Google Spreadsheet of Sony eBook Store category totals

[pwalker8]

I have noticed a number of things when searching for books at Sony.

First, the notify when new books arrive for a particular author doesn't seem to be working. I have yet to be notified even though the authors that I asked about have had new books. I do get the purchase receipts, so I know that my email is correct.

Second, a number of books are misfiled and you don't always get all the books when you do a search. I'm not sure how the website is setup, but more than once, a book has appeared on the new arrivals several days before it shows up on the author's books available list.

Third, I get different results depending on how I search for something. It's hard to put my finger on what's happening, but I've not found a book when I search for a title, but found it when I searched for the author. Very strange.

While the site is fairly quirky, there is no doubt that they have added quite a few books in recent months, especially backlist books. I've been able to find several old favorites as well as pick up a couple of older books that I had heard of, but hadn't read. That's pretty important given the scarcity of new SF books over the last several years (non-romance based werwolf/vampire books that is).

[vivaldirules]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I have noticed a number of things when searching for books at Sony.

First, the notify when new books arrive for a particular author doesn't seem to be working. I have yet to be notified even though the authors that I asked about have had new books. I do get the purchase receipts, so I know that my email is correct.

Second, a number of books are misfiled and you don't always get all the books when you do a search. I'm not sure how the website is setup, but more than once, a book has appeared on the new arrivals several days before it shows up on the author's books available list.

Third, I get different results depending on how I search for something. It's hard to put my finger on what's happening, but I've not found a book when I search for a title, but found it when I searched for the author. Very strange.

While the site is fairly quirky, there is no doubt that they have added quite a few books in recent months, especially backlist books. I've been able to find several old favorites as well as pick up a couple of older books that I had heard of, but hadn't read. That's pretty important given the scarcity of new SF books over the last several years (non-romance based werwolf/vampire books that is).

I've also had problems with their search routine. If you click on Categories, select one, and enter an author's name, for example, you get completely different result from if you go to their "Advanced" Search, enter the author's name and select that category. Go figure. Unfortunately, you have to patient and try several things to make sure that they really don't have what you want.

[The Old Man]

Originally Posted by anotherchance

I just spent the last half-hour putting this Google spreadsheet together as a proof of concept. It should make keeping track of the totals on the Sony site very easy, and I'd be able to update it about once a week. The chart will update automatically as new data is added.

Here's the link to the spreadsheet:
View Spreadsheet

BUMP!
Thanks anotherchance for this.
Hope it is kept up-to-date.

[JSWolf]

And there are even more eBooks now for the Sony given that we can have eReader and most Mobipocket eBooks. I did a test on a Mobipocket eBook tonight. I removed the DRM and then converted to html using mobi2html and then html2lrf to convert and it worked very well.

[The Old Man]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And there are even more eBooks now for the Sony given that we can have eReader and most Mobipocket eBooks. I did a test on a Mobipocket eBook tonight. I removed the DRM and then converted to html using mobi2html and then html2lrf to convert and it worked very well.

That's all well and fine for you smart folks that know what you're doing.
I don't know how to remove the DRM from mobi books.
I don't know what I'm reading when I look at something like this:
http://www.ida.liu.se/~tompe/mobiperl/
In short - provide me with a GUI like libprs500 and I'll be happy

[anotherchance]

Spreadsheet updated again, with totals for the new Short Story categories added for the first time.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?k...LFYsJRqqRtRcdQ

[anotherchance]

BUMP...

36,883 titles as of 2/19/2008

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by anotherchance

BUMP...

36,883 titles as of 2/19/2008

As the Beatles sang "It's getting better all the time".

[Zevs]

Originally Posted by anotherchance

BUMP...

36,883 titles as of 2/19/2008

Thanks again Anotherchance! I must admit though that it is frustrating not to know what the new books each week really are ... Is there no simple way of finding that out ..? According to the statistics we got ~900 new books this last week, but what books are they? Sure the Connect store have a new releases page which for this last week shows a whopping ~50 new books.... but where are the rest, the 850 other new books that arrived this week.... ? Are they secret books, perhaps classified state secrets or .... ? Anyone else who wonders about this sometimes and who even sleeps bad in the night thinking of all the the good books we might have missed ..

