However, in general, my searches (and those of many others) fall into the more mundane. Here, I still believe Alibris has a superior presentation. Sorting by Title A-Z still forces me to page through to find the title I seek.

How many pages am I sorting through when searching for Philip Roth or David Brin? Too many. In addition, I can’t then sort by price for a specific title. The laundry list search result as the first level of results is overwhelming in my opinion. And there’s evidence that it negatively impacts purchasing behavior.

So while it may not be the best search for a super-user like you, I believe it is the best search for the majority of Internet users.

for example, you stated:

“The result was a confirmation that the Alibris search interface was superior…. Let’s start by comparing author searches. At Abebooks and Biblio all of the titles are lumped together into one laundry list sorted by price. So I have to search for the copies of Woken Furies amid all the other titles.”

No - you don’t - all you have to do is change the search order to “by Title” either A-Z or Z to A -

so maybe the synopsis on the top of the page is “nice” - but is it really essential when you are doing a search? after all, you already know you want to buy the book, so presumably you know something about it -

but let’s move on to another search: you mentioned that you collect advance reading copies and uncollected proofs. How easy is it to find these on Alibris? Is it even possible to do a really good search for them?

for Robert K Morgan, it takes seconds on AbeBooks - enter the author’s name and “advance reading” or “uncorrected proof” or “ARC” in the keywords and the results come back instantly, sorted either by price or by title, etc, as you choose - (in the interests of thoroughness, you can enter different keywords, since different sellers use different terms, or you can do one combined boolean search)

but how do you find these on Alibris?- all of the keywords and author name came up with no results. I tried using softcover binding and highest price first hoping that some ARCs would show up - but got discouraged after coming across #10 on the list (”Still Another Pelican in the Breadbox ” by Kenneth Patchen)

so then I tried “soft cover” and “first edition” - and I did find one - of course, I had to look thru all 26 results to make sure that was the only ARC/proof copy -

and I wonder how many are being missed on Alibris ….

(and I won’t even mention the fact that several searches I did on the “advance search” came up with NO results even though they were for books actually available in abundance and I was just using author and title - maybe that was just a temporary glitch…)

Best search interface? not by a long shot, in my book…..

iTunes continues to disrupt the music industry and downloadable music is sure to be the standard for some time. We have iPods now, not Walkmans (cassettes, cds) or 8-tracks or turntables (vinyl).

Movies aren’t far away. Netflix is already putting brick and mortar distribution out of the market. Yet, the next step (and not far away) is downloadable movies. Netflix is already testing it and many others are inching closer to this reality.

I’m not saying your husband can’t sell some of his old vinyl. There is a collector’s market out there. An … antique market. But building a business strategy around dying distribution methods isn’t a winning model in my book.

Personally, my husband’s got more old albums than any sane person, and I’ve been considering making him list them all on Alibris (which would keep him out of trouble for a decade).

So what’s your insight on this topic?