Amazon Plan Would Allow Text Search Of Books

emmastory writes "The New York Times is running a story (free registration required) about a new development at Amazon - they plan to assemble "a searchable online archive with the texts of tens of thousands of books of nonfiction." Users would only be able to read a certain portion of the text from any one book, but it sounds promising nonetheless. The Times article suggests that this is part of a larger strategy to compete with Google and Yahoo by making Amazon an authoritative source of information on everything book-related."

Comments

Brilliant idea

[seinman]

If this happens, maybe we'll finally be able to find books based on their actual content instead of the (usually pretty crappy) writups that Amazon does on them.

Re:Brilliant idea

[steelerguy]

This looks like it is only for non-fiction. Usually not to hard to tell what a non-fiction book is about just by reading the title.

Re:Brilliant idea

[m0rph]

Seems like more of a rip of what Oreilly has done with Safari.

Re:Brilliant idea

[tomstdenis]

That and the press BS that they put on it.

Though chances are if its from O'Reilly its a decent text. Chances are if it says "for dummies" it isn't :-)

Tom

Re:Brilliant idea

[mummers]

But what if it's the wrong selected text, for example the single interesting sentence from a Jeffrey Archer novel...

Re:Brilliant idea

[tomstdenis]

True enough, but quality is of question too. Not all Calculus textbooks, for example, are of equal educational value.

It would be very valuable to be able to open a chapter of the book and give a read over it, you know, like in a real fucking bookstore.

The problem being that stores [brick and mortar] like Chapters.ca stock only self-help dime-a-dozen whim-of-the-minute books. In fact when the local chapters first open you could walk in and buy TAOCP [I did :-)]. Now you would be lucky to get a calculus/algebra/science/anything textbook and at best you can only find those "cheat sheet" books which basically tell you how to solve every problem [but not why the solution works].

For the most part people have to blindly trust some review from "BigGuy4477" about the value of a 89$ textbook...

Tom

Re:Brilliant idea

[Surak]

You can already do that to an extent on Amazon and on BN.com. For some books, they let you look inside at the Intro, table of contents, and sometimes a chapter or two. You can usually see the liner notes and front and back cover too.

Very cool. I've purchased books based on the ability to look inside the book.

Of course this *could* be great for college paper researchers, looking for a quote or two to stick in a research paper. Depends on how much meat you can really get at.

If it weren't for copyright issues, I'd love to see libraries do something this. You already have the equivalent for magazine articles, but usually you have to either pay or actually go to the library to use their InfoTrac or whatever engine.

Re:Brilliant idea

[stephenbooth]

I'm far more likely to pay attention to the customer reviews than a write up from Amazon.

I guess what I'm saying here is that if you buy a book from Amazon then please take a few minutes to write a quick review saying what you liked/hated about the book, it will help other people make a decision. I've found that Amazon are usually quite fair (well Amazon UK are) and will publish a negative review so long as it's clear and non-offensive. If you write "This book sux." it'll get dumped, something like "This book skips a lot of the detail you need for this sort of level." then it will probably get through.

Even if I buy a book from somewhere else I'll usually write a review of it on Amazon.

Stephen

Re:Brilliant idea

[ceejayoz]

It would be very valuable to be able to open a chapter of the book and give a read over it, you know, like in a real fucking bookstore.

Amazon.com has their "Look inside this book" feature on a lot of titles, which lets you read a scanned excerpt of the book and see what you think. Just like in a real fucking bookstore!

Re:Brilliant idea

[tomstdenis]

scanned excerpt. In real book store I can read any section *I* want, not just some flashy section.

So unless they put the entire book online it won't be anything like a real fucking bookstore!

Re:Brilliant idea

[Lord_Dweomer]

"Amazon.com has their "Look inside this book" feature on a lot of titles, which lets you read a scanned excerpt of the book and see what you think. Just like in a real fucking bookstore!"

Except in a 'real fucking bookstore' I can look through the table of contents to see if it has chapters that may sound interesting, and I can then read a little bit from a section of MY CHOOSING. I don't care what amazon wants me to see from a book, and yes I realize some is better than none, but the real beauty of a bookstore is to flip around the entire book with no restrictions and see if you like the whole thing.

Re:Brilliant idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the "look inside" pages I've seen have been stuff like the table of contents, index, or back page author biography. Not the test that people read.

Re:Brilliant idea

[aziraphale]

Actually, most of the crappy writeups on Amazon are provided by the publisher, not Amazon at all. You're only looking at Amazon-originated content in the 'editorial reviews' section of a book page if it says 'Amazon.com' at the top. If it says 'From the Publisher', or 'Book Description', it's the publisher that provided it. This does, it must be said, stretch the definition of 'editorial reviews' somwehat.

Oh, and the books Amazon promotes on its front page, or on section header pages, under headings like 'what we're reading this month' - Amazon doesn't put them there off its own bat - it's done in co-operation with publishers, with publishers buying placements with virtual money called 'co-operative marketing funds', which are allocated on the basis of how much money the publishers' books made for the ookstore the previous year. Same deal with physical bookstores of course - spend co-op money, and you can get your books 'face out' on the shelf (cover showing, rather than spine), or onto an 'end-cap' (a display shelf at the end of a row), or even onto a table display.

A short time working in publishing is a great way to disabuse yourself of the notion that book stores know or care anything about the books they sell...

Re:Brilliant idea

[whatch durrin]

From my experience with non-fiction (college textbooks) in a "brick-and-mortar" store, the books are usually sealed shut with plastic wrap. That only goes for new books, of course.

Besides, in college you usually don't have a choice about which textbook to use for the class. I guess you could always purchase supplemental books, but those are usually out of the price range/interest level/time scope of many college students.

Re:Brilliant idea

[Kindaian]

If it weren't for copyright issues

There is no such thing... the copyright is protected by itself and the use as such, is covered by the fair use and other similar rules around the world to protect re-use for academic and investigation and the like...

Re:Brilliant idea

[Surak]

So you're telling me that if a library offered the full text of copyrighted books online, that that would not be a violation of copyright? I think a few book publishers would take issue with that.

Re:Brilliant idea

[simong_oz]

Of course this *could* be great for college paper researchers, looking for a quote or two to stick in a research paper.

Take that one (not very big) step further - it will become an absolute treasure trove for those lazy students who can't be bothered to do their own work and just blatantly plagiarise. I'm not talking about the people who discuss their results with others or work together, but the minority who just blatantly cheat.

Whether people are prepared to admit it or not, the availability of everything as raw data (ie. text) and the cut/paste mentality has been creating a real problem; more so at university level, but it is certainly filtering down.

Re:Brilliant idea

[Zerth]

I wish they'd do this for fiction, although I know it'd be halfway impossible and it probably wouldn't cover out of print books. I've got at least one book that I can't remember the title/author but could quote enough passages or facts to find it.

How many books could there be about a 1-eyed ex-programmer turned fencing instructor who was the original programmer of a computer made of cloned brain tissue that is the server for a MMRPG but has developed consciousness due to another ex-programmer who, dying of cancer, imprinted himself into the game just before he died. But he died partway through the process and, since he was a wizard in the game, summoned the consciousness of the computer into the game in an attempt to access past "saves" of himself to fill in the blank spots, but botches the spell causing the consciousness of the computer to lock in all the other players in the game as hostages. This causes management to abduct the original programmer and force him to go in to the game, using an unimplemented bard class, and convince the consciousness(who, due to some freudian complications, considers itself female and wants to bone the original programmer) to let everyone go.

And that's just the first couple chapters. Given a chance to do a literal search I'd probably just quote a line the programmer says after realizing he still had root access when faced with a bunch of demons "go to hell go directly to hell do not pass go do not collect 200 credits" plus enough random words to narrow it down a bit(for example, partway through he searches for a set of Katana+Wakizashi that grants wishes and is guarded by a Medusa and that the cancer-programmer/wizard has a tortoise for a familiar).

