GOODREADS IS…INTERESTING 🤨

GOODREADS IS…INTERESTING 🤨
My Patreon: www.patreon.com/user?u=15204080
My Book: www.elliotbrooksnovels.com/pe...
My Instagram: / ebnovels
#goodreads

[@ebnovels]

Idk why I always want to say "songs" instead of "lies" for that book. But anyway! Have you ever come across some very odd Readers Also Enjoyed books? 📚

[@CedTheThird]

i’ve definitely seen this happen too and been super confused. the “top picks for you” tab on the app is also so broken lol none of the books it recommends me are things within the top genres i read, it’s nearly all colleen hoover. to be completely honest i’ve never really gotten super helpful recs from storygraph either sadly. i think this is one of those situations where it’s just safer to get recs from a human instead of an algorithm or whatever is going on over on goodreads lol

[@3choblast3r4]

Ok to be fair to goodreads (had to google the writer) you're a girl that reads and you have green yellow hair ... it's not strange that it believes you'd enjoy a tiktok book. Jokes aside, though... yeah Amazon and Goodreads are pushing those books real real hard. But not just those. Go check Amazon's top selling books. It's those tiktok books in the top 3... followed by a classic in whatever genre you're in (e.g. Tolkien for fantasy) then the 50 next books are all tiktok smut romance between innocent, shy, virgin teenage girl and bad boy archetype humanoid, usually a lot older than the girl .. in most cases not actually a human... covers went like vampire with a young girl in his arms - mobster with a young girl in his hand - large anthropomorphic wolf.. holding a pregnant girl .. and weirdly porny title, something about alpha breeding (wtf bro?) ... alien .. holding a young gir... yeah ok you get the drift.. Bro like why... I can't even enjoy browsing the new / popular books to look for something new or interesting. At least put that idiotic stuff in it's own fkn category.. next to the link for the vibrators and lube I imagine. Not even people like Brandon Sanderson grace the tops of the list. Not a fan but ffs he's the most popular fantasy writer out there at the moment, and still...

[@pannaalmaberente9966]

@@3choblast3r4 It is wierd but they are up there because that is what sells. And based on the amount of smutty hybrid/monster loveintrests in fanfiction there is an audience.

[@pannaalmaberente9966]

@@3choblast3r4 Absolutely agree. Romance Books should be devided by having and not having adult content or at least give a warning. It really is bad for people who don't want to read that stuff or not the right age

[@larak1809]

@@pannaalmaberente9966 Even recommendations from people are a bit of a hit and miss. I think *why* people like books is just very hard to quantify. Still, I really story graph for recommending me books that I haven't heard of. I can also edit parameters of what I want it to recommend to gain something that suits me better in the moment.

[@miguelangelthomas5154]

Oh yeah. Those Colleen Hoover recommendations are really annoying. There is literally nothing about me or my reading pics that puts me into Colleen Hoover's orbit yet they keep pushing her on me. I mostly read spanish language literary fiction and hardboiled detective thrillers.

[@bryanwade9501]

Haha this is so timely. I work in software design and I’m currently researching good reads and similar apps and websites because I want to create something that does a better job at suggesting books. My opinion is that good reads has a lot of good data but doesnt always do a good job interpreting it with their algorithm. My suspicion is that some of the parameters they use like popularity and genre don’t have as strong of a correlation to book enjoyment even though they may be weighted highly in their algorithm. Good reads is probably more tailored towards generating ad revenue and marketing certain books so that probably skews their recommendations to be off base. Last point is they have a crazy amount of categorization but I think they probably have people tagging books with so many different things to ensure they get seen that it gets to the point where the book is no longer accurately represented in their system. These are all hypotheses so the only way to really know is being on the goodreads team. Really complex algorithms sometimes get to a point where the person making it may not even know how it works so maybe they don’t know either lol.

[@phoenyxashes1993]

please let us konw when you create the software, I'd really like to try it!

[@hanpear]

i’ve found that story graph has been pretty accurate for me as far as new recommendations, but sometimes i don’t think it goes far enough to show me accurate recommendations that maybe i haven’t even heard of yet

[@brinbrawner6101]

I hope you do this! I'm not a software designer I'm just in cyber but I very much so want to create an app for finding new media (podcasts, books, movies). I just figured it would never exist because at the moment I have no clue how to design/build an app so I'll be on the lookout and hope that you are successful :)

[@KittyAndTheBooks]

I don't usually use that feature but sometimes I see the "you should try this book because you enjoyed that book" thing on the main page and soooo many times it made no sense at all. It would be something like "you should try this gruesome classic about the WWI because you enjoyed this middlegrade fantasy book from last year".

