What e-reading really, really needs right now, what would give it a major boost, is a Web site dedicated to book reviews. As far as I know, there is no central, obvious place where readers can go for recommendations.
My first thought is that this should be based on Joomla! or something similar. Most of the reviews, especially in the beginning, would need to be written and uploaded by account-holding readers. Other readers would then vote, in two ways: on the quality of the book, and on the quality of the review. Reviews should be sorted in order of their ratings, best first.
Books should be classified according to genre, with no limit on the number of genres involved. For example, 1984 by George Orwell might be classified as fiction, science fiction, political fiction, dystopian fiction, British fiction, fiction of the 1940s, novels which have been filmed, novels which have been made into TV dramas, etc., and searches on multiple genres should be allowed.
Despite what I have just said, the notion of “genre” is hopelessly inexact. One can only characterize a book by its place in the swarm of other books.
A book’s place in the swarm may be established by means of association tables. Readers should be asked to submit a list of their favorite books (not just the books in their library, as at LibraryThing). The list can be of any length, as long as there are at least two entries. Order within the list does not matter. Provided the set of lists is large enough, associations between books can be measured by the frequency with which other titles occur together with the “target title”.
Suppose I have just read 1984 and liked it very much. This becomes my “target title”, which I enter in a search dialog. The software returns a table. I imagine it might look something like this:
1984, Orwell – 100%
Animal Farm, Orwell – 83%
The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood – 75%
Riddley Walker, Hoban – 71%
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn – 64%
Heart of Darkness, Conrad – 56%
A Clockwork Orange, Burgess – 42%
etc., down to
Bend Sinister, Nabokov – 8%
Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Orwell – 7%
Ulysses, Joyce – 7%
Madame Bovary, Flaubert – 6%
The Time Machine, Wells – 4%
followed by large numbers of titles at 3% and below.
The table tells me the number of lists, expressed as a percentage, in which each of these titles occurs together with 1984. Thus, Animal Farm occurs in 83% of all those lists submitted by other readers which include 1984. The presence of Flaubert, Joyce, Nabokov, etc., suggests that 1984 is a piece of world-class fiction; and that much else in the table is likely to appeal to lovers of good writing.
If I am inclined to read more of Orwell’s work, I can go straight to Animal Farm, noting that Keep the Aspidistra Flying has less immediate appeal, but is still worth investigating.
On the other hand, if I have never heard of Margaret Atwood, I might click on The Handmaid’s Tale, so generating another association table for that book, which would give me a better idea of whether it was for me. If I liked what I saw, I could go to the reviews page for The Handmaid’s Tale, discover that this was also a dystopian novel, read what others think of it, and from there click on “get prices” (or whatever). This would generate a price-comparison table, and links to places where the title can be found.
No book should be excluded, in any language; fiction or not; in print or not; in copyright or not; however published; with an ISBN or not; and whether available only as a p-book, as an e-book, or both. The price-comparison would almost always favour e-books; people without an e-book display might then think more seriously about acquiring one.
Searches which yielded only a p-book could include a radio button with a legend like: “Would you like this title made available as an e-book?” Anonymous data from this button could be made available, for a fee, to publishers, so encouraging them to adopt E.
Further revenue could come from advertising and a commission on all sales originating from the site. This would not only pay the overheads, but allow professional critics to be engaged. Payment could also be made to amateur critics whose reviews were highly rated by readers.
Above all, the reviews should be intelligent, considered, and grammatical. If it is anything at all, the site must be authoritative: the first port-of-call for those needing independent opinion about books. A forum would be a useful addition.
I would like to get involved with such a project. If you would too, especially if you know a lot about computers, e-commerce and content management systems, please email me or add your voice to the voluminous commentary which I hope appears below!
I have been saying for years that there needs to be a good, e-book only, review website.
I agree with your premise except I think more emphasis needs to be placed on ebooks instead of p-books. I say this because there is no shortage of reviews for most big publisher print books, but the books that desperately need reviews are those published direct to ebooks (and POD) from the small press.
The utility of such a site has to be useful for the end user and IMO the end user (the ebook buyer) is the one who most needs the services of an ebook review site. If I want p-book reviews I am much more likely to go to Amazon. For such a site to be useful to me I would need to be to be able to filter out all p-book only books. This pbook filter should be on by default so I don’t have to wade through tons of paper-only books to find one ebook.