On the off chance anybody recognizes this book(from the late 80's early 90's I think) I'll give you all my mod points:)

Re:Brilliant idea

[Anonymous Coward]

As a counterpoint, many books I want at Barnes and Noble are sealed shut, I can't read any pages. Then the 10 Amazon gives me are looking pretty good. If you're wondering what kind of books I am looking at, think 100+ dollar texts.

Re:Brilliant idea

[FroMan]

Why don't you just go to the "real f---ing bookstore?"

If you don't like how an online business does things, don't use the online business.

If you don't realize the difference between a brick and mortar store providing physical access the the product and an online store providing a digital copy of the product, you need to get your head examined.

Basically they would be giving the book away. My guess is that the publisher has a problem with that.

Original point, if you don't like the rules, don't play the game.

Re:Brilliant idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Except in a 'real fucking bookstore' I can look through the table of contents to see if it has chapters that may sound interesting, and I can then read a little bit from a section of MY CHOOSING. I don't care what amazon wants me to see from a book, and yes I realize some is better than none, but the real beauty of a bookstore is to flip around the entire book with no restrictions and see if you like the whole thing.

I agree! That's why i always go to a real fscking bookstore first to find the book i want before going and buying the same thing on amazon!

Re:Brilliant idea

[5KVGhost]

Sure, if you can find the particular book that you want in the "real fucking bookstore[s]" you happen to have access to. Amazon's stock is a wee bit larger than most.

After flipping through the bookstore's copy of the book do you buy it there or do you order it online? Be honest.

Re:Brilliant idea

[legojenn]

I wonder if they have got the patent on this yet.

Re:Brilliant idea

[anthony_dipierro]

Amazon is not offering the full text online. They are offering short passages from the full text based on full text searches. I'm sure if you try to search for "the" or make too many searches on the same book during too short a period of time your request will be denied.

Re:Brilliant idea

[anthony_dipierro]

Take that one (not very big) step further - it will become an absolute treasure trove for those lazy students who can't be bothered to do their own work and just blatantly plagiarise.

Of course that works both ways. It will be very easy for teachers to perform a search to see if a certain phrase has been plagiarized. And most teachers can figure which quotes aren't from the students themselves, they just can't prove it without such a search tool. When a student starts making references to Dublin, for instance.

Whether people are prepared to admit it or not, the availability of everything as raw data (ie. text) and the cut/paste mentality has been creating a real problem; more so at university level, but it is certainly filtering down.

How is it a problem? Learning to plagiarize successfully is an important skill for the working world.

Seriously though. Information can be used for bad, but it can be used for good too. I'm a big believer that humans tend to use open and free information more for the betterment of humanity than to its detriment. Sure, there are sometimes exceptions, but I don't see how this is one of them. Like I said, in addition to increasing potential plagiarism, it also increases potentially catching someone at plagiarism.

Re:Brilliant idea

[SN74S181]

You buy the thumbed up copy that everybody has been digging through for reference, while drinking coffee from the store's coffee bar. It's the only copy they have. The spine is dirty but you pay full price.

Re:Brilliant idea

[Red Warrior]

Since I have no mod points today, "Me too!" ;->

I have made decisions[1] on numerous book purchases by reading excerpts from the books on Amazon. Throw in the fact that brick & mortar stores cannot compare with thier selection (yes, they can order it - doesn't do much for reviewing it today, though) OR the option to buy used or new, hardback or paper. AND if the book has multiple reader reviews, it's usually possible to get a good feel for the book.

[1]Usually "NO". Most books suck. Most writers can't. I can usually just get it from the library, etc.

Re:Brilliant idea

[Red Warrior]

The King County (WA) library system does almost exactly this they have a "library" of a few thousand books (mostly Tech, Suprise!) that are available for online reading.

Baen puts many of it's books online for free download (in NON DRM formats), and has noticed sales of it's back catalog skyrocket.

Definitely seems to be gaining popularity. It's really the same idea as radio. If they like it, and enough people are honest, enough will buy it to make it worth while.

Re:Brilliant idea

[Red Warrior]

King County, WA

Re:Brilliant idea

[ceejayoz]

Throw in the fact that brick & mortar stores cannot compare with thier selection

That's my main reason for using them... unless it's an incredibly rare and obscure book, I can find it on Amazon. If it is rare and obscure and thus they don't have the book, they'll even search used bookstores for it and get it sent to ya (a service I've used a couple times).

Couple that with all the other stores they have, and the millions they've obviously put into usability testing... there's no equal, IMO.

Re:Brilliant idea

[caouchouc]

If you don't like how an online business does things, don't use the online business.

I've got a better idea. Offer them some criticism and suggestions instead, so that they might possibly remedy shortcomings and make it a better place to shop.
It's either that or find them snooping on you to find out what you want, because they don't just magically know.
For an online bookstore- TOC/appendix, chapter summaries and samples of content from each would be nice, and no need to give the whole book away electronically. Though, personally, I much prefer the dead tree versions and have no interest in an electronic copy.

Original point, if you don't like the rules, don't play the game.

"You think this is a game? You think this is a fucking game?!" (had to be done)
That was a terrible analogy. Have you been playing the Price is Right all this time or something? This isn't some game with regulation button sizes and referees; It's business.

Patent this

[number_man]

Shouldn't somebody patent this process before Bezos does??

Re:Patent this

[keyslammer]

IANAL, but I think now that they've announced it, it can't be patented (unless it already has been).

Re:Patent this

[ceejayoz]

IANAL, but I think now that they've announced it, it can't be patented (unless it already has been)

That's funny. Oh... you're not trying to be funny.

Have you missed the dozens of articles about people recently patenting things that've been around for 30+ years, then suing small businesses for cash?

The USPTO seems to grant a surprising amount of patents on things that "can't be patented".

Re:Patent this

[keyslammer]

Have you missed the dozens of articles about people recently patenting things that've been around for 30+ years, then suing small businesses for cash?

That's different: that's just blatant disregard for prior art. It's quite a another matter if you announce something in a huge press release and _then_ tried to patent it. You'd look like a moron because you yourself created the prior art! Not that this would stop Amazon...

Re:Patent this

[Wabin]

IANAL either, but my brother is, and I think that you have 1 year from public annoucement to patent an idea. So they would not look like a moron at all.

Re:Patent this

[keyslammer]

I think that you have 1 year from public annoucement to patent an idea.

I must retract my former statement: you are correct. According to BitLaw:

The most important rule, however, is that an invention will not normally be patentable if:

• the invention was known to the public before it was "invented" by the individual seeking patent protection;
• the invention was described in a publication more than one year prior to the filing date; or
• the invention was used publicly, or offered for sale to the public more than one year prior to the filing date.
  

Re:Patent this

[privaria]

While that is true for U.S. patents, I would very surprised if Amazon didn't have an application pending already, before doing the press release. Many if not most countries other than the U.S. have an "absolute novelty" requirement that prohibits filing an application for something after it has been publicly disclosed unless the application can claim priority of another application, e.g., one filed in the U.S.

If Amazon has indeed filed a U.S. application with intent to file overseas as well, that application will be published 18 months after filing.

Ed Suominen
Registered Patent Agent * Open Source Developer (Yes, both...)
+ http://www.eepatents.com
+ Nothing above to be construed as legal advice or the opinion of my firm or any client.

Re:Patent this

[Wabin]

Just reread my post, and though no one on slashdot will care one whit, I must correct my grammar. It shoudl read: "they will not look like morons." Not "they will not look like a moron." I suppose I could have said, "it will not look like a moron," but somehow, referring to a corporation as a moron seems odd, no matter how often its logo tries to anthropomorphize.

Re:Patent this

[tommut]

Too late.

-Jeff Bezos

Re:Patent this

[gnurb]

Actually they have up to a year after public disclosure to patent it. International patents on the other hand are another story. I would be very surprised if they don't have some sort of patent already pending for this, at least a provisonal one.

