04-19-2017, 11:43 AM | #46 |
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I think that the problem is one of curation. Amazon is bad at proper curation. I see too much dreck if I go to just browse the Kindle site. On the other hand if I look at Kobo they are careful to show off trad pub bestsellers and critically well received literature.
Many of you seem to not care about discovery through browsing. I care. Many of my favorite novels and authors come from browsing through bookstores. We should be entitled to that kind of discovery with online stores. I don't care if there are mountains of poorly written self published works *as long as I don't have to see them.* In the realm of games, Steam is working to a new UI which will hide garbage so that you can still seek it out but it's not rammed down your throat. That is what Amazon should strive for. I don't think self published works should be killed, I just think that they should not be promoted the way that they currently are. |
04-19-2017, 11:51 AM | #47 | |
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04-19-2017, 12:15 PM | #48 | |
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I get what you're saying: you browse titles rather than relying on recommendations from others. But you still have a homegrown filtering method. We all do. No matter what we buy and from whom we buy it. I figure I just have more to choose from, now. The so-called "increased noise" from the indie boom is irrelevant to me. I never waded into unfiltered trad-pub waters either. I no longer browse book-stores for reading material, I troll (not bad troll) places where books are being discussed to get my ideas. Which allows me to be fairly publishing-method agnostic. I'm not specifically looking for good self-pub (or trad-pub) books to read. I'm looking for good books to read, period. The new publishing model hasn't changed my selection process. The advent of ebooks and online retailers in general did that. That made everything more convenient and eliminated tons of buyer's remorse for me. I now have waaaaay more ways to filter dreck (pre-purchase) than I ever did before. Last edited by DiapDealer; 04-19-2017 at 12:18 PM. |
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04-19-2017, 12:26 PM | #49 | |
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Oh and your complaint is the exact opposite of what I have heard about Amazon. I heard they only promote best sellers. Depends on how specific I get in a search what I get in return. And even I wish there was a way to sort better. Amazon doesn't want to curate because they would lose money. And I am not talking chump change. Here is a breakdown. For every self-published 99 cent ebook sold Amazon gets 65 cents. For every $1.99 book they make $1.29 Now they only make 30% + delivery fee from $2.99 to $9.99 $10 and over, they are back to 65%. |
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04-19-2017, 12:27 PM | #50 | |
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04-19-2017, 12:56 PM | #51 | ||
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Whether it was Vampires, or Young Adult Dystopian Futures, they'd feature a bunch of one type of story and cut back on anything else. What ever they thought was hot and selling would be what was on the shelves. I find it no fun to browse when they limit what they stock that way. I find so much more on-line that interests me. No competition with the book stores there. Quote:
I think the only solution is to let the market pick out the good stuff with purchases to encourage the good writers, point out the bad stuff with one-stars and complaints, and let us all fend for ourselves. I think there are plenty of sites, groups and discussion forums, along with the various reviews and ranking systems, that if someone puts an effort into it, it'll work for them. I'd much rather there be a lot of choices, and chose for myself, than to have someone else chose for me. Been there, done that, it sucks. |
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04-19-2017, 02:32 PM | #52 |
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The thing is, books are largely fungible. Not entirely; nothing can be substituted for a favorite author, but generally speaking there are more books than I can ever read which have similar appeal to me. That being the case, the extra effort involved in seeking out indie books is not worth the far greater effort it would entail, especially since the savings isn't significant. I don't care about undiscovered gems; I already have a surfeit of discovered gems and more keep bringing themselves to my attention. My problem is resisting them!
I'm kidding, but just a little. My usual routines, whether book reviews or Goodreads friends or the occasional search on authors or topics of interest more than meet my needs already. I'm not about to go digging in the indie cesspit for the odd diamond which may be a cubic zirconium at that. |
04-19-2017, 02:38 PM | #53 | |
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04-19-2017, 06:35 PM | #54 |
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If you really don't want to see indies when you search on Amazon go to Books then Advanced Search. Put in your favorite publisher, genre and date range and you are good to go. Or go browse a bookstore to see what's on the tables.
