As many of you probably know, I started tracking my recommendation sources a couple years ago and using that information to pick better books. As often as possible, I’m choosing books that have already been read and recommended by trusted recommendation sources rather than from publishers’ catalogs or various “Most Anticipated” book lists. The key to success is the “already read” part because it provides an opinion beyond “does the premise sound good on paper?” and independent of publishers’ marketing machines.

Each quarter, I’m sharing my reading quality and my best recommendation sources. 

My Q2 2019 Reading Quality

My Successful Books Attempted dropped a bit from Q1’s 63%. My goal is to keep this success rate above 50% all year long, which it is, but I don’t like seeing the 16% decrease from Q1. This is mostly due to an increase in DNF’s as you can tell by the next stat.

The second number gives me an extra incentive to DNF books that aren’t working for me and is about even with Q1’s 83%.

How I Calculate My Best Book Recommendation Sources

This year, I’m approaching my best recommendation sources a little differently. I’m basically going to make this like a race through the end of the year.

• Each quarter, I’ll share my best recommendation sources for the entire year to date, rather than just that quarter. That way, I can see who’s moving up and down as the year progresses. Plus, it might be fun for y’all to watch!
• I picked the top 5 recommendation sources by # of successful recommendations.
• Then, I sorted them by % of total recommendations that are successful, which factors in unsuccessful recommendations.

The reason I don’t want to use % successful recommendations as my only metric is it could cause sources with 1 successful recommendation (100%) to beat out sources with, for example, 4 successful and 1 unsuccessful recommendation (75%).

And, this entire calculation is a work in progress. I’ll be tinkering with the best way to do this all year. Hopefully, I’ll have a foolproof calculation by the end of the year to include in my 2020 Rock Your Reading Tracker!

My Best Book Recommendation Sources for Q2 2019

Key Takeaways

• Annie Jones shot up the list…which is not surprising. I was actually surprised she wasn’t higher in Q1 and knew she’d rise throughout the year.
• Bloggers and #bookstagrammers (as opposed to traditional media sources) moved up the list in Q2. This is also not surprising…I was actually surprised when more of them didn’t show up on my Q1 list.
• New Additions to my Top 5 (compared to Q1): Happiest When Reading, Gilmore Guide, and Amazon Best Books Lists.
• Sources that fell out of my Top 5 from Q1: Laura Tremaine, Ashley Spivey, Read It Forward’s Best Books of the Month Lists, and She Reads 2019 Book Preview.

Who have been your best and worst recommendation sources lately?

How I Keep Track of My Reading Quality and Best Recommendation Sources…and You Can Too!

Are you thinking it takes me hours to calculate my reading quality and keep track of my Best and Worst recommendation sources every month? Well, it totally could, but it doesn’t. I use my “Rock Your Reading” Tracker, which automatically calculates my reading quality for me and helps me easily keep track of my recommendation sources.

If you’re interested in tracking your own reading quality and recommendation sources, you can purchase my tracker for $11.99! Go here for more details or purchase below!

Purchase the tracker…

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