want to block absurd book suggestions

[JimJoe]

I am a guy. B&N is wasting its time suggesting books I'll never read.

This time around its books on my female harmonal imbalance. I am very certain I am male and have no need of such materials.

No, none of my female relatives would look for book advice from me.

As I said last time. Suggest something I am likely to read, like computer books.

Anything other book suggestion is a waste of my time.

There still needs to be a filter in 'My Nook' here to let me set the genre I would be willing to accept suggestions for.

I have specifically warned other people at work about this messed up aspect of the Nook.

[sandie52]

Why not just browse, filter and search  and buy on the website if you don't like the way that shop works? The  only time I ever use shop is to buy an app or see what the friday book is. I like browsing on the website since I get more information in exactly the way I want it.

[Undo]

I'm not sure I've even noticed what books are being suggested for me. I've trained my eyes, over the years, to ignore most advertising, although once in a while, something will catch my attention.

[JimJoe]

Since they expext me to buy, the least they could bring themselves to do is suggest books I'll spend money on. For them to do otherwise is idiocy. Certainly shows a lack of common sense.

[Undo]

I agree, you'd think they would have some formula for suggesting books based on your previous purchases. Netflix and iTunes both do a good job of that.

[doncr]

IT should be common knowledge by now that BN markets the Nook Color to women.  They probably don't go to the trouble to see what you've bought or the books that you look at on the website in order to tailor the suggestions.  It's easier for them to throw up some romance novels, Cosmo/People/Yoga magazines, and slap a sample cookbook on your device than try to figure out who you are and what you'd be interested in purchasing.

[JimJoe]

I read books, lots of them. I bought the Nook color so I could read ebooks with DRM.

Not marketing to me and my book likes is lost sales.

No company that wants to stay in business can afford to mismarket the things they sell.

It should be an easy add-on to all of our profiles here so we can let B&N know what genres of books we are interested in and therefore increasing their sales.

Their current method is decreasing sales.

[Serendip]

I'm not interested in what they think I want to read. Or, for that matter, what ANY company or person suggests I read, unless they know ME. Basing on what others have bought doesn't work for me in any category, for any company.

So very easy to ignore it all, and not worth my time or energy to do otherwise. And it's what I do with all companies that attempt to be "helpful"...

[DeanGibson Distinguished Bibliophile]

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doncr wrote:

...  It's easier for them to throw up some romance novels, Cosmo/People/Yoga magazines, and slap a sample cookbook on your device than try to figure out who you are and what you'd be interested in purchasing.

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What?  That would require some THINKING, some intelligent marketing, rather than the "spam approach" to marketing.

This is where Amazon excels over most Internet marketeers;  you can tailor the recommendations you get.  Not that I get great recommendations, but at least they don't firehose everyone with the same thing.

In fact, I'd like to know one area where B&N has been innovative.  Bringing out the Nook was (innovation-wise) a just better mousetrap than the Kindle, and the NookColor, although technically well-done, was just a color extension/integration of the original Nook with the burdgeoning tablet market -- they were just lucky to be first.

[Schwa]

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DeanGibson wrote:

In fact, I'd like to know one area where B&N has been innovative.  Bringing out the Nook was (innovation-wise) a just better mousetrap than the Kindle, and the NookColor, although technically well-done, was just a color extension/integration of the original Nook with the burdgeoning tablet market -- they were just lucky to be first.

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I have to disagree with your last statement there, Dean.  While you are correct that it doesn't really fall under the term "innovative", I think they deserve a little more credit than "lucky".

Amazon was absolutely steadfast in their firm belief that no one wanted to read books on an LCD device (they certainly are scrambling now) and the original iPad had already landed huge.   B&N made the very gutsy move of betting that there was a market somewhere in the middle, and it paid off. They've been without competition there in that spot for almost a year now.  I don't see luck, I see everyone else playing catchup to an original idea (not the device, the vision of a target market).

On topic: In the age of Amazon and Google, I don't really bat an eye at forced advertisement, sad as that may be.  B&N is not currently very good at it for sure (OMG, I have hope for the future!  sacrilege!) but It doesn't really bother me that much.  Just adding my opinion to the mix, I can see how others would be frustrated.

[tuck229]

I don't pay much attention to the shopping home page for B&N, but I did notice last night that it gave me a book suggestion and mentioned it was based upon a specific title I had downloaded a few days earlier.  I have no idea if they have a thinking system in place to analyze/predict members' reading tastes.  They do keep track of every single book that you just read the overview of...can't imagine that info is never going to be used for anything. 

Did you double check that you are registered as male on your user profile?

The only program that does an impressive job of guessing what I will like is Pandora (amazingly accurate) and Netflix (somewhat accurate.)  Amazon sends "you might like"s to my inbox on a regular basis and just get deleted without opening now because it is never anything that I am interested in. 

[Nallia Distinguished Bibliophile]

Huh.  I don't know what I'm doing differently, but I don't get any of the romance/erotic/vampire/werewolf/truly annoying book recommendations that I see so many here complain about.  Thank goodness, because I don't read any of those genres that people here like to stereotype as being all I must read since I am a woman (my bookshelves are filled with science fiction, fantasy, mythology, programming, math, and physics books--maybe I'm not really a woman *rolls eyes*).  All of the recommendations I get are in the genre I read most--Science Fiction & Fantasy.  And they are usually actual science fiction or epic fantasy.  Maybe it's because I'm as particular about which free ebooks I dowload as I am about the ebooks I buy?  My only real annoyance is that most of the recommendations are for books I already own in hardcover.

[bestem]

I do wish you could tell B&N not to make reccommendations off any books that were freebies.  Or maybe only off books that you add to your library on My B&N.  

[bklvr896]

I get book recommendations off freebies and off items I've purchased.  I look at them sometime, othertimes, I don't.  It doesn't really bother me, I'm very good at ignoring information I'm not interested in, so I don't see it as a big deal.  There are a lot of other things I wish they'd work on fixing or improving that, IMHO, are more important.

[dfehling]

I just never do my book browsing from my Nook. I look first on Amazon, because they excel at recommendations based on MY critera. Then, once I find a book I am interested in, I check the online library first to see if they have it (they rarely do, unfortunately), then I look for it on BN.com and add it to my library there. So, I don't ever see B&N's useless recommendations. (They really need to improve in this area!)

[Omnigeek]

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Nallia wrote:

I don't read any of those genres that people here like to stereotype as being all I must read since I am a woman (my bookshelves are filled with science fiction, fantasy, mythology, programming, math, and physics books--maybe I'm not really a woman *rolls eyes*).

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Would you marry me? 

[Nallia Distinguished Bibliophile]

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Omnigeek wrote:

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Nallia wrote:

I don't read any of those genres that people here like to stereotype as being all I must read since I am a woman (my bookshelves are filled with science fiction, fantasy, mythology, programming, math, and physics books--maybe I'm not really a woman *rolls eyes*).

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Would you marry me? 

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I would consider it, but someone else already beat you to it. 

[DeanGibson Distinguished Bibliophile]

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Nallia wrote:I would consider it, but someone else already beat you to it. 

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I take it you are not in southern Utah?

Oh wait;  I've got it backwards ...

[Omnigeek]

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DeanGibson wrote:

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Nallia wrote:I would consider it, but someone else already beat you to it. 

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I take it you are not in southern Utah?

Oh wait;  I've got it backwards ...

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Ever see "Paint Your Wagon"?  Maybe she's near No Name City ...