Re:Goodreads Is Broken
by TillE on Saturday September 07, 2019 @12:52PM
(#20904941)
It astounds me that after 20+ years of Amazon, nobody's come close to creating a good way to discover books. Amazon.com is particularly bad at it, but browsing the shelves of a library is still a better experience than what I can get from Goodreads.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
The single thing that bothers me most about goodreads is that they’re owned by a bookseller, the have a list of 200 books I’ve read, and every month they email me promoting romance novels, bestsellers and books about america culture. The one I just checked includes an advertisement for dresses (I’m male) If they would literally just list new releases by authors I’ve read it would be 100% more useful.
Could it be that there is a moneyed interest in keeping things undiscovered?
Not exactly. The moneyed interest is in driving dollars to the things that they invested heavily in, and need to get that money back. They paid big bucks for a book they expect to be a bestseller, they want attention on that book. So there’s no incentive to drive attention to the little books.