Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end • Hacker News Board

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#41

Post by chrisseaton » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 2:42 PM UTC

Abhinav2000 wrote: post #38

chrisseaton wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Goodreads was better at helping users find new books they wanted than amazon themselves and so it made sense for amazon to buy them. I still don’t get it - people were already finding books on Goodreads and buying them on Amazon... so why did Amazon need to buy them? Why pay for it if it’s already working for you? And why pay a referral fee if people already want to ignore other options and go to Amazon to buy afte…

Because they had to pay goodreads a commission each time (say 5% —> i’m completely making this number up and its probably a lot lower). So if 70% of goodreads profit is from Amazon, amazon figured they could just buy them since the cost of running goodreads is a lot lower than the commissions it makes so amazon was basically paying them anyway. better (in their view at the time) to just pay goodreads one off and buy…

> Because they had to pay goodreads a commission each time

But why were they doing that?

"the vast majority of internet users were hooked on Amazon" so they were buying through Amazon anyway.

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#42

Post by Finnucane » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

Hokusai wrote: post #6

> Instead, it has stagnated: Amazon holds on to an effective monopoly on the discussion of new books This is the main point. It is the same thing that Oracle purchasing MySQL. What once was a promising raising technology is nowadays stagnant. (Interest over time https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%... ) GoodReads could help to find better books to read. But, Amazon likes the current state wher…

In Amazon’s early days they had human genre section buyers who managed what was promoted. When I worked for an sf publisher in the 90s we’d see them at cons. They would come to our parties and we would spend their expense account money. They’d look at the books we recommended. It was very different.

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#43

Post by foxdev » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 2:46 PM UTC

imglorp wrote: post #10

Business opportunity here to replace this? Start with some HN or Reddit style forum discussion code. Some income could come from affiliate links to indie booksellers. (Is there even infra for such a thing right now? Need to build that too?) Edit, answering myself, this guy has some thoughts: https://tomcritchlow.com/2020/04/15/library-json/ Edit, as for the index corpus, the USLC does okay: https://catalog.loc.gov/vw…

Here's an attempt at making a Goodreads-like that runs on ActivityPub: https://github.com/mouse-reeve/bookwyrm

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#44

Post by prepend » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

asicsp wrote: post #33

prepend wrote: post #7

I have used goodreads since soon after launch. It’s probably the worst site that I use, but I prefer it’s benign neglect over the “improvements” made on the main amazon site. I just use it as a list of books of I’ve read and am reading, and to see books that my friends are reading or have read. It’s been funny to me that the search is horrible and seems to be something worse than just regexing a list of book titles.…

I mostly use reddit [0][1][2] to build my TBR list. I follow only a few on goodreads, but my twitter timeline (which is mostly catered around book reading) comes up with nice recommendations. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/ [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/booksuggestions/ [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/

Thanks, I use those subs as well.

I think it’s more of whatever you call that “programmer anxious subliminal minmaxing” feeling that I get knowing that goodreads has all that info from me, and should be able to automatically help.

I don’t have a shortage of books to read or anything and I have a system that works. But I suspect that there’s great books out there for me that I haven’t discovered yet and would like for technology to help with that.

I mainly find books through serendipitous interactions and recommendations from friends and I read more books found accidentally than when I consciously seek out new books.

It’s a problem with amazon and audible and my library too. They suck at recommending books. I think it’s just because they are happy if I just buy something, where I’m looking for five star books. So our incentives are different.

I’ve spend quite a few saturdays trying to hack something from goodreads data to just do it myself. But I can’t get a good data export.

I think if you just find people with at least 100 similar rating to me and then recommend books that they 5-star that would result in good stuff.

The main downside of amazon buying them is that I used to wish for a breach of all their customer ratings data so I could just do the analysis on the leaked data (after de identifying the customers of course). But amazon has much better security.

By the way, it seems like all the content companies are this way now. Netflix isn’t interested in me finding movies I love. Spotify is maybe the closest but I think they promote lots of stuff.

I’ve been trying to think of a business model that relies on finding awesome matches, but I think there’s more money in finding marginal matches that bring customers back again.

My current money is on getting local AI that I can train to serve me (instead of google, Microsoft, etc).

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#45

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #37

dageshi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're saying that goodreads became an alternate front end to amazon for finding books but users used amazon (via affiliate links) to actually buy the book. Goodreads was better at helping users find new books they wanted than amazon themselves and so it made sense for amazon to buy them.

> Goodreads was better at helping users find new books they wanted than amazon themselves and so it made sense for amazon to buy them. I still don’t get it - people were already finding books on Goodreads and buying them on Amazon... so why did Amazon need to buy them? Why pay for it if it’s already working for you? And why pay a referral fee if people already want to ignore other options and go to Amazon to buy afte…

> And why pay a referral fee if people already want to ignore other options and go to Amazon to buy after finding on Goodreads?

Because if Amazon stopped paying those referral fees, then the website can stop posting links to Amazon, and instead post links solely to Amazon's competitors. Yes, people are hooked on Amazon and so even in the absence of a direct link they might browse over to Amazon and search for the product there, but that introduces a lot of friction and so Amazon would lose some business.

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#46

Post by prepend » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

a_bonobo wrote: post #18

prepend wrote: post #7

I have used goodreads since soon after launch. It’s probably the worst site that I use, but I prefer it’s benign neglect over the “improvements” made on the main amazon site. I just use it as a list of books of I’ve read and am reading, and to see books that my friends are reading or have read. It’s been funny to me that the search is horrible and seems to be something worse than just regexing a list of book titles.…

For me, recommendations got remarkably better once I used 5-10 tags ('shelves') per book for about 50 books I read - after that, the per-shelf recommendations got very good.

