“Is It Possible to Give a 6 out of 5 Stars?”: Book Selection and Recommendation in the Internet Age

Authors

  • Margrit Schreier

Keywords:

literary mediation, book market, bestsellers, book reviews, reader, internet

Abstract

To explore the factors that influence the choice of light reading, the seventy-five “most useful” customer reviews of twenty-five Amazon.com bestsellers were coded for reasons underlying book recommendation. The results show involvement to be most important, followed by author- and theme-related reasons. This highlights the pattern-driven nature of book selection.

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Published

2017-10-11