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With books, Amazon has become the opposite of a search engine for me. I have to use external resources to actually find the right titles, to enter them 1:1 into

With books, Amazon has become the opposite of a search engine for me. I have to use external resources to actually find the right titles, to enter them 1:1 into Amazon search to get to the books. Context based discovery has become next to impossible (which I used it before a lot for). Something must have changed in their indexing algorithm a while ago. Also many results are flooded with garbage, like some ridiculous "notebooks" with similar titles to the searched book or product name.

diamondap 4y ago
Amazon kind of gave up on discovery, at least for books, when they realized they could make more money running ads. I sell books on Amazon. Years ago, their book pages had two carousels of "similar titles" on each book detail page. Similar titles were selected by some pretty helpful algorithms based on what purchasers of the current title had also purchased, as well as some other secret sauce. At the time, ads weren't very prominent, and they were profitable for authors. I could buy them for 5 cents a click and even if only one in fifty clicks resulted in a purchase, I made money. Now, most of the algorithmic recommendations are gone, and for many ads, Amazon suggests bids of $2.50 or more per click. Those clicks bring in money whether Amazon makes a sale or not. To some extent, they've given up on matching customers to the best or most suitable products. Why should they work that hard if ads are more profitable? They've also had problems with piracy and counterfeits, as mentioned in this article. I heard a radio interview with a Target executive a couple years ago where a journalist said, "Amazon is underpricing you on everything. How do you plan to stay in business?" She said, "We vet every product on our shelves. We know who makes it and where, whether it's legit, and whether it contains lead paint and parts kids can choke on. Try to find that info on Amazon." The reporter didn't seem too impressed at the time, but the Target woman clearly saw where things were going. As the quality, authenticity, and reliability of Amazon's merchandise has declined, people are starting to notice. I'm not sure this is a problem they will ever have the will to fix. While they break even or lose money on genuine goods they have to ship for free, profits from third party sellers and Chinese drop shippers keep the retail operation afloat.
- rmbyrro 4y ago
  Interesting. The algorithmic recommendations still work well for me. I discover a lot of good books swiping the carousel.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  This is somewhat of an aside about Target, but I've noticed that their inventory has moved significantly upmarket in the last 10 years or so. Their long-term strategy appears to be distinguishing themselves from the "bottom-of-the-barrel low-cost stuff" market and settling in a "low-cost but still decent stuff" niche.
  - citizenkeen 4y ago
    “Wal-Mart for the wealthy” is probably a very profitable demo to serve.
  - zrobotics 4y ago
    Thing is, even Walmart vets their inventory. This problem has been going on long enough that I've been telling friends & family not to purchase anything that goes on or in your body from Amazon due to counterfeit issues. Whereas, with Walmart I am pretty well assured that if I buy a can of green giant corn it's actually produced by that company. Sure, it's definitely possible for counterfeits to sneak into their supply chain, but that is only possible via employees or suppliers defrauding Walmart. Walmart also loses on this, so they are incentivised to audit and prevent this, since they actually hold and own the inventory. Whereas Amazon has zero incentive (or ability) to audit their supply chain, since the inventory they hold is actually owned by someone else. [aside-yes, I know that frito lay, nestle, etc actually own their inventory in Walmart and just merchandise the space]. Target definitely has moved upmarket, but even their low cost competitor has far tighter controls than Amazon. I would even speculate that Walmart has less likelihood of counterfeits in the supply chain than target, having been tangentially involved with a vendor getting into each retailer. Walmart is incredibly mercenary with their suppliers, and due to their size they can get away with very onerous terms. I tend to dislike them for this, but I will admit I'm impressed with their supply chain management and they certainly don't leave opportunities for fraud available to their suppliers.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
raybb 4y ago
I've made a habit of going to Open Library (https://openlibrary.org/ https://openlibrary.org/) to search for books. More often than not I can even see the full text of the book if I just want to see a chapter or something.
DrudgeCorporate 4y ago
And then once you find the book and get it shipped to you it gets destroyed in shipping because they put it in a padded envelope or a box with zero padding. Every book that I've ordered from them has been damaged. I quit ordering books once it happened the fourth time.
- zrobotics 4y ago
  Aside, but I truly don't understand how Amazon can get away with how poorly they pack product. I work on the IT management side of fulfillment, and have been involved with shipping vendor negotiations as well as auditing our return/damage/shipping claims. Amazon routinely ships product in comically oversized boxes which increases the likelihood of damage to the point it is a meme. Having worked on it, I get that sizing packaging is a tremendously complex optimization problem that even other experienced programmers underestimate the complexity. The options for different package size grow factorially with different product selections, and it isn't possible to have every size box available in a packing station. However, it isn't an unsolvable problem to pack better. Optimizing split shipments to increase effeciency is tremendously complex, but calculating the box size needed for an order is actually pretty trivial (ignoring packing density, which is oddly often a reasonable assumption for shipping goods to the consumer). Amazon can certainly improve here, just by using routing packages to a packing station with a closer box size and having differing box sizes in each station. I have always assumed that, given their scale, Amazon doesn't necessarily face the same price hit that a normal shopper faces when sending an oversize package. I have gotten multiple shipments from Amazon that were so oversize that, at my company's shipping pricing, would likely result in a net loss due to shipping cost. However, I suspect that Amazon has negotiated rates that insulate them from this, and the shipping companies take a loss on individual packages to gain the volume.
bmitc 4y ago
Yea, Amazon is absolutely terrible as a book seller. It's virtually impossible at times to distinguish between certain editions. The other day, I found an error in that clicking on a paperback edition took me to a completely different book. There's nowhere in the entire page to report that as wrong. And I have also found it increasingly hard to find books via their search. I have even had a few cases of the exact title of the book bringing up no search results, while I could perform the search in Google, and Google would find the Amazon listing for the book.
- tedmiston 4y ago
  > The other day, I found an error in that clicking on a paperback edition took me to a completely different book. I also just found this except in the opposite direction. I wanted an ebook version of a paperback book. The publisher has paper and electronic versions of all of their books, but somehow clicking Kindle version of Book A is linked to a Kindle version of Book B... and apparently a Kindle version of Book A just isn't available on Amazon. I ended up buying the ebook from the publisher's site directly, which came in mobi, epub, and pdf formats. I thought "oh, I'll just drop this into the Kindle app so my notes and highlights will sync across devices". I was shocked to discover that's not even really possible with a third party purchased ebook. Eventually I gave up on that and just used the PDF edition and made notes in highlights in Preview after the Kindle macOS app and Kindle iOS apps lost all of my notes and highlights trying to sync twice.
WheatM 4y ago

