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Amazon Plan Would Allow Text Search Of Books

Posted by Hemos on from the interesting-ideas dept.

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."

17 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Brilliant idea by seinman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Brilliant idea by Surak · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      My journal has hot /. gossip.
    2. Re:Brilliant idea by stephenbooth · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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

      --
      "Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
    3. Re:Brilliant idea by Lord_Dweomer · · Score: 4, Interesting
      "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.

      --
      Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
  2. Wonder how long before .... by binaryDigit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... 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 :)

    1. Re:Wonder how long before .... by WaKall · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

  3. Too bad ... by JSkills · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ... 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?

  4. this could be huge... by jaxle · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  5. It's not the writeups, it's the moderation. by Thag · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

    --
    All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
    1. Re:It's not the writeups, it's the moderation. by professorhojo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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*

  6. Fair Use? by wo1verin3 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Fair Use? by poptones · · Score: 2, Interesting
      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.

  7. How long before? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.

  8. Re:Patent this by keyslammer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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...

  9. Re:Change the world... by Bearpaw · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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.

  10. Mainly teasers by xtrucial · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  11. Re:speaking of searching with Amazon by Roark+Meets+Dent · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.