I never thought of that. Thanks, I’ll try it. I currently just use “read,” “want to read,” and “abandoned.”

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#47

Post by mark_l_watson » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #13

Hokusai wrote: post #6

> Instead, it has stagnated: Amazon holds on to an effective monopoly on the discussion of new books This is the main point. It is the same thing that Oracle purchasing MySQL. What once was a promising raising technology is nowadays stagnant. (Interest over time https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%... ) GoodReads could help to find better books to read. But, Amazon likes the current state wher…

Amazon was pretty much forced to buy Goodreads: the original business model of Goodreads before the Amazon buyout was making money from referral links to booksellers. While links were provided to several internet booksellers besides Amazon, like Barnes & Noble, already the vast majority of internet users were hooked on Amazon and only buying through Amazon links. Consequently, Amazon was paying Goodreads a huge amoun…

I hate to complain, but I hate the Goodread suggestions in my iPad Kindle app. I don’t want to be the target of marketing when reading. I don’t want to see badge alerts.

Poor customer experience. I have always bought a small percentage of my eBooks on Apple Books or Google Play Books, just to avoid my whole library being tied to one company.

Since the advertising annoyances in the Kindle app, I have been buying more from other vendors.

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#48

Post by prepend » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

Finnucane wrote: post #42

Hokusai wrote: post #6

> Instead, it has stagnated: Amazon holds on to an effective monopoly on the discussion of new books This is the main point. It is the same thing that Oracle purchasing MySQL. What once was a promising raising technology is nowadays stagnant. (Interest over time https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%... ) GoodReads could help to find better books to read. But, Amazon likes the current state wher…

In Amazon’s early days they had human genre section buyers who managed what was promoted. When I worked for an sf publisher in the 90s we’d see them at cons. They would come to our parties and we would spend their expense account money. They’d look at the books we recommended. It was very different.

I once climbed some stairs with Jeff Bezos at a conference. We sat in the front row next to each other at a midnight Neil Gaiman reading and I got to witness the small talk between them. Bezos asked Neil if he had gotten the recent shipment of books and Neil responded that he had and that they were really thoughtful and he enjoyed them.

I thought that Bezos must have the best book recommendations. And that since he and Gaiman were friends he was able to pick perfect books that even Neil Gaiman didn’t know about.

That’s what I want. Unfortunately my plan to develop a relationship with Bezos to the extent that he buys me books has failed so far. So I look for more attainable methods.

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#49

Post by frosted-flakes » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #37

dageshi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're saying that goodreads became an alternate front end to amazon for finding books but users used amazon (via affiliate links) to actually buy the book. Goodreads was better at helping users find new books they wanted than amazon themselves and so it made sense for amazon to buy them.

> Goodreads was better at helping users find new books they wanted than amazon themselves and so it made sense for amazon to buy them. I still don’t get it - people were already finding books on Goodreads and buying them on Amazon... so why did Amazon need to buy them? Why pay for it if it’s already working for you? And why pay a referral fee if people already want to ignore other options and go to Amazon to buy afte…

Amazon's referral program is open to everybody to use. How could Amazon restrict GoodReads from being a part of it?

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#50

Post by hairofadog » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

DarkCrusader2 wrote: post #28

freddie_mercury wrote: post #15

The author complains that it is "impossible" to find books on Goodreads. Simply adding the author's name to any query will always take you to the book you are looking for. Don't just rely on a title. Which should be common sense (if you were at a bookstore you would always tell the clerk the author's name and not just say "Do you have Holiday Heart?") but apparently isn't. The author complains that searching for 'hol…

I love Letterboxd's approach to movie recommendation wherein they don't provide any. Users can create arbitrary lists for all kinds of stuff based anything like genre, themes, feel, mood, cast/crew etc. There is probable a high quality list for anything you can think of. I have found some of my favorite movies on the site this way, no algorithms involved. I wish more site would do this instead of collecting every sin…

I was going to say this! Letterboxd is the slickest and most fun media discovery platform I’ve seen. It’s so easy to stumble onto interesting recommendations, and the platform is straight-up fun to use. Look at these lists that Letterboxd users put together:

Insane Toni Collette dinner table cinematic universe https://boxd.it/8DO8A

Or look at this list of films directed by women, organized by poster color: https://boxd.it/lITC

Lots of fun stuff like that, but then also lists composed around incredibly specific vibes:

wlw movies that aren't period dramas and don't have sad endings https://boxd.it/8nKBc (The author of that list says “wlw = an umbrella term referring to lesbian, bi, pan, and queer women”; new to me)

Good movies with no sex scenes to watch with your parents https://boxd.it/54Pcw

The lists themselves are a sort of smart commentary.

Letterboxd gets right the one thing that so many recommendation algorithms get wrong: I'm fickle, and I like different stuff at different times, and I also want new things that I didn't even know I liked. The article about StoryGraph mentions this: too often, algorithms assume you only want more of A) what you listened to last time, or B) what's popular (looking at you, Apple Music).

On a separate topic, one thing I'll say about ratings is that while I find good ratings to be worthless – generally any media of even the most middling quality will have rabid fans somewhere, especially if it's serialized (TV shows, book series, Star Wars, etc.), bad ratings are useful to me; if something is rated badly it's generally because it's truly boring and devoid of any value whatsoever.

Anyway, thanks to the top-level poster for the link to Story Graph. I hope it becomes useful, and in the meantime I'll keep pining for someone to disrupt the rest of Amazon’s book empire as well.