New book discovery website

Aetheric · Apr 9, 2014

Alright, I can't figure out where to put this, so this is my best guess.

I built a new website called abookfor.me. It's a keyword search engine for books, more or less, that runs on a giant cache of books from Amazon and Smashwords. Long story short, I need feedback and beta testers.

(Also I'm Claire, the site admin/hapless lunatic who spent far too many late nights on this thing.)

I have a chunk of functionality in mind for it that revolves around author promotion, but first I just need some kind of feedback on whether it's even useful, or usable, or if you think it can produce good results.

So... the address is http://abookfor.me/. It's crazy o' clock here, so I'll call back in around eight hours to see what you all think, or to see if I've been banned, whichever comes first.

PS. I know the Amazon search is occasionally godawful. I'm still working on that. Try the Smashwords version instead.

I gotta go sleep now. I swear I have PHP code imprinted on the inside of my eyelids at this point.

Thanks

C

aruna · Apr 9, 2014

What I've noticed on several websites that offer a genre search, is that there is almost never a search option for "mainstream" or "general fiction". What if a book doesn't fall into any of the standard genres? Mine wouldn't be any of the ones on your list. The publisher has classed it as "women's fiction" and also "literary fiction", but those two also aren't on your list, even though they are categories on Amazon. I suppose Drama would have to do at a pinch; though it sounds a bit too dramatic for me! What really is drama?

PS I think it's a good idea but haven't tested the functionality yet, as I'm at work.

JournoWriter · Apr 9, 2014

- When using it on my smartphone, I can only access six results. There's no way to expand the results list that I can determine. It's generally clunky on mobile.

- Results appear to be utterly random. I tried the same search twice from both sources, and got different results both times.

- Results were strange. Diary of a Wimpy Kid and various drawing and pop-up books were in the Amazon list for fantasy. Narnia books were on the list both times, but not Game of Thrones, for example.

- To be truly useful, this needs more search options. Adding an author/title/keyword function would be a start. Users have got to be able to filter, or else you're just giving them a huge list of books by genre. That's not what people want.

- I'm still left wondering why I would use this and not just go directly to the retailer's site. Amazon's searches give me almost exactly what I want and offer suggestions to boot. I've not used Smashwords, so I can't really compare. If you want people to use this, you've got to offer something beyond a genre search that thinks Wimpy Kid is a fantasy novel.

Old Hack · Apr 9, 2014

This doesn't belong in Book Promotion. At best, you're advertising your own site and asking us to error-check it for you.

I'll port it over to our Blogging room, but the room mods might not think it fits there either.

Incidentally, your site didn't work for me at all. I clicked around a bit and then closed it. Total fail, I'm afraid.

Aetheric · Apr 9, 2014

Well, okay. I'm going to err on the side of caution and leave this alone then. I guess delete this thread or something?

New book discovery website

Aetheric

Will write for food

aruna

On a wing and a prayer

JournoWriter

Just the facts, please

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman

Aetheric

Will write for food