Can Amazon actually tell time?

[temporus]

Okay, is it just me, or does anyone else get annoyed by the marketing bits from Amazon declaiming: Best Books of X.  Where X here represents either a year or the month.   What gets me about this, is not the books themselves, but the fact that they are purporting to tell me which are the best books of a month, while the month is only half over.  Seriously, I got an email from Amazon claiming to share with me the Best Books of October.  But, as I recall, there's a good week and a half or so left of the month.  How on Earth can they possibly know that in the remaining time there won't be other, even cooler books coming out?

Grrr..  Okay, that's probably more a pet peeve of mine than anyone else's but I know I got something like that over the summer claiming that it was telling me the best books of 2009.  I have nothing against any of the books they sent me on the mailing.  I have nothing against Amazon for sending me suggestions.  If I did, I'd have told them to stop it by now.  I sometimes get a kick out of seeing books recommended by authors I interact with, and will sometimes send them a note to let them know their book has been recommended by Amazon in an email.  I think that's a great thing.   But seriously, please wait to judge a month, year, decade, etc, until it's actually over.  Please?

So, am I the only person who gets these Amazon mailings?  (Or B&N, or Borders)

And if you get these mailings, do they ever influence you?  Do you ever check out the books from a library, or buy them from the vendor?  What if you get a tailored message that tells you the latest novel by Author you've bought in the past is now available to you for a discount?

Comments

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

I get emails from all those places, but I rarely bother to read past the header.

I might buy a book by an author I liked eg: Terry Pratchett, but I think I would have anyway. Their email just reminds me it's out - and I don't necessarily buy it from there in any case.

[temporus.livejournal.com]

I don't buy too terribly often from Amazon. More so since the Kindle, because it's so damn easy that way.

My purchase matrix is convoluted, and probably over thought beyond all rationality. But yeah, I may well buy a book, but not from the vendor that sent me details in the mail.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I ignore such things so thoroughly they don't even make a dent in my mind any more.

[temporus.livejournal.com]

Do you find any value in Amazon's recommendations on the website? Or the: people who like book X also liked book Y type features?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

The only time I investigated their suggestions was when I was doing some research into Napoleon's battles, because I didn't know who the current crop of scholars were. Each recco I examined thoroughly, then looked up elsewhere on the net.

For fiction, never, except to note patterns in the reccos, which causes me to try second guessing how they are tweaking their algorhythms--or if publishers might be paying to get certain titles shoved in there, appropriate or not.