Care and Feeding of an Amazon Recommendations List

Amazon is my friend, and like any good friend, we’ve had some discussions about what books I like, and Amazon has recommended several others I might enjoy. I like this. But it’s getting to the point where I’m no longer quite sure what to tell her. For instance:

1: One high recommendation Amazon is giving me is for Griffiths’ quantum mechanics textbook. This is certainly a good recommendation, since I’ve bought other physics texts from Amazon in the past, and I’ve told her that I own several others. On the one hand, the other two Griffiths texts I have are very good textbooks, and other students have said that his quantum book is also good. On the other hand, though, I’ve never used the book myself, and since I already have another undergraduate quantum text and I’m never going to take an undergrad quantum course again, I’m not likely to ever use it. What should I tell Amazon to let her know that I appreciate the thought, but I’m not interested in that particular book?

2: Many series come in both individual books and in boxed sets, and Amazon will often recommend both versions. Thus far, what I’ve been doing is if I own all of the books in a series (whether as a boxed set or otherwise), I tell Amazon that I own both the boxed set and the individual books. Thus, for instance, I tell Amazon “I own this” for the Lord of the Rings boxed set, even though the books I own are separate. But this double or triple-counts books in series, even though I only own one copy of each. Is there any better way to record this?

3: Many of the books Amazon recommends for me are books with which I am familiar and which I did like, but I’m not looking to purchase them right at the moment. I’m not likely to buy any more Heinlein, for instance, until I can find a larger bookshelf to store them on. Again, these are good recommendations (since I’ve bought and own many other Heinlein books), but I’m not interested in buying them at the moment (though I may at some point in the future). How ought I to explain this to Amazon?

Overall, I like the recommendation feature, and if nothing else, it’s great fun to see all of my old favorites that Amazon knew enough to recommend for me. She’s also suggested several books with which I wasn’t previously familiar, but which I now intend to check out (which is, of course, a large part of the purpose of such a list). But I’d like to see this good feature become even better.

Might clicking “not interested” work?

That might hurt her feelings, and she’d either think you didn’t like physics anymore, or that the book sucked quantum foam, but not in a good way.

For case 1, mark it not interested. For case 2, that’s probably a good approach. For case 3, either just leave it as-is, or add it to your wish list and mark it “Not interested”.