Interesting article on Kindle and Scammers

[Cinisajoy]

Miscategorized books are a pet peeve of mine.
Put your books where they belong, not where you think it will be seen.
And don't tell me readers can't find it.
Now I like romance and other stuff.
If an author purposely puts other in romance, I will assume they don't know the difference between a rooster and a pussy cat. So I don't bother with them. Note: I mean actual other not rabbiting romance.

[darryl]

I am of course basing my views on my own experience. Unfortunately most search engines have long ago ceased catering exclusively to the end user, and are now designed primarily to make money. In these days where "discoverability" is king and, at least for Indie books there is no gatekeeper, this is a very powerful role. It would not be entirely inaccurate to say that those who control the instruments of discovery, in this case Amazon and, of course in a wider context Google, are in a loose sense the new gatekeepers. Having attained this position, their main danger, apart from newcomers with something better, is that they misuse this influence to such an extent that their products become unusable to many. Anecdotally this is already happening to some extent both to Amazon and Google. But it seems only to a small extent so far.

For the moment, personally and for my genres and preferences, Amazon still works for me. I recognise that for others it apparently does not.

@Cinisajoy. I once again find myself in furious agreement with you. Indies must indeed be professional and not simply attempts to monetise mediocre fan fiction or worse. When anyone can self-publish of course there will be more trash. The trouble comes when the search, promotions and other discovery tools not only don't work but are openly manipulated in favour of such trash. In theory at least sales rankings free from manipulation should consign virtually all such trash to obscurity where it belongs.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Miscategorized books are a pet peeve of mine.
Put your books where they belong, not where you think it will be seen.
And don't tell me readers can't find it.
Now I like romance and other stuff.
If an author purposely puts other in romance, I will assume they don't know the difference between a rooster and a pussy cat. So I don't bother with them. Note: I mean actual other not rabbiting romance.

Use the exclude "-" function.
I typically exclude "erotic" and three or four other terms relating to porn plus some terms to remove non-english books. Excluding terms is the fastest way to shovel through the dream.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Miscategorized books are a pet peeve of mine.

I hate looking for non-fiction books and finding a bunch of fiction books that authors have purposefully categorized that way.

[sherman]

Another aspect of scammers are the Very Long Books.

I'm talking about the supposed short stories (or books) that have "bonus" content, and the book is somehow over a 1000 pages long. They are incredibly easy to spot, yet somehow amazon does nothing about them.

And the search... oh the search...

[sherman]

Originally Posted by sherman

Another aspect of scammers are the Very Long Books.

I'm talking about the supposed short stories (or books) that have "bonus" content, and the book is somehow over a 1000 pages long. They are incredibly easy to spot, yet somehow amazon does nothing about them.

And the search... oh the search...

Ah, the author of that post does mention it in the comments.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by Phogg

Use the exclude "-" function.
I typically exclude "erotic" and three or four other terms relating to porn plus some terms to remove non-english books. Excluding terms is the fastest way to shovel through the dream.

That doesn't solve the problem though, because the miscategorisation can be in both directions.

If there are two books, one about babies and another about bathwater, but both books have been incorrectly assigned to both baby and bathwater categories, then excluding the bathwater category throws out both the baby book and the bathwater book.