I miss browsing libraries and book stores

[RobFreundlich]

Originally Posted by kacir

Ooops ...
I never paid attention to where they get the relationships of various authors.
Now I should go to www.gnooks.com and fill in *my* favorite authors, so the AI is a tiny bit wiser the next time I am looking for a book.

That's a neat site. Thanks!

[RobFreundlich]

Originally Posted by issybird

That said, when I say I miss them, I miss the results and the fun and the joy of discovery. I wouldn't go back; the advantages of the current system outweigh the losses and by a significant factor.

I wonder whether it's possible to bring that joy of discovery back, in online form. That's part of what prompted my original post - a combination of frustration with what's out there online, wondering if I was the only one who feels like I do, and thinking about whether anything could be done about it (or if there was already something out there).

I'm a UI developer, and so part of my job is looking at things where people say "I don't like the way that works" and saying "well, maybe it can work another way or an additional way". Or is it that whenever I hear someone say "I don't like the way that works", I say "well, maybe it can work another way or an additional way", so I became a UI developer? Which one is the chicken and which one is the egg?

And more importantly, is there a book on Amazon about it?

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by RobFreundlich

• Quick sense of what the author is all about - reading blurbs from the back covers of a few books
• Quickly scanning large amounts of data - looking at the spines of the books. The combination of title, author, and font somehow gave me what I needed. I can't quantify it, but it worked.
• See all the books in a series - Pick up one book, see it's in a series, open up the cover, and the series is listed on the inside, usually on one of the first few pages. Granted, it's not all of the books in the series unless the book is the latest one published, but even that gave me information.

I think part of it is about the compactness of the information. Or maybe information vs. data.

In a physical book store, when you're looking at the "listing", you see only a few "fields" for each book, so you're seeing many books at once. Because you're seeing the important fields, you get a lot of important information at once.

In an online store, the listing shows you a lot of fields for each book, and you are limited to how many books you can see at once. Even if the site lets you show hundreds of books per page, because of the number of fields, your field of vision limits you to only a handful of books. And also because of the number of fields, the important stuff is lost in the noise. So you are getting a lot of data, but little information.

My opinion and experience, anyway.

I agree with you. Plus in a physical store or library it's usually pretty easy to see where a series begins and ends - typically the spines of books in a series will look similar - and quickly move past it to the next one if you're not interested.

It's great that online stores and libraries have more books available than could possibly be carried in any one physical store or library. I just wish they could come up with better ways of browsing.

[tomsem]

I have not spent any significant time in a physical bookstore or library in years. I don’t miss it, and don’t clearly remember why I liked to visit these so much in the past. I guess pre-internet it was the only way to do things, but now all my reading is digital, and so such visits are superfluous and inconvenient as well.

At the same time, I don’t spend significant time on Amazon (or wherever) browsing for books. I get most book ideas elsewhere and go there to read about the book and decide what to do (wish list, buy, ignore, check to see if I can borrow it, see what else the author has written, etc.). It is very efficient.

The analogy I would use about discovery is this: Google is a portal to the internet. But I have to have some idea of what I’m trying to find before it is of any use to me. Amazon is of no use to me unless I have some idea of what I want to buy.

I used to be too easily impressed by recommendation engines but now regard all of them (the ones I encounter anyway) as next to useless. Even for sites I use a lot, like Amazon and Goodreads. And lesser used sites have absolutely no clue what I like.

[haertig]

I've gotten some good tips from recommendation engines. Searching for authors "like James Rollins" I found Matthew Reilly. Good stuff. And from somewhere, don't remember what site, a recommendation for "Wool" by Hugh Howey came up. Just finished that one and really liked it.

[Katsunami]

I've been in some Dutch book stores in the last year, because my GF insists on reading (Dutch) paper books. I've hated the experience each time. I've hated it all my life, in any store.

I don't browse in search of something to buy. I always know exactly what I want. In a store, they mostly don't have it on the shelves (be it books or anything else), and if they do, it's often hugely expensive compared to internet prices. So, I just find what I want online and have it delivered the next day (or with some stores, the same day if you want to pay for that), or instantly, in the case of e-books.

The only stores I go to deliberately are clothing stores because I want to see and try one what I might buy so as not having to buy three sizes and then send the ones back that do not fit.

"I miss browsing stores" just sounds nostalgic to me, just like the people who bemoan the disappearance of the huge game boxes that only contained a CD and a 200 page manual. I've given all my games away, and bought up to date, completely patched and repackaged games at GOG.com for pennies. (I can back them up, as they don't have DRM, so I won't ever lose them.)

