e book sellers ! you need to pay better attention to search

Last year when Jeff Bezos was interviewed by Charlie Rose for his 60 Minutes TV show, one of the key takeaways from it, besides the sneak preview offered on Air Prime, Amazon’s forthcoming drone-based home delivery service, was Bezos’ defence of his business practices, especially with regard to the book publishing industry.

He said, “The internet is disrupting every media industry. The future is happening to book selling. Amazon is not happening to book selling.” Responding specifically to the complaints about Amazon, Bezos said: “Complaining is not a strategy.”

I was reminded of this today when I made a casual review of several eBookseller sites, which sell a wide selection of eBooks for buyers around the world. One can very well say that when it comes to sale of eBooks, they are indeed competitors to Amazon.

Why are eBook sellers losing money from potential customers?
I did a very basic comparison of these sites to the Kindle eBooks section of Amazon.com. It was shocking to see these sites leave money on the table because they haven’t got their search function right.

Why are they doing it? If they don’t take care of their own interests, can these sites then complain against Amazon for its competitive instincts?

I adopted a simple methodology. I opened The New York Times fiction bestseller list for eBooks from a couple of weeks ago. I had already downloaded this sometime ago for a comparative study. I went there again and randomly picked up a few bestsellers.

First stop, Diesel eBooks (diesel-ebooks.com). I searched for the eBook Innocence (by Dean Koontz), a current NYT bestseller. This is what I got:

It was not there in the first page of 20 results. In fact the first page is entirely filled with adult fiction eBooks, many of them offered free. Please note that the search defaulted to bestselling.

I made the same search in the Amazon Kindle eBookstore to get the following result:

The NYT bestseller was returned as the top result, with Sort by Relevance as the default search method.

I went back to Diesel, and this time searched for the full title plus the author name. It turns out that the eBook is actually available in Diesel eBookstore, and that too at least for Indian buyers, at a much discounted price to that of Amazon:

On digging further, I found that the title is returned as the 25th result in Diesel when you just search for ‘Innocence’.

Twenty-fifth result! Just imagine. No why would any eBookseller offer a full page of adult eBook fiction as the search results page for Innocence, and return a free eBook as the top result? Shouldn’t its internal search default to relevance like Amazon’s does, and give weightage to an eBook listed as a bestseller by the prestigious NYT ? Scott Redford of Diesel, are you listening?  

Why is eBooks.com ignoring Linda Lael Miller? 
Next stop, eBooks.com. I searched for Linda Lael Miller. Her work Big Sky Secrets is currently an NYT bestseller.
But you wouldn’t know if you searched for her name in eBooks.com:

So I went to Amazon and did the same search:

They know a thing or two about relevance. The search for Linda Lael Miller returns her current NYT eBook bestseller as the top result in Amazon, and not the 20th result as it’s in eBooks.com. Now, how many people abandoned their search for Big Sky Secrets in eBooks.com because it didn’t list it as a top offering from the author?
Shouldn’t the search algorithm of the site be changed to give some weightage to the NYT bestseller list? Stephen Cole of eBooks.com, are you listening?

Why can’t eBookmall.com not search for full title and author? 
See what happened when I searched for the full title and author name at ebookmall.com:

I turned disappointed to Amazon.com even though as a matter of fact, I want small eBooksellers to thrive, and want to purchase eBooks from them, even at a slight loss in price. But it seems they are not interested in helping someone like me.

Amazon recognised the search for the full title and author name of the bestseller, but was not very truthful when it told me that only the hardcover was available. On clicking the result, I could find the Kindle eBook version as well.
So Amazon is not perfect, but still it takes you where you want to go.

I returned to ebookmall.com and performed one more search. This time, just for the eBook title. It turns out the eBook was actually available there:

My message to the promoters of eBookmall is simple. You’ve got work to do to review your search function. Otherwise, you are losing out on potential sales.

Infibeam too has to improve 
What about India? Infibeam (infibeam.com), co-founded by former Amazon employee Vishal Mehta, offers a good selection of eBooks. But here too, I found that they could improve upon their search function a bit more.
Look what I got when I searched for Laura Lael Miller in Infibeam:

Her current bestseller Big Sky Secrets returned as the 30th result. That needs improvement. EBooksellers have to give additional weightage to NYT eBook bestseller lists in their search algorithms and increase public awareness that they do sell these eBooks in their stores. Otherwise visitors to your sites will return disappointed, and you will continue to complain against Amazon.com. Remember, as Bezos said, “Complaining is not a strategy at all.”