In part two of our leisure study, we examine the reading habits of Canadian book-readers and book-listeners.
The reading habits of Canadians
Break through the noise: Building pre-pub discoverability & buzz
2015: A numeric summary
Infographic: Discovering Kidlit
'Tis the Season...for Conferences
Goodreads Gives Good Recommendations
Many of us are avid readers. We’ve all gotten tips from friends on what the next most amazing, imaginative, exciting, fresh, brain-imploding new book is and we add it to our to-read list. Well, friends… that list is going to get a lot longer and a lot better with the book recommendation algorithm from Goodreads.
BookLamp and Whichbook: Two Solutions to the Online Book Recommendation Problem
We’ve all had a helpful bookseller recommend a book at some point. They have those freakish encyclopedia brains that remember every book they have on their shelves. The problem, though, is that more and more people are making purchasing decisions online and it is very difficult to replicate the helpful bookseller experience on the web. Two book recommendation engines—BookLamp and Whichbook—are trying to solve this problem.
Canadian Bookshelf, eh?
If you haven’t already visited, Canadian Bookshelf, I would highly recommend you take a little time to do so. The site itself looks great and there is a plethora of great (Canadian) content already there with more to come. I won’t go into all the features and functions of the site here as you can just go and try it out or read about it on their blog, but I will point out why we like this project in one word: collaboration.
A Book Algorithm that Works
Many businesses use algorithms to make product recommendations, including book retailers such as Amazon and Chapters. If your customer base is large and mostly online it’s an easy way to generate recommendations for a wide range of customers. But when it comes to books, the system hasn’t always served the customer well.