Re:Patent this

[Anonymous Coward]

that isnt funny you cocksucking assclown mother fucking dipshit bitch whore gook chink wop spic jap cannuck polak

speaking of searching with Amazon

[Artifex]

Have you noticed that they now offer web searching as well, and are also generating third-party ads based upon what you're looking for?

This development may bite them back - when I look for something on Amazon now, I often find in their ads that other people have the item cheaper. Amazon may get a nickel or quarter for the referral, but they lose the dollars from the markup.

Re:speaking of searching with Amazon

[Roark Meets Dent]

Try several dollars per used book sold via Amazon's system. If I recall correctly, I believe Amazon's profit margins are a good deal higher on used book sales that they process than on new books they sell themselves.

Wonder how long before ....

[binaryDigit]

... someone writes a distributed bot to query targeting a specific book and sections to finally retrieve the entire book. If it's a distributed app, then it would be tougher for Amazon to block. You could even have it only go after certain parts of the books at different times to make it tougher. Now not to say that this is a good use of effort, but that never stopped anyone from doing such a thing before :)

Re:Wonder how long before ....

[Rogerborg]

alt.binaries.ebooks . Kazaa. eDonkey. Gnutella. etc.

Re:Wonder how long before ....

[koh]

Interesting idea... Now go patent it quickly before Amazon wakes up :)

Re:Wonder how long before ....

[dew-genen-ny]

Ha ha ha.....devious....I like it.

just wait for someone to hack in and steal all the text - Let's face it, it's probably only a few gigs. Just one disgruntled employee would be all it takes to put the whole thing out there on p2p.

Let's free the information! No one should own thoughts!

Re:Wonder how long before ....

[s88]

Yea, I thought the same thing when I only read the Title. Atleast read the summary and you will see that "Users would only be able to read a certain portion of the text from any one book".

That means, the search will tell you the words are there, but you can only see the actual text if it falls within the "viewable portions".

Re:Wonder how long before ....

[WaKall]

If they limit search-inside to logged-in users, then this becomes more difficult. You'd need an amazon account (1:1 with email address) for each set of pages that you view. If it's 10 or so pages per account, then a 300 page book means you need 30 accounts.

Re:Wonder how long before ....

[joto]

If it's 10 or so pages per account, then a 300 page book means you need 30 accounts.

And exactly how is that making things difficult?

Re:Wonder how long before ....

[devnull17]

A few gigs? Hardly. Let's go with a conservative estimate of 1 MB per book. Amazon has, IIRC, over a million books in their collection. That's a terabyte of data right there. Not to mention that in the state that they'd likely be in, you'd need an enterprise-class database server just to retrieve the information.

Amazon

[jester]

I remember when doing a search on Amazon for "Database Admin" returned the number 1 response of "The fine art of vaginal fisting" and the reviews that it prompted ... pushing this book up into the top 100 bestsellers. Now what would the ability to read some text from books do ;-)

Re:Amazon

[AbstracTus]

Actually I remember getting the same match when searching for "C++ pointers" I pointed this out to a lot of friends and they all had a good laugh, however amazon seemed to pick up on it because later that same day the matches were normal again.

Perfect!

[zapp]

I always find it annoying when reading a paper boo when I can't Ctrl-F to find a certain segment.

Now I can just hop online to amazon, do the search, it will tell me what page it's on, and I can go read it!

Re:Perfect!

[epsalon]

You have this feature in paper books as well. It's called an "Index" and it has various term for the book listed with their page numbers.

Re:Perfect!

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, the last biography I picked up didn't seem to have one. Could've sworn it was a non-fiction book, too...

OCR Be Damned!

[Foofoobar]

And minimum wage laborers in 3rd world countries find themselves scanning books into computers and correcting the text using crappy OCR technology for 12 hours a day. This is one job I'd be happy to export to India.

Re:OCR Be Damned!

[jafuser]

Actually, if they used a search engine capable of OCR pattern matching algorithms, they could save themselves a lot of manual work...

Re:OCR Be Damned!

[Foofoobar]

Still, regardless, they'd still have to manually scan those books all in (whether one page at a time or multiple pages via a multipage scanner), and do a spellcheck on everything to make sure whatever OCR technology they are using correctly identified all the characters.

Re:OCR Be Damned!

[buro9]

They'd probably try and get a few publishers on board so that they can be supplied with digital versions of the text. I can't imagine that they would OCR everything... so they'd negotiate what they could from the outset.

This would be very easy for publishers to accomodate, and they would do so more willingly if the book was old (e.g. Origin Of Species, etc).

Re:OCR Be Damned!

[joto]

This made me thinking. What does there exist of tools for automated OCR? Most paper copiers do an admirable job of removing staples, feeding one sheet at the time, copying double-sided, and finally stapling both the original and all the copies together. With a scanner inside instead of a copier, this should work just as well for scanning books. Only downside is that you would have to remove the spine, but I think amazon.com can afford that.

Re:OCR Be Damned!

[Foofoobar]

There are tons of automated scanners out there but as with most automation you absolutely have to have a person there watching all the time to make sure that two pages aren't grabbed at the same time and other such problems... but it's still better than hand scanning.

As for the software, Textbridge is perhaps the best that I know of.

Piracy...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although this might (although it's very sure it will) allow people to copy books far more easily than the current scanning (which still needs a lot of spellchecking and proofreading, as text identification is still an unreliable technology, even when scanning uniform text from printed books) and (even worse) manual typing (or screenshotting in the case of ebooks)...

Nevermind the argument, this is a bad idea.

Re:Piracy...?

[hatrisc]

scanning? i've always just hand typed it.

O'Reilly on steroid?

[UnderAttack]

Would this be like OReilly's Safari online books on steroids? Safari is my favorite bookstore for a while now.

Re:O'Reilly on steroid?

[javatips]

Safari is not a book store. It's a renting library where you can only get a section of a book at a time (unless you are permanently connected to the Internet).

It would be a book store if you could buy and download a complete book so you can read it however it please you (online or offline, on-screen or off-screen).

Re:O'Reilly on steroid?

[f0rt0r]

Yep, it sounds just like Safari Online. I use that to make my technical references available online. Now if I only had time to read them...

Re:O'Reilly on steroid?

[Soko]

Not exactly, I think.

Safari is access to the whole content of the book on-line, as well as searching for text within that content as well as any other books they have available on-line. IOW, Safari is actually a superset of the Amazon thing, since you can pay to read the whole book, not just search through it for snippets and passages.

I love Safari as well - saves shelf space, trees and frustration (because of the search function). I wouldn't want to read a novel on-line, since a paper book is a better interface for that, but for reference material about programming/networking/Operating Systems etc., Safari works well, since you're in front of a machine anyway. And IIRC, errata in the books is applied directly to the text on-line, and you get the latest edition without having to get another book, just updated content.

The only time having all of your reference material on-line would be a problem is if you need ref. material to get your Cisco router that connects you to the Internet back on-line.

Soko

Re:O'Reilly on steroid?

[GoofyBoy]

Its a bookstore in the way that people walk in sit in a comfy chair a read for an hour or two and don't buy the book. :)

Too bad ...

[JSkills]

... there was no mention of the actual search technology Amazon would be using to allow searching the text of such a large archive of books (why only non-fiction I wonder).

Looks like they'll be going with a proprietary solution. Even though the article seems to indicate that Amazon is launching this new service as a response to Google's "Froogle" shopping search product, wouldn't partnering with Google make more sense for them?

Re:Too bad ...

[binaryDigit]

.. there was no mention of the actual search technology Amazon would be using to allow searching the text of such a large archive of books (why only non-fiction I wonder).

This type of text searching has been around for a gazillion years and is not really that complex. It really depends on how flexible they want to make the searching. Case in point, wildcards. Google sacrifices flexibility by not allowing you to search on wildcards in their news searches in order to gain speed. Ditto for things like phrase searching, etc. The actual # of docs is pretty much irrelevant wrt search speed (at least directly). It depends more on the features you allow in your query language and the # of hits returned by each part of your query. Plus you're dealing with static data that can easily be distributed.