[@itsmejellydee]

some semi-educated guessing: One, the goodreads algorithm is probably not literally cross checking users' lists, except maybe in the case where there is a VERY strong correlation and the book is in a well defined genre (like Mistborn suggesting Eye of the World, both are high/epic fantasy with many reviews, audience overlap is likely). If it can't find a book similar enough that way, then it probably looks keywords/themes. So Kaikeyi would relate to Lies We Sing to the Sea for both being mythology retellings. In the case of the Stardust Thief, it's probably tying them together for being "arab" (one of the reviews on the other book mentioned it being by written by an Arab), but can't say how it prioritizes which relationships. The last way would be keyword "groupings". As an algorithm learns, it can start to associate different topics more closely together. For example, it could relate Half A Soul to This Savage Song by relating fae and monsters in a larger "supernatural" category. The other thing to remember is that people can sign in with their Facebook or Amazon account, which will include user data from outside of goodreads. If enough people bought Babel on amazon and also watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on Prime Video using the same account, it might start to associate them together. Hard to say without seeing 'under the hood', so just some thoughts. Either way, it is, as you say ... interesting 😂

[@drinkbooks]

Honestly, it probably has to do with key words used in the descriptions for the books and the tags associated for the searches. There are often a lot of tags that go with items in a searchable website. The book recommendation algorithm probably has a set number of 'matches' to search for. Some books match a whole lot of factors and make sense. Some books match two and they're the tags that are the least specific, like 'romance' or 'fantasy' so you end up with a weird recommendation that doesn't really fit except in the loosest sense. (Please note; I don't know how the tags get added to books on Goodreads but there are a lot of tags that get slapped on books, lots of stuff really, that do not fit and are only designed to have the item show up in as many searches as possible and have nothing to do with the item in question.)

[@a_bookish_gemini]

I agree, I don’t think the generated suggestions have anything to do with actual readership; it’s most likely tags, key words, etc.

[@JennFaeAge]

Not a review but it took an almost hilarious amount of attempts to get them to acknowledge a book I wrote was actually written by me (really not doing this as a plug I promise, unless people want to know wtf I'm talking about lol), my editor ended up having to send an email *saying* it was definitely mine before they acknowledged it

[@rachelbanks7858]

Go on then... what's the book? :)

[@JennFaeAge]

@@rachelbanks7858 Fairy War by EJ Graham (there's a sequel due...well, currently its release date is just "Summer 2023")

[@MissBronwen]

I love the sweater you’re wearing in this video! ❤

[@miandagny]

You calling it a hoo hoo is funny to me for some reason and out of nowhere made me think of the sauna scene in Frozen where the owner says hoo hoo

[@johnsaxongitno4life588]

It happens in scribed too and it is very frustrating and I can’t stand it prayers and thoughts for you and your amazing family love your family friend John ❤❤❤Merry Christmas 🎄 for you and your entire families xxx

[@booksandbeauty4381]

I think it would be cool if for readers also enjoyed if it recommend books that aren’t read as much but have similar tropes and ideas. Just to help out indie authors and diversify books that readers are hearing about

[@aaaaanditsgone]

This was cool lol thanks for sharing

[@rivermay109]

I feel like those other books might be sponsored books - paid advertising

[@fcohen8296]

I am not even a fantasy reader at all but found this topic interesting which is why I clicked on your video. I have been wondering the same thing! The Goodreads recommendations so often do not make any sense to me. I sometimes wonder how in the world they can get it so wrong

[@Quaisior]

I read and cataloged a children's science book with my child and one of the Goodreads recommendations I got was for a misogynistic religious book. I couldn't have come up with a more contradictory book recommendation if I tried!

[@msrichardsreads]

OMG The Stardust Thief rec. 😂😂😂 The readers also enjoyed is always so random and makes no sense.

