The absolute bane of the book industry: book discovery. Publishers have always been trying to discover ways to get people to discover their books, but to this day, it’s still a hit or miss. Despite the amount of money a publisher can funnel into advertising a book, there’s no guarantee it will be a success.

Unlike other types of media, there is nowhere to plug in what books you’ve enjoyed so far and get recommendations on what to read next. It’s a real problem in the industry and despite attempts at possible solutions, it has not been solved so far. Amazon’s Goodreads website is popular but it’s not perfect. Google recently tried their hand at it and failed hard.

It’s a tough nut to crack. Perhaps impossible too, since it would be difficult to turn into a business. Goodreads keeps itself afloat with ads, which mostly are used to advertise books and defeats the purpose of individualized recommendations. It’s a genuine problem that affects the industry so undoubtedly, there will always be attempts for solutions, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Read more about book discovery at the Good eReader.

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