The idea of searching for books as a recreational activity is pretty recent. Maybe 100 years old. Before that you were lucky to have a few books beyond school or the Bible, if you even knew how to read.
But in the 20th century we had two new institutions form that gave us a lot of choice about what books to read. Public libraries and bookstores. Both were based on the idea that you would walk in and look for books arranged in long rows. If you wanted to look at a specific author, genre, or type of book, you looked it up in a card catalog or with the bookstore staff, then you hunted it down. A bit tedious and very open for you to wander, read, and happen to see something else.
In the last 15 or 20 years, we've started to look for and find books online. That means a lot of changes. Right now the standard is Amazon's system, and there are companies like Bublish and Zola Books building new, exciting models. But what other models are there?
But what do the other players look like? Here is a quick survey:
AddALL: Comparison book shopping where you can see what a book costs at different online retailers like Amazon and B&N. This system is about finding the best source for the book that you already know you want.
AbeBooks: They also search every bookstore, but cover rare books and other hard-to-find types of books that don't show up in popular search engines.
BookFinder: Another simple search engine with an old UI but a powerful search engine. They say they search 150 million books, which is pretty powerful. But it's all based on knowing the title, author, or ISBN #, rather than looking for something to fall in love with.
Image source: Anosmia via flickr
0 comments