Thursday, November 22, 2007

Amazon.com's Most Popular Gifts: Books

It's time to address the 900-pound Gorilla in the room: Amazon books. As "Earth's Biggest Bookstore," Amazon.com is synonymous with books in the minds of many consumers, who may not necessarily even think about Amazon for other purchases. The task of adequately indexing Amazon's thousands of book categories through their aStore program is complicated by their 999-category limit for individual stores. There is simply no alternative to splitting our book selections into several more-or-less self-explanatory subdivisions.

Heretofore we have pointed our links to our Browse Amazon Books website, hosted on space provided by a certain ISP who now threatens to discontinue service to anyone who (truthfully) criticizes their woefully inadequate service. That, coupled with Google's headlong rush into corporatism since their acquisition from founders Page and Brinn has pretty well rendered that site irrelevant although MSN Live Search and Yahoo Search still adequately index it.

We have already blogged about our new "Author Mania" store, which features several (mostly fiction) genres that Amazon.com indexes by author. Although building this store has proven to be a rather pains-taking process, other projects are well enough in hand now to continue expanding this resource with some regularity. We've also started Technical Bookmania which attempts to bring Amazon's Technical and Professional categories to light. The specialized books in this store are not individually big sellers, and Amazon doesn't do much to make them easy to find, burying them in an unnecessarily deep and abstruse heirarchy. Finally, we are introducing Book Mania, which is currently an "everything else" catch-all, but should be evolving into our primary book source, where the most popular categories are featured with considerable depth.

In a related story, Amazon just released it's new Kindle e-book reader. Those who have had access to the device in advance for review purposes give it high marks, although the few Amazon customers who have reviewed it thus far are somewhat cooler on the device. It seems little pricey, until you consider that it includes a connection Amazon's own Whispernet wireless telephone network. With all the hoopla that surrounded the Apple iPhone, it's nice to see a truly useful product introduced without quite so much fanfare.

Amazon.com publishes a series of gift guides, which change over time and may even disappear altogether. These snapshots are an excellent indication of what products are popular on any given day. While the content of the guide may vary, these Books should be around for a long time...

  1. Be a Real Estate Millionaire: Secret Strategies for Lifetime Wealth Today
  2. Walking in Your Own Shoes: Discover God's Direction for Your Life
  3. Results That Last: Hardwiring Behaviors That Will Take Your Company to the Top
  4. Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food
  5. You: Staying Young: The Owner's Manual for Extending Your Warranty (You)
  6. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
  7. I Am America (And So Can You!)
  8. The Dangerous Book for Boys
  9. Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish
  10. Stop the 401(k) Rip-off!: Eliminate Costly Hidden Fees to Improve Your Life
  11. The Daring Book for Girls
  12. A Thousand Splendid Suns
  13. Clapton: The Autobiography
  14. Water for Elephants: A Novel
  15. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)
  16. The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
  17. World Without End
  18. Harry Potter Boxset Books 1-7
  19. An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems
  20. Boom!: Voices of the Sixties Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today
  21. The Pillars of the Earth (Deluxe Edition) (Oprah's Book Club)
  22. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
  23. Double Cross (Alex Cross)
  24. Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10
  25. Love in the Time of Cholera (Oprah's Book Club)
  26. Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time
  27. Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition
  28. A Lifetime of Secrets: A PostSecret Book
  29. Become a Better You
  30. Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, & Priorities of a Winning Life
  31. Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy
  32. The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945
  33. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
  34. The Kite Runner
  35. Eclipse (Twilight, Book 3)
  36. Rhett Butler's People
  37. The Secret
  38. The Alphabet from A to Y With Bonus Letter Z!
  39. His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass)
  40. Home to Holly Springs (Father Tim, Book 1)
  41. The Choice
  42. New Moon (Twilight, Book 2)
  43. My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir
  44. Harry Potter Paperback Box Set (Books 1-6)
  45. Playing For Pizza: A Novel
  46. Peek-A-Who?: Board book
  47. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
  48. The Wisdom of Menopause: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing During the Change, 2nd Edition

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