Smashwords Search

[JSWolf]

@nikkie Since you work for Smashwords, maybe you can help. There Is a book I've reports a number of times but it's still for sale and it's not legal.

Legacy: Arthurian Saga by Mary Stewart
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mstew

There are no legal versions of Mary Stewart's Arthurian Saga available in the US. The UK does have legal versions. But this specific book is not legal and needs to be dropped from Smashwords and every place it' sbeen sent from Smashwords. And it also needs to be removed from everyone's library at any store it was purchased.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

@nikkie Since you work for Smashwords, maybe you can help. There Is a book I've reports a number of times but it's still for sale and it's not legal.

Legacy: Arthurian Saga by Mary Stewart
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mstew

There are no legal versions of Mary Stewart's Arthurian Saga available in the US. The UK does have legal versions.

Not true. It is available on Kindle at least in the USA.

Also the UK has pirate versions. She died in 2014. Who is the publisher on Smashwords?

The Amazon UK publisher of the three separate Kindle editions is Publisher : Hodder & Stoughton (2 Feb. 2012), so legitimate. Though Amazon does have pirated content. Worst is Google's Playstore/Books.

The SAME editions from the SAME publisher is on Amazon USA.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Not true. It is available on Kindle at least in the USA.

Also the UK has pirate versions. She died in 2014. Who is the publisher on Smashwords?

The Amazon UK publisher of the three separate Kindle editions is Publisher : Hodder & Stoughton (2 Feb. 2012), so legitimate. Though Amazon does have pirated content. Worst is Google's Playstore/Books.

The SAME editions from the SAME publisher is on Amazon USA.

None of the books of Mary Stewart's Arthurian saga are legally available in e-book format in the US, though they are in other countries. Do you have a link to the US Kindle version?

Shari

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Not true. It is available on Kindle at least in the USA.

Also the UK has pirate versions. She died in 2014. Who is the publisher on Smashwords?

The Amazon UK publisher of the three separate Kindle editions is Publisher : Hodder & Stoughton (2 Feb. 2012), so legitimate. Though Amazon does have pirated content. Worst is Google's Playstore/Books.

The SAME editions from the SAME publisher is on Amazon USA.

Yes it's true. That Legends book is illegally being sold. There is no legal versions of Mary Stewart's Arthurian Saga sold in the US. They are legally sold in the UK but only as separate novels. There are no omnibus legally sold in the UK.

The book was put on Smashwords and then distributed from there. I've reported it a number of times and Smashwords refuses to take it down. So TBH, you cannot trust Shmashwords since they don't give a damn about selling illegal books.

[MarjaE]

Can you please take that to another thread?

I also have trouble with Smashwords search.

I am struggling with sensory issues and chronic illness. I want disability fiction, lesbian fiction, and science fiction. Preferably all 3, or 2 of the 3. I also want happy endings, and some hope with my own illness.

Category search doesn't really work for me.

I know it could give things away, but I'd like an optional scale for happy or unhappy endings.

Keyword search is painfully hard to use. If I add more keywords to narrow down the results, I get more results because it seems to default to OR instead of AND. I don't think it supports NOT.

Tag search is slightly better because it defaults to AND, but still suffers when authors skip relevant tags, or when they spam things with irrelevant or mismatched tags.

[sherman]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

Tag search is slightly better because it defaults to AND, but still suffers when authors skip relevant tags, or when they spam things with irrelevant or mismatched tags.

Are you sure about this?

Because whenever I've recently attempted to search for multiple tags on smashwords, it seems to default to OR.

Or maybe it was a bug for a while, because I just tried one, and seemed to use AND.

Maybe the new search interface should let the user how the combine tags, using a combination of AND, OR, NOT. Maybe allow the google syntax of prefixing the search term/tag with a '-' or '+'

Also, while on a wishlist, more filtering of search results would be wonderful. I'd love to be able to filter by word count, or price in searches for example.

[nikkie]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Yes it's true. That Legends book is illegally being sold. There is no legal versions of Mary Stewart's Arthurian Saga sold in the US. They are legally sold in the UK but only as separate novels. There are no omnibus legally sold in the UK.

The book was put on Smashwords and then distributed from there. I've reported it a number of times and Smashwords refuses to take it down. So TBH, you cannot trust Shmashwords since they don't give a damn about selling illegal books.

It looks like a report of fraud was investigated and proof of rights by this publisher was provided. (I have nothing to do with this part of our site, but was able to see that this was done.)

[nikkie]

Originally Posted by sherman

Are you sure about this?

Because whenever I've recently attempted to search for multiple tags on smashwords, it seems to default to OR.

Or maybe it was a bug for a while, because I just tried one, and seemed to use AND.

Maybe the new search interface should let the user how the combine tags, using a combination of AND, OR, NOT. Maybe allow the google syntax of prefixing the search term/tag with a '-' or '+'

Also, while on a wishlist, more filtering of search results would be wonderful. I'd love to be able to filter by word count, or price in searches for example.

Some recent changes were made to tag search.

