Quote:
Originally Posted by BillSmithBooks
While the question is raised in a trollish way, I think the OP has a pretty legitimate point: Discoverability is still a huge issue with ebooks.
IMHO, online bookstore browsing tends to be vastly inferior for browsing than physical stores...the simple reason is that you can take in dozens of titles in a gaze at a physical bookstore while online bookstores typically can only show perhaps a dozen titles.
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I think the OP might have a somewhat valid
question, but not a
legitimate point. Unfortunately the question was asked in a way that assumes "facts" not in evidence: namely that current online book-browsing methods are somehow
inherently inferior to the in-store, finger-on-spine experience. And that everyone who doesn't still prefer to do it that way has "forgotten" something, or traded something valuable away.
No matter how "clear" it may seem to many (and I'm not singling out BillSmithBooks here since he so obviously included an "IMHO"
) that physical in-store browing would/should
naturally be most people's preference, it just doesn't hold up across the board. I for one, find online book (forget ebook) "discoverability" vastly easier,
much more efficient and
sooo much more pleasant than the in-store browsing experience
ever was. Even long
before I personally became involved with ebooks, I had given up the physical browsing experience in favor of online research and online ordering of physical books. I considered online bookstores a godsend.
To those that see in-store browsing of books as inherently superior/better/more pleasant/whatever, I'm going to make the assumption that you were probably lucky enough to have a quality bookstore relatively close that had a vast assortment of books to choose from. And that you had a convenient way to get there. Some never had that. I was always an hour and fifteen minutes from a "quality" bookstore that in the end, probably wasn't going to have the stuff at the top of my wishlist anyway and would have to "order it in." And invariably, people were always waiting on me to get done "dragging my heels" in the bookstore so they could get somewhere else. So I always felt rushed and unprepared and almost always unsatisfied with what I
was able find.
So while everybody's book browsing/finding/selecting preferences are perfectly valid, it's quite apparent to me that a large number of people seem to be under the mistaken notion that
all booklovers have these pleasant memories of perusing vast selections of books at their leisure and being able to immediately purchase all of their favorite kinds and walk out with treasures under their arms to take home and devour.
It's just not quite the universal, shared, book-lover memory/experience you (rhetorical you) might be thinking it is.