On the left, click Books to filter out other types of products. Now, directly below each of the recommended books, you'll see the reason it's being recommended, such as: #Recommended because you purchased [TITLE].#
For each book recommended, you can refine the system by indicating:
Whether you own the book.
Whether you're just "not interested" in the recommended book.
Your rating for the book on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 meaning "I love it."
Few Amazon customers take the time to confirm this raw data in Amazon's recommendations engine, and as a result it can spit out some wacky suggestions. If you've purchased books for children or friends that you wouldn't read yourself, the result is faulty recommendations.
In some cases, Amazon will guess correctly which of your purchases are gifts--for example, when you ship a book to a different address--and excludes them from recommendations.
Here's how to exclude other inappropriate books from your recommendations:
Near the top of your recommendations list is the text, "These recommendations are based on items you own and more."
Clicking you own shows the list of books Amazon knows you've purchased.
To exclude books from the recommendations system, uncheck the box labeled #Use to make recommendations#.
You can also improve your recommendations by letting Amazon know about books you've purchased elsewhere.
The star ratings you assign to books on this list won't be visible to other Amazon users, but the ratings can affect which books get recommended to whom and how often.
As you scroll through the list of books, be on the lookout for quality books you've read that are complementary to your book. When you find one, check the box #Use to make recommendations# and assign it a 5-star rating. This will encourage Amazon to recommend your book to other users with your same buying and rating history. This will help seed Amazon's recommendation system for your book.
Here's a way to further jump-start your book in Amazon's recommendation system: Buy other books published in your niche, along with your own book. Ask your friends and family to buy them also. This will inject your title into the recommendation engine. It won't dictate the long-term position of your book; that will depend on the independent actions of many thousands of customers. But those paired purchases, if relevant, can surface your title in Amazon recommendations weeks earlier than might otherwise occur.