Filters to sort by rank and by price might also be useful.
Revenues: This is always the hard part for any web site.
I’m not sure the publishers will buy the website data or be willing to pay much for it. That leaves affiliate links and advertising. My suggestion would be to survey the direct to ebook publishers and find out what kind of advertising they might be willing to buy and at what price otherwise it’s Google Adsense or Adbrite or one of the other advert services. As far as affiliate sales go, there are not a lot of good ebook affiliate programs since Fictionwise canceled theirs.
I think you laid out a lot of good ideas and plans here and I would love to help make this happen…I’m mostly a developer (in fact I do development work for http://www.reviews.com and R.R. Bowker right now – so I already have some ties and exp. in the publishing and reviews world).
Perhaps we can set up a wiki or something and start fleshing more of this idea out and I’ll get to work on a prototype of some sort…
I too am working on an ebook review site. I haven’t thought too much about monetizing it (that’s not my goal), and I envision it less as a complete database than as a group blog with a slightly better index.
I hope to make it public very soon.
For big sites with database connections, librarything is fulfilling that purpose. Otherwise, the best consumer reviews are on ebook marketplace sites. Literary bloggers have not seen a particular need to focus specifically on ebooks (because many writers are still coming out with print books first).
One of the problems with review sites is that they are either too highbrow (commenting on only a small number of titles) or too eclectic (mixing celebrity bios with home repair books with fiction). Even in the realm of creative writing, there is a lot of ground to cover (and to set up categories for).
Two sites I go to for reviews: Scott Esposito’s Quarterly Conversations and M.L. Orthofer’s Complete Review . I’m not too familiar with speculative fiction, but there are several excellent review sites. Also, I’m finding a lot of good recommendations from mobileread’s forums, although forums are hardly the ideal format to have a literary dialogue.
Brad, filters should be no problem for those not interested in p-books (or in e-books, come to that). If all books were covered, it would encourage the takeup of e-reading, simply on price. One could also filter on genre and all kinds of other criteria, and (for registered users) filter out books they have already listed in their “favourites”.
Kevin, that sounds great! We’re still discussing this at the Teleblog, but I’ll mail you soon with a résumé of where we’re at so far.
Kevin, I think a wiki could be a good place to store links to reviews. It however is not a good place to feature original reviews. Right now Wikipedia is a terrible place for information about the literary scene. They’ve clamped down on “non-authorative sources” in favor of MSM sources, meaning that a 1 paragraph review in NYTBR would be more likely to be allowed on a wiki page than a 2000 treatise on a book by an unknown literary blogger (especially if that litblogger is the one who added the link). Instead of being regarded as someone contributing to the discussion, a self-linker is regarded as a kind of wiki-vermin.
There already is a rec site like this (what should I read next kind of thing)but ebooks would only be in there if the pbook was. My problem has been titles which are only available in e. That’s why I started the blog I did, to review some of these titles to help other customers.
@Robert – I agree. What I meant was let’s put together a wiki to collect the ideas and plans for building this book/review service…not a wiki as the book/review service.
I think there is currently a large gap between the parties involved in books (regardless of format)…so far I think services seem to be focused on tying people of the same group together (ie. readers to readers, pubs to pubs, reviewers to reviewers)…to make things worse they are not really doing any of it in ‘ingenious’ ways that make people talk about it (librarything is probably pushing the envelope the most in this world right now)…
What I think needs to be figured out is a better system that ties readers to reviewers to authors to publishers (and to sales data)…it’s a little bit Amazon, a little bit facebook, a little bit library thing, a little bit lulu, and a little bit J’ne sais quoi…
The first challenge is collecting the data (the right data), the second challenge is figuring out the right filters and applying the right glue…that’s just my two cents.
BTW a list of good, thoughtful ebook review web sites would be a useful list for Teleread to compile and publish.
On starting a (e)book review site: it is easier to get established in a niche than it is with a generalist site. Because of this I think a genre specific site might catch on (e.g.: Mystery & Crime, Science Fiction and Fantasy, etc.) because you are more likely to attract readers and reviewers who have a passion for that subject.
