Quote:
Originally Posted by calvin-c
I'm sure you can come up with other ways of finding new authors-maybe people who are willing to search them out & compile the lists-but the current system, with many authors 'feeding' one publisher and many publishers 'feeding' one distributor works-in the sense of putting the books out in front of people. If we're going to replace that, let's make sure we replace it with something that fixes the shortcomings without creating new problems in areas where the current model works very well.
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This would be potentially easy. In that 'easy' way that relies on a large sum of cash, a group of talented people, and gaining momentum. Algorithms for recommendations engines are reasonably well understood, they involve hard maths and a lot of computation, but there are people who write these things (the Netflix competition is an example). If, for example, Shelfari was funded by Amazon to create a good recommendations engine, and was able to import all your book purchases from Amazon, then I suspect it would become a lot easier for me and my friends to find good new authors. I'd love to see this, with options to confine the search space (new authors, books within genres and such).
I would guess the hard part is actually getting enough people to use it, hence the thought that Shelfari / Amazon may be a good place for this to happen. Currently I find Amazon's recommendations a bit hit or miss. I like Sci Fi, they seem to recommend an ungodly amount of Dr Who and Star Trek books which I have no interest in, I need to be able to just filter out sub genres, for example.
If the above partnership did this, and just sent recommended first chapters to a Kindle, then I would probably switch to using a Kindle.
How would a self published author author get noticed in a sea of books. Offer your book to 100 people, free of charge, they read it, rate it, and if it is any good recommendations will start to bleed through the system.
I know I am naive, and I have a maybe unhealthy belief in recommendation engines and 'the wisdom of crowds'.
Anyway, this is going increasingly off topic. Sorry.