A Look at Amazon’s New Features: Your Books and Book Clubs

A Look at Amazon’s New Features: Your Books and Book Clubs

By Melody E. McIntyre

 

Recently, Amazon has introduced two new features for its users, Your Books and Amazon Book Clubs. Both are currently in early access, but are open to the public on Amazon.com. Your Books launched December 13, 2023. Amazon’s Book Clubs have been around for a while, but are still in “early access”. I have taken a quick look at both of these new sites and can offer some preliminary thoughts.

Your Books

Amazon has launched Your Books, a new feature that catalogues all of your books purchased through Amazon. It combines physical books you’ve ordered, Kindle ebooks, and your Audible library into one collection. Using that data, Amazon can directly recommend new books to, of course, sell you more books.

Your Books is in Beta and currently only available for Amazon.com. Most of my Amazon purchases are from Amazon.ca, so the library it showed me was limited, as were many of the recommendations, but I could already feel myself getting tempted to fill up my wishlist. If you’re looking to cut down on book spending, this could be a dangerous new site. Most of the recommendations come in through “Discovery Mode”, which takes each book in your library and makes suggestions based on that choice. However, it doesn’t seem to distinguish between ones I loved and ones I barely read, instead providing recommendations for every one. You can narrow it down some using the filters, which let you sort by rating, genre, price, etc.

Unfortunately, Your Books is pretty limited so far. It’s really just a catalogue with sales recommendations. Perhaps more features will be added, but I see no way to add in books I’ve acquired elsewhere, mark things as “owned” or even “read” vs. “unread”. On my Kindle, I have a many collections that let me sort my books and Your Books doesn’t offer that.

At first glance, it seems like Your Books is meant to replace Goodreads, which has many good features, but is ripe for abuse by review bombers and scammers. However, is no way to input your own through Your Books, or to comment and engage in discussions. Another Amazon feature, also in early access, is Amazon Book Clubs.

 

Amazon Book Clubs

It seems that an early version of Amazon Book Clubs was launched in 2020, but to this day remains in early access. Even so, the site’s clubs are popular. The clubs featured on the main page include “Unforgettable reads” at over 111,000 members and Amazon’s Sarah Selects with just under 50,000 members. Sarah Selects is named for Amazon’s editorial director, Sarah Gelman, and focuses on newly released titles.

While the site is in early access, only certain members can start new clubs. The FAQ does not specify which members, but I tested it out and I am not one of them. However, I was easily able to join any of the featured clubs that interested me and enter the discussions.

Organized like a forum, members can post and reply to each other about the latest book selected by the admin. Previous books are visible on the side panel, but not the previous discussions. Members can make suggestions and vote on them, but it seems the final decision is by the admin.

 

While both these features are limited, in early access, and created to make money, I admit I am happy to see Amazon trying out new features. I’m open to new ways to explore and discover new awesome books. Both systems need to grow and develop, but I see potential in both, particularly in Your Books, because as someone who reads ebooks, physical books, and audiobooks, I definitely need help organizing my sprawling library.