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This has become a really serious problem buying any sort of Kindle book these days. I got very tired of the OCR-created classic books that are sold with poor fo

This has become a really serious problem buying any sort of Kindle book these days. I got very tired of the OCR-created classic books that are sold with poor formatting, spelling errors and sometimes even remnants of the conversion process left in the text, so I always really carefully search for specific publishers, for instance "Jane Austen Sanditon Penguin English Library" (or similar). But even here all the reviews for the tens of different editions are simply mingled together - including people complaining about torn paperback covers, and random editions that are stolen from Project Gutenberg and sold for profit on Amazon, as well as some that are simply gibberish and seem to have been run through Google-translate. That particular edition above even links to the wrong item from the search. So sad that Amazon don't even care about their Kindle book inventory any longer: this is an area where they could easily guarantee authenticity and quality - if they could give a shit.

ghaff 6y ago
>random editions that are stolen from Project Gutenberg and sold for profit on Amazon, Most of what is on Project Gutenberg is public domain so it's not being "stolen." If it's a simple copy and paste with no added value and it's being sold, that's a bit slimy but it's not stealing.
nebulous1 6y ago
> But even here all the reviews for the tens of different editions are simply mingled together This isn't just books. There are product pages that cover multiple different models with all the reviews and ratings mashed together, even though the models have essentially nothing to do with each other. Like different sizes of Samsung phone but the different sizes have entirely different motherboards/screen techs/cpus/memory.
- Stratoscope 6y ago
  For many products there is a way to separate out the reviews, although it is not obvious how to do it: Click the "nnn customer ratings" to get to the review section. In the barchart on the left, click any of the "n star" or "nn%" links. Above the reviews will be a row of dropdown lists, which may include "All formats" or "All styles" or the like. There you can select the individual product variation. You can also change the "n star only" to "All stars" to get all the reviews for that variation. Unfortunately this doesn't work for the book being discussed here.
  - tzs 6y ago
    I just checked a dozen books, from the ones Amazon recommends for me, from their best sellers, and in some randomly chosen categories, and didn't run across any that allowed format filtering. Also, I distinctly recall I used to see reviews where between the reviewers name and their review, Amazon added a note saying what format the review was for. I'm not seeing that anymore, either.
    - Stratoscope 6y ago
      Interesting, I do still see the filter choices for other products, and I thought I used to see them for books. Maybe they stopped doing it for books? (Other filters are still there, but not filtering by edition.)
- esrauch 6y ago
  To be fair, it seems like a tough problem to solve generally: what is two variants of one product versus separate products is not well defined. Even if you only have two different colors of the same product, a review might apply regardless of color or only to the one color, or even a mix of both ("2 stars, the ink in this pen smudges too easily and the blue is a light blue not a dark blue")
  - hansvm 6y ago
    Part of the problem is that we're using reviews for multiple purposes: Amazon mostly seems to want reviews to be for a type of product and is fine merging reviews from any seller claiming to sell that product because at least then all the reviews will be in the same place. This is still subject to the problem you're describing (how broadly should different parts of a single review apply). That isn't the whole story though. For a lot of products people already know exactly what they want and are using reviews to figure out if the seller is able to provide it without selling a counterfeit, without shipping it 2 months late for 2-day shipping, without selling a used model as new, etc.... This still suffers from a granularity problem (does the seller generally do a good job and just not know how to package N64 controllers), but that granularity isn't as severe of an issue as with arbitrary products.
acabal 6y ago
Check out Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org https://standardebooks.org. I started the project in large part because of Amazon's lack of interest in quality control for their books. Our catalog is still smaller compared to Gutenberg but the project has been around for ~5 years and is stable and growing.
- thiagoeh 6y ago
  Do you accept donations?
  - acabal 6y ago
    Not at the moment, but we're working on it :)
- wyclif 6y ago
  Big fan of Standard Ebooks here since the beginning. Thanks for doing what you do and keep iterating. You should because I see no signs that Amazon is going to address ebook QC.
reaperducer 6y ago
I got very tired of the OCR-created classic books that are sold with poor formatting, spelling errors and sometimes even remnants of the conversion process left in the text I got so tired of it that I gave up on e-books, and only get my books in dead tree form now. And not from Amazon, but from real book stores and libraries that pull what I want from their shelves. While I can no longer get my books in 11 seconds, or "free next day shipping," I know that I'm getting what I paid for, and supporting people who need support.
dragonsky67 6y ago
If you are looking for classic books why don't you go to Project Guttenberg? They have many (most?) classic books in many different formats. I'm not sure that a publisher should still be getting money out of a work that was published over 100 years ago.

