Apple: 1 million new iBooks customers each week since iOS 8 launch

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by murg

Clearly, this is some sort of evil conspiracy on Amazon's part.

To be fair, all that unrelated stuff that comes after the "Pretty-Much Everything You Wanted to Know About the Author You Searched For" links can be a damn nuissance. If only there were a way to not pay any attention to the stuff that comes after Everything You Wanted to Know.

[disconnected]

One thing that annoys me about Amazon's search is that they seem to keep changing the various paths to get to a given result and not all of the paths lead to exactly the same result.

As a small example, there are 13 Elizabeth Daly titles available in Kindle format.

If I do a search on her name selecting the "Kindle Store" department from the dropdown list, it returns 23 results. One is a link to her Amazon author page, eight are a semi-random collection of books not by her, and fourteen are actually her books -- thirteen different titles, as the first book in the series has two versions.

If I click on the link to her author page and then click on "Kindle edition", it returns only 11 results -- the second and twelfth books in the series are missing, as well as the additional version of the first book.

The "Advanced Search" feature returns the same results as my first search except that there are only seven of the random not-by-Elizabeth-Daly books instead of eight.

I've never figured out any particular pattern for this so I usually end up trying all three methods and even then I'm never sure I've found everything.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

To be fair, all that unrelated stuff that comes after the "Pretty-Much Everything You Wanted to Know About the Author You Searched For" links can be a damn nuissance. If only there were a way to not pay any attention to the stuff that comes after Everything You Wanted to Know.

You apparently need to pay attention to the stuff that comes after the "Everything You Wanted to Know" link if you really want to know everything.

A search for Roger Zelazny in the Kindle Store produces 10 titles plus several that he co-authored and his short stories. Also, Audible, Spanish and German titles. Unfortunately, a person has to wade through the unrelated items.

Roger Zelazny's "Pretty-Much Everything You Wanted to Know About the Author You Searched For" link only gives us 8 of his Kindle titles. None of the co-authored or anthologies.

[DiapDealer]

I'm so sorry that further research yielded more results for you. That must be so disappointing. I suggest using a different ebook store's search engine that provides more relevant results with less "wading."

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm so sorry that further research yielded more results for you. That must be so disappointing. I suggest using a different ebook store's search engine that provides more relevant results with less "wading."

Actually I do for the obvious reasons.

[DiapDealer]

Well there you go. No problems then.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Oh you're welcome. And just to recap: "Roger Zelazny" + Search Kindle Store = Pretty-Much Every Book of His They Have to Sell (or are permitted to sell you) in the first two items returned by the search.

Just to recap, a search for Roger Zelazny returns 50 hits, of which quite a few have nothing to do with Roger Zelazny. Just because one of the hits is a link to the author's page doesn't make that fact go magically away, no matter how much you want that to be true.

The authors pages have their own problems. For one thing, it doesn't have all the books available by the author. A look at the kindle link on that page yields only 8 books and don't show several books that I have bought from Amazon and are still available if you do a search for the book.

I noticed this particular quirk some time ago.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Just to recap, a search for Roger Zelazny returns 50 hits, of which quite a few have nothing to do with Roger Zelazny. Just because one of the hits is a link to the author's page doesn't make that fact go magically away, no matter how much you want that to be true.

The fact that a big chunk of what you were supposedly looking for could be found by following the first two links returned by the search doesn't magically get erased just because you want to focus on the later, irrelevant links that you have little need to look at or follow. No matter how much you want it to be true.

How is it not helpful/productive that the top links in the search results are either 1) direct links to that author's works, or 2) a link to that author's page which includes direct links to many of the author's works sold at that store? Unless fairly easily finding lots of the author's books you were searching for at that store wasn't the goal?

Just for purposes of comparing and contrasting, when I type Roger Zelazny into Kobo's search engine, the result I immediately get is:

1 - 12 of 20 results for “steven brust”
Search instead for: roger zelazny

When I then follow that suggested roger zelazny link (which curiously looks exactly like what I typed in the first place), I get: 1 - 12 of 12 results for “roger zelazny”. The first is a Roger Zelazny book, the second is a Steven Brust & Roger Zelazny collaboration, and the remaining eight links have no connection to Roger Zelazny at all.

So again I ask: how is this an "Amazon agenda" to push books they WANT us to buy?

