Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
@rkomar. I agree with you. An experience such as the OP wants requires a very limited subset of the books available. Browsing even just the spines of what must be many millions of books available on Amazon would be a daunting task indeed.
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I'm not the OP but I am one of the people who said I miss the old way of browsing. For me it's about function and finding things efficiently, not nostalgia. I don't see why online stores can't provide a browsing experience that would combine the way I would browse in a brick & mortar store or library with the wonders of modern technology.
I'd like to be able to select a category such as Mystery, then see an alphabetical list of authors with a brief bio and description of the type of books the author writes (like what I'd see if I walked up to a shelf of books that were alphabetical by author, picked up a physical book and flipped to the author's bio page).
For those who prefer a quick visual cue, perhaps there could be a sample cover of one of the author's typical books. Sticking with my example of Mystery, the cover of one of those super-cozy books featuring a nosy lady who runs a tea shop is generally quite different from the cover of a hard-boiled, thriller, or romantic suspense book.
Once I clicked on an author I'd want to see a list of their standalone books and a list of their series. Then I could click on a series to see a list of books within that series. I would then like to be able to see the books sorted in series order. Once I clicked on a specific book, then it would show all available editions of that book.
Also, at the top and/or bottom of the author list screen I'd like to have alphabetical links (just A, B, C, etc.) for the author last names so if I browsed through all of the A and B authors on Monday and wanted to go back on Tuesday and pick up where I left off it would be easy to go directly to C. (The Overdrive library used to have this alphabetic link function in search results and dumped it in one of their site overhauls.)