Amazon.com’s New Book Search Feature

Search and Read over 100,000 Books o­n Amazon

Amazon.com’s new book search feature now lets you search the text of most of the books they sell.

When I read about this new feature, I didn’t realize the full benefits of it. Not o­nly can you search the page, but you can read the full page and keep reading the next few pages of the book. Now that I’ve had a chance to use it, I wonder if it really will cause sales to decrease rather than increase. Amazon makes it tricky to keep reading more than a few pages ahead, but I was able to read at least 50 pages of a book. That’s quite a bit more than the trial chapters some authors will give you as an incentive to buy their book.

From an Author’s standpoint, I think they should put even more restrictions as to how many pages someone can view from a book. The good news is authors do have a choice about including their books in the search.

But cheapskate tactics aside, it will help you narrow down your choices if you know you want a book o­n a specific subject and you can’t tell the difference between the books available.

Benefits: A try-before-you-buy feature for books o­n Amazon. Makes it a lot more appealing to buy books o­nline.
Disadvantages: You can o­nly read a few pages at a time. Come o­n! You didn’t think they’d let you read the whole thing for free, did you?!

Conclusion: Visit Amazon, do a search for a book and check out this feature.

For a live demonstration, do a search, then browse o­ne of the results. Visit:

http://www.amazon.com

Reviewer: Donna Knight
Score: 4/5