsister’s scheme is pretty awesome), I would believe that these are the same book. However, I didn’t realize that these two were the same book for at least a couple of months:

The style is obviously completely different, but the UK title doesn’t need to be different! Now I’m obviously not in marketing, so maybe they had a very good reason for the complete change in style and title, but it’s freaking confusing when you read international book blogs, hehe. I was super excited for “both” of these books when I was seeing cover images in haul updates. Yes, maybe I should have done a bit more research when I was first seeing The Gathering Dark, but did anyone else get confused by these titles? I honestly would be more likely to pick up The Gathering Dark than Shadow and Bone if I was going on cover and title alone. I’ve since been convinced by all the awesome reviews that Shadow and Bone is fantastic, so now I’m excited for my library hold to come in, don’t worry ;-).

Does anyone have a better idea than me why these extreme changes happen between the US and UK editions? Like I said, I understand different covers because of copyright, but the title doesn’t have to change does it? Have you run into this problem when reading blogs from different countries? Are there other examples of extreme changes that you’ve been confused by? (And don’t get me started on cover changes on later editions….)

-A

Filed Under: Discussion Tagged With: discussion, multiple covers and titles for books

Questions About Twitter

March 27, 2013 by Anya 21 Comments

I Have Questions About Twitter

My confession: Twitter really confuses me! All through high school and college I avoided it like the plague because it was the snobby cool thing to do (sigh) and now when I want to join in the book blogging discussions, I don’t know what I’m doing D: . I’ve read the how-to’s and mostly understand what to do with @, but only kinda #. But now I’m left with etiquette questions about Twitter that pertain mostly to what all the awesome book bloggers that I’m trying to chat with expect.

How I feel trying to talk to new people: awkward ;-)

Introduce Yourself or Just Talk?

So you know when you are watching your Twitter feed and someone that you haven’t talked to before (and don’t completely remember following, but evidently you did) says something interesting? It feels a bit intrusive to butt in to a pre-existing conversation with my thoughts, but I do want to join in. Or perhaps there isn’t a pre-existing conversation, the blogger is just making a statement, but I still haven’t talked to them previously so they feel like a stranger on the street with a cool shirt. It’s a little weird to just go up and start talking about their shirt ya know? So on Twitter, do you expect new people to introduce themselves at least briefly before launching in to a conversation? Or are you okay with completely new people just responding to you?

Replying After Hours/Days

Sometimes I’ll see that someone responded to a tweet hours after they did so, or even the next day. I get the email notifications still because otherwise I’m worried I will completely miss everything and seem more anti-social that I am >.>. However when I then respond back, I find that I barely every get a continued reply. I realize that Twitter isn’t really meant to be a place for drawn out conversations over the course of days, but sometimes I really do want to continue the conversation even though we aren’t on at the same time. Am I being completely silly by tweeting back hours later? Should I just send an email if it’s that important to me? Often it’s not that it’s important enough for an email, I just want to keep talking to that person. This is also a problem since I keep strange hours as a student and am often not on Twitter at the “hot” times of the evening. How do I connect with people when we’re never on at the same time??

Tweet Old Post

I started using the WP plugin Tweet Old Post a while ago because it seemed like a good idea and some bloggers swear by it. However, I’ve noticed there might be two opposing opinions on this one. If I see other people posting automated tweets too often, I get annoyed and I’m sure many of you do as well. I’ve even see whole blog posts about how annoying automated tweets are. I’ve tried to cut down my Tweet Old Post settings so that they only go two or three times a day, so that my overall automated tweet count is at a max of four (since I also have new posts auto-tweeted). How do you feel about this and other automatic tweets like Buffer? Is this a great way to get more blog traffic or a horrible annoyance? Have you ever unfollowed people because of too many automated tweets? How many is too many?

Post Announcements

This is related to the above, but from the other angle. Do you find tweets announcing new posts at a blog useful? Do you keep track of any of your blogs that way? Or are you already following a blogger through email/RSS/etc and a tweet about a new post is old news/annoying? Besides using Twitter to chat with other bloggers/readers, I have mostly assumed that it is useful to tweet about my newest post at least once a day so that people who don’t necessarily follow me another way can see if they are interested. However, this adds to the number of automated tweets that might not spark any conversation. Do you think this is a good use of Twitter or not the point?

