Amazon's recommendation system and the impact of free and discounted books

[Bob Butler]

tl;dr: Amazon's recommendation system is skewed by free and cheap kindle books and no longer works as well as it used to. Is there a good alternative?

Amazon's recommendation system used to be pretty good. I faithfully rated books I'd read or purchased and often discovered new books and authors based on Amazon's recommendations.

Then I got my first Kindle in 2008 and soon discovered free books on Amazon.

Free books skew Amazon's recommendation system. It's based on the idea that if you buy items A, B & C, your tastes are similar to other people who bought the same. But a lot of people grab any free book they see if they have even the slightest interest in the topic.

So you tend to get lots of recommendations for other books that are or have in the past been free.

You can "improve your recommendations" and check "do not use this for recommendations" for the books that you got for free. But, you pretty much have to do this for any book that was ever free -- even if it's a book you paid for or a book you really liked.

And discounted books like the Kindle Daily Deal can also impact the rating. I bought Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger series when they were offered for $1.99 each. The first couple of pages of my recommendations are heavily influenced by this -- and a lot of the books aren't really related, they just happened to be part of the same sale.

I've pretty much given up on their recommendations at this point. It's not completely worthless, but it takes more effort than I think it is worth to keep it useful. And part of that means excluding books that I'd really like to be part of the recommendation system simply because they happened to be free or cheap at one point.

I'd love to find an alternative. I know of a few sites that give you a recommendation based on a single book or author, but nothing that takes a large set of ratings, both positive and negative, into account like Amazon does.

[Giggleton]

Finding new books to read is always tough. But I think it is safe to say that the more work/time you put into your recommendation profile the better results you will get.

Although since Amazon is all about profits I think we must take all of their recommendations with a grain of salt.

In the end, I don't think it is quite possible to program into a computer what the mind is going to desire in the future based on past preferences.

[pidgeon92]

I find that finding new books to read is anything but tough. My "to be read" pile has more than 1,000 books in it. I don't look at Amazon's recommendations for me, but I do pay attention to the "other people bought this too" section of the Amazon product pages for books that I really like. I would wager that 60% of my "to be read" pile is based on finding books this way.

This is a useful site:

http://www.yournextread.com

[fjtorres]

Well, being a bit selective in picking freebies would help a bit.

[xg4bx]

i don't get their recommendation system at all. just because i buy one cheapie zombie novel doesn't mean i'll be interested in every cheapie novel in totally unrelated genres.

in general i like the system but lately it feels like i'm locked in constant battle with it.

[Bob Butler]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Well, being a bit selective in picking freebies would help a bit.

Not really, that's kind of my point.

Let's say I buy a book that I am interested in and it becomes a a KDP Freebie the following week.

A bunch of people will pick it up just because it is free. Many of those same people also pick up any other free book that comes along.

The recommendation system is going to link my purchase to all the other freebies the OTHER people grabbed.

It's not my lack of selectiveness, it's everyone else's.

[wvcherrybomb]

Goodreads

[emellaich]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

In the end, I don't think it is quite possible to program into a computer what the mind is going to desire in the future based on past preferences.

Well, they don't really program this into the computer. What they do is watch what you buy and watch what other people buy. The computer then points out books that people with similar reading tastes have also read.

As the OP said, it originally worked pretty well. However, with free books people began to stockpile stuff because it was free. As a result, the books don't really match their tastes. The original point was a good observation.

Amazon will need to adjust their algorithm. Possibly only tracking books that actually cost money. Or giving an extra boost when books are part of a series. Or building a filter process similar to Google Circles. It starts with a raw set of suggestions. You tune it by dragging books into and out of specific circles. Then you can browse for books that match a given circle.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by emellaich

Amazon will need to adjust their algorithm. Possibly only tracking books that actually cost money. Or giving an extra boost when books are part of a series. Or building a filter process similar to Google Circles. It starts with a raw set of suggestions. You tune it by dragging books into and out of specific circles. Then you can browse for books that match a given circle.

I wonder if also weighting books by the amount spent would help any?

[Joykins]

I've stopped using Amazon for recs and started using Goodreads. I've had some minor issues with my Goodreads recs, but fewer than with Amazon.

[RainingLemur]

I've not seen many decent recommendations come through Amazon. When I read a book and really enjoy it, I'll just take a few minutes to search various forums (there's one around here somewhere that is pretty good for that...) for some real human input into books, not just a computer telling me what I'd like based on 1's and 0's.

[xg4bx]

why doesn't it just ask me what i like?

this is what i like, this is what i'm willing to pay and base recommendations on that. i don't care what other people like and even their *ahem* "betterizer" doesn't do donkey squat.

and while they're at it add author tracking and new release alerts. i can't even count how many authors i like that put out books i'm unaware of until weeks later.

[emellaich]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

why doesn't it just ask me what i like?

this is what i like, this is what i'm willing to pay and base recommendations on that. i don't care what other people like and even their *ahem* "betterizer" doesn't do donkey squat.

and while they're at it add author tracking and new release alerts. i can't even count how many authors i like that put out books i'm unaware of until weeks later.

Hear! Hear! I agree on the author tracking and new release alerts. Also, even though it is similar to author tracking, I would like to see series tracking.

On the other hand, outside of this, I don't think they could base it on your recommendations. There is no way to 'know' what you want in the future (except for favorite authors). They have too many customers to develop personalized recommendations by staff. Their system is an attempt to do this automatically.

The closest that I can think would be if they sponsored 'curators' who follow various genres. If you find a curator you like, you could follow them.

P.s. This curator concept is in a post on my blog about a possible new approach for publishers of fiction: blogs.8chs.com

[Joykins]

Also, muddled in with my Amazon purchases is the fact that I buy a lot of gifts on Amazon.

[Bob Butler]

Originally Posted by Joykins

Also, muddled in with my Amazon purchases is the fact that I buy a lot of gifts on Amazon.

You can mark items as gifts under "improve my recommendations".