[hrosvit]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

I never said that you read reviews on Amazon. You say now that you don't consider the act of publishing to be a "recommendation", but before you said:

Which would imply that you don't disagree that publishing is a recommendation, but you don't consider it a social recommendation. I don't disagree with that, but I also don't consider Amazon reviews to be social recommendation, so I asked you what is the difference because I don't see one. Both cases are recommendations by people that I don't know, have never met, and who don't recommend the book to me specifically.


Both the information on the author and the cover that made you buy it were conveniently placed at your disposal by the publisher. So you bought it based on the publisher's recommendation, even if you don't know who the publisher was.


You do know that the fact that a book is popular is a recommendation, right?

So the fact that a publisher put a synopsis on a book and that I see a book lots of places qualify as recommendations? I guess the author recommended the book to me by writing it in the first place.

Fine; I give up. You win; I purchase my books based on recommendations.

And the reason I said that I brought up "recommendations from a social point of view" is because this entire thread started out as a discussion of books and social networking sites. It had absolutely nothing to do with publishing.

And my statement "I was speaking of recommendations from a social point of view" did not imply anything about publishing. You inferred that. I was stating that this thread was about sharing opinions of books on social networking sites, which would be of no interest to me. I stated that I don't base my reading on recommendations (again, speaking specifically of these social networking sites, as well as adivce from friends, etc.). Your first statement was "I hate to tell you this, but that isn't possible. At the very least the fact that the book was published means that it has the endorsement of the publisher." Up until this point, no one had mentioned publishers. You broke new ground.

Let me issue the following disclaimer: I was under the impression we were discussing what I would consider to be traditional forms of book recommendations - book clubs, advice from friends, book reviews, blogs, etc. I had no idea that the concept of recommendations involved such acts as publishing the book and putting a synopsis on the jacket. I hereby withdraw all claims that I do not purchase books based on recommendations.

Now that we've cleared that up, Wikipedia tells me that in 2010, a little less than 330,000 books were published in the US. I assume the vast majority have a synopsis included. Does anyone have any advice how I should sort through all these books that have been officially recommended to me?