The tough part of all this is getting the stuff in digital format. I assume for most current books it won't be a problem. The hassle would be older books that you'd actually have to OCR. Though once they're done, they would have a pretty valuable asset.

Re:Too bad ...

[ceejayoz]

Looks like they'll be going with a proprietary solution... wouldn't partnering with Google make more sense for them?

You are aware that Google's a proprietary solution, right?

Just because Slashdot loves Google doesn't mean it's all of a sudden non-proprietary!

Re:Too bad ...

[JSkills]

My issue with the concept of Amazon's solution being proprietary was not that proprietary = bad, but that they would be building something that has already been built (and successfully implemented) before. Sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel so to speak. When was the last time you wrote your own bubble sort algorithm.

Technical semantics aside, there very well might be some sound business reasons that Amazon would want their own software written from the ground up. But if it's basic search on a gigantic volume of text, licensing/partnering with Google might not be the worst thing ...

Re:Too bad ...

[AntonyBartlett]

My issue with the concept of Amazon's solution being proprietary was not that proprietary = bad, but that they would be building something that has already been built (and successfully implemented) before. Sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel so to speak.

Perhaps you meant bespoke rather than proprietary

When was the last time you wrote your own bubble sort algorithm.

Never, but not because it would be like re-inventing the wheel. http://www.hack.gr/jargon/html/B/bubble-sort.html

Re:Too bad ...

[JSkills]

I didn't mean "bespoke" instead of "proprietary". I meant proprietary.

Any chance of you commenting on the actual content of what I'm saying rather than picking actual words or phrases and commenting on them out of context?

And why the reference to "Hacker jargon" for Bubble Sort? It should be pretty clear why the the bubble sort reference is used in making my point about not writing software that exists. If not, how about this one, when was the last time you wrote your own search engine?

Re:Too bad ...

[nexthec]

Because proprietary is the wrong word, and you sound like an idiot calling a proprietary product an alternative to using a proprietary product. its like...hey I hate SUV's that's why I bought a Jeep Cherokee.

Re:Too bad ...

[JSkills]

wow. you too?

I am comparing the development of a new product to partnering with a company that has an existing solution.

Yes, both solutions are proprietary. The point is build vs. buy/partner - which is what I stated in my last reply.

So I sound like an idiot to you? Whatever, you just keep picking out single words to focus on instead of using your mind to grasp the obvious point ...

Re:Too bad ...

[AntonyBartlett]

Whatever, you just keep picking out single words to focus on instead of using your mind to grasp the obvious point

Well, I guess that's Slashdot for you. Don't let it get to you.
For the record: I agree wholeheartedly with your obvious point about software reuse being a Good Thing.

Good Data

[mindshadow]

See... I would pay up to about 50 dollars a month to have free access to reading those books online... I guess the problem would be printing them out and redistributing them. Perhaps maybe just manuals... I am so sick of shelling out 50 bucks so I can read 5 pages about some topic knowing I will never read the rest of the book. Love the web ... information is free ... hate the web ... information is not reliable and all over the place. :(

Re:Good Data

[Yosemite Sue]

So, like Safari on a larger scale?

I don't know that I'd pay $50/month ... but I use Safari at work, and I like the idea of an expanded version of it ...

YS

oops!

[zapp]

I really need to learn to proof read :) it's a good thing I'm not a boo(k) author!

Re:if I search for "the" will all pages come up? n

[mirko]

and if you look for "TEH", will you be redirected to Salshdot ?

Be careful, Amazon!

[grub]

Any returns of C or C++ code might get SCO's law team on your ass..

Re:Be careful, Amazon!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think SCO's lawyers are probably already sniffing around. Amazon runs entirely on Linux...

legal?

[hatrisc]

doesn't this infringe on basically every copyright that the publishing industry has?

Re:legal?

[hatrisc]

/me slaps self in face for assuming without reading fully

Re:legal?

[keyslammer]

It is well established that you can cite portions of a work (which seems to be what they're doing), if the portions are especially large, I would imagine that they'd have to get permission from the publishers.

Of course, as Amazon, they're probably in a position to do so.

Re:legal?

[DeepRedux]

It looks like Amazon is going to get permission before they do this. First line of the article: "Executives at Amazon.com are negotiating with several of the largest book publishers...". There is no infringement if they have permission.

Re:legal?

[aziraphale]

Crikey - you're right - I bet Amazon didn't think of that. We should get Jeff Bezos on the phone right now and tell him.

Oh no, hang on, it seems that they have thought of it. Thank goodness for that - no need for an eagle eyed Slashdot reader to point out the error of their ways.

It seems that, because Amazon has the entire publishing industry over a barrel nowadays, just a few quick calls from Amazon to their biggest suppliers, and a notice in publishers' weekly, and they can go ahead and do whatever they like with the content of the books they sell.

You know, in some music stores, you can go up to listening points and hear music, on demand, without paying for it. D'you think the RIAA should be told? I bet they'd be really keen to sue their key supply channel for this obvious copyright infringement...

Re:legal?

[timeOday]

I guess the authors have no say? (Who am I kidding)

Invasion of Privacy

[BillFarber]

Isn't this a violation of the privacy of all the people who have biographies for sale at amazon? John Ashcroft could search the text and find out anything they want about Abraham Lincoln! This article should be listed under "Your Rights Online".

Google is your friend.

[I am Jack's username]

No registration, print friendly.

text search of books ?

[borgdows]

I predict the most used keyword will be :

sex

this could be huge...

[jaxle]

This would be awesome for students. I've always wished I could just execute a search function through a book to find what I was looking for. It can be a p.i.t.a. to use indexes and thumb around until you find what you need.

Re:this could be huge...

[CycleMan]

Remembering my student days, I'm glad I didn't have such a search function. A search function lets you bypass what you're not specifically looking for. In an academic quest for knowledge, sometimes you need all the paragraphs of disclaimers and limiters around the cute phrase you're looking for, or you'll radically misinterpret the phrase.

One example from current events: Bush said in his State of the Union address, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa"

However, several news organizations excluded the first six words of that sentence, and then called the President a liar. The President's intelligence or honesty aside, intentionally excluding these words dramatically distorts the meaning of the phrase, to the detriment of those using the filter.

It's not the writeups, it's the moderation.

[Thag]

The real issue is that Amazon's system doesn't do moderation very well, and as a result the reviews get spammed with people who really really like something.

Or, you get situations where teachers apparently tell their classes to submit reviews on Amazon for a book, and you have 30 reviews that say nothing.

And, of course, being a bookseller, there is a strong motivation for them to bias things so that positive reviews outweigh negative ones.

Jon Acheson

Re:It's not the writeups, it's the moderation.

[professorhojo]

amazon don't post negative reviews if there aren't enough positives, i've found.

one book i read by some guy that was just awful only had 1 glowing review (by his girlfriend/wife/fuckpuppet). so i reviewed it badly 3 months ago. i'm still waiting for that review to arrive.

*sigh*

Re:It's not the writeups, it's the moderation.

[mumblestheclown]

Do they really have a motivation for strong reviews to outweigh weak ones?

amazon carries virtually every book that you might want to buy. what do they care whether you buy calculus book GOOD vs calculus book BAD? yes, this might mean that they have some extra stock, but i think the long term value of having happy, trusting customers means more to them.

Re:It's not the writeups, it's the moderation.

[jonadab]

Actually, I often make my purchase decisions based on the negative
reviews. Any book, no matter how bad, will get positive reviews.
I find that it's more useful to see what people _didn't_ like about
the book.

Sometimes there's useful information in the positive reviews, too.
I was once making a purchase decision between two similarly-priced,
similarly-specced printers; the reviews of both were positively
glowing, but there was a difference in writing style. The one (a
deskjet model, IIRC) was consistently called "awesome" in every
review. The other (ESC900) got comments like "The print quality
is exemplary for a model in this price range." Guess which one I
bought? (Nothing against HP, mind you; I was only comparing two
specific models, not the two companies in general.)

