Library of Amazonia
Comments
Interesting (to me) note on this story that Marketplace on NPR covered tonight. Reference books, and author and publisher opinions. Publishers actually wanted it--and the 120,000 books that were volunteered for the new feature are mid-line sellers--not best sellers, and not the really low-ball ones. It’s an effort to gain expoure for those books and authors. All of the publishers said that they would not even consider putting “real” reference works on the service. At best right now, there are a very few cookbooks, and a few travel guides that fall under the category of being a possible sale-deterrent (by getting what you need and not buying the book.) Authors are worried, of course, that it might pave the way for some sort of digital piracy involving their works. Amazon said that if sales did not noticably increase, or if authors voiced widespread concern, they would pull the plug on it without hesitation.
Were i an author i think i would only want it to go one page back and one page forward, and somehow not let the same book contents be looked at by the same ip more than like, say, once an hour? If there second search of different words showed up in the same book, just give a paragraph, Maybe, then after that, just say that the book pertains to it and and list other books that you can see content in.
It doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, Just kind of usless really…
That’s very interesting. I don’t know how useful it actually is though. I can’t remember ever buying a book, and basing that purchase at all on any of the content inside. I *might* read the forward, but I guess I just have this thing about reading it all in order, and without any spoiling of the story. Sometimes I’m even upset at what the jacket gives away.
Didn’t Google have some type of function to [google]search book text[/google]. Ok, yeah, that was blatant and uncalled for.
By Derek Jones on October 24, 2003 at 08:22pm link