John Eklund writes in Inversion magazine about the marketing of books, including some observations about automated recommendations:
When I consider purchasing a book online, I’m supplied by a shopping algorithm with a list of what else I might like, based on what I have bought or what other people “like me” bought.
... the “customer-recommends” algorithm removes the pesky human from the interaction. And it does the exact opposite of what it claims to do: far from expanding my reading horizon, it contracts it. It doesn’t show me new worlds, it tries to duplicate as closely as possible the reading world I’m stuck in. When I’m offered “more like this” I want to scream NO! Not more like that. More like something else entirely, more like some other reader I’m nothing like, more like some new and different experience.
He sums up,
We are awash in great books, more than we could possibly read. I have to laugh when I hear people bemoan a lack of quality, or say things like “What a lousy season for fiction.” To access the literary wealth we have to step outside the paradigm of the Corporate New, where we are marketing targets, and instead create for ourselves a Personal New, a truly custom-designed inventory of the found, the overheard, the stumbled-upon and the forgotten. Superb books are plentiful in every bookstore and library. While the commercial publishing conglomerates chase the next mega-selling piece of fundamentalist pornography, literary treasures and surprises await those with open eyes and ears.
Link: Don't Point that Ad at Me: the business of books is bad for reading via goodreports.net.
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