Review moderation? I don't need it, because I have some
discernment. Just let people tell me in their own words what
they think, and I'll figure out if it's something I want to buy,
not just based on whether they liked it but on the details of
what they said about it and how they said it.

Now, the ratings (N stars) are mostly worthless to me, because
they don't convey enough information. But the reviews are useful.

Google vs Amazon: Battle of the Titans!

[Noryungi]

Seriously, though, I think Google would still be king of search...

Amazon would put snippets of book contents online and Google would then rank said snippets according to the number of times they have been linked to by Amazon aficionados.

If I want to know the 'net opinion on, say, The Lucifer Principle, I'll simply go to Google, which will link to the relevant snippets as ranked by the Internet. Interesting, no?

Re:Google vs Amazon: Battle of the Titans!

[241comp]

I suspect that if Amazon does not want the traffic it would receive from all it's high Google listings, they would just create a robots.txt file and disallow the google bot from indexing the book texts. I don't think this is about becoming the most popular search engine on the web. It is about fighting froogle.google.com as the one-stop place to shop.

Fair Use?

[wo1verin3]

Remember when MP3.com cached a whole tonne of MP3 files on their servers? And even though they weren't selling them and you could only access them if you provided the original cd (or an exact copy) at one time, it was still decided not to be legal?

Caching the entire contents of books sounds a little beyond fair use. The concept is cool, but they're going to need some publishers behind them. Maybe they think the name 'Amazon' will keep lawsuits away, but it won't.

Re:Fair Use?

[poptones]

MP3.com had already tried to establish itself as its own "label." They had clearly declared themselves competitors to the RIAA labels and then, in a grab for mo' money, decided they would dance through what they thought to be a "loophole" wherein they would "cache" - and then stream - MP3s of CDs from any major label that the "client" could prove (by way of sticking a Cd in a drive) they owned.

contrast this with Amazon.com being one of the largest distributors in the world of books for all these publishers - it's the publisher's friend. Sure, they may do some things that threaten publishers (like their print on demand publishing) but Amazon didn't go out and try to co-opt all their business by providing unfettered access to any book a "client" could provide an ISBN number for.

This sounds like a fantastic service. If they were to provide a "fair use excerpt" from any book on any subject in response to a query, that would be one service that finally lives up to the promise of the internet. What remains to be seen is if it actually lives up to that promise, or if it becomes yet another "premium" subscription service that simply "embraces and extends" the widening information gap between those with money and credit - and those without.

How long before?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, one book in raw text mode = (like) 100Kbytes? 200K?

Alrwight. Now imagine a DVD burner. Ok. Now imagine 100,000 books inside a DVD. Not long before you will be able to have *all* the books ever written in a couple of DVDs (or whatever the next generation of optical disks at 100GB will be (from sony)). And what about DRM? Shouldn't books have DRM?

Seriously though, the problem is that you need a clerk to sit down and manually scan all those books.

Re:How long before?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can only put around 25,000 books onto a DVD.
(or, actually, 12,000 books in two formats...)

Some guy proved this

Re:if I search for "the" will all pages come up? n

[Anonymous Coward]

As in "TEH GHEY"?

Here comes the next patent

[montey]

This is sure to be the next Amazon.com patent: US-Patent 20030722.47blahblahblah "Ability to search bodies of published texts using RFC 2549".

POWELLS

[jbottero]

Powell's World of Books has an EXCELLENT technical bookstore, and their catalog is on-line. Powells.com

Change the world...

[mgcsinc]

Some wealthy do-gooder could pay amazon to use this feature to the public's benefit, linking words such as "porn" to self-help books about sex-addiction and "bomb-making" to a similar book about dealing with pent-up anger...

Re:Change the world...

[Bearpaw]

Some wealthy do-gooder could pay amazon to use this feature to the public's benefit, linking words such as "porn" to self-help books about sex-addiction ...

How about linking searches for self-help books to a book on addiction to self-help books?

... and "bomb-making" to a similar book about dealing with pent-up anger...

Better yet, link to a book about non-violent ways of dealing with a society that's been fucked up by the manipulations of rich assholes.

Re:Change the world...

[Lord_Dweomer]

"Some wealthy do-gooder could pay amazon to use this feature to the public's benefit, linking words such as "porn" to self-help books about sex-addiction and "bomb-making" to a similar book about dealing with pent-up anger..."

Which public would this be benefiting? The one that thinks porn and explosives are "Bad Things" and should be banned? I would be extremely offended if when I clicked on a link for porn it took me to the listing of a book telling me that porn was bad and I had an addiction to it.

If you search for something, you shouldn't be given results based on someone elses moral beliefs. You should be given results based on your search and be your own judge as to whether you "have an addiction to porn" or "have pent up anger issues". Mod the parent up as troll for I lack the modpoints to do so.

One rule for them...

[Rogerborg]

Sure, your honour, I only OCR'd and put my entire book collection up on Kazaa so that people could search for passages before buying them from me. Same with my mp3s and DVDs, now that I think of it.

Let's look at the fair use provisions in the 1976 copyright act:

the fair use of a copyrighted work [...] for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

Purposes such as selling isn't covered, but let's read on, because as with most things written by lawyers for the benefits of lawyers, it's not that clear cut.

In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include :

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Well, you work it out. It's a copy of the entire work. That it's offered one piece at a time can't be a defence by itself, otherwise those fragments I upload and download to and from various people over eDonkey would be fine by same argument. The duplication is clearly of commercial nature (for Amazon's benefit), but on the other hand, it's arguably increasing the potential market for the copyrighted work.

That last one is a very, very interesting provision. If Amazon can argue that making entire copies and distributing parts of them - potentially all of them - for their profit is just increasing the market for the original work by way of advertising and promoting it, why can't I argue that for my eDonkey use?

If you think this argument is trite, have a look at www.sharereactor.com, which indexes content on eDonkey. You see the "Buy this at Amazon.com" links right there? What is eDonkey doing that's significantly different from Amazon? Are Amazon obtaining each and every rights owners' permission to perform this duplication? I doubt it, so the differences seems to be these:

It's easier to obtain all the fragments from eDonkey (but not much easier, it can take upwards of a week to completely download a large file). And sharereactor is not for profit, whereas Amazon is primarily interested in their own profit.

You work out where the morality and legality lies.

Re:One rule for them...

[aziraphale]

> Are Amazon obtaining each and every rights owners' permission to perform this duplication? I doubt it

Why do you doubt it? You do realise that Amazon has a direct business relationship with every publisher whose books it sells already, don't you? They don't buy their books from Barnes & Noble...

Amazon's book buyers will offer this facility to publishers (whose salespeople they already work with directly - many publishers will employ one person whose entire job is selling books to Amazon) as a marketing benefit - and charge them for the privilege, no doubt - just as they do today with their 'look inside' feature. In order to keep competitive, publishers will prepare and supply the text in the format Amazon wants. It's really not hard for Amazon to do this at all.

Re:One rule for them...

[Rogerborg]

>>Are Amazon obtaining each and every rights owners' permission to perform this duplication? I doubt it
>Why do you doubt it?

I doubt it because it would require negotiating a contract with every rights owner, not every publisher. Easier for factual books, as it's more likely that the publisher is the rights owner and the book is work-for-hire, but even that's not universal.

That said, when I say "would require", I mean should require. If this doesn't happen, and Amazon just goes ahead and does this anyway, then all it demonstrates is that copyright has been turned on its head and that publishers can ride roughshod over the "exclusive" rights of creators, all the time using the argument that because they control the means of distribution, their aims must axiomatially be the same as any rights owner, and that as long as they toss them a crumb - whether the rights owner gave them permission or not - then it's no harm, no foul.

By the same argument, Microsoft could appropriate GPL code simply by sending a cheque to the rights owner, and claiming that they're doing them a favour while they're at it. It's a nasty precedent, and I hope that you're right and that Amazon are going to obtain explicit permission from each and every right owner before implementing this.