Zevs

[vivaldirules]

Originally Posted by Zevs

Thanks again Anotherchance! I must admit though that it is frustrating not to know what the new books each week really are ... Is there no simple way of finding that out ..? According to the statistics we got ~900 new books this last week, but what books are they? Sure the Connect store have a new releases page which for this last week shows a whopping ~50 new books.... but where are the rest, the 850 other new books that arrived this week.... ? Are they secret books, perhaps classified state secrets or .... ? Anyone else who wonders about this sometimes and who even sleeps bad in the night thinking of all the the good books we might have missed ..

Zevs

Zevs, I think this is a general problem with most or all online stores. Heck, I don't care just about what's new this week. I want to know what else is in their database I don't know about even if it was new a year ago. Just as with Amazon (whether for ebooks or pbooks), there's no way to know without spending an awful lot of time poking around. Each search returns a list of titles which you then need to slowly page through to get an idea what's there. At least at the library I can go to a section of interest to me and quickly scan the books on the shelf to see what's there. I wish vendors would provide a downloadable database of some variety that you could do something like that quickly. Even Project Gutenberg lets you see a complete list of everything there with a title or author starting with a certain letter. So why not Amazon or Sony? I should add that we have a similar issue at MR. It takes quite a while to see what's in our 4032 ebook library when you get to see only twenty books listed at a time.

[Zevs]

Yes Vivaldi, I sure agree.... but isn't it extremely frustrating,,, why don't they just keep a list or database of all books with a date of addition field that one can look into. It is one thing when I know exactly which books to search for, but if not, if I just want to find what is new in this bookstore since last week, or last month, why can't they make it easy for us to check that. On Tuesday evenings each week I want to find out which books they have added, why do they just tell me 5% of them ? Sometimes one gets the feeling they don't want to sell some books

[vivaldirules]

Well, I just looked. If you click on Categories at their site they show the New Releases on 4 pages with 50 new titles per page. You're right. That's only about 200 titles of the 900 new ones.

If you click on a category (e.g., Science and Nature) and then click on More Science and Nature New Releases at the bottom, you get a single page of 50 new titles in that category. You could repeat that for each category of interest to you.

I know that stinks. But it beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Guess that's all we can hope for.

[anotherchance]

On the spreadsheet, the URL links to each category are formatted to launch the search results ordered by "Newly Added" , but you're right, it is a pain that there is no "Added Date: xx/xx/xx" that would help with this problem.

[Zevs]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

Well, I just looked. If you click on Categories at their site they show the New Releases on 4 pages with 50 new titles per page. You're right. That's only about 200 titles of the 900 new ones.

If you click on a category (e.g., Science and Nature) and then click on More Science and Nature New Releases at the bottom, you get a single page of 50 new titles in that category. You could repeat that for each category of interest to you.

I know that stinks. But it beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Guess that's all we can hope for.

Yep, that is what I usually do, I look in the New Releases. However since I do look there fairly often, I do remember some of the books there, so not all of those 4 pages are new books from the last weeks update. They just have four pages and when they get new ones they just stick them in and then take out some of older ones in the list so it will make 4 pages, i.e. 200 books roughly. So for example this week I would say that almost 50 books were really new, the rest were "overspills" from previous new additions. So it is actually only around ~50 new books that they show us, and then ~850 books that are hidden away for some reason.

Looking at the More xxx New Releases at each main topic page might give a better idea I guess of what is really new, but how difficult would it be for Sony to also include an added date so one can really see and sort these lists on that. Has anyone tried to ask Connect to do this ?

Zevs

[vivaldirules]

Originally Posted by Zevs

Looking at the More xxx New Releases at each main topic page might give a better idea I guess of what is really new, but how difficult would it be for Sony to also include an added date so one can really see and sort these lists on that. Has anyone tried to ask Connect to do this ?

Zevs

I haven't. But if you do, let us know. I think I don't do enough to encourage them to get better.