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

Patent this

[number_man]

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

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 :)

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 ;-)

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: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: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..

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".

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..."

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.

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: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...

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.

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*

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.