Re:One rule for them...

[Rogerborg]

Of course, I should have just checked the Amazon T&C's. Here they are:

Limited License Grant By submitting content and other tangible or intangible materials to us (collectively, "Content"), you grant to Amazon.com and its affiliated companies a royalty-free, nonexclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to: (a) use, reproduce, perform, display, and distribute any copyrightable works (e.g., creative text, images, and artwork), trademarks, or trade names included in the Content; (b) adapt, modify, reformat, and create derivative works of any Content; and (c) sublicense the foregoing rights.

As I read this, Amazon can basically do whatever the hell they want with anything that you sell through them, and for that matter they can sell the rights to do so to anyone else they like. If you get money out of them, it's because they're being nice. They could just as easily give your content away for nothing.

As nice an example as you could find of the lesson that publishers now dictate terms to creators, pretty much the opposite of what copyright laws were supposed to achieve. Sigh.

Re:One rule for them...

[Urkki]

Wouldn't that make it the publishers problem to obtain the permission? Except I do think the publisher doesn't need anybodys permission, I imagine publishers want a very broad rights to any book when publishing it...

Re:One rule for them...

[Rogerborg]

What they want isn't necessarily what they get. However, the Amazon T&C's require anyone sending them content for sale to warrant that they have "full authority" to grant a "royalty-free, nonexclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use, reproduce, perform, display and distribute, and adapt, modify, reformat, create derivative works of any content" and further that they can and do grant Amazon the rights to sublicense these rights.

Any author signing away these rights to a publisher deserves to be royally screwed over. I'd rather self publish and make nothing rather than gamble on receiving pennies under these terms. This flies in the face of the intent of copyright, and illustrates perfectly how completely publishers can now demand outrageous boilerplate licensing terms in return for making money by selling the fruits of other peoples' labours.

Re:One rule for them...

[aziraphale]

Owning the copyright is not the same as owning the distribution rights - which is, after all, what publishing is. If you don't hand over the distribution rights to a third party, you'll find it a bit hard to get your book into stores (unless you want to print, sell and ship your own books).

So long as copyright is acknowledged, the holder of the distribution rights is generally free to sublicense those rights at will. that's what publishers do. that's how they get things like translations, e-books, and so on published.

So, if the publisher was smart enough to get right to distribute the work in all forms now known or subsequently developed (standard contract verbiage), they can distribute electronic copies of the work to Amazon without having to go back to the copyright owner.

In what way does improving the sales-potential of their book ride roughshod over the rights of the creator - who, presumably, got into bed with a publisher for a reason?

Re:One rule for them...

[Rogerborg]

As I've said elsewhere, it depends on what rights the author has signed over. Publishers want you to sign boilerplate that gives them free reign to exploit and sublicense, then throw you a bone when and if they feel like it. Authors want to license strict sets of rights. If you license your book to a text publisher, you generally don't want to give them a contract that lets them just give it away to third parties, which is what Amazon are demanding.

==free online books?

[KingRamsis]

so i someone wrote a script that sequentially searches for most popular words you can end up with the whole text?

Hmmmmm...

[Metroid72]

I wonder how much Amazon is going to charge/demand for discount to publishers in order to be in this index?
What about small publishers/self published?

What about exclusivity... of other booksellers want to do the same and Amazon demands it?

Like META tags in books?

[JZ_Tonka]

This will then prompt publishers to include several pages at the beginning of every book with nothing but "sex sex sex sex sex sex..."

But would we be able to

[ManoMarks]

Use Google to do searches of Amazon to do searches of the text of books?

Re:But would we be able to

[joto]

Yes, but you would be better of using a meta-search engine to search google.

Your tax dollars at work

[Anonymous Coward]

The NIH has a good start with something of this nature. The NCBI (part of the National Library of Medicine) has a fully-searchable set of about 20 books. The books are generally cover biology topics, but represent some of the standard texts used in college courses. They call the project Bookshelf and it is entirely free. Several books contain direct links to gene sequences, etc.

Re:Your tax dollars at work

[pope1]

As a member of the Linux Systems group at NCBI,
I fully encourage everyone with an interest
in Biology to use and test out the resources
available. The PubMed archive we house is another great full-text search, providing access
to medical journals on a variety of topics.

I can search entire text of Hacking TiVo!

[jkeegan]

I can search all of Hacking TiVo: The Expansion, Enhancement, and Development Starter Kit..

but then again that's because I'm writing it. :)

Definitly!

[Schezar]

"Of course this *could* be great for college paper researchers, looking for a quote or two to stick in a research paper. Depends on how much meat you can really get at."

College is great in this respect. No matter how crazy, ill-conceived, or outlandish your premise is, there are a thousand nut-jobs out there with nice quotations to support it. This would make it even easier to back that dribble up. Especially late the night before it's due, when you need to support that last flimsy claim in order for your paper to make sense.

Re:Definitly!

[sharkey]

Such as The Caine-Hackman theory. No matter what time it is, 24 hours a day, you can find a Michael Caine or Gene Hackman movie playing on TV.

Research Humanity vs. P2P

[tyrani]

This sounds like a good project that they could get some gov't funding for.

Besides the obvious copywrite problems, if the gov't was to get involved and Amazon (or whoever) was allowed to permit searching an entire book for concepts / keywords but not be able to view the entire book without paying for it this would both increase sales and usefulness.

If this was the origional model for online music, think of all the problems that would have been avoided. Perhaps a second look at this type of archiving will help the movie industry as bandwidth increases.

I thought the previous poster was joking, but...

[Metroid72]

the book does exist and has raving reviews!!!
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
slim in size but big on info, April 20, 2003 Reviewer: Magdalene Meretrix (see more about me) from Idaho This book is very slim -- there are only about 100 pages in it and much space is taken up with line drawings. It's understandable that the book is so slender since there really aren't volumes of information to impart on the subject, but I really wish the book had been longer. The book does covers the information very well and thoroughly. There is no way to make the information sections of the book longer without artificially stretching it out. As it is, vaginal fisting is a topic best suited to an article, not a full-length book. There is a section near the end of the book with poems and stories about fisting, written by people other than the author. I would have enjoyed it if that section had been expanded, even if it went so far as to take up half the total volume of the book. I was hungry for more information about fisting and would have liked to have seen more on the table at my feast of information.
But even if the reader is disappointed by the quantity of written material, they will not be disappointed by the quality. The author quite obviously knows what she is talking about and has produced a very clear and concise guide to an exotic activity that is one of the less understood forms of pleasure sharing available to adventurous and exploratory couples. Addington discusses safety information, hand positions, necessary and desirable supplies to have on hand, and even more obscure topics such as fisting after a hysterectomy. There is one personal account by a woman who tried fisting but did not enjoy it. I would have liked to have seen more varied accounts, especially stories about difficulties (whether overcome or not) and problems with fisting. I was also surprised that no one, not even the author, mentioned the cathartic or healing experiences that some people can have during a fisting experience. Most of the descriptions of what it feels like to be fisted focused on the sensation of being very full and on a very spiritual level of trust and intimacy. In my experience, this is just one hue of the spectrum of sensations and emotions that can accompany fisting.
Having personal experience with this subject, I can say that Addington has covered the physical territory very well and produced a book that is a good information source for beginning explorations in this intense, cathartic, orgasmic activity. I feel comfortable recommending this book to anyone who is curious about adding this activity to their sex life. Those already participating in fisting will probably not gain anything new from this book (other than the few poems, line drawings and one-page personal accounts) but those who have never been introduced to fisting by a friend or lover will learn quite a bit in the pages of Addington's book.
Was this review helpful to you? 9 of 11 people found the following review helpful: Fully Illustrated Sexual Teaching, November 25, 2002 Reviewer: cousinpaco (see more about me) from Cincinnati, OH United States As an up-and-coming investment banker, I work under extreme pressure. My partner also makes her living in a stressful position. Together, we like to relieve our tensions by exploring ways to spice up our sex-life. It's difficult to find guidance and inspiration for such private matters, but Amazon.com has offered a wealth of options. I was looking for a new idea to try in the bedroom, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
Then I found a wonderful book.
When I first came across the cover, I thought it was the abandoned idea for Spinal Tap's latest album "Smell the Glove." To my pleasant surprise, it was a wonderfully written, illustrated manual on the art of vaginal fisting.
Ms. Addington presents sensitive, tender explanations and answers some delicate questions, which went a long way toward making us both feel much more at ease about our predilictions.

