Quote:
Originally Posted by alecE
I find the browsing process on a web site incredibly frustrating - as an example, I was browsing Waterstone's site the other day, just looking at the history section. There are several hundred titles, listed 10 on a page.Trying to decide from a thumbnail image of the cover and the author/title/price data whether or not to click and view the blurb is very tedious. I probably buy fewer ebooks simply because I cannot skim the contents and make an informed choice on purchase. Being able to browse the physical shelves in a store, and *still* be able to make an e purchase would be really great for me. Will suggest it to my local Waterstones next time I'm there!
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I feel the same about trying to decide from a thumbnail, etc. but can't come up with a rational reason why I feel that way so I suspect it's just being uncomfortable with change. Logically, when I'm browsing the shelves at the bookstore I'm often trying to decide based on title, author, and spine-which is usually less informative than thumbnail. (Except it does indicate the size of the book whereas not all 'listings' do so. FW, IIRC, does but then they also give at least a couple sentences of the synopsis, too.)
As for the 10 books/page, that might make sense for dialup customers but with broadband the first thing I do is set my preferences, when possible, to display pretty much as many books per page as I can. (OK, I draw the limit when the list contains thousands of books-even broadband takes a while to download a page like that. When they have that many I'll usually opt for 100-150/page.) So my major frustration is with online sellers who don't offer that option.
But, one thing I still find frustrating about buying ebooks vs browsing in a book store is the inability to 'thumb thru' the book, reading a paragraph or two here & there. Not paragraphs selected by the person trying to *sell* me the book, but paragraphs I choose. (One option the sellers *could* implement would be to show a TOC & let the user specify a limited number of pages to view-say 3 to 5, selected from any of the pages in the book. Nobody does this, that I know of, but I think it would improve browsing.)
Right now it's like browsing in a bookstore where all the books are wrapped in plastic.