diamondap 4y ago

Amazon kind of gave up on discovery, at least for books, when they realized they could make more money running ads. I sell books on Amazon. Years ago, their book pages had two carousels of "similar titles" on each book detail page. Similar titles were selected by some pretty helpful algorithms based on what purchasers of the current title had also purchased, as well as some other secret sauce. At the time, ads weren't very prominent, and they were profitable for authors. I could buy them for 5 cents a click and even if only one in fifty clicks resulted in a purchase, I made money. Now, most of the algorithmic recommendations are gone, and for many ads, Amazon suggests bids of $2.50 or more per click. Those clicks bring in money whether Amazon makes a sale or not. To some extent, they've given up on matching customers to the best or most suitable products. Why should they work that hard if ads are more profitable? They've also had problems with piracy and counterfeits, as mentioned in this article. I heard a radio interview with a Target executive a couple years ago where a journalist said, "Amazon is underpricing you on everything. How do you plan to stay in business?" She said, "We vet every product on our shelves. We know who makes it and where, whether it's legit, and whether it contains lead paint and parts kids can choke on. Try to find that info on Amazon." The reporter didn't seem too impressed at the time, but the Target woman clearly saw where things were going. As the quality, authenticity, and reliability of Amazon's merchandise has declined, people are starting to notice. I'm not sure this is a problem they will ever have the will to fix. While they break even or lose money on genuine goods they have to ship for free, profits from third party sellers and Chinese drop shippers keep the retail operation afloat.