Likewise, I think it is preferable to have the site be ebook-only, again as part of the “own the niche” strategy. Filters are fine, but the search engines will tell you most people do not use filters or drop down boxes or radio buttons when they use a search engine, and they are unlikely to use those on a site search too.
Brad, that is an excellent idea. We’re going to be producing some reader’s guides in a while.
I love this idea. And it’s about time. Please keep us posted and let me know when/if you need help announcing the launch to consumers and the trade!
I think this is a wonderful idea, and agree that all books, e- or p-, should be included. A review will apply to any book regardless of its physical or digital form, and I imagine in the (relatively near) future, the number of ebooks will skyrocket, thus making it extremely inconvenient to exclude titles based on format. It’ll be very easy, especially in a community-run site, to simply tick a checkbox when a book becomes available as an ebook. I do think people use filters, as long as they’re easy to see and easy to apply.
I’ve spent (not enough time during) the last year running a fairly large community site on a Drupal backend (based in part on a similar theory of having highly ranked content float), and would love to chat with you more about it if you’d like.
I agree that niche-related reviews might drive interest in the beginning, but also think that in this case starting big is a good idea. Perhaps there could be channels where reviewers who specialize in a particular genre could be highlighted; this might also be a great way to get genre authors involved by highlighting their work through interviews, Q & A, etc.
(This is my first time reading your blog; I’m looking forward to catching up!)
It’s a great idea BUT: I work, I do creative work in needlecraft, visual arts & music, I have a wife and childre who need SOME attention, and I READ! I’m already drowning with this blog, Project Gutenberg’s Rss & The Internet Archive’s Rss. Any review site must be QUICK and easy to filter & read….
@Richard, try BookLamp.org. Those guys are trying to establish a Pandora style book site; similar to what you’ve mentioned.
Here’s a description from their site:
BookLamp.org matches readers to books through an analysis of writing styles, similar to the way that Pandora.com matches music lovers to new music. Do you like Stephen King’s It, but thought it was too long? BookLamp allows you to find books with a similar level of tone, tense, perspective, action, description, and dialog – while at the same time allowing you to specify details like… half the length. It’s impervious to outside influences – like advertising – that impact socially driven recommendation systems, and isn’t reliant on a large user base to work.
P.S> I am not associated with Booklamp in any way. i just think they have a cool idea and might come out with something good eventually
Some genre-specific review sites are heavily oriented toward e-books, simply because the genre being covered is mainly an e-book genre. (Small-press genre romance is an example.) However, it would certainly be nice if I could go to a mainstream review site and find it covering e-books. I read fantasy literature, and it frustrates me how the major science fiction and fantasy review sites often ignore the existence of e-books.
Q, thanks, I’d forgotten about BookLamp.
Kevin, sorry, there’s nothing to report.
A high-quality comprehensive book review website would be fantastic. An earlier article by Ficbot mentioned the large database of reviews at Amazon and noted their uneven quality and their susceptibility to manipulation.
Amazon also has a massive database of associations between books. Richard Herley presents an extended example based on associational results, so I thought some readers might be interested in the type of data currently available through Amazon for the example book 1984. Amazon’s associations are based on search and purchase history and not on “a list of favorite books”:
Customers who searched for “1984” also expressed interest in:
Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell (2003)
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (2006)
1984 (Signet Classics) by George Orwell (1961)
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Lord of the Flies (Penguin Great Books by William Golding
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Animal Farm (Signet Classics) by George Orwell
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited Aldous Huxley
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Of Mice and Men (Centennial Edition) by John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Frankenstein (Signet Classics) by Mary Shelley
Frankenstein (Enriched Classics) by Mary Shelley
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition) John Steinbeck
1984 (Cliffs Notes) by Nikki Moustaki
These titles are from only the first 3 of 17 “pages” of books. The books overlap with Herley’s envisioned results; however, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood does not appear until page 5.
These initial titles show a problem with Amazon data I think. It is probably distorted by book lists in schools that define “required reading” and “suggested reading” in classes. For example, the connection between 1984 and The Great Gatsby is not based on theme, genre or style. Results based on “favorite books” would be interesting to see.