At The StoryGraph, we take a lot of pride in our personalised recommendations.

Before the product was built, one of the comments which came up consistently during customer research was the desire for high-quality recommendations. Readers were tired of the same books being churned out over and over again. So we put a lot of time and effort into developing our super powerful search engine, which generates suggestions tailored to you and only you!

With our recommendations, you can tell us exactly what you’re looking for in a book. Filling out the free-text box in our reading survey is the key to taking your recommendations from good to ‘was this book literally written for me?’. However, we know that being faced with the option to write whatever you like can be a little daunting, so we’re here to help!

Think of that free-text box as a real-life person on the other end of your screen. A fellow book-lover, a friend, or a bookseller even! Imagine you’re chatting about all the components which make up your favorite type of books. You can write anything you like in there (just keep it comma-separated), so thinking of it like a conversation might help get those cogs turning.

Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of things you could consider while filling out your survey:

• Think about the last book you absolutely loved. What were the main elements that made you love it? It could be found-family dynamics, a long-hidden family secret, or a queer coming-of-age story. If you can pinpoint these elements, you’ve already got some great stuff for your free-text box.

• Look back over some of your all-time favorite books - what do they have in common? Are there any recurring themes? Maybe it’s bisexual characters, mother-daughter relationships, or an underdog rising to a challenge. Identifying themes or plotlines which consistently show up in your five-star reads is bound to generate some stellar recommendations.

• Consider how you choose your next read. What sort of things do you look for or hope for when you’re picking out a title from your TBR? Maybe you’ve been seeking out lots of millennial fiction lately. Or you want to feel inspired by astounding start-up stories. Whatever you feel like reading about, you can tell us and we’ll find it for you!

• Identify tropes of your favorite genres and decide which ones you like the best. Breaking it down by genre will make it easier! Take romance, for example. Do you love enemies-to-lovers? Or prefer opposites-attract? Or maybe workplace romances are your jam. If you’re really stuck, try googling something like ‘horror tropes’ and you’ll find loads of blog posts which will help you pinpoint themes and tropes you love.

• Mix it up! The answers you give us are not set in stone. You can edit and change your answers at any time, and as many times as you like. If you don’t think your recommendations are up to scratch, you can tweak your responses. Or if one day you fancy reading something completely out of your wheelhouse, you can take the whole thing again! Get creative with your answers and we promise we’ll do our best to show you something you’ll love.