rmbyrro 4y ago
Interesting. The algorithmic recommendations still work well for me. I discover a lot of good books swiping the carousel.
nerdponx 4y ago
This is somewhat of an aside about Target, but I've noticed that their inventory has moved significantly upmarket in the last 10 years or so. Their long-term strategy appears to be distinguishing themselves from the "bottom-of-the-barrel low-cost stuff" market and settling in a "low-cost but still decent stuff" niche.
- citizenkeen 4y ago
  “Wal-Mart for the wealthy” is probably a very profitable demo to serve.
- zrobotics 4y ago
  Thing is, even Walmart vets their inventory. This problem has been going on long enough that I've been telling friends & family not to purchase anything that goes on or in your body from Amazon due to counterfeit issues. Whereas, with Walmart I am pretty well assured that if I buy a can of green giant corn it's actually produced by that company. Sure, it's definitely possible for counterfeits to sneak into their supply chain, but that is only possible via employees or suppliers defrauding Walmart. Walmart also loses on this, so they are incentivised to audit and prevent this, since they actually hold and own the inventory. Whereas Amazon has zero incentive (or ability) to audit their supply chain, since the inventory they hold is actually owned by someone else. [aside-yes, I know that frito lay, nestle, etc actually own their inventory in Walmart and just merchandise the space]. Target definitely has moved upmarket, but even their low cost competitor has far tighter controls than Amazon. I would even speculate that Walmart has less likelihood of counterfeits in the supply chain than target, having been tangentially involved with a vendor getting into each retailer. Walmart is incredibly mercenary with their suppliers, and due to their size they can get away with very onerous terms. I tend to dislike them for this, but I will admit I'm impressed with their supply chain management and they certainly don't leave opportunities for fraud available to their suppliers.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

raybb 4y ago

I've made a habit of going to Open Library (https://openlibrary.org/ https://openlibrary.org/) to search for books. More often than not I can even see the full text of the book if I just want to see a chapter or something.

DrudgeCorporate 4y ago

And then once you find the book and get it shipped to you it gets destroyed in shipping because they put it in a padded envelope or a box with zero padding. Every book that I've ordered from them has been damaged. I quit ordering books once it happened the fourth time.

zrobotics 4y ago
Aside, but I truly don't understand how Amazon can get away with how poorly they pack product. I work on the IT management side of fulfillment, and have been involved with shipping vendor negotiations as well as auditing our return/damage/shipping claims. Amazon routinely ships product in comically oversized boxes which increases the likelihood of damage to the point it is a meme. Having worked on it, I get that sizing packaging is a tremendously complex optimization problem that even other experienced programmers underestimate the complexity. The options for different package size grow factorially with different product selections, and it isn't possible to have every size box available in a packing station. However, it isn't an unsolvable problem to pack better. Optimizing split shipments to increase effeciency is tremendously complex, but calculating the box size needed for an order is actually pretty trivial (ignoring packing density, which is oddly often a reasonable assumption for shipping goods to the consumer). Amazon can certainly improve here, just by using routing packages to a packing station with a closer box size and having differing box sizes in each station. I have always assumed that, given their scale, Amazon doesn't necessarily face the same price hit that a normal shopper faces when sending an oversize package. I have gotten multiple shipments from Amazon that were so oversize that, at my company's shipping pricing, would likely result in a net loss due to shipping cost. However, I suspect that Amazon has negotiated rates that insulate them from this, and the shipping companies take a loss on individual packages to gain the volume.

bmitc 4y ago

Yea, Amazon is absolutely terrible as a book seller. It's virtually impossible at times to distinguish between certain editions. The other day, I found an error in that clicking on a paperback edition took me to a completely different book. There's nowhere in the entire page to report that as wrong. And I have also found it increasingly hard to find books via their search. I have even had a few cases of the exact title of the book bringing up no search results, while I could perform the search in Google, and Google would find the Amazon listing for the book.

tedmiston 4y ago
> The other day, I found an error in that clicking on a paperback edition took me to a completely different book. I also just found this except in the opposite direction. I wanted an ebook version of a paperback book. The publisher has paper and electronic versions of all of their books, but somehow clicking Kindle version of Book A is linked to a Kindle version of Book B... and apparently a Kindle version of Book A just isn't available on Amazon. I ended up buying the ebook from the publisher's site directly, which came in mobi, epub, and pdf formats. I thought "oh, I'll just drop this into the Kindle app so my notes and highlights will sync across devices". I was shocked to discover that's not even really possible with a third party purchased ebook. Eventually I gave up on that and just used the PDF edition and made notes in highlights in Preview after the Kindle macOS app and Kindle iOS apps lost all of my notes and highlights trying to sync twice.

WheatM 4y ago