Amazon Launches ‘Your Books’ for Lists, Recommendations

Amazon has launched a new service called Your Books that allows customers to see all the books they have purchased, borrowed or saved across print, Kindle and Audible. In addition to serving as a reading history, the hub also serves personalized discovery suggestions designed to drive sales. “Simply type ‘Your Books’ in the search bar on the Amazon Store, and the top result will open the Your Books feature. Once there, the Library tab contains every book you have ever bought or borrowed from Amazon,” the e-retail giant explains.

Bibliophiles can organize their library based genres, authors or series, “allowing you to discover which categories you like the most” or those you’d like to expand, Amazon says. The Library tab also allows users to search Amazon’s extensive books database, presenting recommendations based on past purchase patterns and current interests.

Another feature “is the ability to see all the books you’ve saved on Amazon in the same library” on a Saved Books tab, writes Lifewire, adding that “a Notes and Highlights tab will show you the highlights you’ve made or the notes you’ve taken, separated by book title.” Amazon is positioning the new hub as “a personal book sanctuary.”

TechCrunch calls Your Books a “competitor to Goodreads,” another book tracking site owned by Amazon since 2013. “As on Goodreads, the new tool will help users organize their own collection of the books they’ve read and … will help them find new ones. But instead of reading through reviews from other Goodreads users, the reviews here are from Amazon shoppers,” TechCrunch points out.

TechCrunch suggests the timing of the Your Books launch may have something to do with a recent controversy triggered by Goodreads due to “review bombing,” whereby competing authors and their allies anonymously write negative reviews of competing work to kneecap competition.

“For authors, that means Goodreads has become a double-edged sword — the same features that can generate excitement around their new titles can also be used against them,” TechCrunch writes, noting that Your Books relies more on its recommendation engine than reviews.

The Verge took Your Books for a test run, and found it helped surface “some hidden gems,” but was critical of its ability to organize around digital comic books and manga.  Amazon purchased an app called ComiXology in 2014, merging it into Kindle as of December 4, a change that has not gone over so well with comics fans, according to The Verge.

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