All right, those are my main questions and I really would love to know what you think about them. What do you use Twitter for? Do you have any questions about Twitter that you want to add to the discussion?

-A

Filed Under: Discussion Tagged With: discussion, questions about twitter

Spring Bookmark Making!

March 22, 2013 by Anya 4 Comments

Spring Bookmarks!

All right all, confession time. I think the second best thing about books (besides reading them!) is making bookmarks for them :D. Sure you could grab whatever scrap of paper is sitting around to mark your page (because of course you won’t dog ear it >.>), or you could use one of those plain bookmarks bookstores and libraries give out, but how about a cute/epic/custom made bookmark just for that book? Doesn’t that sound like something your book would appreciate? (Imagine a used car salesman saying that last part, haha). But seriously, I have come to completely love papercrafting and stamping, and bookmarks are definitely the most productive use of that obsession. There are really only so many cards I can send out before it starts to look weird <.<.

Anyway, in addition to showing off my new pretty spring bookmarks:

I wanted to explain briefly the process of making them, since it’s super easy and quite fun if you are less artistically inclined. I can make pretty things without getting frustrated about my lack of drawing skills :D. Also just so you know, I have a friend who is more obsessed with papercrafting than I am and I pretty much just use her supplies all the time.

Step 1: Pretty Things!

By “pretty things” I mean paper, stamps and ink ;-). My favorite company is Lawn Fawn since they have freaking adorable stamps. Seriously, look at those little critters! I still haven’t had a chance to use that zebra and tree, but I must D: . This is the hard part about making pretty bookmarks, since you have to actually buy the supplies, but if you are starting small with just one project, it doesn’t take much. Also everything besides the actual piece of paper you end up using is reusable, so you’ll soon find yourself with quite a collection, mwahaha.

Anyway, all crafting/hobby stores that I’ve been to have a decent stamp and paper selection. Getting nice ink can be a little trickier, but I recommend trying to find a slow dry ink for the fun part that is coming up!

Step 2: Shiiiiiiny

After you stamp your cool design on to a bookmark sized piece of paper, the spiffy part comes. Another confession: I love embossing! I’ve generally found that to make your bookmark look more like a finished product and less like a kid’s art project, embossing helps a ton. This is why we wanted the slow dry ink. Embossing is the process of sprinkling (dumping) special embossing powder on to your still-wet ink. You then just tap the extra off and use a small hair dryer or heat gun to heat up the powder. The powder goes through this magical process of looking grainy and weird to suddenly melting and solidifying into a raised, smooth material along the outline of your stamp. If you really like the color ink you have, you can use clear embossing powder just to get the shiny effect (maybe with glitter!), or you can stamp in whatever color you want and then use colored embossing powder. Colored embossing powder is really useful for dark paper, since most colors show up much better in the powder than the ink. It’s especially fun to get metallic powder that’s even more shiny :D.

There are lots of other things you can do to fancy up your bookmark, such as layering papers, coloring stamps in with marker, and getting creative with different colors on different parts of the stamp (kind of tricky, by the way). This is just the basic process that I use to make fun and simple bookmarks that take very little skill, haha!

What sort of crafty things do you like to do? Have you made your own bookmarks before? I would love to see some pretty pictures!

-A

Filed Under: Discussion Tagged With: discussion, making bookmarks

Long Vs. Short Books

March 20, 2013 by Anya 26 Comments

Discussion: Long Vs. Short Books

Long Vs. Short Books

Hello wonderful people, I have a question for you today: how do you feel about long books versus short books? Does the length of the book matter in your decision to read it or accept it for review (if you accept review requests)? There is a certain amount of pressure to get lots of books read so that we can keep up content for our blogs, so does the idea of spending twice the time reading one book give you the shakes?

Me trying to get ahead.

I’ve found that I’ve become a bit more stressed about keeping a steady stream of content in the form of reviews for this blog, and the pressure doesn’t get much better even as my reading speed has increased. Now that I can always put up two reviews a week, I just want to keep pushing myself. This has caused me to look at some of the books I want to read soon (I’m looking at you Way of Kings) and worried about how long it would take me to read it. Instead, it seems like a better choice to read a shorter book, and I tell myself that I will just get ahead on my review schedule and then read the long book. The problem is that it never happens!

