Sometimes I feel like Steve Irwin hacking and slashing my way through the Amazon in pith helmet and khakis when I try to make head or tail out of Amazon.com's book searches. It's been one of those days.
Prolonged thrashing about in the "browse category" jungle has given me an eerie sixth sense about [the] Amazon's twists and turns not available to ordinary mortals. The "Biography" category is the case in point.
Just as the navigable headwaters of the Amazon begin at Obidos, Amazon.com was once a tiny trickle of books meandering from the Cascades to Seattle and on to the wider world. Keep that in mind.
As that meager flow swelled to a raging torrent the natives prayed to their heathen gods for some relief from the relentless flood. The waters carved out new categories, slowly at first -- then with an alarming vengence.
There are now dozens of "Biography" categories: Sports Biography, Music Biography, Military Biography -- soon perhaps "biographer biography." Unfortunately, those categories are muddy little tributaries.
The main channel is "People A-Z", an alphabetical listing of selected biographies by subject, the way you'd expect to find them. If you're interested in browsing this is the place.
Amazon has thousands of associates who link to their site. They won't move pages just because a new ordering makes more sense -- it would create dead links all over the web. So no "people" go to the shiny new categories.
Amazon may fix all this someday. For now, though, the specialized biography sections give you a search box and a "top 100" list. After that, you're pretty much on your own.
No comments:
Post a Comment