October 28, 2003
Amazon Search in the Book makes things troublesome
Ok, so I've got me two (2) Amazon gift certificates, and I'm all ready to purchase a book, I know the author, and type in his name, and get back...lots of crazy stuff. The problem seems to be that the author I'm looking for (Walter Kauffmann, in case your interested), is quite well-known and referenced in loads of books. With Amazon's new Search in the Book feature, I can find references to him that I didn't know existed. But here is the problem. I don't care what other books he was referenced in. I can't find his books. They aren't listed in the first three (3) pages.
It appears that Amazon has thrown the baby out with the bath water. I like the new Search in the Book feature, but I still need to be able to get to authors and titles fast. Amazon needs to find some way to exclude the textual results, or propagate the author and title matches to the top of the list. Otherwise, I'm going to go to Buy.com, where the books are cheaper anyway, and I can find them in an eighth of the time.
I've seen a little bit of this over the years just as Amazon has added so many stores. I do a search for an author and end up with results in cookwares, which is not particularly helpful. Search-in-the-Book seems like it compounds it even further.
Posted by: nathan maphet at October 28, 2003 12:02 PM
