I prefer Kobo for e-reading, but gosh darn it the recommendations are strange

For those who've never heard of it: Kobo is an e-reader (physical, as well as app for Android and iOS) using the ePub format. I'm a fan of them, and I went with them for an e-reader. My only real gripe is their recommendations, i.e. the "We want you to buy more crap from us" feature. Some of it I can understand, some of it just boggles my mind.

For example, I enjoy Jim Butcher's novels. I've purchased the Dresden Files through Kobo, since my paperbacks and even some of my hardcovers are pretty much dead and dying from being read and loaned out too much. Naturally, it recommended me his Codex Alera. Cool! Except that it's recommending me the series in German. Ich kann kein Deutsch.

When I went to reread the Wheel of Time recently, I bought it in ebook format, rather than haul around the big fat novels. I bought the complete series to date, all fourteen novels. Kobo picked up on that, and made an understandable recommendation: Distinctions, the prologue to Towers of Midnight. Of which I have the full novel of, thanks to having bought the whole series.

Probably based on the amount of the fantasy genre in my reading list, Kobo suggested Stormlight by Ed Greenwood. I read the book in paperback years ago, so it really wasn't that bad of a suggestion all things considered, though Ed Greenwood should be banned under the Geneva Convention.

I have no clue whatsoever why it's recommended me the Boxcar Children or Horse Crazy.

On the bright side, it hasn't recommended me any Harlequin romance novels lately. For a while, I'd open up the Kobo web site and see six bare Highlander chests across the top of the page. The nearest I can figure is that it saw my one search for Outlander when I was showing my mother and grandmother how Kobo worked and decided that I had a love for gruff yet tender Scotsmen that only e-books could fulfill.

And the most annoying thing? I tell it "I already have this" or "Not interested" and it removes them from the list... for about a day.

 

But Ed Greenwood created Forgotten Realms.

 

I also have a kobo but I only put public domain books and pirated e-versions of books I own in hardcopy on it, so I don't have this problem. Until you can buy a copy of a book and it comes with a digital copy I won't be buying any digital only copies of anything.

 

Precisely what I do with my Kindle. I don't know why book manufacturers haven't latched onto attaching a digital code to their novels. They'd sell better IMO.