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Having recently used amazon search to find a book by name, it seems to work well enough; the book came up as the first result I think it's a search tool and no

by 8note 5y ago

Having recently used amazon search to find a book by name, it seems to work well enough; the book came up as the first result I think it's a search tool and not a browse/explore tool. You should already know which thing you want by the time you ask amazon to find it for you

blue1 5y ago
My recent experience is that some books are unfindable by search, even if you enter the exact title. Only ISBN works. In other words, amazon search totally sucks. To the point that I find easier to search amazon via google ("now you have another problem").
null_object 5y ago
> I think it's a search tool and not a browse/explore tool. You should already know which thing you want by the time you ask amazon to find it for you I was recently searching Amazon for a specific classic Kindle book with the exact title, author and publisher (Penguin Classics) and still got a list of maybe 500 completely garbage versions that had obviously gamed the algorithm. Even finally finding the “correct” version in the list, and clicking on that led me to a fake version of the book.
- buescher 5y ago
  I've had exactly that problem and had to resort to searching other booksellers for the Penguin edition of something in the public domain.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Before Amazon was Amazon, I had described to Jeff my own vision for the browse/explore "tool", which would have been based on US Library of Congress classifications (remember, not-yet-Amazon was only a US company at that point). You would have been able to "dial in/out" on progressively finer and coarser categorization, and switch to "adjacent" LoC classifications. Sadly, the source of the company's bibliographic data at the time flattened the LoC 3-level heirarchy in a way that made it impossible (or at least very difficult) to recover, and I had to abandon the idea. I still think it would have been lovely.
- ryanchants 5y ago
  I was thinking about building something like this recently. Mostly to replicate the library browsing method online. How it works when I go to the library: I have a book I'm interested in. I look that book up and get its call number. I then go to where the book is on the shelf. I browse its neighbors and uncover books I never would have known to look up.

by 8note 5y ago

blue1 5y ago

My recent experience is that some books are unfindable by search, even if you enter the exact title. Only ISBN works. In other words, amazon search totally sucks. To the point that I find easier to search amazon via google ("now you have another problem").

null_object 5y ago

> I think it's a search tool and not a browse/explore tool. You should already know which thing you want by the time you ask amazon to find it for you I was recently searching Amazon for a specific classic Kindle book with the exact title, author and publisher (Penguin Classics) and still got a list of maybe 500 completely garbage versions that had obviously gamed the algorithm. Even finally finding the “correct” version in the list, and clicking on that led me to a fake version of the book.

buescher 5y ago
I've had exactly that problem and had to resort to searching other booksellers for the Penguin edition of something in the public domain.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

Before Amazon was Amazon, I had described to Jeff my own vision for the browse/explore "tool", which would have been based on US Library of Congress classifications (remember, not-yet-Amazon was only a US company at that point). You would have been able to "dial in/out" on progressively finer and coarser categorization, and switch to "adjacent" LoC classifications. Sadly, the source of the company's bibliographic data at the time flattened the LoC 3-level heirarchy in a way that made it impossible (or at least very difficult) to recover, and I had to abandon the idea. I still think it would have been lovely.

ryanchants 5y ago
I was thinking about building something like this recently. Mostly to replicate the library browsing method online. How it works when I go to the library: I have a book I'm interested in. I look that book up and get its call number. I then go to where the book is on the shelf. I browse its neighbors and uncover books I never would have known to look up.