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Old 03-31-2010, 04:35 PM   #14
causticmuse
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcy View Post
Even knowing what I want, I find Kobo a pain. Example, I *really* wanted The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay. Type Bryce Courtenay into the search -- you get 500 results, of which not a single one is a book by him. Type Power of One into the search -- again 500 results, not one being the book I'm looking for. Now Fictionwise. Type Bryce Courtenay into author search -- no results. Not what I hoped for, but at least an easy answer. Type Power of One into title search -- only one result. It isn't the book I wanted either, but is only one result to scroll through and does have power of one all in the title.

-Marcy
Wow...I had no idea that Kobo's search was so poorly designed until I read this and tried your "Bryce Courtenay" search myself, including Boolean search string variations using "and" and "&" (which were totally ignored). It seems that if the results don't yield your desired authors or titles on the first page, you can pretty much assume that Kobo doesn't carry them. Otherwise, there will be pages and pages of useless results to browse through.

I get the feeling that they programmed their search this way to make their catalog of titles look much larger than it actually is. When you click on the individual categories to browse, you'll see that some subjects--particularly in non-fiction--have only a handful of random titles.

Last edited by causticmuse; 03-31-2010 at 04:39 PM.
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