Beyond just a pressure for content, I also want to read everything NOW! It’s so hard to accept that I can only realistically read one book at a time, so deciding which one feels like I’m choosing a favorite kitten (they are all adorable, gah!). But if I read the short books first, then I’ll be able to get to more of them sooner, right?

It’s also just no fun when you find yourself with a review book that was a lot longer than you thought (Veil was like this). Usually I do honestly want to finish the book, since it did look interesting and is fairly entertaining, but it can take me weeks to get through a long review book if it’s only half holding my interest :(. Yes, perhaps I should have just stopped, but I’m a bit completion-obsessed >.>.

So I’m wondering if you have a cut off for how long of a book you are willing to take a chance on. Obviously if a book is super exciting, I’ll ignore the page count because it probably doesn’t matter. However does length ever factor into your decision of what to read next? Or whether to accept a book in the first place? What is your cutoff for what is a “long” book vs. a “short” book?

-A

Filed Under: Discussion Tagged With: discussion, long vs. short books

Do You Ever Read Books Without Reviewing?

March 12, 2013 by Anya 26 Comments

Reading without Reviewing?

Reading Books Without Reviewing Them

Hi lovely readers! I wanted to ask your advice today and get a general idea of how people handle books that they read but don’t want to review for one reason or another. For the most part I review everything I read because of the pressure to get more content up and my desire to get my thoughts out there. However, I’ve been thinking about situations where I wouldn’t really want to write up a review, and I’m interested in what other reasons some of you might have….

It’s All Been Said Already

I’ve run into this feeling with a number of books recently, most notably Catching Fire and Mockingjay. I mean, let’s be honest, it probably has already been said! I just can’t think of what I could contribute to these books anymore, since it seems likely that anyone who wants to read them already has, or is planning to. Anyone who hasn’t heard of them either has no interest in that genre/reading in general or is new to the scene. I suppose it is fun to write about last year’s (two years, etc) popular books and reminisce, but perhaps then a discussion post with lots of spoilers would be better? As a blog reader, do you like reading posts about older books you’ve already heard of, but not for a while? Or is it just noise that you skip over?

I Can’t Figure Out What I Think

This fortunately hasn’t happened to me yet, but I’ve been close. What if you reach the end of a book, and you just have no idea what to say about it? I’ve had a couple books where I didn’t have much of an opinion, especially because I felt like all my criticisms were due to be reading outside of my genre, so I wasn’t sure I should say anything. So far, I’ve been able to think through my feelings (gah, feelings!) more and sort out what was the book’s fault and what was my brain’s fault, but I’m worried I’ll find a book where this can’t happen for one reason or another. Has anyone decided not to review a book they read for this reason? If no one says this has happened to them, I’ll be reassured ;-) (this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say anything, tell me!).

The Book Doesn’t Fit My Blog

This one I can totally understand. If you have a blog with a fairly specific theme and you are trying to keep to that genre(s), skipping reviewing a book for your blog makes complete sense. In these situations, do you still write a review for Goodreads/Amazon/etc? I think I would be conflicted since I would in part rather be spending time reading more books! This reason is also why there is the “(mostly)” in my blog description ;-). If you choose to post only positive reviews, not liking the book also makes perfect sense :).

Avoiding The Stress A Bit

I haven’t had too much trouble with stressing out while reading books to review, however I can imagine knowing you are going to review a book would change some people’s reading experiences. Do you ever feel like you need to take a break from reading books to review them?

I’m sure there are lots more reasons out there, and I really want to hear them! Have you ever decided to read a book without reviewing it? If so, what were your reasons? Do you find yourself reviewing most of the books you read, or does it really depend?

Happy Reading!

-A

Filed Under: Discussion Tagged With: discussion, reading without reviewing

Book Discovery: What’s Wrong?

March 4, 2013 by Anya 12 Comments

Discussion: What Is Wrong With Book Discovery?

What is Wrong With Book Discovery?

