survey fail

[fred_mouse]

quick background: I bought a kobo touch ereader for my youngest child's 8th birthday, with the intention of putting lots of the ebooks from the Gutenberg project on it. While getting this working is still ongoing, due to tech fail on my part (not working out which parts of the process were going to require internet access, and then going away for the weekend), zie is pretty excited by the idea.

On to the reason for this post: Today, I checked my email, and found a 'recommendations' set, which includes the option to take a survey about my thoughts on the recommendations. Given that I don't like the recommendations that we are getting, and I'd like to work out how to stop them on the kobo, so that zie doesn't read the free previews of things that zie really shouldn't be reading, I took the opportunity to make comment. 

Unfortunately, some of my responses are going to be irrelevant, because I had to fake the age - the choices start at 18, and go up. Plus, for the 'how do you like to get recommendations', none of the options were relevant, so I filled in 'none' in the 'other' box, which it insisted that I had in fact not answered the question. 

On the plus side, I've found that I might have the opportunity to modify what is recommended. Now all I have to do is log in to the site, and see how I go with poking the buttons. 

Has anyone had any luck with changing those preferences?

(mostly posted to grumble about stupid publishing industry who assume that the only people who use their stuff are the ones that they want to market to)

Comments

[elf]

No specific advice on Kobo settings; I haven't dealt with any of the store-specific ebook options.

It's one of my longstanding rants that ebooks are never going to be seriously mainstream as long as they're inaccessible to kids, which means "as long as you need a credit card to buy them." (I always giggle maniacally when publishers wring their hands about the low sales of YA titles in ebooks. Because, duh.)

Also worth checking: the Patricia Clark Memorial Library at Mobileread has public domain & a handful of other books-with-permission; usually, those are better-formatted than the Gutenberg editions. Many are hand-proofed against original print copies (many early Gutenberg books are sloppily proofed) and formatted more carefully.

There are also a number of free & low-cost children's and YA books posted at Smashwords, but I don't recommend you send an 8-year-old there to poke around; there's also a lot of questionable content. (Including erotica, which most 8-year-olds I've met have no interest in, and books with violence, which parents might want to steer them away from, and books with atrocious grammar and bad spelling, which parents might be even more concerned about.)

When my young teen got an e-reader, she discovered Fanfiction.net and I can barely pry her away from it now. Both of my daughters' writing skills improved noticeably after they started reading at ff.net... it's like they suddenly realized that words can be fun and had a reason to want to get better at them.

(Kindle specific)

[taeli]

Just wanted to add that http://youngedition.pixelofink.com/ has free and cheap kids and YA books for the kindle listed every day.

Re: (Kindle specific)

[fred_mouse]

thank you - I'll add this to my list of resources. At this point, youngest has half a dozen or so Bobbsey Twins books to work through, and quite a lot of other bits and pieces I grabbed - I don't want zer to be too overwhelmed!

(while youngest has a kobo, once I run out of things to read on the ipad, I'll have a loot there for things to read using the kindle ipad ap)

[fred_mouse]

Here (Perth, Australia), one doesn't have to have a credit card to buy one, as they are available in a multitude of stores. Sony seem to be the most prevalent, the Kobo was in the second shop I tried, and I'm told that Kindle are readily available in one of the low budget chain stores (I stopped looking when I found a Not-Sony). I'm suspecting that we are on the early part of a wave of kids getting them, at least in our area, where there are a lot of affluent parents who would like their kids to be reading more!

Thank you for the reference to the library - I will go and look at that when next in need of books. I have seen some of the issues with the Gutenberg books - the ones easily available through the Kobo store are frequently proper covers - but as a start, we have picked up about 50 books, and will worry about getting more when youngest has finished those. And I might go and have a poke around at Smashwords - mostly I'll be doing the looking, with guidance from youngest as to what zie is after, because the ereader has been registered on my laptop, rather than the family machine (compatibility issues with the ereader software).

[lauredhel]

I don't know how to change recommendations on email/ the Kobo app - I've never received a recs email from them, and don't use their app (I manage my books with Calibre). But if you're talking about getting rid of the Recs on the home screen, all you have to do is click "Recommended for You", and choose "Shortlist" from the dropdown instead. Then tap the little hearts next to books in the library to choose your Shortlist.

[fred_mouse]

in terms of using the app - I was going for the fastest, least tech savvy approach that I could find, in the hope that I could get books on the ereader in less than an hour, so that there would be books on it when we gave it to youngest (I had lots of time. Then I got it out of the bag to find that the goldfish staffer had in fact not given me the model that zie had sold me, and I had to chase around multiple suburbs to replace it. And then the desktop mac refused to do anything. and and and and ...). And then I failed to press the 'sync' button, so they didn't sync anyway. Two different sync procedures (app to store, app to reader) annoyed me greatly.

As to the 'recommended for you' - I'm not sure if I've managed to find the right setting. I've changed the selection at the bottom of the screen to be 'shortlist', and then selected some of the books in the library, and it looks like the section higher up the screen is reflecting the books that have been recently opened, so I'm hoping that that will get sorted fairly quickly. Much appreciated - thank you.

[lauredhel]

Yes- the top carousel shows books recently opened or recently loaded, and the bottom (when set correctly) shows your Shortlist (the books you've hearted).

[fred_mouse]

cool - thanks! I haven't had the oomph to look in to much about getting it working, and I really really dislike the fact that most tech these days comes without a decent manual that I can look stuff up in. It might be intuitive to the people who set it up, but I am pretty sure that my intuitive is not the right one in these cases.

(seriously, step 3 in the instruction pamphlet is "follow the set up instructions and start reading in minutes!". At no point did any of those instructions tell me that I had to sync the device, when it was already plugged in and supposedly set up to transfer books across, when I was hitting the 'download' button for the books. *cranky cranky mouse* ensued).

[isis]

I have a Kobo touch and don't see any of this! I think there's a setting you can turn off. Hmm...I have settings/reading life unchecked. It also says 'to view or change your account and profile settings...please sign into the Kobo website and click on My Account'. So you could probably do it there.

(I don't buy any books from kobo.com. I use my reader for free ebooks, fanfiction, and library books through Overdrive.)

[fred_mouse]

As a result of reading lauredel's message above, I found the 'reading life' setting, and turned it off - hopefully it will have that effect! As to the signing in to a website - that requires more oomph than I have today, but maybe some other time I'll remember!

As to purpose of the ereader - I want youngest to have some exposure to 'classics' which I don't tend to find easily available in paper form, and so have started with Project Gutenberg, and will see where else to go from there. Unless there are very specific books available through kobo, I can't imagine myself buying any either! For me, the ebook reader *is* the expense, not the start of the spending. Shall have to see how it goes though.

[lauredhel]

Reading Life has nothing to do with recommendations. It's all the little 'awards' that you get - for finishing a book, reading at certain times of day, etc etc.

[fred_mouse]

ah. Sounds like a good thing to have turned off. I want youngest to feel rewarded *by reading* not *for reading*.

[fred_mouse]

oh, and having looked at the rewards, I'm even happier to have turned it off. Yes, it might be good for pointing out some of the features, but I have no desire for youngest to try and 'read through the night' just to collect an award. Seriously, there are very few people that I can think of that might benefit from being encouraged in that behaviour!