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January 17, 2013

iDreamBooks – Book Recommendations From Trusted Critics

ss-idreambooks

Amateur reviewers are plentiful, especially on sites like Amazon and Goodreads. What many of these amateur reviewers can’t offer, however, is perspective. How does this book compare to the author’s previous work, and what specific themes were emphasized throughout the novel? iDreamBooks is an app that relies on reviews written by professional critics to help users decide which books are worth reading and which can be pushed aside.

iDreamBooks lets you browse through recently-released books in a number of ways. Start by selecting the genre you’re most interested in, or search for the title or author directly. When you click on a category, like Bestsellers, you can sort the books by release date, rating, or number of reviews. Each book listing includes a photo of the cover, a brief description of the story inside, and a score that falls somewhere between 1 and 100. Click on the title of a book to read more about the author, and see a sampling of reviews from around the web. iDreamBooks lets you know immediately how many of the reviews are positive and how many are negative, and provides easy-to-follow links that you can use to read these professional reviews in full.

iDreamBooks scores are based on the percentage of favorable reviews, with sources weighted based on age, editorial oversight, and overall quality. Books that get a score of 70% or above get a “recommended” rating from iDreamBooks. Although the web-app is primarily populated with reviews automatically pulled from newspapers and magazines, iDreamBooks encourages individual critics and bloggers who fit certain criteria (available in detail on the iDreamBooks site) to submit links to their own reviews for inclusion, as well.

Practical Uses:

  • Decide which book to check out next
  • Find out what the critics think of a book you love
  • Recommend a great novel by a new author to your book club
  • Avoid reading any books that have gotten negative reviews

Insider Tips:

  • iDreamBooks only prints reviews from professional publications and individual critics
  • Book scores are based on the percentage of positive reviews
  • All scores are weighted based on the quality of the source
  • Users can enter to win iDreamBooks’s frequent book giveaways

What we liked:

  • Reviews are less likely to be manipulated on iDreamBooks, compared to sites with user-submitted reviews
  • People can browse books by category, or search for a book by title
  • iDreamBooks aggregates reviews from around the web, versus one single source
  • Readers can get an accurate assessment of the quality of a book
  • Users can find the top rated books in any single genre

What we didn’t like:

  • iDreamBooks doesn’t give users an easy way to browse through the most highly-rated books across all categories

Alternatives:

Company Info:

  • Launched: 2012
  • Privately Held
  • Founded by: Rahul Simha, Vish Chapala, and Mohit Aggarwal,
  • Web site: http://idreambooks.com

Costs:

  • Free

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