Tens of thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

And how does indexing tens of thousands of books make Amazon any sort of "authoritative" source for book-related information? Perhaps this would make them a source of "current" book info.

Sorry, but indexing just a tiny fraction of the millions of extant manuscripts doesn't make one an authority.

Next step...

[Crusty Oldman]

.

Now, put the rest of the book online, pay the author directly, and ya got something!

What about searching through the old stuff?

[machinecraig]

I'm surprised nobodys mentioned Project Gutenberg - I mean, they've been OCRing public doman books for a long time now, and there are thousands of texts available... not in some crappy interface that Amazon will use, but in wonderful, sweet, ascii text format. Couple this with some good regular expressions and you're in business... want to see how many times Sherlock Holmes talked about using cocaine? It's elementary!

Re:What about searching through the old stuff?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, actually, now that Amazon has a patent on putting book text online, Project Gutenberg will have to shut down immediately due to infringement.

Sorry, but we can't have Project Gutenberg stealing Amazon's invention. In our capitalist society, hard work should be rewarded, not stolen.

Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Free books, search by title and page number and you have your book.

Only 900 searches for the new harry potter book, sounds like a good deal!

RealLife?

[ryanoo]

The publishers said they have been guardedly cooperative.

How authors will react is another question.

Isn't this what happens in the RealWorld? You walk into a bookstore, open it up, read a few pages and make a decision on whether or not you want to buy it?

I think publishers and authors would be rather short-sighted to not allow potential customers shop online the same way they shop in brick and mortar stores.

Piece by piece,

[pair-a-noyd]

search a little, store a little. Search a little store a little more.

Pretty soon you'll have the entire book.

They'll have an app out to search the pieces out and stich them together into one complete book..

Yeah, this will work, thanks for the free ebooks Amazon..

Re:Piece by piece,

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why Amazon intends to limit the number of pages of any given book that an individual can read. Presumably, you'd need to be logged in and verified to use the feature so they can keep track of what you've already accessed.

Better info than buythis.com info

[SirLanse]

Most real searches for info just lead to sites that are trying to sell whatever. Real research is inside the books. This may help to find information not just sales pitches.

Oh Goody

[jayhawk88]

*Accessing http://www.amazon.com/search*
Enter your search criteria:______________
*Enter search "Moby Dick"*
Search Complete:

Moby Dick
by: Herman Melville

Call me...
Would You Like to Read More? This title can be purchased for $14.95 through our...

*Back Button*
Enter your search criteria_____________
*Enter search "Tale of Two Cities"*
Search Complete:

A Tale of Two Cities
by: Charles Dickens

It was the best of times, it was the...
Would You Like to Read More? This title can be purchased for $29.95 through our...

*Back Button-Back Button-Back Button-Close*

cnn link

[$exyNerdie]

Amazon plans book-text search

Is that a bad thing?

[greymond]

The Times article suggests that this is part of a larger strategy to compete with Google and Yahoo by making Amazon an authoritative source of information on everything book-related."

Like i'd really go to Google's or Yahoo's website to buy a book/dvd/something online

Too much work, too slow

[daveo0331]

While you're doing that, I'll be at Borders with my cell phone.

Re:Too much work, too slow

[pair-a-noyd]

Hey, no kidding, my dad goes to the book store and sits there reading the same books, a few chapters at a time, sipping coffee. He never buys the books, he just reads them, even if it takes him a year, he reads it a piece at a time..

Talk about patience..

(cheap and stingy too..)

Re:Too much work, too slow

[August_zero]

Considering the markup Borders has on its coffee (like 1000%, does one cup of coffee really cost them $2.50?) they are hardly loosing anything on the deal in this case.

I have done the same myself, a few years ago when I was between jobs and classes I would spend an afternoon reading a book from cover to cover in one sitting. SInce I would buy a Mocha and a Scone, they probably turned more profit than if i had bought the book.

Let's face it...

[Anonymous Coward]

...no one here is EVER a lawyer. IANAL should go without saying.

Great idea.

[rice_burners_suck]

This is an excellent idea. I would hope that I'd be able to read a few sentences or paragraphs from the text containing the search phrase, along with whatever pages I am able to preview before buying the book and I hope this will later be extended to fiction.

Just imagine if Amazon did some deal with the Library of Congress that allowed them to scan in nearly every book published in the United States. Once the information is digitally stored, it could be utilized in other ways as well:

• Libraries around the country could offer consoles on which you could read any book through a secure connection of some type, preventing unauthorized copying, which would prevent book publishers from agreeing to this. You could essentially read any book, even if the library doesn't have it.
• Bookstores, schools and other organizations might get in on this network and offer the same service.

This service doesn't even have to be free. I'd pay a subscription fee to have access to this information, as would the bookstores and whatnot.

Re:Great idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Questia's online library already has 45,000 books digitized and indexed for full-text scanning, along with 350,000+ journal, magazine, and newspaper articles.

Re:Great idea.

[euxneks]

It is a great idea but I think that open source community should be the ones doing this. I'm not too comfortable with the fact that a tool that should be in the libraries across the world, as you have said, is going to be used in a company's scheme to make more money =(

Enh... I can only assume that it will be a success and that someone in the Open Source community will start making something similar. Maybe for the Gutenberg Project..

I WOULD NOT PAY A SUBSCRIPTION FEE for this service. Books are meant to be free. That is what the libraries are for. Personally I think all libraries should have their books online with downloadable capabilities.

Re:if I search for "the" will all pages come up? n

[Anonymous Coward]

Boo hoo hoo. Call the whaambulance.

well.... ?

[tommut]

want to see how many times Sherlock Holmes talked about using cocaine? It's elementary!

Now I'm actually curious... How many? ;)

Re:I thought the previous poster was joking, but..

[Tackhead]

> Those already participating in fisting will probably not gain anything new from this book (other than the few poems, line drawings and one-page personal acco

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaitaminit. POEMS?!?! WTF?

Fisting poetry?
Goatse links now on topic?
What the fucking fuck?

They'll just create the "illegal to remove cookie"

[kaltkalt]

Amazon will patent (and pay for the relevant legislation) the "illegal to remove cookie" that stays on your hard drive and tells amazon's search engine how many times you've searched within a given book. Once you reach, say, 10 pages (or a percentage of the book) it won't let you search through at book anymore. And if you dare remove the cookie from your computer or block it in any such way, the DMCA police will be at your door. This seems like the most logical, simple solution :P Ah, and book publishers are allowed to hack into people's computers to 1) make sure the cookie is there and 2) destroy the persons's computer if it isn't.

god bless 'merikuh

At this risk of being ruled off-topic...

[sean.peters]

However, several news organizations excluded the first six words of that sentence, and then called the President a liar.

Yes. And the President also neglected to mention that various US agencies, to include the CIA had reason to believe that the British intelligence was inaccurate. If the President didn't know that, he should have.

We're left with two choices: either we get to believe that the President and his team are really incompetent, or that he's surpassed Clinton in his ability to use legalistic shenanigans to avoid telling the truth, yet not technically lying.

Sean

Re:I thought the previous poster was joking, but..

[SN74S181]

Welcome to the big, real, world.

If you want your cheese sandwich on whitebread, it's over there in the corner.

The publishers have already told them "hell no!"

[Anonymous Coward]

I have close ties with some of the world's largest publishers, and some of my friends are execs in that industry.