I agree that filtering by word count, price, etc would be great. Include/Exclude for tags could certainly be useful.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by shalym

None of the books of Mary Stewart's Arthurian saga are legally available in e-book format in the US, though they are in other countries. Do you have a link to the US Kindle version?

Shari

They are only separate in UK and on Amazon, no omnibus. That omnibus certainly looks like a pirate work.

UK Amazon ebook. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crystal-Cav.../dp/B00713DNEE
USA Amazon ebook https://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Cave-.../dp/B00713DNEE

I have two different paper editions, so I've never bought the ebooks. We have a lot of Mary Stewart books, but the wife won't read the Arthurian ones because they are Arthurian. Otherwise she's a fan. It's also suspicious that it's the ONLY Mary Stewart on Smashwords.

I've not read the last two of the series of five. I assumed it was a trilogy.

I'd be very surprised if it's not a pirate edition.

[maddz]

Books 4 and 5 were published considerably later than the original trilogy. I owned the originals in paperback and replaced them with the ebooks when they were in a Deal on Amazon a couple of years ago.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Quoth

They are only separate in UK and on Amazon, no omnibus. That omnibus certainly looks like a pirate work.

UK Amazon ebook. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crystal-Cav.../dp/B00713DNEE
USA Amazon ebook https://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Cave-.../dp/B00713DNEE

I have two different paper editions, so I've never bought the ebooks. We have a lot of Mary Stewart books, but the wife won't read the Arthurian ones because they are Arthurian. Otherwise she's a fan. It's also suspicious that it's the ONLY Mary Stewart on Smashwords.

I've not read the last two of the series of five. I assumed it was a trilogy.

I'd be very surprised if it's not a pirate edition.

That ebook is not available to purchase in the US.

Shari

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by shalym

That ebook is not available to purchase in the US.

Shari

We went through this several years ago in the reading recommendation thread. Someone contacted the publisher and it was determined that they were unauthorized. I run into a lot of unauthorized books of dead authors on the various services - Amazon, Apple, etc. I've reported a few, but eventually I've come to accept the idea of if whoever now owns the rights doesn't care enough to take action, why should I care? Stewart's Arthur cycle has been up there for years.

[Gardenman]

Originally Posted by nikkie

Hey folks.

I work at Smashwords and wanted to request some feedback from interested folks about our search engine. It has changed quite a lot over the last 10 years and gone through a number of backend iterations but remains a sore point for some of our users. Unfortunately we aren't the size of Google and so we can't do everything they do, but I would like to make things a bit better for users when possible.

Some background:
We replaced the primary search engine technology around 5 years ago and built a completely new index, but at the time left the frontend as it had been for a long time. It searched the database for exact matches for titles, authors, series, and isbn but deferred the full text to our search engine. The exact matches showed above the full text results, so often when we got complaints it was unclear whether they were referring to the suggested type-specific results (authors, series, titles) or the full text results below. Since then we have changed this and moved more of these searches to directed searches for title, tag, or full search.

At that same time we added an auto-complete feature that could quickly recognize and auto-suggest titles, authors, and series so that those could be searched automatically and for the full title if you know it. When we added auto-complete it didn't quote the title, so at the time it was still possible to get semi-poor results when searching from the autosuggestion, but since then we have changed that so those results should always return good results for anything auto-suggested by the search box.

I'm in the process of re-designing the way our index works as well as a complete re-design of the frontend for search to make it easier to find books, series, and authors. We also have a goal of making filtering by book properties (word count, categories, etc) possible and searches by topic or tag more sortable by useful properties so people can more easily use the search engine for discovery of new books.

I've looked through anonymized search data from our logs and have some idea of what users are trying to find and why but would like to hear directly from interested readers (or authors). If you are using our search engine for something other than finding books to purchase (think of davidfor and his plugin here), feel free to comment as well.

If you have feedback, could you provide info on:

• the kinds of things you search for
• what works well with the current system
• frustrations with the current system

Apologies if this isn't the correct area for this. It's been a while since I was active here so I don't remember all the norms. Feel free to move this to a different area if needed.

Thanks in advance!

Is it possible to do a bulk download of the books in my library?

[sufue]

Originally Posted by Gardenman

Is it possible to do a bulk download of the books in my library?

^^^^ This...

Also, I want to say that I really appreciate your (OP) asking for user input about how to structure the search engine!

[sufue]

My main suggestions come from trying to use the search during the semi-annual sales, where IMS (and I could be wrong) the various coupons each have to be searched individually - i.e. the FREE group is not included in the 75%-off group, is not included in the 50% off group, etc. If my memory is wrong, you can skip the rest of this post !

So for example on the normal search, where you can search FREE, or $0.99 or less, or $2.99 or less, and each group presumably picks up the others that are included within it, maybe there could be something similar for the coupons: FREE (i.e. 100% off), 75% or more off, 50% or more off, etc.

I understand that this doesn't say much about the actual price, since the starting base prices can vary. But it does come into play for me a little bit with series books, where if the first book is free, but the rest aren't discounted, I might think a little more about starting that series than starting one where the first book is free, the second and third are 50% off, and the rest are 25% off, or something like that.

JMTCW...