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04-19-2017, 07:38 PM | #55 | |
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There is no real reason that we can't have some really great browsing tools, such as show me all the books by authors who I have bought, or that are in this list of publishers, or are in my list of favorite authors. I really expected that we would have had that years ago, but Amazon has no real competition, so they have no incentive to improve. The browser hasn't changed over the last 6 or 7 years, at least as far as I can tell. I've pretty much given up on browsing for book on Amazon. I have my favorite authors in authoralert, I watch recommendations here and sometimes I'll look at the Amazon recommendations. Every so often, I'll do an individual author search on Amazon, then filter out all the books that weren't written by the author I want (no idea why Amazon would think that when I put in Roger Zelazny, I really want a dozen other authors). |
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04-19-2017, 07:44 PM | #56 |
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And this is a precious resource. Finding a publisher or reviewer or blogger who shares your tastes is a great way to find your next read, though I must admit it has mostly eluded me so far.
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04-19-2017, 08:38 PM | #57 | |
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I think for me the search for a next book is a never ending thing. I'm always doing it but it's a background task and it doesn't get serious till near the end of a book. The thing is I'm always looking at books and I have a very long list of possibles at any given time. I have close to 1,000 books in my Amazon library, none of which are likely to be bad choices and it's a safe bet they're mostly good choices. None of this really matters. I can just pick a book right now, any book in my library or any other book that strikes my fancy, start reading and it's going to be a good one. That's because I'm always looking. I'm always ready. If I decide to wait before choosing that's a choice I make, not a hardship. Really looking for good books is part of the fun of reading. I listed the things in my earlier post that guide me. They're all fun. I don't see this as a problem of any kind. The idea that anyone can publish anything they want is fine with me. There are so many resources available about books that finding good ones isn't a difficult task if you're interested enough to do it. I have nothing against big publishers. Well, I have a lot against some of the things they do but all in all I think they're a good and important part of our culture. I have nothing against the idea or practice of self publishing. I'm sure that introduces a lot of problems as well. I think the reading situation today is probably better than it's ever been. And it's been very good during my 76 years. If I could change anything it would be the importance of genre. Book stores didn't organize books by genre when I was younger. I was in my 40s before that began. Books were just books. We learned to judge them by what they were about; what they had to say, not by some artificial and limiting category. Book stores had a non-fiction section and a fiction section and hidden away in the back was the very disreputable science fiction section. Genre was an obscure topic you might see mentioned in a scholarly review but rarely elsewhere. Other than that the book situation has improved greatly. Barry |
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04-19-2017, 09:54 PM | #58 | |
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I developed relationships with many like-minded readers this way over the years (as well as with a few people who challenged me to step outside my comfort zone from time to time). And even though many of those forums are now defunct, and their members scattered to the four corners, my relationship with many of them transitioned to other social media (mainly Goodreads and Twitter) where we still share what we're reading--what we like and what we don't like. Fond memories, memorable discussions, and great reading-oriented relationships that I hope to be able to utilize for years to come. I don't waste time pining for ready-made, automated, algorithmic book- or author-sorting tools. I've invested heavily in human filters. And they're paying huge dividends. Now I don't need to use ebook retailers for anything other than buying ebooks. |
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04-20-2017, 01:22 AM | #59 |
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Agree about Amazon - what I really wish for is functionality to say "I have no interest in reading anything by this author so stop including them in search results or recommendations"... Everytime I buy something, I have to clear a lot of dreck out of my recommendations; I'm reluctant to use the 'don't use for recommendations' setting too much as I can miss stuff that way.
pwalker, I suspect the other authors are to do with the way short story collections appear in the database; I expect RZ has a story in a collection, and as a result the search includes titles by other authors in that collection. |
04-20-2017, 04:54 AM | #60 |
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Are you talking about physical or online stores? Either way, you're not remotely choosing at random, because there's no such thing. Physical stores carry a minuscule minority of all the books available, and e-stores have algorithms that will present certain books to your notice, and not others. All book browsing is gate-kept and curated through one method or another.
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