[Thasaidon]

[QUOTE=Katsunami;3676925

"I miss browsing stores" just sounds nostalgic to me, [/QUOTE]

You are mostly correct. It is mostly just nostalgia but it is a little more than that,

The book salespeople and librarians in years gone by were often very knowledgeable about and loved books and it was possible to have interesting conversations about books with them. Most book salespeople I come across nowadays seem to be little more than stock clerks and cashiers. Librarians while usually still knowledgeable are far fewer than they used to be and so overworked they can rarely spend time talking about books to borrowers.

From visiting many bookshops (especially second hand ones) I learnt to love the smell of books and the look and feel of paper books from handling them. There was also the thrill of occasionally finding an interesting book on a topic I would never have thought would interest me.

I love my eReaders and eBooks but I still miss visiting and browsing libraries and bookshops.

[rkomar]

With shelf space being limited, book stores tend to only stock what they think they can sell. There will be books they aren't sure about, but they tend to only take one or two copies and don't restock them if they don't sell. So, you know your chances of getting something utterly bad is lower in a book store than if you are looking at a catalog of all available books. I think that's what the OP is asking for, some interface that limits offered ebooks in a similar way to what a physical bookstore does. Nostalgia, smell, aversion to technology,... are all red herrings here.

[PurpleStar]

I miss it sometimes too and go to the bookstore and look at the books. Once in awhile I do buy one which I did last weekend. Now I’m stuck reading a paper book. It’s not that bad, but my Kobo is better and more convenient I think.

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by rkomar

With shelf space being limited, book stores tend to only stock what they think they can sell. There will be books they aren't sure about, but they tend to only take one or two copies and don't restock them if they don't sell. So, you know your chances of getting something utterly bad is lower in a book store than if you are looking at a catalog of all available books. I think that's what the OP is asking for, some interface that limits offered ebooks in a similar way to what a physical bookstore does. Nostalgia, smell, aversion to technology,... are all red herrings here.

Perhaps the OP will tell us if you are right.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Thasaidon

Perhaps the OP will tell us if you are right.

The OP did ask for a website that offered something similar to the browsing experience in a physical store. Apart from selection, the only other possible similarity is in visual presentation (maybe images of the spines of books can be shown packed together in alphabetical order).

[darryl]

@rkomar. I agree with you. An experience such as the OP wants requires a very limited subset of the books available. Browsing even just the spines of what must be many millions of books available on Amazon would be a daunting task indeed.

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by darryl

Browsing even just the spines of what must be many millions of books available on Amazon

It's ~35 million books available on Amazon in all formats, with about ~6 million available in Kindle editions.

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by darryl

@rkomar. I agree with you. An experience such as the OP wants requires a very limited subset of the books available. Browsing even just the spines of what must be many millions of books available on Amazon would be a daunting task indeed.

I'm not the OP but I am one of the people who said I miss the old way of browsing. For me it's about function and finding things efficiently, not nostalgia. I don't see why online stores can't provide a browsing experience that would combine the way I would browse in a brick & mortar store or library with the wonders of modern technology.

I'd like to be able to select a category such as Mystery, then see an alphabetical list of authors with a brief bio and description of the type of books the author writes (like what I'd see if I walked up to a shelf of books that were alphabetical by author, picked up a physical book and flipped to the author's bio page).

For those who prefer a quick visual cue, perhaps there could be a sample cover of one of the author's typical books. Sticking with my example of Mystery, the cover of one of those super-cozy books featuring a nosy lady who runs a tea shop is generally quite different from the cover of a hard-boiled, thriller, or romantic suspense book.

Once I clicked on an author I'd want to see a list of their standalone books and a list of their series. Then I could click on a series to see a list of books within that series. I would then like to be able to see the books sorted in series order. Once I clicked on a specific book, then it would show all available editions of that book.

Also, at the top and/or bottom of the author list screen I'd like to have alphabetical links (just A, B, C, etc.) for the author last names so if I browsed through all of the A and B authors on Monday and wanted to go back on Tuesday and pick up where I left off it would be easy to go directly to C. (The Overdrive library used to have this alphabetic link function in search results and dumped it in one of their site overhauls.)

[darryl]

@4691mls. I have little doubt it could be done. The question is how useful it would be. In mystery books alone Amazon has over 200,000 titles and many many authors. Not the most effective means of discovery. With that number I doubt it is any better than simply browsing randomly.