6 ms·

This always happens with various editions of books too especially for classic books. For example: I want to buy Meditations by Marcus Aurelius but there are so

This always happens with various editions of books too especially for classic books. For example: I want to buy Meditations by Marcus Aurelius but there are so many editions of that book with different authors who translated these books but you'd see the same exact reviews on all of these editions. It is very hard for me in that case to choose the right book.

DantesKite 8y ago
I know what you mean. It took me a while to find the original version of Napoleon Hill's "How to Think and Grow Rich" because everyone and their mother's posted $0.99 versions. That's why I like Standard Ebooks. It's a website where volunteers transcribe public domain books into high-quality books for various eReaders. A lot of ebooks tends to suffer from poor formatting and grammar issues, but all the books on Standard Ebooks go through a rigorous proofreading process. The book covers are quite lovely too. I really like it. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/ https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/
- gordon_freeman 8y ago
  This site looks good. Thanks for sharing.
harshreality 8y ago
You shouldn't have to do the following, but there is a way around that mingled-reviews problem: Go to the "all reviews" page, search that page for "filter by", and and change "all formats" to the format you're viewing. My biggest complaint about books is not the review mixing problem, although that's bad. My biggest complaint is that different translations shouldn't be mixed at all, while identical translations by the same publisher (for instance, ebook and paperback versions) should always be comingled. On Amazon, both principles are routinely violated. For example, you can search the books category for "marcus aurelius hays meditations" and find the paperback (black cover red bird silhouette) as the first real result, but the ebook format under that entry is NOT the Hays translation. I don't see any way to get to the Hays translation from that search. If you search for the same keywords in the kindle category, the kindle edition is the first real result. (In both searches, you get two sponsored search results which are not the Hays translation but Amazon promotes them anyway). There you have it... the world's biggest online bookstore is incapable of selling books properly. An alternative would be to mix all editions, but have a clear well-designed selection interface so that it's clear which translation you're selecting, and then under each translation which edition (format, publishing date, and/or edition number if there are numbered editions) you're selecting. A commercial modern translation of something like Meditations might only have one ebook and one paperback by the same publisher. An out-of-copyright translation might have a dozen different editions made by taking the gutenberg edition and slapping a more engaging cover on it. If you're selling books and you make it difficult to navigate book editions in either of those common cases, you have utterly failed at being competent in your line of business. That incompetence might not show up in sales figures, because people who want a specific edition will grudgingly search until they find it, and people who don't want a specific edition will pay for whatever random awful edition catches their attention first.
- gordon_freeman 8y ago
  > For example, you can search the books category for "marcus aurelius hays meditations" and find the paperback (black cover red bird silhouette) as the first real result, but the ebook format under that entry is NOT the Hays translation. I don't see any way to get to the Hays translation from that search. This. I feel your pain here. Amazon should develop a simple UI to navigate through various editions/translations and also once one selects a specific edition/translation then the UI should only show all formats (Kindle, Paperback, etc.) for that particular edition/translation only.
  - harshreality 8y ago
    Yeah, and it's not just books. Amazon gets a lot of heat on HN for their review-spam problem and their counterfeit goods problem. But the product variant selection problem, whether it's different editions/translations of books, or different colors/styles/sizes of clothes, or different variants of other consumer goods, is easily solvable by comparison. And it's not getting solved. Every product with multiple dimensions of variants (e.g. color, size, # in pack) feels like it has a different interface, random mix of radio buttons and drop-downs, and a change in one dimension can cause other dimensions to disappear or shift around. Is there any management or programming talent, with the power to implement fixes, left in the retail/marketplace divisions? Or has it all moved to AWS and logistics?
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      If you have a mixture of products at a price of 4 5 5 5 7 8 and 4 5 is counterfeit 5 is used 6 7 8 is the same product you would find on any merchants shelf for 6 or 7. If only 4 is returned then on net they made more sales and the consumer sees that he can get product foo on Amazon for only $4! Amazon makes more money by providing you with a worse experience so why would they improve it?
  - cgriswald 8y ago
    I had the same problem and came to the conclusion that there is no Kindle version of the Hays translation. The really frustrating part is that I already purchased a physical copy of a different translation, so when I found the physical Hays book and clicked the Format -> Kindle option it offered me the ebook for a steep discount... and it let me choose amongst many version none of which were the Hays version.
juskrey 8y ago
Learn Greek!
nos84733675859 8y ago
Off topic, but I would recommend the Gregory Hays translation if you haven't read it before first. I also liked one by Maxwell Staniforth. Hope that helps.