A few weeks ago I discovered a lovely article through Radish Reviews Linkspam listing 25 hard truths about the publishing industry. One of them was, as they put it, that book discovery is “wonky.” Well, they might have used more colorful language in addition, but I think we can all agree that there is some wonkiness. I wanted to take a moment today to start talking about the problem so that maybe we can start brainstorming solutions. After all, it’s the technological revolution, why can’t we get someone to find a way to recommend all the books we actually want to read??

Define “Book Discovery”

First, let’s get a good idea of the problem. Book discovery is the process of finding new books. Back in the old days (hehe) this was mostly dependent on word of mouth: “Oh, you liked that book, you have to try this one!” There are a fair number of sites that have tried to automate book discovery, such as Goodreads, Amazon and the beta of Bookish, but they just don’t always work great. I think a lot of us will agree that we still rely on word of mouth, but now we can get those recommendations through our blogger friends. Wouldn’t it be awesome if the recommendations for books worked as well as Pandora or Netflix? I mean, Pandora guesses pretty darn well what music I will like based on ONE song. And while sometimes I hit a bad movie with Netflix recommendations, most of them are what I was in the mood for. Why is it then, that when I enter in Daughter of Smoke and Bone into Bookish, I get suggestions that don’t even like vaguely similar from the description? Seriously, I was getting books that didn’t even look like fantasy! Not to mention that there are doubtless lots of indie books out there that I want to find, but I am going to have to get very lucky to stumble onto a review of them from a friend. Otherwise I’m not likely to hear of them, let alone from a trusted source that will lead me to actually try out the book.

It’s also worth pointing out that there are two different models of automated book discovery. Goodreads focuses on a full profile approach, where they make recommendations based on your entire shelf, but this makes it difficult for you to know if a book has particular aspects that you might be looking for if your shelves aren’t very specific (like me :( ). Bookish and Amazon have narrower approaches where they make specific recommendations based on one book. This is nice since you know if you are in the mood for that type of book, their recommendation might be useful. However it can also lead to spurious recommendations when they make a match based on one attribute that you actually don’t care about at all…. I think this might be causing my confusion on Bookish’s recommendations ;-). Which model do you prefer?

Problem 1: Ratings Material

Now, I’m just guessing here, but I’m willing to bet that one of the problems with making an algorithm for book discovery is that it takes a lot longer to read a book than listen to a song or watch a movie. It’s probably just difficult to get enough feedback from readers to categorize all the world’s books reliably on the categories that count (or even figure out which categories count!). While Goodreads gets lots of reviews on books with a fair amount of popularity, there are plenty of books without any reviews at all. While ratings are helpful, it seems likely that a review that can be mined for keywords is necessary to get good results in an algorithm. Thoughts? Movie and music discovery systems have also been setup to get feedback on how the algorithm did, with all the thumbs up and down and Netflix begging for ratings after you finish a movie. However, there isn’t the connection between book discovery recommendations and feedback on several of the sites. Amazon does ask for feedback, but I find that I often haven’t finished the book (or even started it) by the time they send an email. This might be due again to the amount of time it takes to read a book, or perhaps Goodreads just isn’t as focused on this element of book discovery?

Problem 2: Money

Netflix is a service that you pay for, so there is an obvious monetary benefit to them perfecting their recommendations engine. Pandora is a bit different, since (unless you upgrade) it’s free, however they want you to come back and listen to their ads, so again they want to be the best. While you could make the argument that Amazon wants to have the best recommendations so you buy books based on them, the monetary incentive from the publishing side seems to have corrupted book discovery on Amazon. Personally, it’s gotten to the point that I don’t even look at Amazon reviews because I have no way of knowing if that is an author boosting their positive reviews or bribing fans to post more reviews, given all the scandals we keep hearing about. This seems to be a problem of Amazon’s algorithm being too easily influenced and the publishing industry being too closely tied to book sales. This is obviously not changing anytime soon, but it is a hurdle that will have to be figured out when designing a recommendation algorithm.

So, now I want to hear from you. Do you use recommendation engines as a primary source of book discovery or do you just rely on suggestions from friends? Is there a particular site that you prefer? Do you think the problems that I’ve listed can be solved easily? Do you think that they are problems at all?

- A

Filed Under: Discussion Tagged With: book discovery, discussion