Introducing Inkmesh

[Mr. Goodbar]

Great site, clean, simple and fast. I would agree with some of the comments around file type filtering, etc., but great start.

[Mare of Earth]

Niiiiiiiice!

Really, really nice.

This is very quickly going to become a favorite of mine.

Thank you!!!!!

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by anurag

Ahi, we definitely want to include non-English books. I've noted your link.

Some Russian ebook sites:
www.litres.ru
www.publicant.ru
www.lib.ru (Free books)
Russian and Ukrainian:
http://bookland.net.ua/

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by orwell2k

Searching for eBooks on most sites tends to bring up audio books as well as eBooks (they should be something like aBooks not eBooks!). I really wish places would make a clear distinction between these two completely different format types.

You can filter by ebooks, audiobooks, and other media types. Left hand side after you search.

[anurag]

GA Russell - Thank you. We wanted to prevent cluttering up the UI with devices that didn't have a considerable market share. Is there a particular device you want to see in addition to the ones on there already?

hike_gc - thank you!

SDRebel, publication date sounds like a useful feature. A lot of the sites we index don't give us the publication date, but we'll start thinking about how to get it and add sorting on it.

Deb - glad you found so many ebooks you liked. More are on the way! We don't have ebooks from Diesel so far, but they're on our list of sites to index.

Darqref, being able to sort by date added to Inkmesh would be very useful in finding new books, we agree. More books per page would also be useful, we will definitely add it when we add user registrations. Till then, if you use Firefox, you can try this extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4925 - after setting it up, this will automatically load the next page for you for most sites with pagination. Regarding your goals for Inkmesh (1) yes, we want to build a better mobile version of Inkmesh at some point. Title and author searches will always work, but we will think about how to make the search process even faster. (2) bmd and I are discussing the new ebooks strategy - it's sorely needed. (3) a recommendation engine is on our long term goals as well, so I'm glad to see our goals for Inkmesh are in sync with yours! The search exclusion feature sounds interesting, we will discuss it.

pthwaite, we agree date based sorting would be a very useful addition. We will be spending time on this one soon.

orwell2k, thank you, we love all our users too! We agree - audiobooks are great, but they don't quite fall into the same category as ebooks.

Seventh Son, as you can tell by the comments here and on the feedback forum on the site, country based filtering is one of the most requested feature additions, so we're definitely going to do something about it.

Sparrow, thank you for your feedback. We try to show everything that's relevant to the query so people can find things they might not know about, but we always sort results based on the degree of relevance. Given this, can you elaborate on how you would want to refine searches like Armadale?

kennyc, you're welcome!

fbrII, thank you. We read ebooks from all those publishers ourselves; it's only a matter of time before you start seeing their results on Inkmesh.

Peadar, I am glad your book is on our site; for everyone else, here is the link! http://www.inkmesh.com/ebooks/the-in...-guilin-ebook/

Mr. Goodbar, thank you.

Mare of Earth, you're welcome!

igorsk, all sites noted, thank you.

The feedback here on MobileRead has exceeded all our expectations - it's exciting, humbling and extremely encouraging. Thank you all; we are committed to making Inkmesh much more useful for all of you.

[NormHart]

Thank you, very impressive.

One suggestion, sources = publishers, might get you some sponsorship without running ads.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by anurag

Sparrow, thank you for your feedback. We try to show everything that's relevant to the query so people can find things they might not know about, but we always sort results based on the degree of relevance. Given this, can you elaborate on how you would want to refine searches like Armadale?

I'd like to be able to enter search strings with Boolean operators, e.g. "wilkie collins" AND "armadale" - to retrieve only specific items of interest.

I can see the benefits of your approach, casting a wide net - but the items returned extend over several pages, and I'm unlikely to browse through them.
Having unrequested items presented gives this user the impression the search has been 'messy', and not under my control (just my opinion, other people may prefer that method).

[mgrunk]

Love it - wish I could just search by author or by title - I'm looking for William Faulkner the author- but it returns a bunch of books about him.

[datawitch]

This is great! Thanks and keep up the good work.

[lightfusegetaway]

Wow, awesome.

Found a book through your site that I could not locate through Google. Very nice!

Added to favorites.

[neilmarr]

Terrific job, Anurag. Congratulations to you both and good luck as time goes on. I won't be the only one making regular use of Inkmesh.

By the way, just drop me a line if you want to add the catalogue of exclusive new titles from our own small independent publishing house (about 120). From our own site (www.bewrite.net) they are all priced the same; at $2, £1 or E1.50. At outisde retailers, they're regular market priced. At least for the rest of this year, they're all free to Mobile Read members.

Very best wishes. Neil

[Deb]

Originally Posted by mgrunk

Love it - wish I could just search by author or by title - I'm looking for William Faulkner the author- but it returns a bunch of books about him.

Just had a thought - would it be possible to start with a very narrow return of books, with an option to widen the search? That way, one is not buried by unwanted information but there is still the chance to do some open exploring.


This is such a NEAT program...

[Elfwreck]

If books were tagged "public domain" or "copyrighted," that'd (1) allow exclusion of PD books from low-price searches and (2) allow site users to realize that the PD book they're seeing at $1.99 to $8.99 might be available free somewhere.

You'd have to decide which jurisdiction(s) public domain you'd use. And when you get user logins, you might figure out a way for them to tag books; if they like the site, they'll do most of the work of categorizing books for you. You might still need to check (especially PD vs non-PD), but it'd be a lot easier to verify info than to establish & note it in the first place.

[anurag]

NormHart, thank you. That's an interesting suggestion about publisher sponsorship.

Sparrow, I see what you mean. We weren't sure people would use it, so we didn't note it explicitly, but we do have the ability to do exactly the kind of search you described. See http://www.inkmesh.com/search/?qs=%2...nE=Find+Ebooks
Essentially, phrase searches work if you use quotes, and the AND operator in uppercase works too. We are also working on adding more 'poweruser' search prefixes like title:"Armadale" and author:"wilkie collins". We will post on MobileRead and Twitter (@inkmesh) once we do.

mgrunk - thank you, see my reply to Sparrow, we are working on granting your wish!

datawitch, thank you.

lightfusegetaway - Happy we could help. Google performs poorly for ebook specific searches - this is one of the reasons we built Inkmesh. I am glad you like it.

Neil, thank you for the wishes. We would love to include bewrite - I will be emailing you soon.

Deb, that's an interesting thought. Once we add more search options (see my reply to Sparrow above), users will have the ability to narrow down the search. Exploration features on Inkmesh will continue to evolve, because we think finding new and interesting ebooks users don't know about is as important (if not more) as finding the best source for a specific ebook.

Elfwreck - user tagging would definitely help in excluding PD books. We are also thinking thorough doing that automatically, because it should be possible to build a list of PD authors and classify books accordingly. The issue, as you point out, would be jurisdiction, and that ties into the user's country of choice. All interesting problems to solve

[anotherchance]

Brilliant!! Found Charley Boorman's "By Any Means" for a great price at BooksOnBoard. However, the InkMesh price quoted of $26.34 was WAY OFF, so I recommend clicking thru to the site to check the prices, because I got it for $9.16 including $5.27 Rewards. A NET cost of $3.89. Fantastic.