B&N has a new app called Browserly

[HLS]

To compete with goodreads.com. It seems like a good way to discover a new book. For instance it asks for books that were so good you read in 1 day and you can see recommendations with book cover thumbnails submitted by other users.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/h/about-browsery

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by kcladyz

To compete with goodreads.com. It seems like a good way to discover a new book. For instance it asks for books that were so good you read in 1 day and you can see recommendations with book cover thumbnails submitted by other users.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/h/about-browsery

I have long maintained the discover-ability will be the next big break through in the ebook area. Not sure that the goodreader model is going to be the break through or not, though.

[fjtorres]

The timing is not the best.
Launching what is effectively a new social network at a time of FACEBOOK backlash?
Dunno...
People are (finally) getting skittish about sharing personal data online.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The timing is not the best.
Launching what is effectively a new social network at a time of FACEBOOK backlash?
Dunno...
People are (finally) getting skittish about sharing personal data online.

I don't see it. At least not with those in my family who use Facebook (I never did). A shrug and "oh well," and they continue as usual.

But I think comparing Browserly with Facebook is kind of a stretch. I think the true comparison should be between Browserly and Goodreads.

[DNSB]

Hmmm... the link says Browsery but Browserly seems to be the preferred spelling in this thread.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/h/about-browsery

And yes, as a Canadian, I'm not going to click on a B&N link to check for myself.

[HLS]

I find the app on the phone kinda cluttered. There seems to not be an actually website out side of the "about" site which is a bummer

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I have long maintained the discover-ability will be the next big break through in the ebook area. Not sure that the goodreader model is going to be the break through or not, though.

What do you think is missing in terms of ‘discoverability’?

I have no problems finding interesting things to read. My problem is finding time to read what I’m interested in reading (and in many cases, have already bought). I don’t rely on any one source of book recommendations, and don’t think I need any more. I have no interest in trying Browserly, at least not until it has attracted some critical mass of users (I’m skeptical that it will, and don’t understand why B&N is even trying this).

Authors and publishers have a discoverability problem. But it is not obvious to me that there is a one size fits all tool to help with this.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Authors and publishers have a discoverability problem.

Correct.
More precisely, authors and publishers have a *visibility* problem for lack of effective marketing. With the explosive growth in actively available books, both new releases and backlist, it is increasingly hard for any but the biggest name authors to be noticed by non-fans. That is their problem, though.

Readers have no shortage of effective ways to find reads and discover new authors. Especially online. That the authors and publishers have a problem doesn't mean readers have a problem. Therd is no causal link between the two processes. At most, rezders have a selection problem: two many books, too little budget/time.

Unfortunately for B&N, the two most effective reader discovery systems are Amazon and Goodreads. They already have a copy of Amazon's book section and are trying to mimic Goodreads. But it's a wee bit late to be trying that. Plus they have bigger problems than marketing books. Starting with marketing themselves to avid readers to try to reverse their continuing decline in traffic.

B&N itself has a visibility problem.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by tomsem

What do you think is missing in terms of ‘discoverability’?

I have no problems finding interesting things to read. My problem is finding time to read what I’m interested in reading (and in many cases, have already bought). I don’t rely on any one source of book recommendations, and don’t think I need any more. I have no interest in trying Browserly, at least not until it has attracted some critical mass of users (I’m skeptical that it will, and don’t understand why B&N is even trying this).

Authors and publishers have a discoverability problem. But it is not obvious to me that there is a one size fits all tool to help with this.

Never said that one size fits all was the way to go. I'm sure that eventually we will see a lot of different approaches. For example, authoralerts was a very useful tool for me, not 100%, but it notified me of a majority of new books by authors that I like. Unfortunately, Amazon cut them off at the knees.

If I were the major publishers, I would put together a consortium of the major publishers to develop a database of all the books currently in print, both paper and ebook, with each publisher responsible for maintaining their books and give people access to it. I suspect that we would see a lot of innovative uses of it.

I really expected that Amazon would be doing a much better job of building tools to match customers with their preferred authors. But hey, I guess when you don't have much competition, there is no incentive to innovate.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Correct.
More precisely, authors and publishers have a *visibility* problem for lack of effective marketing. With the explosive growth in actively available books, both new releases and backlist, it is increasingly hard for any but the biggest name authors to be noticed by non-fans. That is their problem, though.

Readers have no shortage of effective ways to find reads and discover new authors. Especially online. That the authors and publishers have a problem doesn't mean readers have a problem. Therd is no causal link between the two processes. At most, rezders have a selection problem: two many books, too little budget/time.

Unfortunately for B&N, the two most effective reader discovery systems are Amazon and Goodreads. They already have a copy of Amazon's book section and are trying to mimic Goodreads. But it's a wee bit late to be trying that. Plus they have bigger problems than marketing books. Starting with marketing themselves to avid readers to try to reverse their continuing decline in traffic.

B&N itself has a visibility problem.

Certainly there is a major selection problem. Readers have to wade through too much garbage to find the books they want to read. Amazon has brought that on with their business model of pushing the maintenance of their book database on to the "publishers" which in many cases is just people trying to scam the system.

Certainly, the publishers could do a lot more to market their authors. Tor does a pretty good job with the weekly newsletter. Baen did a great job back when Jim Baen was still alive.

