Goodreads was the future of book reviews. Then Amazon bought it.

hedge@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 11 points –
washingtonpost.com

📚 Time to switch to BookWyrm

EDIT: Fairly incredible that this article should appear on WaPo, which is owned by amazon.

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I've been using StoryGraph since it came around and really enjoy it. I've looked at BookWyrm, but I haven't considered switching yet.

The article mentions the WaPo connection to Amazon and its board, as they should, but I'm surprised to see this particular topic there, too.

This particular paragraph is disingenuous in its characterization of what's going on with Reddit, though:

There was also a concern that any major changes to the platform could scare people away. One former employee compared Goodreads to Reddit, an 18-year-old internet forum where users are revolting because of modifications to the site. “People feel like they can’t anger the community,” the former employee said.

Honest question: how does StoryGraph value your privacy? Being based in the US and being for free suggests that user data could be the real product. Otherwise it obviously looks really nice and I would love to use their stats.

Not sure what she gets from it, but my partner pays for Storygraph because of how bad Goodreads has become.

https://app.thestorygraph.com/privacy But, what private info you are worried about liked/disliked books linked to a email?

Read the privacy statement but couldn't figure out how to interpet it. I'm not worried about it that much but would like to avoid further feeding into big data. Not sure how, but the books I read could easily tell a lot about me.

The feature I liked most in goodreads, was that it would send you a monthly email with "new books by authors you've read". It would send it at the start of the month, which was not actionable, but if you'd just wait a few months reading it, it was easy to see that LE Modesitt Jr finished another book in the series I enjoyed.

They stopped sending that, now it's a "here are some books we want you to show some interest in".

I got a bookwyrm account, and apart from not knowing all the books I've read, they also can't tell me what books have come out recently, by authors I enjoyed in the past.

I'd think that would be a basic part of any book collection tool.

They stopped sending that, now it's a "here are some books we want you to show some interest in".

Sounds like a great example of enshittification.

Stage 2, I think?

Does anyone else ignore the reviews and social media aspect of Goodreads and only use it to organize their data?

I just tried BookWyrm. It imported all my stuff from GoodReads. So far I'm loving it.

Have you figured out how to get it to recommend you a book that you'd even consider reading? I sure haven't 😳

It doesn't do algorithmic recommendations like GoodReads or Storygraph. Its much more of a feed-based system of finding books via observing what others are reading. It takes some work to curate a following list that fits your tastes, but if you go to your favorite books and actually follow the people who feel similar to you, then over time you will start to get some wild recommendations by seeing the stuff they are picking up or marking as "to read". I much prefer it to algorithmic recommendations because it adds a human level of complexity - for instance, an algo isnt going to recommend a book that was published 40 years ago that has almost 0 online data about itself, but a person I really respect could say its one of their all-time favorites and now I have a new book that I literally never would have heard about anywhere else except for that one person.

My only problem with that is that what people read is, for many at least, all over the place. So me finding a person that likes a few of the same books as me (no small feat, by the way) is no guarantee that they'll read anything else that I'll be interested in.

I get the concept, just wouldn't mind some educated guessing by an algorithm as a supplement.

I may be strange on this, but I have never felt like I need automatic recommendations, and any I have gotten feel more like a nuisance.

I have my list of books on BookWyrm and sometimes I look at it and go like "oh I wonder what this author has been up to" and I look it up, or I participate on some online discussion about what people have read and if something sounds interesting I add it to my BookWyrm list.

I've also added a couple of books from people I follow there, who have interest in common but sometimes add this entirely unexpected book and I get to explore it.

I have a feeling that has more to do with the quality af the algorithms you've been exposed to than the base concept of them.

As a for-instance, I gave ChatGPT a list of 2 books¹ I was happy with a few days ago, and asked it to recommend similar stuff. It gave me a list of 5 books², 3 of which I'd already read, and very much liked. Asked it to add those 3 to my input list and recommend some more, got 5 new ones³ (one I'd already read, and liked).

Så far I'm on book 2 of the recommendations, very much liked the first one, almost done with the second and it's great.

I probably won't get that level of recommendations from Bookwyrm at any point, but it would be nice to have something based on all the data in pumping into it, instead of having to guess which stranger to follow and hope they read something good, and that I'll actually be there to notice.

——————

  1. input books
  1. first 5 recommendations (® for already read, ®® for read after recommendation)
  1. 5 recommendations more (® for already read, ®® for currently reading)

No, that sounds like a great use of AI. I would be happy if a non-corporate option could be used for these kind of tasks for those that benefit from it.

For me though, I don't think it's about bad recommendations for books but the idea of seeking recommendations at all. I'm almost never in a "I want to read something but I don't know what" state. If I don't have a book in front of me or in my mental queue, I'm usually doing something else instead. My queue is almost never empty.

I don't follow strangers hoping for recommendations, I just follow someone that I feel an affinity for and sometimes that results in learning about a new book, seeking it and reading it.

The idea of receiving book recommendations feels overwhelming, especially from a system that would find a million interesting things, just for me. But I'm not opposed at all to such a tool existing!

I'm always searching for the next book 😅 We clearly have vastly differing needs, very interesting to see a different perspective on the subject — thanks! 😃👌

Thanks for the BookWyrm recommendation, looks interesting. I have tried LibraryThing before, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. I started building my own Goodreads alternative years ago since I couldn't find anything existing that suited my needs, but unfortunately didn't ever have the time to properly work on it.

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The article is a bit strange. Two different things are mixed there - goodreads as such, and generic social media issues (unreasoable dislikes, paid reviews etc). I like goodreads and do not know if there is an alternative. However, the site and app are outdated as hell, and miss some obvious features. However, if I understood the article correctly, these issues were there before Amazon, Amazon simply did not invest in the site enough to solve these issue.

To be honest, I freaking love bookwyrm so much. One of my favorite ways to burn time online is to find books that come across my feed that are missing info like cover art, description, etc. and to fill it all in. I've spent hours doing this and it feels so cool, like I'm actually part of maintaining the system.

Also, Ive found that the people on Bookwyrm tend to like books that I really love that are also potentially kind of niche, so Ive found a lot of really great book recommendations that I never would have found from Goodreads or an algorithm.