IMPORTANT: New Amazon search order

I've received a couple complaints about it being hard to find books through Amazon. One did "spiritual autobiography" and despite their being a number of books with exactly that title, they didn't show up in the first five pages. It turns out the Amazon search request I used was tilted toward sales rank--so high-selling books jumped to the top, even if something like "spiritual autobiography" was a subject, or in the description.

Anyway, I changed the request structure to what Amazon calls "relevancerank." Chances are this is better, but Amazon searching is so central to the site that, if it's not, I want to know, and quick!

Any other Amazon complaints--besides the .jp ISBN issue, which I'm also going to try to hit--since I'm in that code?

T

It would be really, really nice to have a link to Amazon.uk as a choice in 'find books'. I don't know how many uk users you have - but I suspect that most of us would rather use the uk site than the .com site.
However - I can see problems for you if you link to all the amazons from there - and presumably other users will want their own country specific Amazon? So maybe one link to .com and one to 'other amazons' with a list behind? I could live with two clicks !!!

**Amazon.ca is no longer working.

I have inputted about a dozen titles and authors but the search result is always (0 results).

I'm not having much luck with Amazon.co.uk either.

Amazon.co.uk has fits of not co-operating but they rarely last long. You do have to make sure ISBNs are in the right format (X not x) and sometimes you need to avoid apostrophes (so Carrie, War might work where Carrie's War doesn't).

Amazon.de would be nice too, although its English language catalogue is inferior to the mothership's.

So:

Apparently Amazon has the better search ONLY for its US branch. So it was failing. (Sorry, but I assumed they have the same API engine underneath.) I've fixed it. Alas, if you search .co.uk, de, fr, jp, etc. you will get it sales-ranked, not relevancy ranked.

I'm alarmed that Lynne and Jcbrunner--both dedicated users--didn't see that LibraryThing connects to all the national Amazons. I've totally failed!

I've modified the wording "Or choose from 45 libraries around the world" to "choose from 45 other sources around the world." Does that work better?

BoPeep reminded me of something I noticed a while back but never posted about -- apostrophes don't seem to work in Amazon searches. (Not particularly related, but it IS an Amazon issue.) For example, a search for "Madeleine L'Engle" on Amazon turned up only five results, whereas a search for her book A Wrinkle in Time turned up 66 results on its own.

Wow! That's a bad error. Fortunately, it's one I could easily solve.

THANK you! That was a good one.

I'm alarmed that Lynne and Jcbrunner--both dedicated users--didn't see that LibraryThing connects to all the national Amazons. I've totally failed!

I read their comments to refer to something else - on the book information page or edit page, or on the cover in list view, you get this:
Find At...
Amazon | Abebooks
Alibris | BookFinder
Booksense | Find in a Library
Editions, by Popularity
(etc)
And clicking 'Amazon' takes you only to .com. Which isn't much use if they don't carry your book (but other amazons do).

BoPeep is correct, I was talking about the works page, not the add books page.

For me, it is largely a convenience issue. My US-centric library works better with a connection to Amazon.com because only a minority of US Amazon features is available at Amazon.de and the virtual shelf is much smaller.

Buying books with Amazon.de is not as easy as possible from the LT works page (and loses Tim's referrer commission), as I have to grab either ISBN or the title and open another tab to search Amazon.de. I could possibly create a greasemonkey script for that, but I prefer an integrated solution.

My recommendation: two Amazon links on the book page. First the US one, then one customized Amazon (or none for the US users).

Ah. I get it. It's hard for me to "see" the interface as others do. I thought that option was being overlooked.

Actually, we're going to make that whole left panel be customizable, so you can link to Amazon.jp, Powell's and AlbananBooks.com if you want...

T

Sorry Tim - cross purposes - I realised when I had posted this that I wasn't being clear. I was referring to the find book link which I use for information on any book I've discovered in someone else's library and want more info on - or to buy...........

Find At...Amazon | Abebooks
Alibris | BookFinder
Booksense | Find in a Library

You have in no way failed - it was entirely down to my bad wording! Sorry.

Actually, we're going to make that whole left panel be customizable, so you can link to Amazon.jp, Powell's and AlbananBooks.com if you want...

{weeps with joy}

Seriously... I'm really pleased! Bless you - this is WONDERFUL :-)