[@markusvieira4427]

One thing that i notice is when i am on mobile is different books when i am on PC!. strange

[@ScorpionFlower95]

lol, I've been thinking about that a lot. I am greek and as someone would expect, I read books in that language and by greek authors. So, let's say that I have just finished a mystery book by a greek author. What goodreads does, isn't recommending me other mystery books that readers have enjoyed. Goodreads will recommend me a book from the same country of origin, with no regards to its genre at all. Something that to be honest, I don't see it doing with books written in or translated to english.

[@ReadingNymph]

This is hilarious, its so true, the recommended books never match up 😅😅

[@whisper_dvm5157]

LOL!!! It’s so funny that you talked about the Stardust Thief recommendations. I got the same ones and I took a screenshot and posted it on one of my FB book groups! It made me laugh so hard. Not sure how this desert quest story brought out health and diet recommendations. 😂😂

[@ebnovels]

It’s different for me now, but I’m glad I wasn’t the only one!

[@whisper_dvm5157]

@@ebnovels oh true! I just checked mine and they are much more reasonable now. My screenshot is dated Nov 30 so I wonder when it got updated?

[@StormReads]

My friends and I have talked about this stuff on lives! We laugh at the recommendation section especially when you read a Thriller and it recommends a romance 😆.

[@KiraFriede]

Not too long ago there was a video on the vlogbrothers channel why it is that when you Google an author, it shows books from a different author. It's because people saw that book appear, were like "I don't think, that's from the author" and then *clicked* on it. And I can imagine something similar happened here, especially with the last one. People were scrolling their recommendations, saw that book and clicked on it, because it was so odd. And because they clicked on it, that was interpreted as liked and then it showed up for others and the same mechanism happened. You click on it, not because you like it, but because it doesn't fit. But the algorithm doesn't know that. It thinks, you like that book and will keep recommending it to more and more people.

[@trevorreads]

WACK. Now I’ll be keeping my eyes out for this for sure haha!

[@rayene_23]

Hi, tech (ish) person here; I'm a backend developer, data scientist and I have dabbled a little in recommendation systems Now, I haven't checked Goodread's recommendation system in particular so I can't say for sure how it works but I have two possible theories that could explain why things like this happen; 1- If they use book-based recommendations; so essentially the most common practice in this field is representing each entity (in this case books) as vectors then calculating the correlation between said vectors and adding the ones with the highest correlation to the "readers also enjoy"; this means they use things like tags and keywords to make a book's vector, which could lead to two book recommending one another just because they both talk about souls for example even if everything else is completely different. 2- The second possibility is if the recommendations are user based; in this case the algorithm could use the already existing user data (books read, ratings...etc) to create generalized profiles (this is a method used by spotify) so each user belongs to a certain user profile, this means that when users from profile A like two books it's possible that they're recommended through each other even if the individual users who read one book haven't read the other. I could be wrong though and this could be due to other factors, but based on my understanding of both rec systems and Goodreads, these seemed the most plausible. I hope this is somewhat helpful

[@carolinec3951]

I thought since there are so many possible books that the algorithm could list, it picked the ones Amazon/ Goodreads wanted to sell more of. If it advertises or recommends certain things then the business side would see a bump in those sales.

[@joshuatheargonaut4412]

Digging the Amy Whinehouse/Hedge witch hairdo.

[@o_o-lj1ym]

The stardust thief one, omg hahaha what!! Goodreads is on something.

[@sarahweiner6924]

I use Goodreads over Storygraph and the other competitors because I care more about the data behind my reading (when I read the book, how I would categorize it, did I like it) than recommendations and I am really appreciative that it exists. BUT my current gripe is this: if I started re-reading a book, then put it back on my Read shelf without finishing it AND delete the reading dates from this year, the book does not appear at the top of my Read shelf when sorted by reading dates (yay) but it DOES show up in my Year in Review. Why???

[@andieland1923]

I always had problems with Goodreads not working properly or doing weird things so I abandoned it awhile ago for a different tracking site. It was just too frustrating to use. That last one though... what the heck??

[@HarvestLockwood]

Thank you for making a video about this because Goodreads recommendations have bugged me for years...

