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As far as recommendations, how about something like Amazon's recommendation engine? I've found that very accurate (it should be; I spent ages training it) but it tends to hit books I've already read, since there aren't a whole lot of books that fit my requirements that I haven't read yet. It would be great if something like Smashwords had that, geared to indie ebooks -- with quality as one of the parameters. Actually, I'd pay for that. Let's say it added 50 cents to the price of an ebook, that going to pay for the recommendation engine -- I'd pay that without a second thought, if it was as good as Amazon's system, which is basically dead on. It's worth that to me to find good ebooks I want to read. Of course, this would require having someone actually read the book in question, which might be an issue with a lot of ebooks that only sell a few dozen copies ... but then again, if something was rated high quality (the higher the quality, the more reading would be required; you can spot suck pretty quickly) its sales would probably skyrocket, which could be a win all around -- not least in encouraging authors to produce higher-quality ebooks.
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