Simon & Schuster has just developed the first the first voice-activated book recommendation tool. If you have a device running Amazon Alexa or Google Voice Assistant will be able to recommend King books tailored to users reading tastes from a selection of 56 titles.
The program, S&S said, will ask users a series of situational questions—voiced by audiobook narrator Jeremy Bobb and will suggest a reading list informed by their responses. “Simon & Schuster intends to be at the forefront of utilizing voice interaction technology to connect books and authors to readers and audiobook listeners,” S&S executive v-p and chief marketing officer Liz Perl said in a statement. “Using A.I. through Stephen King Library is a fun and innovative experience for exploring this master storyteller’s work.”
You can check out a demonstration of this new system by asking “Alexa, Open Stephen King Library.” Those with one of Google’s Home devices or any other platform on which Google Assistant is available can say “Hey Google, open Stephen King Library.”
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