DantesKite 8y ago

I know what you mean. It took me a while to find the original version of Napoleon Hill's "How to Think and Grow Rich" because everyone and their mother's posted $0.99 versions. That's why I like Standard Ebooks. It's a website where volunteers transcribe public domain books into high-quality books for various eReaders. A lot of ebooks tends to suffer from poor formatting and grammar issues, but all the books on Standard Ebooks go through a rigorous proofreading process. The book covers are quite lovely too. I really like it. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/ https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/

gordon_freeman 8y ago
This site looks good. Thanks for sharing.

harshreality 8y ago

You shouldn't have to do the following, but there is a way around that mingled-reviews problem: Go to the "all reviews" page, search that page for "filter by", and and change "all formats" to the format you're viewing. My biggest complaint about books is not the review mixing problem, although that's bad. My biggest complaint is that different translations shouldn't be mixed at all, while identical translations by the same publisher (for instance, ebook and paperback versions) should always be comingled. On Amazon, both principles are routinely violated. For example, you can search the books category for "marcus aurelius hays meditations" and find the paperback (black cover red bird silhouette) as the first real result, but the ebook format under that entry is NOT the Hays translation. I don't see any way to get to the Hays translation from that search. If you search for the same keywords in the kindle category, the kindle edition is the first real result. (In both searches, you get two sponsored search results which are not the Hays translation but Amazon promotes them anyway). There you have it... the world's biggest online bookstore is incapable of selling books properly. An alternative would be to mix all editions, but have a clear well-designed selection interface so that it's clear which translation you're selecting, and then under each translation which edition (format, publishing date, and/or edition number if there are numbered editions) you're selecting. A commercial modern translation of something like Meditations might only have one ebook and one paperback by the same publisher. An out-of-copyright translation might have a dozen different editions made by taking the gutenberg edition and slapping a more engaging cover on it. If you're selling books and you make it difficult to navigate book editions in either of those common cases, you have utterly failed at being competent in your line of business. That incompetence might not show up in sales figures, because people who want a specific edition will grudgingly search until they find it, and people who don't want a specific edition will pay for whatever random awful edition catches their attention first.

gordon_freeman 8y ago
> For example, you can search the books category for "marcus aurelius hays meditations" and find the paperback (black cover red bird silhouette) as the first real result, but the ebook format under that entry is NOT the Hays translation. I don't see any way to get to the Hays translation from that search. This. I feel your pain here. Amazon should develop a simple UI to navigate through various editions/translations and also once one selects a specific edition/translation then the UI should only show all formats (Kindle, Paperback, etc.) for that particular edition/translation only.
- harshreality 8y ago
  Yeah, and it's not just books. Amazon gets a lot of heat on HN for their review-spam problem and their counterfeit goods problem. But the product variant selection problem, whether it's different editions/translations of books, or different colors/styles/sizes of clothes, or different variants of other consumer goods, is easily solvable by comparison. And it's not getting solved. Every product with multiple dimensions of variants (e.g. color, size, # in pack) feels like it has a different interface, random mix of radio buttons and drop-downs, and a change in one dimension can cause other dimensions to disappear or shift around. Is there any management or programming talent, with the power to implement fixes, left in the retail/marketplace divisions? Or has it all moved to AWS and logistics?
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    If you have a mixture of products at a price of 4 5 5 5 7 8 and 4 5 is counterfeit 5 is used 6 7 8 is the same product you would find on any merchants shelf for 6 or 7. If only 4 is returned then on net they made more sales and the consumer sees that he can get product foo on Amazon for only $4! Amazon makes more money by providing you with a worse experience so why would they improve it?
- cgriswald 8y ago
  I had the same problem and came to the conclusion that there is no Kindle version of the Hays translation. The really frustrating part is that I already purchased a physical copy of a different translation, so when I found the physical Hays book and clicked the Format -> Kindle option it offered me the ebook for a steep discount... and it let me choose amongst many version none of which were the Hays version.

juskrey 8y ago

Learn Greek!

nos84733675859 8y ago

Off topic, but I would recommend the Gregory Hays translation if you haven't read it before first. I also liked one by Maxwell Staniforth. Hope that helps.