Amazon's recommendation system and the impact of free and discounted books - Page 3

David Munch · 06-13-2012, 01:27 PM

I never go for freebies. Too much other good stuff to read, and way too much for me to try out random stuff that might be awful.

I always go by recommendations. Especially from the people on this excellent forum!

Mistress · 06-13-2012, 07:00 PM

Try out GoodReads. You need to rate at least 20 books before it will start giving you recommendations, and it gives you recommendations based on the "shelves" or genres you've placed the book in, and the shelves or genres other people who have read the book have placed it in.

So, if you rate 20 books on war, and 15 other people have also put those books under a sci-fi tag, you'll get a few sci-fi recommendations, and a few war recommendations.

However, if you rate 50 books on war, and still only 15 people put those books in sci-fi (not including you), but you've put the book under a dystopia shelf as well, the algorithm will filter out the sci-fi books and search for war books that have placed on a dystopia shelf by several other users.

The more you rate, the more precise your recommendations, but it's based on how people shelve their items, and you can choose for it not to recommend anything based on books with a star rating of less (or more) than whatever you want - so if you want, it'll only provide recommendations based on your five star books.

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06-13-2012, 01:27 PM	#31
David Munch Scholar Posts: 1,009 Karma: 3999312 Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Denmark Device: Kobo Libra H2O + iPad Air 4	I never go for freebies. Too much other good stuff to read, and way too much for me to try out random stuff that might be awful. I always go by recommendations. Especially from the people on this excellent forum!

06-13-2012, 07:00 PM	#32
Mistress eBook Addict Posts: 4 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2012 Device: Kindle Keyboard 3G	Try out GoodReads. You need to rate at least 20 books before it will start giving you recommendations, and it gives you recommendations based on the "shelves" or genres you've placed the book in, and the shelves or genres other people who have read the book have placed it in. So, if you rate 20 books on war, and 15 other people have also put those books under a sci-fi tag, you'll get a few sci-fi recommendations, and a few war recommendations. However, if you rate 50 books on war, and still only 15 people put those books in sci-fi (not including you), but you've put the book under a dystopia shelf as well, the algorithm will filter out the sci-fi books and search for war books that have placed on a dystopia shelf by several other users. The more you rate, the more precise your recommendations, but it's based on how people shelve their items, and you can choose for it not to recommend anything based on books with a star rating of less (or more) than whatever you want - so if you want, it'll only provide recommendations based on your five star books.