# You'd think Amazon would understand the concept of what a book is **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 4, 2015, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818 "2015-02-04T18:07:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/1 "2015-02-04T18:07:27Z")
But apparently not. My niece wants to learn French. Specifically reading and writing French. So she specifically wants a book on learning French. So I went to Amazon and typed in “learning French” as a search term and specified I wanted “books”. The first item that came up was _Easy French Step-by-Step_, a paperback book by Myrna Bell Rochester. Okay, certainly something to consider. The second item was _Learn French - Word Power 101_. A kindle product. Which is not a book. The third item is _French, Conversational: Learn to Speak and Understand French with Pimsleur Language Programs_. Which is a audio cd. The fourth item is a notebook insert _French Conversation (Quickstudy: Academic)_. The fifth item is another audio cd, _French For Dummies_. At this point, I’m thinking, “Wow, apparently Myrna Bell Rochester has written the only book on learning French in the world. Who knew it was such a narrow field?” But no. The sixth item was another actual book: _Learn French In 7 Days!: The Ultimate Crash Course to Learning The Basics of the French Language In No Time_ by Dagny Taggart. So there is apparently more than one book in this category. So why was Amazon sending me off into the land of audio cd’s and kindles and other things which are not books? Of the twelve items that Amazon recommended on the first page - when I had specified I wanted books - six of them were non-books. Has Amazon wandered so far away from its original market that it’s forgotten what a book is? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/2 "2015-02-04T18:20:11Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The second item was _Learn French - Word Power 101_. A kindle product. Which is not a book. Yes it is… oral sex is sex and e-books are books. The rest, I agree. They’re pulling that shit a lot: you ask for digital music and they show you CDs and DVDs, you ask for movies and they try to sell you the soundtrack. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/3 "2015-02-04T18:21:41Z")
No, Amazon’s search engine _sucks._ Or the terms that each item is tagged with sucks. Or both. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/4 "2015-02-04T18:36:23Z")
Everything Amazon sells is assigned to _some_ category/department. Audiobooks are categorized as books (which IMHO makes perfect sense). And things like the audio CDs listed in the OP are at least borderline audiobooks. ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/5 "2015-02-04T18:44:49Z")
It sounds like what you really need is a copy of “The Web Search Box: It’s Secrets and Mysteries” . ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/6 "2015-02-04T18:45:02Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Has Amazon wandered so far away from its original market that it’s forgotten what a book is? > [@running\_coach](#): > > No, Amazon’s search engine _sucks._ Or the terms that each item is tagged with sucks. Or both. Amazon search box, type in “learning French”. In the drop down box, select category: Books. The results are exactly as the OP reports, which includes things that clearly are not ink and paper books. However. Amazon sells a LOT of products, so it takes a little more work to craft a suitably selective search that will weed out the broader category of products tagged as “books.” On the left hand (in my browser) of the page, the search results can be further refined, including which particular “Book Category” search terms one wants. These include “Paperback” and “Hardcover”, both of which can be selected, which will then yield only paper and ink books. Problem solved? ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/7 "2015-02-04T19:04:56Z")
> [@xenophon41](#): > > On the left hand (in my browser) of the page, the search results can be further refined… lots of vendors search engines have filters like this. you may have to do a general search first before the filter options appear. there also may be a + symbol to bring up or expand filters. you can go from thousands of results to a couple dozen. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/8 "2015-02-04T19:16:33Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > (snip)But no. The sixth item was another actual book: _Learn French In 7 Days!: The Ultimate Crash Course to Learning The Basics of the French Language In No Time_ by Dagny Taggart. (snip) Dagny Taggart? Really? I was intrigued and looked her up on Amazon. Quite the polyglot. She has 7 day books on more than a dozen languages. All that while running a railroad. I am impressed. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/9 "2015-02-04T19:51:42Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > Dagny Taggart? Really? I was intrigued and looked her up on Amazon. Quite the polyglot. She has 7 day books on more than a dozen languages. All that while running a railroad. I am impressed. Eddy does all the real work on the books, though. Dagny just lends her name to them. 🙂 I don’t see why “e-books” aren’t books. Times change, and words change, too. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/10 "2015-02-04T19:56:17Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/11 "2015-02-04T20:34:13Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Yes it is… oral sex is sex and e-books are books. I think it depends on context. There are situations when an e-book is not a book and oral sex is not sex (if you’re trying to get pregnant, oral sex won’t get the job done). If Amazon is going to have filters in their search engine, then I think they should sort their products and put them into the appropriate categories. If they want to have filters for _books_, _e-books_, and _books or e-books_, that’s fine. But you shouldn’t include e-books in a books filter. