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I run Gnooks, a self-learning literature recommendation experiment which has been used by a few million people so far. According to their likes, Tolkien is the
by mg 3y ago
I run Gnooks, a self-learning literature recommendation experiment which has been used by a few million people so far. According to their likes, Tolkien is the 3rd most popular author:
https://www.gnooks.com/top https://www.gnooks.com/top
- opdahl 3y agoVery interesting. Do you track any sort of demographic data, such as age, gender and location? Looking at the top authors I would wager millennials are the biggest users?
- mg 3y agoThe users only rate authors and enter no other data. So the only demographic data I have is the list of countries Matomo outputs. For last month, the top 10 countries look like this: United States 46.4% United Kingdom 8.1% Canada 5.2% Australia 4.3% Russia 3.9% Germany 2.9% Italy 1.9% France 1.9% India 1.8% New Zealand 1.3%
- forgotmypw17 3y agoThank you for such an amazing service! It would be cool to see popular authors by region. I bet there is also a lot of variance between the States.
- mg 3y agoGlad you like it! Yes, there are a lot of directions the project could evolve into. I have many ideas in a list. Finding a better business model than ads would be a good first step I think.
- vidarh 3y agoAffiliate links for the authors would be a start... Probably wouldn't be huge money, but links would be actually helpful and I doubt anyone would mind you making money of those links.
- forgotmypw17 3y agoI recommend writing a mission statement that makes it easy to see what the "cause" behind it is, and then providing easy ways to support or donate.
- opdahl 3y agoIf you don't mind unsolicited advice, I think your service could easily facilitate a paid "newsletter" of recommended new authors based on some sort of user profile.
- bell-cot 3y agoWow. Asimov at #10, Heinlein down at #86, and Clarke didn't make the top 100. Certainly not what I'd have expected. OTOH, your users probably aren't a statistically random sample of old S.F. fans...
- mg 3y agoCorrect, the focus is not on science fiction. Most users probably come over from https://www.gnod.com https://www.gnod.com after discovering one of the other recommendation projects. The music one is pretty popular. Or they come via googling for "author recommendation engine" or something like that. Clarke is at position 293: ... #292 John Flanagan #293 Arthur Charles Clarke #294 Augusten Burroughs ...
- vidarh 3y agoScifi isn't a particularly big seller (biggest genre fiction by a huge factor is romance and thrillers). Frankly the top entries do suggest a disproportionate amount of old S.F fans.
- WalterBright 3y agoAs I grow older, my formerly stellar opinion of Clarke's work has been drifting downwards.
- edanm 3y agoReally? Could you expand on why? (I'm a fan of his work but haven't read him in years)
- WalterBright 3y agoIt just didn't seem that interesting anymore. They also lacked a grand adventure, and seemed rather pedestrian. I felt I was supposed to like Clarke, but was just bored with it.
- bell-cot 3y agoHis older works, or some of his, ah, kinda-obviously-past-his-prime works?
- ekianjo 3y agoDan brown just before Frank Herbert?
- pfdietz 3y agoSeems legit.
- scruple 3y agoInteresting site, found an author I was unaware of to explore. Thanks for linking it!