ghaff 6y ago

>random editions that are stolen from Project Gutenberg and sold for profit on Amazon, Most of what is on Project Gutenberg is public domain so it's not being "stolen." If it's a simple copy and paste with no added value and it's being sold, that's a bit slimy but it's not stealing.

nebulous1 6y ago

> But even here all the reviews for the tens of different editions are simply mingled together This isn't just books. There are product pages that cover multiple different models with all the reviews and ratings mashed together, even though the models have essentially nothing to do with each other. Like different sizes of Samsung phone but the different sizes have entirely different motherboards/screen techs/cpus/memory.

Stratoscope 6y ago
For many products there is a way to separate out the reviews, although it is not obvious how to do it: Click the "nnn customer ratings" to get to the review section. In the barchart on the left, click any of the "n star" or "nn%" links. Above the reviews will be a row of dropdown lists, which may include "All formats" or "All styles" or the like. There you can select the individual product variation. You can also change the "n star only" to "All stars" to get all the reviews for that variation. Unfortunately this doesn't work for the book being discussed here.
- tzs 6y ago
  I just checked a dozen books, from the ones Amazon recommends for me, from their best sellers, and in some randomly chosen categories, and didn't run across any that allowed format filtering. Also, I distinctly recall I used to see reviews where between the reviewers name and their review, Amazon added a note saying what format the review was for. I'm not seeing that anymore, either.
  - Stratoscope 6y ago
    Interesting, I do still see the filter choices for other products, and I thought I used to see them for books. Maybe they stopped doing it for books? (Other filters are still there, but not filtering by edition.)
esrauch 6y ago
To be fair, it seems like a tough problem to solve generally: what is two variants of one product versus separate products is not well defined. Even if you only have two different colors of the same product, a review might apply regardless of color or only to the one color, or even a mix of both ("2 stars, the ink in this pen smudges too easily and the blue is a light blue not a dark blue")
- hansvm 6y ago
  Part of the problem is that we're using reviews for multiple purposes: Amazon mostly seems to want reviews to be for a type of product and is fine merging reviews from any seller claiming to sell that product because at least then all the reviews will be in the same place. This is still subject to the problem you're describing (how broadly should different parts of a single review apply). That isn't the whole story though. For a lot of products people already know exactly what they want and are using reviews to figure out if the seller is able to provide it without selling a counterfeit, without shipping it 2 months late for 2-day shipping, without selling a used model as new, etc.... This still suffers from a granularity problem (does the seller generally do a good job and just not know how to package N64 controllers), but that granularity isn't as severe of an issue as with arbitrary products.

acabal 6y ago

Check out Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org https://standardebooks.org. I started the project in large part because of Amazon's lack of interest in quality control for their books. Our catalog is still smaller compared to Gutenberg but the project has been around for ~5 years and is stable and growing.

thiagoeh 6y ago
Do you accept donations?
- acabal 6y ago
  Not at the moment, but we're working on it :)
wyclif 6y ago
Big fan of Standard Ebooks here since the beginning. Thanks for doing what you do and keep iterating. You should because I see no signs that Amazon is going to address ebook QC.

reaperducer 6y ago

I got very tired of the OCR-created classic books that are sold with poor formatting, spelling errors and sometimes even remnants of the conversion process left in the text I got so tired of it that I gave up on e-books, and only get my books in dead tree form now. And not from Amazon, but from real book stores and libraries that pull what I want from their shelves. While I can no longer get my books in 11 seconds, or "free next day shipping," I know that I'm getting what I paid for, and supporting people who need support.

dragonsky67 6y ago

If you are looking for classic books why don't you go to Project Guttenberg? They have many (most?) classic books in many different formats. I'm not sure that a publisher should still be getting money out of a work that was published over 100 years ago.