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

The fact that a big chunk of what you were supposedly looking for could be found by following the first two links returned by the search doesn't magically get erased just because you want to focus on the later, irrelevant links that you have little need to look at or follow. No matter how much you want it to be true.

How is it not helpful/productive that the top links in the search results are either 1) direct links to that author's works, or 2) a link to that author's page which includes direct links to many of the author's works sold at that store? Unless fairly easily finding lots of the author's books you were searching for at that store wasn't the goal?

Just for purposes of comparing and contrasting, when I type Roger Zelazny into Kobo's search engine, the result I immediately get is:


When I then follow that suggested roger zelazny link (which curiously looks exactly like what I typed in the first place), I get: 1 - 12 of 12 results for “roger zelazny”. The first is a Roger Zelazny book, the second is a Steven Brust & Roger Zelazny collaboration, and the remaining eight links have no connection to Roger Zelazny at all.

So again I ask: how is this an "Amazon agenda" to push books they WANT us to buy?

Yea, well I can pull up all SF books and sit there and page through all 88,411 books (well actually I can't I think they limit it to 400 pages). Technically every single Roger Zelazny kindle book should be in the list somewhere. It's just not a very useful. Apparently you seem to think that just because they are all buried in there somewhere, there is not issue.

If your point is that Amazon's search engine doesn't stink as badly as Kobo's, then guess what, I agree with you. That doesn't make Amazon's search engine any less flawed, though. When I search from Roger Zelazny books, I expect to find Roger Zelazny books, not Roger Zelazny plus whatever else books Amazon want's push at me. When I go to the author page, then I expect to see _all_ the ebooks they have for sell by that author. This isn't rocket science. You just need good quality control (which I have read is a major issue for Amazon and it's search engine) and you need to care about it, which rather obviously neither you nor Amazon does.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

If your point is that Amazon's search engine doesn't stink as badly as Kobo's, then guess what, I agree with you. That doesn't make Amazon's search engine any less flawed, though.

And yet it was Amazon's search engine that you chose to implicate in a plot to get you to buy the books THEY would like you to buy and not Kobo's search engine. As if it were a hidden agenda instead of a quality control flaw like you're now suggesting.

Originally Posted by pwalker8

One of Amazon's issues, IMPO, is that they have gone from pointing you to books you might want to buy to pointing you to books that _they_ want you to buy.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by murg

Clearly, this is some sort of evil conspiracy on Amazon's part.

Isn't everything?

Helen

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

And yet it was Amazon's search engine that you chose to implicate in a plot to get you to buy the books THEY would like you to buy and not Kobo's search engine. As if it were a hidden agenda instead of a quality control flaw like you're now suggesting.

Nice try to change the goalpost there.

Amazon very much tries to push items that they want to sell on to customers. At one time, it did seem a legitimate try at pushing items that were in some way related to items you had previously purchased or looked at. Now, it's a lot more of "placement" thing, i.e. items in categories they want to push. Perhaps Kobo does it as well, but then again, I don't buy books from Kobo, so I don't complain about them.

Once again, your defense seems to be that you found some other ebook store that wasn't good. Perhaps so, but that still doesn't make Amazon correct, or even particularly good at showing me the books that I'm looking for.

[Graham]

Is the search engine giving different results for different people? If I search for Roger Zelazny on amazon.com in Books, every result returned on the first page is by Roger Zelazny.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...=roger+zelazny

In the first five pages I see 60 results, of which 51 are by Roger Zelazny. Of the remaining 9, Zelazny wrote the introduction for two, and the other seven are spurious - but are by authors who are often grouped with Zelazny (Norton, Bester, Vance) so could be viewed as 'if you like Zelazny you might also like this' recommendations.

51 out of 60 seems pretty good to me, and I can see why the others are in the list.

Graham

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Graham

51 out of 60 seems pretty good to me, and I can see why the others are in the list.

No this isn't good enough. You still have to wade through all the drek that is in there. 9 out of the first 60 is still seriously flawed.

[DiapDealer]

It's not "flawed" ... it's a "plot."
Except when it's flawed.
But not when it's a plot.

I hear a little quality control could fix the flaw. But apparently, Amazon doesn't want to fix it since the flaw seems to be accidentally contributing to their "get you to buy something you didn't want to buy" plot.

Maybe it's a flot.