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Separate-Grocery-815 t1_iy8op9o wrote

Goodreads seems to use a simple correlation-based algorithm to determine recommendations instead of something more sophisticated like mood/pace/genre on StoryGraph. I’ve been recommended Dr Seuss after reading Shakespeare because so many people that shelved Shakespeare had already read Dr Seuss. Any algorithm that did more than basic correlation should have caught that that’s not a good rec. I think Colleen Hoover has been shelved alongside almost every book on the site just because of her popularity, and that’s probably part of why GR pushes it so much. That and Amazon sales.

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thriftstorepaperback t1_iy98me8 wrote

Yeah StoryGraph recommendations aren’t perfect but I’ve definitely put a few of them on my TBR, and I can see the logic for most of them. It’s getting better as I read and rate more books too.

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KibethTheWalker t1_iy9meqw wrote

Y'all recommended Storygraph overall? I'm thinking of switching and the only reason I haven't is because I have friends on Goodreads that read regularly and I often get good recs off what they're reading. I do hate supporting Amazon though.

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QueenMackeral t1_iy9x6yh wrote

I've tried it and couldn't get used to it, and a lot of the cool features were paywalled behind a subscription. I hate subscription based services so that put me off as well.

I like Goodreads because it's simple and free, I just use it to log books, keep track of my yearly goal and see what others are adding.

Storygraph's recommendations aren't bad, but I prefer using Librarything for recommendations.

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twistedpeppermint1 t1_iyajgqb wrote

I LOVE LibraryThing and I don’t think it gets recommended enough. Their recommendations are great. I feel like I actually find unknown books through them. I feel like because the UI is kind of outdated it doesn’t get used as much but it is such an amazing website.

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QueenMackeral t1_iyc85sj wrote

it's such a good resource for finding books. Their tagmasher feature is amazing for finding super specific things, the member recommendations are awesome for finding similar books to ones you like, and the algorithm even tells you if it thinks you'll like the book. So far I haven't even needed to use their recommendation page.

I think the UI is on par with goodreads, but people are more familiar with goodreads.

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FiggyStars t1_iy9ztqh wrote

I originally hated the Storygraph, but I tried out a few other different trackers and ended up migrating back to the Storygraph and will now stay. I do think $50usd a year is a bit steep for a subscription to access “better” features, but from when I did my trial the only thing I used from it was the tags stats comparison. You also can’t contribute to their requests for features/roadmap unless you’re a subscriber, which I think sucks, but they’re pretty responsive on email to questions, and they genuinely do want to make it a better website, unlike GR who hasn’t done anything of note in the last ten years.

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KibethTheWalker t1_iyaka5n wrote

Yeah they stopped improving gr as soon as amazing bought it. I'll have to see if the free features are good enough for me - $50 is a bunch, but might be worth it?

Out of curiosity, do you remember which others you tried?

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deafwhilereading t1_iy9uedt wrote

Personally, I never had Goodreads but adore storygraph! If you plan on switching you can also import your Goodreads data to your storygraph account :)

I especially love the stats and challenges Goodreads offers! Additionally, they seem to always be improving it.

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