Over 5000 book covers have been arranged by visual similarity to produce a captivating interactive map.
The map uses books from New York Times API lists; ‘Best Selling Books’ and ‘Also Selling’, from between June 2008 and June 2019.
Spend hours diving into this absolutely epic interactive map of over 5000 book covers from the New York Times’ Best Sellers list.
Well-known authors like J.K Rowling who have been writing under a pseudonym have been classified incorrectly when it comes to gender so the algorithms aren’t perfect but visually they are intricate and intriguing.
Machine learning is responsible for the organisation of the book titles, with gender being determined by the genderize API which determines gender by the first name of the author, which has caused a few mistakes in the arrangement due to pseudonyms and non-western names.
The map is easily searchable as well so you can explore different titles and authors and see where they fit in amongst all the different genres.
The map used GoodReads API to categorise all the different genres, with travel and food being included due to its quiet popularity and perhaps newfound love of us millennials.
Book imagery followed the first recorded cover that the New York Times ever received and you can see that the books have been categorised by their visual similarity in the interactive map.
So go on, check out the map for yourself here and you can thank OpenSeadragon for the easy navigation!