[@AndrejaAndric]

Hi Elliot - nice commentary on the GoodReads recommmendation feature. I can't comment on GoodReads recommendation in particular, but in general Recommendation is a complex area. Think of KZbin, Spotify or Facebook - they too recommend content based on user profiling. Here's a rough list of what goes into the calculation. Similarity of books (music, videos or anything else) is decided, first, from "similarity" of users, like you said - what they posted, liked, interacted with etc. Second, metadata is analyzed for similarities, like titles, period, publishers, and the like Third, content can be analyzed for certain features to determine similarity between them across different media objects (books, videos, music etc). Mixtures of all these features can sometimes give surprising and, from human point of view, incorrect results, but many times they do work. And then there is also serendipity: we don't want to be recommended only things that are similar to what we know, as then we will never discover anything new and different. So similarity is not the only criteria that is at play - I guess a degree of randomness is added to the mix. Recommendation is a problem that can never be definitely solved, there will always be space for improvement.

[@devlyn873]

Have you looked at how StoryGraph does with it's recomendations in comparison? I've never used it for that so I'm definitely curious. I'm on both StoryGraph and Goodreads but the analytics and data provided by StoryGraph are so much better.

[@beachbum3129]

Agree! What is the music played after your videos? It’s beautiful 🎶

[@adaynasmile]

I have used Goodreads for years. I don't even know how long. In the last year the whole platform has been having issues. Between being recommended the dumbest things, to things not showing up on my books I read this year, to books not being on my book list at all...I don't know what they are doing with things but I wish they would fix it. I also wish they would stop separating all the books so that when you click on a book and say that you want to read it, then realize it is the wrong format (say hardcover and you have it on kindle) than it messes up your algorithm when you go to change it. I have over a thousand duplicates and no easy way to change that. And most of them are due to multiple formats being listed and me trying to list the format I actually used versus the one I didn't.

[@makayla9837]

I have seen some that make little sense but I hate when you look at a middle grade book and one of the “recommended” books is an adult fantasy. Like yeah they are both fantasy but the content os completely different

[@Katiedora122]

I haven't seen anything too egregious recently, but for some reason I only notice them when Goodreads recommends a book/author that I already don't like, haha. Although there must be some variation, because I just looked at Half A Soul and it didn't give me This Savage Song (which I also liked), but it recommended Nettle & Bone, Legends & Lattes, and Belladonna. After I scrolled for a bit it did show me Juniper & Thorn and The Golden Enclaves, though, which felt like a much bigger stretch.

[@bluejayandrooster]

I imagine they use something like tags to tie things together. Finding highly rated books with similar tags/merchandise groups (fantasy, romance, fae, etc.) and suggesting based on that as opposed to looking at the actual reading history of the people. I don’t know that that’s what is happening for certain by any means, but I have worked for companies (and I work in technology!) that do similar things for product recommendations. But I agree that sometimes it’s wildly dissimilar so there is almost certainly a secondary factor.

[@a_literarylavender]

i feel like I'm one of the very few who have both babel and once upon a time in hollywood on both of my (physical as well as goodreads) shelves. 😆 but I'm glad I'm not the only one who has noticed the idiocy of this aspect of goodreads.

[@Neverrgreen]

In the past I've noticed this function leans heavily on books also released the same year for the recommendations

[@sarahm345]

Where is your sweater from? So cute and comfortable looking. Also yes GoodReads is so random with this.

[@amandagarcia1166]

What makes this even funnier is that I looked up each book you mentioned to see what I received as "readers also enjoyed" and none of the books you saw were on the list I received. Crazy but the algorithm they must use loops in the user profile currently searching, the book, and key words in book(s) synopsis to come up with the lists bc it was weird

[@michaelldennis]

I did the same thing and had same experience.

[@shaunaisazombie]

Few other things to consider is a) the fact that the algorithm could be connected to Amazon since they own Goodreads. The pool of readers could be a lot bigger for that algorithm. And b) like ads on social media, there could be some kind of website tracking going on. Not that you were looking at that last book specifically, but maybe you bought something on Amazon that would trigger that suggestion. Or maybe there have been a lot of page clicks that brought people to that book from similar books. A bot could do that. And of course c) a book's marketing team could have a deal with Goodreads. Babel ran ads on Goodreads when it came out, so it's going to be suggested to everyone six ways to Sunday if there's even a smidgen of similarity to another book.