Every single major publisher of importance has been adamant about never going along with this, despite the pleadings of certain factions within Amazon (read: pet project). For the publishers, this would be pure downside with no upside and therefore this is DOA. Amazon requires the permission of the publishers and the publishers are committed to making sure it never happens.

It is curious that Amazon is still trying to market this idea to the public when the major publisher's have already firmly rejected the concept without the slightest hint that they'll ever change their stance. This was shot down months ago.

the flaws are obvious, but the path is positive...

[LifesABeach]

if, one considers the tragic event at alexandria. and if, one projects to the day when one can purchase the 'complete library of congress data block', (with monthly updates...).

then, this amazon sales pitch DOES have some public good

else, i'm going to the book store, because i need answers, indexes, and toc's, not hype; good luck amazon.com, i hope the best.

p.s.
is it only me, or has anyone noticed the close pricing of books online with shipping, and what you can buy at a bookstore? Mu-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha

Re:I thought the previous poster was joking, but..

[Tackhead]

> If you want your cheese sandwich on whitebread, it's over there in the corner.

Wasn't the fisting (hey, I get ads for that in my spam every day!), it was the idea of writing poetry about it. Eeeew! :)

One step closer to LCARS

[jonadab]

I work at a public library. A year or so ago, I was at a conference
held by our library catalog software vendor, and at one point they
asked the open-ended question, what feature did we most want. I
raised my hand without hesitation and said, "The ability to search
the full text of every item in the library." They laughed, which
I pretty much expected, because I realise the difficulty of making
such a thing happen, but it's true: that's the feature I want.

If Amazon helps get the ball rolling toward that end, then I say,
Go Amazon. They can even patent it, I don't care, as long as they'll
license it to library software vendors and other interested parties.
Seriously, we've been waiting for this feature for a LONG TIME, and
it hasn't been happening. Star Trek made us drool over this feature
a long time ago, but nobody stepped up to implement it in the real
world. It's about time! My opinion of Amazon just shot up a couple
of notches because they're even thinking seriously about finally
really doing this; when/if they actually roll it out, they'll be
the closest corporate thing to my personal hero.

And yeah, just nonfiction for now, but once the proof-of-concept
is done, I suspect it'll prove so useful that lots of genres of
book will be added. Though, I have to admit, it would be _most_
useful for nonfiction.

also for profs

[Anonymous Coward]

.. if they could just plug in a student's paper and have it analyzed for plagiarism.

Not just profs, either - there's a net.kook on the rec.pets.dogs ngs scamming people with a plagiarized dog training book, but nobody has the time to track down which bits came from where to refute him

funny you should say that.

[Artifex]

Last December I wrote a comment about a truly awful Information Society CD, "Insoc Recombinant," which is basically a rehash of earlier work with truly pathetic mixes:

Summary: very very disappointing
Review: I wish, I wish, I WISH I had read the reviews on Amazon
first, but I was out burning a gift card at another store (shame on
me!) and saw this in the stacks. What a mistake!

If you're new to
InSoc, don't get this album. Buy the self-titled debut album, or
Hack, or even Peace and Love, Inc., but not this. This is NOT
a "greatest hits" selection by any means - just some very lame
remixes of a few songs that point out the weakness of the vocals and
how boring drum machines can sound.

If you like InSoc and you want
remixes, don't get this album. Amazon sells plenty of other single
CDs from InSoc on the Tommy Boy label that have decent/better
remixes, and you can get two of them for the price of this one.
Seriously, even if you are a completist, and have most of the
discography, don't waste your time and money.

Amazon, of course, kicked it back, claiming that I was being negative about the artist. I wasn't. I was actually trying to push sales towards his other work, that people might enjoy. This would actually make more sales for them in the long run, of course, but somehow they thought I was rude:

Dear Jason,

Thank you for writing to Amazon.com.

Your comment was removed because of inappropriate content. We
encourage all voices to respond openly in our store, both positive and
negative. However, we do exert some editorial control over our
customer reviews.

Please understand that we wholeheartedly support the right to free
speech. Our intention is to make the customer review forum a place
for commentary and feedback about titles, so discussions that
criticize artists and their intentions are removed. Your comments
were, in part, directed toward the artist and their character.

What I can suggest is that you resubmit your review, but restrict your
comments to critically analyzing the content of the title.

Thanks for your cooperation.

Happy Holidays,

Marcie Wallace
Amazon.com... And You're Done

Was I criticizing the artist, or the content?
Was Amazon protecting the artist, or protecting sales?

not true

[gnurb]

that's completely unfounded. perhaps your bad review was dismissed because it was crappy, and unhelpful?

example, my linear alebra book this quarter.

(2/5 stars. and boy do i agree with that.

Mainly teasers

[xtrucial]

Probably this will be mainly for "teaser" purposes (think movie teasers) rather than something that actually allows researching. Like their "Look Inside" feature, which only shows the first few pages of a book. Still cool, though.

I want this for my books and magazines at *home*

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd *love* to be able to have a searchable index of all my books and magazines, even if it didn't include context like Amazon does, and just returned title, volume/issue, and page numbers.

Baen fanboy.

[spumoni_fettuccini]

I had a friend that had a Honorverse book and I borrowed the CD [contains lots of full books by participating authors] in it. That led me to buy the Weber, as well as Ringo's, books [haven't made it all the way through the CD] to stock my library. I now have a nice collection on my laptop and hardcopies. Baen's policy has made me a loyal consumer of their company. After pulling my hair in frustration [heh] at certain authors I usually buy from them, as I know I'm getting a good read.

Questia Already Does This...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Questia online library at www.questia.com already has 45,000 non-fiction books digitized and indexed for full-text searching, along with more than 350,000 journal, magazine, and newspaper articles. While there aren't any computer tech books in the collection, there is plenty in the liberal arts and social science areas.

Already done (kinda)

[feste12]

This idea has already been done for Stephen King books here.

Google Cache

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent! I can't wait until Amazon does this, and then Google caches the entire archive!

not without paying me royalties they won't!

[Anonymous Coward]

- no way will i allow amazon to offer text searches of my titles...

- f*ck amazon...

Many snippets make a book.

[OhioJoe]

"Users would only be able to read a certain portion of the text from any one book"

So, if it is just pre-cut snippets from the book that can be searched, big deal. But if it only shows you the portion in which the text was contained, it wil be a matter of hours before a program is written to deliberate search for every 40th word (or whatever the threshhold is for Amazon to 'snip' the text) and copy that text on and on until it compiles the whole book in electronic format. Then, it's distributed.

Re:I thought the previous poster was joking, but..

[humming]

Personally, I thought about this passage:

but those who have never been introduced to fisting by a friend or lover will learn quite a bit

'No, I did not have intercourse with that woman, I only fisted her'.

//H

Think again

[serutan]

I did read the article and got the same idea. As someone mentioned above, you would have to use a number of different Amazon accounts to retrieve different portions of the book, but I don't see why it couldn't be done piecemeal.

Bob Dylan better be banned from this service...

[spike it]

With his recent allegations of plagiarism from a Japanese book, Mr. Dylan won't ever have writer's block again with this service.

Re:I thought the previous poster was joking, but..

[Tackhead]

> 'No, I did not have intercourse with that woman, I only fisted her'.

If I hadn't posted already, oh, man, my kingdom for a mod point :)

Already there.

[The Cydonian]

Going rate is about Rs 14/- per 1000 words or something. Not exactly enough to support a family of four even in India, but fantastic as a side-income in college.

Re:if I search for "the" will all pages come up? n

[Zontar The Mindless]

Agreed. Some moderators need to look up the word "redundant" because it's been obvious to me that some of them don't know what it means. Those who do know what it means need to be a little less hard-arsed about applying it. It's not fair to label a similar post made 2 minutes after the first one "Redundant" -- not all of us are sitting atop T-1's or type 300 words a minute, after all! If it's the 3rd or 4th such post, or it's made an hour or two after the first one, that might qualify as "Redundant".

Moderators, look at the posting times and please try to be more reasonable about this, won't you? Thanks.