There are occasional authors who do a good job of marketing themselves, but the big issue is that marketing is a huge time sink that takes away from writing. Even the authors who once were very active on that front seem to drift away. People like David Weber and Jim Butcher have fairly extensive web sites, but both seem to have turned that over to third parties and rarely engage anymore.

The publishers biggest issue is that the book stores are their direct customers, not the readers, so they don't really have direct access to the readers. In the ebook business, Amazon has access to the customers and jealously guards that monopoly. Unfortunately, they are focused on pushing books that they want to sell rather than letting me find books that I want to buy.

It seems to me that the most straight forward tool that any author would want is a tool that notifies anyone who signs up when they have a new book. Next would be a tool that lists what books an author has available and links to where you can buy them. The issue with both tools is critical mass and maintaining the database. That's why I mentioned in my previous message that if I were the publishers I would put together a joint database with the other publishers of all the books that were available and let people mine that database.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Certainly there is a major selection problem. Readers have to wade through too much garbage to find the books they want to read.

I'm not sure there's anything new about this. The difference now is that it's so much easier and faster to wade through a ton of garbage to find books you want.

In the days of book stores it was a bit more fun, walking among the isles, looking at this book and that and sometimes finding one you want to read. I did that when I had enough books already, just because I loved the browsing.

Now I browse on a web page or on my Kindle and it's still fun but not as much as in a book store. I still do plenty of it even though I'm stocked up with enough books for the coming 3 or 4 centuries at this point.

I don't believe there is any shortage of good ways to search for books. I'm sure other, and possibly better ways will come along but things are pretty good right now.

Barry

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by barryem

I'm not sure there's anything new about this. The difference now is that it's so much easier and faster to wade through a ton of garbage to find books you want.

...

Barry

It depends on if you are talking about the publishers slush pile and fanfic sites, or book stores. Despite some people's disdain for the publishing industry, they at least filtered out a good bit of the dreck that one now has to wade through at Amazon. Someone thought that those books had enough promise to invest a lot of money actually publishing them. Sure there are people who enjoy wading through the slush pile and fanfic sites. Me, I would like to be able to say, only show me books by major publishers, or books by authors who are on my favorite author list.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

It depends on if you are talking about the publishers slush pile and fanfic sites, or book stores. Despite some people's disdain for the publishing industry, they at least filtered out a good bit of the dreck that one now has to wade through at Amazon. Someone thought that those books had enough promise to invest a lot of money actually publishing them. Sure there are people who enjoy wading through the slush pile and fanfic sites. Me, I would like to be able to say, only show me books by major publishers, or books by authors who are on my favorite author list.

Takes me about 20 seconds to dismiss books as dreck. I've never been a "wader"... even before the days of easy self-publishing. Cream rises, good things get talked about, voices carry--however you want to say it. The path to finding good books to read isn't any more perilous or unnavigable than it ever was.

I've said it before: very few people pick out books to read at complete random, site-unseen; before, during, or after the self-publishing explosion. Avid readers rarely grabbed a book out of hat and started reading. And of the ones that did, I doubt very highly that they've ever taken comfort in the fact that a book they picked with that method, and ended up hating, was at least competently written.

There's always been an ocean of dreck, but nobody's ever been forced to dive in it to find books.

If you only want to see books by major publishers, then browse the major publishers' websites. Problem solved. Go to your favorite authors' websites to see if their latest has been released yet. Talk to your friends. Follow people whose reading tastes you share or admire on Twitter. Hit up a book blog. Check out a "what else are you reading" thread on online forums.

There's never been a time when absolute potluck was going to get you a high rate of return on new favorite authors/books, so I fail to see why people always bring up the "more crap than ever" lament.

Never in the history of the planet has there been so many tools (easy, efficient and powerful tools) at reader's disposal to find great books to read without having to leave their homes. Yet many people want to complain that good books don't fall out of the sky into their laps any more. Well guess what? They never did. Get over it.

EDITORS NOTE: Although my post was in response to pwalker8's post, please understand that with the exception of a couple, most of my "you"s were entirely rhetorical.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Never in the history of the planet has there been so many tools (easy, efficient and powerful tools) at reader's disposal to find great books to read without having to leave their homes. Yet many people want to complain that good books don't fall out of the sky into their laps any more. Well guess what? They never did. Get over it.

.

Perfectly stated.
+1,000,000.

The "dreck problem" has always existed.
Mostly because one person's dreck is the next person's literary masterpiece.
(The randy Penguin drops 15,000 titles a year. They're not all masterpieces. Some years, none are.)

People like to forget that the current explosion in online bookstore catalogs is driven to a large extent by tradpub backlist and by previously tradpub authors rereleasing reverted titles. The "tsunami of dreck" is a tsunami of backlist. Yesterday's bestsellers back to haunt today's offerings. Hardly a reader's problem. Especially if the reader favors a genre that respects its past.

They also like to forget that bookstores are organized by genre and the good online stores sort books by subject, subgenre, and themes. Prefer portal fantasies to military SF? Two clicks and you're there.
There might be 4 million titles for sale but you can easily exclude all but the subject you want. History your thing? Click and you're there. Sort by author, period, new release, preorder or series. What's not to like?

All from your reading room recliner or home library.
No driving for an hour to find...nothing worth the trip.
Been there, done that...on a weekly basis.

I don't pine for the past.
The ebook present suits me just fine.

[Alohamora]

Anyone else use Amazon's reviews to choose books? I do, a lot. If there're enough reviews, I can get a pretty good view of whether or not I'll like a book.