[@ToriMorrow]

When I look up Half a Soul, I’m shown four T. Kingfisher books and Legends & Lattes. And for Babel, it shows me books I either didn’t like or have no interest in 🤣 I’m convinced GR is one big glitch at this point lol

[@sethwr]

i see the same issue in the “top picks for you” section of my profile where it has recommended me the same seven collen hoover books since i created my account despite my taste being quite far off from that

[@coreydinardo5525]

Great video as always. But I have to say, what a cute fucking sweater!

[@ciarajammine2826]

I think they filter via tags and genre , as well as the books that are currently popular in the genre you are reading.

[@traceyanderson7489]

I don’t know if it’s because I’m in Australia but when I looked up The Stardust Thief I did not see that other one recommended 😂

[@amaltennis90]

I am actually reading an arc of Lies We Sing to the Sea right now. It is not great. I have actually read the Odyssey. There are definitely issues.

[@mandimal]

I’m not entirely sure why but I’ve recently become disenchanted with goodreads, can’t put my finger on it but I just don’t enjoy it like I used to. I mostly use it for a quick running TBR list. I never even looked at this particular function 😅

[@readysteadydogs]

I think there could be an image cover similarity matching thing going on in the algorithm.

[@JayGTheAwkwardBookworm]

I love this savage song so much 🥹

[@robertdullnig3625]

If you look at the cover art of Stardust thief and squint, I can kind of see where they were going.

[@Olivia-zt2ii]

I can't wait for the day a better more superior book app comes out.

[@veradex8016]

To be honest I've never seen recommendations that make sense on any platform. From Good Reads to Netflix, Amazon and Xbox Live. They just pull stuff out of the blue.

[@lionheart3290]

The one for the stardust thief I didn’t see there anymore

[@mintyxx1]

I can almost guarantee the algorithm includes tags, as well as who liked what. "Retelling" would have been enough of a tag for Kaikeyi and Lies We Sing to the Sea. Maybe "Feminism" or some sort of female empowerment on Stardust Thief. But the suggestions aren't based only on what people have also liked/read. And the fewer ratings a book may have, the further reaching an algorithm might have to go. So if you look at the inverse of some of those popular books (the ones with less ratings/reviews), the algorithm probably had to do it on some similar tags or similar words that popped up. And I wouldn't be surprised if it was connected to tags associated with KZbin/Google as Goodreads is connected through that.

[@renaisreading]

I would say the recommendations have been particularly worse (or broken?) since the beginning of November. I've started to see this especially in the "lists w/ this book" section - adult grimdark fantasy in "most anticipated romance of x year", and "ya/mg novels of x year" lists for example.

[@ericviera5120]

I haven't used my Goodreads account for anything other than keeping track of the Kindle books I read as they automatically get marked while I'm reading them.

[@playsintraffic2]

It recommended lots of T Kingfisher, the irregular witch society, Travis Baldree when I looked at Half a Soul

[@pheonix9372]

Same

[@Lysis99]

I'm a software engineer. I don't work at Amazon or Goodreads, but I bet some recommendations come from Amazon. And I'm pretty sure some marketing are at play here. And maybe some AI with words and coves (like Kaikeyi and Lies we soing to the sea // The weird match with Stardust theft it's 'round' in the middle) The "Readers also enjoyed" is just text. I'm pretty sure it's more considered "Similar books"

[@crawfishpi]

My guess is they recommend at least partially by the SEO tags.

[@RodgersReads]

That one for the Stardust Thief is so random....I'm dying hahahaha. There's not even a romance element in the Stardust Thief. Maybe the "readers also like" is targeted to the user and not the books so it recommended stuff it knows you like, or because you're female, instead of anything to do with the book you're looking at? ☠

[@whisper_dvm5157]

I got the same recommendations so I don’t think it’s based on the user

[@RodgersReads]

@@whisper_dvm5157 fascinating. Goodreads needs to work on itself 🤣🤣

[@thiadesg]

The whole "Readers also enjoyed" system is definitely broken, as are many systems on Goodreads. I think it has to do with the genres/shelves people put the books on. For example, I read Book A and put it in my "Favourites" shelf. Recommendations would show me what other people put on their "Favourites" shelf... BUT because I also put it in "Read in 2022" and "Owned books", that breaks the whole thing. I don't think it has anything to do with ratings or the number of reviews. (You can see the "Genres" (aka shelves) on the book's page, between the book description and the number of pages of that edition. It's worth looking at to see how broken things are.)

