MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Luzme.com: News, Comments and Requests for Help

Elfwreck · 09-12-2009, 01:08 PM

Grumbles about ebookpriceinfo (and these are *my* grumbles; some will be totally irrelevant to making the site functional for lots of people):

1) Incredibly dialup unfriendly. Can use it at work; basically useless at home. No point in having a price comparison website that takes longer to load than going to half a dozen ebook stores separately.

2) Site in general unfriendly. Hard to tell what it's for; hard to tell what the best format is for searching for books (title only? Title: lastname, firstname? Something else?)

3) Can't search for "1984;" title is too short. Orwell's book is not the only ebook with a name under 6 characters long, just the one I noticed recently.

4) Tends to turn up 1 result per site, even if the sites have multiple versions. (Amazon is prone to having multiple ebook versions, esp. of public domain novels.)

5) Books often listed several times with slightly different name formats. Sometimes Title - Author; sometimes Title - Lastname, Firstname; sometimes Title (Author); sometimes Title by Author, and so on. Each is listed separately.

I know this is because the ebook stores list them that way. Doesn't matter; it still makes it hard for me to compare prices. Understanding the technical issues (and I do, and am very sympathetic) doesn't make the site more useful.

6) Would like the site to indicate which ebook stores it searches; this would let me know that if it didn't turn up a book from ebooks.com, there's something wrong with the scrape code, but if it doesn't turn up results from coolerbooks (or whatever), it's because that's not on your list--and I'd know I should mention it.

7) Doesn't seem to pull any data from ebook publishers that aren't general ebook stores: Samhain press, Double Dragon, and so on. Not sure if this is something that there's any intention to fix; generally, those books are only available in one place or a small handful of ebook stores, and all at the same price.

8) Would like books to be listed by *filetype* not just *program.* I know some publishers don't make it clear whether their ADE books are PDF or ePub, but mentioning the possibilities would be nice. And it would help newbie ebook searchers know whether or not a particular book is usable on their device.

09-12-2009, 01:08 PM	#12
Elfwreck Grand Sorcerer Posts: 5,187 Karma: 25133758 Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: SF Bay Area, California, USA Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3 (Past: Kobo Mini, PEZ, PRS-505, Clié)	Grumbles about ebookpriceinfo (and these are my grumbles; some will be totally irrelevant to making the site functional for lots of people): 1) Incredibly dialup unfriendly. Can use it at work; basically useless at home. No point in having a price comparison website that takes longer to load than going to half a dozen ebook stores separately. 2) Site in general unfriendly. Hard to tell what it's for; hard to tell what the best format is for searching for books (title only? Title: lastname, firstname? Something else?) 3) Can't search for "1984;" title is too short. Orwell's book is not the only ebook with a name under 6 characters long, just the one I noticed recently. 4) Tends to turn up 1 result per site, even if the sites have multiple versions. (Amazon is prone to having multiple ebook versions, esp. of public domain novels.) 5) Books often listed several times with slightly different name formats. Sometimes Title - Author; sometimes Title - Lastname, Firstname; sometimes Title (Author); sometimes Title by Author, and so on. Each is listed separately. I know this is because the ebook stores list them that way. Doesn't matter; it still makes it hard for me to compare prices. Understanding the technical issues (and I do, and am very sympathetic) doesn't make the site more useful. 6) Would like the site to indicate which ebook stores it searches; this would let me know that if it didn't turn up a book from ebooks.com, there's something wrong with the scrape code, but if it doesn't turn up results from coolerbooks (or whatever), it's because that's not on your list--and I'd know I should mention it. 7) Doesn't seem to pull any data from ebook publishers that aren't general ebook stores: Samhain press, Double Dragon, and so on. Not sure if this is something that there's any intention to fix; generally, those books are only available in one place or a small handful of ebook stores, and all at the same price. 8) Would like books to be listed by filetype not just program. I know some publishers don't make it clear whether their ADE books are PDF or ePub, but mentioning the possibilities would be nice. And it would help newbie ebook searchers know whether or not a particular book is usable on their device.