Thursday, June 09, 2005

Amazon's Search Inside the Book Feature

I'm just curious...is it just my book, coming from a small press, that looks as if it was torn apart, taped back together, and tossed carelessly on a scanner in order to provide the cover images for the Search Inside the Book feature?

I was very excited to get this feature working and waited in excess of 10 weeks for it to go up, and then when it did, I was shocked into utter disbelief.

In the first place, why on earth are they scanning in pages of a book when they could easily ask for an electronic PDF document??? No wonder it is taking 10 weeks!

And why the tape? (To borrow from Seinfeld), where are they working--on some kind of flatbed truck that papers are flying all over the place?

After contacting the SIB department, they said they couldn't rescan it because the first scan didn't detract from the customer experience? It certainly detracted from my viewing experience!

So after all that, now I need to send a PDF! Lovely.

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