Using Data Science To Pick Your Reading List

Who are your favorite authors? What are your favorite books? If you have a voracious reading appetite and have finished up the stack on your desk, or the purchases on your Kindle, what do you do next? Amazon has figured you out.  They serve you up the “also boughts” category so that you can see what other readers buy right after you mkae a purchase.  You might buy more but you haven’t even started reading the first book you bought.  What happens when you finish your book and now need to go look for the next one?

I suppose you could go back to Amazon and just start browsing.

But now there is a better way.

A while ago someone sent me the link to Yasiv.  And it was fascinating whether viewing as a reader or a writer.  If you put in the name of your own book, you will find what other authors your readers are buying.

I’ve been binge reading alien invasion/space marine books.  Naturally I put in Myke Cole since I’m about to start his Gemini Cell (Shadow Ops: Gemini Cell) series.  I was surprised by the results.  Because he is traditionally published, I expected nearly 100% trad pub results (unsurprisingly Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International, Second Edition (Monster Hunters International Book 1) and Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire (Book No. 1)).

However, the search also pulled up a thread to Marko Kloos, which was cool since I had just finished reading Terms of Enlistment (Frontlines).  Kloos, in turn had overlapping readers with Nick Webb’s Mercury’s Bane: Book One of the Earth Dawning Series (Volume 1).  So it was fun to see the indies getting some love from those same purchasers!

Yasiv is like the Zillow of homeowners, but instead of looking at your physical real estate, you are looking at your intellectual real estate.

Also if you watched Mark Dawson’s Amazon Ads webinar, then you may have noticed that Yasiv.com is the tool he used for pulling keywords to use for his ads.  Play around and enjoy!