[@laurenschenck5355]

SO EXCITED!!!❤️💚🎄🎄💚❤️❤️❤️💚❤️💚🎄💚❤️💚🎄🎅🏻🎅🏻❤️📖📖📚📚📙📙📚📖📖📖📚📚📖📖📚📚📙📚📖📖

[@LordKingOf]

Goodreads nonsense is the exact reason I switched to StoryGraph Storygraph’s upload from Goodreads is awesome for not losing your records

[@aaronharvey5625]

So I can't say for sure or with any sort of authority since I haven't seen Goodreads' code, and I'm only a learning software developer, but if I had to guess what it's doing is pulling random books from either the "want to read" shelf of people who have read each book. It may also try to match general genre, but not necessarily. That would also explain why the "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" novel was suggested with "Babel" becasue they're both a form of alternative history fiction... actually same with "The Lies We Sing To The Sea" since it is (marketed as) an alternate mythology book.

[@oswintardis]

I just went on Goodreads and clicked on the Recommended for You page. It recommended me I'm Glad My Mom Died based on my currently reading shelf, which is Fire and Blood by George RR Martin... NO CORRELATION WHATSOEVER.

[@theexhaustedflamingo]

Maybe it’s an Amazon thing. My kindle recommended Stephen King’s Fairytale in the children’s books recommendations 🤷🏻‍♀️🤣

[@elixs5380]

I'm not active on all the platforms you use so maybe I missed some update but I was just wondering whether you're still doing the stormlight archive read along even tho book 5 release date has been pushed up to 2024?

[@ramblingsofgabby]

I imagine for books that have very few ratings, Goodreads uses genre but it could also be pulling amazon kindle book sales data.

[@TheArtfulBrittani]

I wonder if you can pay to recommend your book more? it is Amazon....So like random promotions will pop up under that tab sometimes just because someone paid for it to show up under "women centric" books.

[@lea6385]

Okay but this is so strange also because it would make more sence for a person to be putting these there and not an algorithm😂 Like how random did they have to make it for it to be like this its just so strange especially that last one I just cannot imagine what they put in the programme for it to connect those two

[@julissadc6303]

Tech person here(not from goodreads) probaly the algorithm has 2 things: 1) Recommending newer books based on genre and 2) Not cross checking literal names but rather genres

[@RidleyJones]

yeah, these things are called "recommender systems" and they can be implemented in sooo many ways.

[@Marie45610]

The recommendations in general are broken on Goodreads.

[@SarahGK2001]

My guess is that there’s some machine learning classification or grouping going on in the recommendations… and that GoodReads needs a new algorithm lol

[@pheonix9372]

My issue with the Goodreads App is that I can never click on the reviews...I says there will be 67 or some such...but I cannot click to bring them up or they aren't there as I scroll under the book info. Very frustrating so I only use the desktop version, even on my phone

[@bookswithlau]

GoodReads algorithms in general are a complete mess. I like it because i find a lot of new books by reading my friends' reviews and recommendations, but I never, ever, use the 'you might also like'. Sometimes it makes sense, but most of the time it's all over the place and has zero sense. I wished they took the care to make GR work better..

[@kayno_mocha_baby]

I have seen some of these buggy things too. I wish I could volunteer my time to Goodreads and see if I can help with their app and web development (I say volunteer because I'm not very good at programming yet). My guess is that the 'code' for the app is so old, no one at Goodreads is really able to make update and features, just minimal updates. Not sure why Amazon doesn't invest more into this.

[@kristenroper667]

I wonder if they’re basically ads paid for as marketing for the book, and they show up on books who have the same target demographic?

[@robertgamsby51]

Good taste in manga

[@TangibleReads]

GR wants you to read these books

[@LittlePiscesReading]

❤❤

[@cafeaulivre]

Because you read The Jewel Garden: A Story of Despair and Redemption: Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar From a personal story of mental health struggles and how gardening has helped the author to....a biography of a mass murderer? I mean...both are biographical???

