Astereads, by its words

Other readers whose taste pattern overlaps with yours.

An asterism is a small group of stars that form a recognizable pattern. On Astereads, your asterism is the readers whose fingerprints – built from how they rate books across 11 vibe axes – sit closest to yours. The closer their star to your centre, the more aligned your reading lives are.

Astereads's word for following another reader.

Tap Constellate on a profile to add that reader to your constellation. You'll see their new shelf additions in your Inbox. When they constellate you back, you share a constellation – a small mutual orbit.

Readers you've chosen to follow.

Your constellation is the collection of readers you've consciously added – distinct from your asterism (which is algorithmic). You can see who you constellate and who constellates you under /asterism → Your constellation.

Mutual constellation – you both constellate each other.

When two readers constellate each other, you share a constellation. Mutual constellation unlocks deeper visibility settings: 'Find me elsewhere' links can be set to 'shared constellation only', meaning only readers in mutual constellations see your external profiles.

A reader whose fingerprint overlaps with yours.

Kindred readers are the ones who appear in your asterism – their taste, emotional axes, and quality judgments align with yours by some computed margin. The brighter the star, the deeper the overlap.

Your radar of how you feel books across 11 vibe axes.

After you rate a handful of books, your fingerprint emerges as a polygon showing your average lean on each axis – sparse to rich, devastating to uplifting, clear to ambiguous, and so on. It's your reading signature. We use it to find readers whose fingerprints overlap with yours.

A live view of the entire Astereads community as stars.

Every reader on Astereads is a star in the Sky. Brightness scales with reading depth (Spark to Lodestar). Hover to see who, click to visit. The Sky is public – even logged-out visitors can wander it.

A silent signal between kindred readers.

Tap 'Send beacon' on a reader's profile to send a small notice that arrives in their Inbox – without any text. It says only that someone noticed their shelf, naming the sender. No chat, no DM. Limited to 5 beacons per sender per 24 hours.

Notifications about constellations and beacons.

Your inbox shows new constellators (readers who started constellating you) and received beacons. No DMs, no algorithmic 'someone liked your comment' noise – just quiet signals.

Optional links to your profiles on other platforms.

Add your Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky, Letterboxd, StoryGraph, Goodreads, website, or contact email in Settings. You choose visibility: everyone, your constellators, shared constellation only, or hidden.

A reader's depth, by books read.

Tiers, from quiet to bright: Spark (1–9 reads), Rising Star (10–39), Star (40–99), Blue Star (100–199), Lodestar (200+). Brighter tiers shine more visibly in the Sky and on profile badges. Just a marker of how much you've logged – no ranking, no leaderboard.

A first light – 1 to 9 books read.

The beginning of a reading life on Astereads. After your first book, you become a Spark. Match scores with other readers appear once you reach 5 rated books, and sharpen as you rate more.

A new light, growing brighter – 10 to 39 books read.

Recognisable across the dark. Your fingerprint has taken shape; asterism matches become reliable from here.

A mature star – 40 to 99 books read.

Steady and recognisable. Your taste is well-mapped at this point; the algorithm can draw your asterism with confidence.

A hot and brilliant star – 100 to 199 books read.

Among the most luminous in the sky. Blue stars burn hotter than yellow ones – they stand out visibly. Discovery scores against you become more meaningful at this tier.

A guiding light – 200+ books read.

Other readers navigate by your sky. The brightest and rarest tier on Astereads.

Pearson correlation on your reading fingerprint, with a confidence fade.

When you rate a book across 11 vibe axes, we aggregate the slider position and your reactions into a personal fingerprint, your relative weighting of each axis, independent of any single book. To find kindred readers, we compare two fingerprints with Pearson correlation: a standard similarity measure (Resnick et al. 1994, used across recommender systems for three decades) that subtracts each reader's own baseline before comparing. This isolates real preference differences from individual rating habits, a generous rater and a strict rater can still match if they emphasise the same axes in the same direction. Two readers can have a strong match even without a single book in common, if their vibe profiles align. Match scores read your fingerprints, not your shelves. Scores fade visually when one side has few rated books. Match scores appear after 5 rated books and sharpen as you rate more, before that, your fingerprint is still forming.

How similarly your reading fingerprints overlap, axis by axis. Can be high even without a single book in common.

Pearson correlation across your 11 vibe axes. It compares the shape of your reading fingerprints, not their absolute height. Two readers count as similar when the axes they weight above their own average match yours, even if one rates everything higher overall and the other lower. Higher means more alike. Faded numbers mean the fingerprints are still settling, with fewer rated books on at least one side. Not the same as Shared books, which counts how many titles you have both rated.

Overlap on emotional axes only (effect, closeness, tone, mood, reality).

How similarly two readers responded emotionally to the same books – not how good the books were, but how they felt. Pearson correlation across the five emotional axes.

Overlap on craft / quality judgments.

How similarly two readers judged writing craft and execution. Independent of emotional response. Pearson correlation across the six quality axes (characters, plot, prose, pacing, worldbuilding, morality).

Share of their reads that are new to you, weighted by taste match.

Discovery is the one metric that does care about which books you've actually read. It combines taste similarity with shelf overlap (Jaccard distance). Higher discovery means this reader has many books on their shelf you haven't read yet, and your taste pattern suggests you'd probably love them. So your shelves should not overlap much, that is the room to be guided into new titles. Different from Shared books (an absolute count of overlap) and from Taste match (similarity in how you feel books).