patrickrhone
patrickrhone

What We Link to When We Link to Books | Dan J’s IndieWeb Headquarters

While this starts off as a call out for me (no offense taken), I think many of the points Dan makes are valid and important. I’m going to ponder a bit before posting a full response.

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bradenslen
bradenslen

@patrickrhone I do like the idea of linking to the author's book page, if they have one, especially, if it is an indie author (not published by a publishing house.)

For out of print books I used to link to Powell's.

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In reply to
ChrisJWilson
ChrisJWilson

@bradenslen @patrickrhone the reason I often default to Amazon is the easy API; I have a shortcut set up just for that. Now I think I need to work out a more complicated one.

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toddgrotenhuis
toddgrotenhuis

@ChrisJWilson @bradenslen @patrickrhone In the last few months, I started linking to Indiebound instead. While it does have a store, it’s main purpose is to show you where to find the book at your local.

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bradenslen
bradenslen

@ChrisJWilson @patrickrhone If the author does not have a book page one could link to the search results of a book shopping meta search engine like Bookfinder.com. That is for print books only.

Just taking a brief look, most ebook search engines are for free ebooks so that does not help. I didn't look in depth. I'm not finding one that gives good results from multiple ebook vendors: Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, etc at the same time. So ebooks are a problem.

I suppose one could create a custom site search from DDG duckduckgo.com/search_bo... that searches Amazon, Kobo, B&N etc and link to the search results. I've not messed with this to see if it would work.

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bradenslen
bradenslen

@toddgrotenhuis I like the idea of Indiebound a lot. Ebooks remain a problem. So many new authors are publishing in ebook only format.

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JohnBrady
JohnBrady

@patrickrhone I appreciate your situation as someone who's actually trying to sell a book.
When I see a book that looks interesting, I search in this order:

  • My local library;
  • Alibris;
  • Amazon.

I do this whether the original link is to Amazon or not.

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