[@ReadBecca]

I mainly find it baffling that anyone would need MORE book reccomendations, much less look for them from an algorithm. How do I slow down on the book recs so I can keep up 😂

[@leoloveslit]

Im 1000% sure that once upon a time is there with babel bc of babel’s popularity. I don’t really know how good reads makes money but even if they don’t take ad revenue, i’m sure Tarantino’s team has enough resources to make a deal with them… i found it super sus how Once Upon A Time in Hollywood everywhere even though no one talks about it

[@bekichan91]

I wonder if you would have had the same "Readers also Enjoyed" (RAE) if you weren't logged in. I'm not sure if it actually affects it as I'm not sure when you compiled your list, but I had a look at a few while watching the video. I'm not super familiar with the books that showed up in the RAE so not sure if they were good recommendations or not to be honest Half a Soul - This Savage Song didn't showe up in the RAE for me. Some overlap with the Bable RAE books Bable - I didn't have Once upon a time in Hollywood show up, and the first dozen or so seemed alright, but then Jeannette McCurdy's "I'm Glad my Mom Died" popped up and I wasn't so sure any more. Kaikeyi - Lies we sing to the sea also didn't show, but Bable did. The Stardust Thief - Again, the book you listed wasn't in the RAE when I looked it up, but Kaikeyi was. The other books all seemed relevant. I would say that it potentially goes off of what you've been looking at (going by my results and the previous books showing up for me). It could also potentially pull from other things such as books you've rated, friends books and ratings, if you have anything linked to your goodreads account/if your using a google/facebook login for your goodreads account it could pull information that's relevant from there. I suspect if you logged out and cleared your cookies before each search, you'd get a different result from your original search. TL:DR Algorithms suck. They're made to "help" but they don't.

[@RichardSekmistrz]

So... the internet is all about Sponsored Content. Did you know that Amazon (which owns Goodreads) has made a huge amount of money by switching to showing Sponsored Content (Ads).

[@moev29]

I think it pulls from the Amazon purchases. Not from actual reading and reviews

[@KassandraDeTroy]

I know I have at one point had my own "Readers also enjoyed" observations. But it's been so long since making them, I have no recollection of what they might have been. For me GoodReads is only useful for tracking what I've read, want-to-read or currently reading. But for anything other than that? Meh. 🤷🏻‍♀ I have never had much luck with the book recommendations that it gives me.

[@ToddsBookTube91]

If you like the Science Fiction novel Dune, it reccomends that you will like Ender's Game. Though they are both Science Fiction, the stories and not similar at all.. .

[@MichelleFerrerchannel]

Hi Elliot! Hope you read my comment. I do have a theory that is kind of sad about why this happens: I think some publishers are simply paying Goodreads to show their books, but this is clearly low-quality marketing if they are showing their book to random readers, instead of obvious genre lovers. I can't think of other reasons.

[@factcheckingyourmum]

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if some publishers or authors are pushing their books, or some form of it through through this way. Just like Google steers what you end up seeing, and KZbin only shows you what is deemed acceptable. Goodreads is owned by amazon, and i would guess they know how to make money. I don't see how the algorithm could be that bad, on purpose. Colleen hoover is all that's available in every single shop, and her writing isn't that great. The technology is steering us all, and we only notice it if it stands out

[@honorspren]

Seems like they fixed it for "The Stardust Thief" coz it doesn't show that book for me. Would've been hilarious tho 🤣

[@komaedacoffee4298]

I switched to Storygraph

[@MattonBooks]

I don’t have a y kind of insider knowledge, but considering Goodreads = Amazon, I’m going to guess that Amazon sells positions on the “also liked” list. So if I’m promoting a book that I think fans of X might like, I pay to get recommended on that book’s page. Again, just a guess, but they’re a business, so I’m sure any way they can make more money, they’re doing it.

[@simplyreads]

This is why I've switched to Storygraph...

[@rdmertz29]

Maybe they are pulling from Amazon's data? As in, someone who read and rated one book on Goodreads also bought the other on Amazon? Or people may have bought both on Amazon?

[@luluzza]

Not really sure how Goodreads works, but when books are uploaded, tags will be set - either chosen by the publisher / writer or by Amazon. Same as a post on Instagram, a varied range of tags are picked to ensure it targets even people that are usually not interested in the genre. Matching tags with the "Genres" / "shelves" will generate random recommendations. Also, keep in mind that as any other social platform, it most likely measures engagement (clicks / shares / shelving) and probably actual reads come into play only for very popular books.

[@isabelbullock8489]

It's because Goodreads is owned by Amazon now and so they try to sell you the books they think are selling.