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/12 "2015-02-04T20:39:32Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Audiobooks are categorized as books (which IMHO makes perfect sense). And things like the audio CDs listed in the OP are at least borderline audiobooks. I don’t think anybody can learn to read a language from an audiobook. You pretty much have to see the words written in front of you. You might argue that most people aren’t trying to learn a new language. But why try to sell an illiterate person a book? Or sell a deaf person an audiobook? If people are looking for a specific product, list those products. ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/13 "2015-02-04T20:39:51Z")
Here - I made you a thing. [![](https://i.imgur.com/8TvXWW2.png) ](https://i.imgur.com/8TvXWW2.png) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/14 "2015-02-04T20:50:07Z")
BTW, I think Amazon has one of the best search functions out there. I’s always been easy to use and good and suggesting other related things. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/15 "2015-02-04T21:00:02Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I don’t think anybody can learn to read a language from an audiobook. You pretty much have to see the words written in front of you. I don’t know about you, but I learned my native language by hearing it, not by seeing the words written in front of me. With that obvious rebuttal out of the way, I don’t think it would work for _me_ to learn a foreign language strictly by hearing, without seeing the words in front of me, but it must work for some people or else such products wouldn’t sell or get good reviews. > [@](#): > > But why try to sell an illiterate person a book? Or sell a deaf person an audiobook? If people are looking for a specific product, list those products. Often the same book is available in multiple formats (hardback, paperback, ebook, audiobook) and it makes sense to show all the available formats on the same screen. If you want to limit the results to a specific format, there’s a way to do that, as other posters have already pointed out. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/16 "2015-02-04T21:16:32Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I don’t know about you, but I learned my native language by hearing it, not by seeing the words written in front of me. Seriously? You learned to read by hearing? How did you do that? ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/17 "2015-02-04T21:22:01Z")
I love Amazon for many things, but their search is not one of them. They are so damn determined to give you 100 pages of results they just throw anything vaguely related in there. Even when you search for specific model numbers they give you similar items and even unrelated items. I’d hate to think of how many returns are from someone searching for a model/part number and ordering what looked like the right thing at the top of the search results. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/18 "2015-02-04T21:22:10Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Seriously? You learned to read by hearing? How did you do that? Okay, so I missed the part about specifically reading and writing. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/19 "2015-02-04T21:22:32Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > If you want to limit the results to a specific format, there’s a way to do that, as other posters have already pointed out. No, there isn’t. So nobody has pointed that out. What one person posted was that they did the same search I described and got the same results. There is no way you can go to the initial search engine and filter out all non-book results. You have to do the initial search and get all the results - even if you specified books only - and then do follow-up searches to filter out the non-books. My point is that Amazon should make it possible for a customer to filter out non-books at the initial search. And if for some reason, they don’t want to do that, they shouldn’t pretend they have a filter for doing it. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2015, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818/20 "2015-02-04T21:50:06Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > No, there isn’t. So nobody has pointed that out. > > What one person posted was that they did the same search I described and got the same results. > > There is no way you can go to the initial search engine and filter out all non-book results. You have to do the initial search and get all the results - even if you specified books only - and then do follow-up searches to filter out the non-books. If that one additional click is too much for you, you could start with Advanced Search. You can specify a format, although AFAIK you can’t specify more than one an a time (e.g. Paperback or Hardback). > [@](#): > > My point is that Amazon should make it possible for a customer to filter out non-books at the initial search. And if for some reason, they don’t want to do that, they shouldn’t pretend they have a filter for doing it. “Pretend they have a filter for doing it”? This is quite possibly the first-worldest problem I’ve seen in a very long time. For a really good Pitting, you should have mentioned how angry you were and thrown in some colorful obscene insults directed at Amazon. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-amazon-would-understand-the-concept-of-what-a-book-is/711818.md?page=2)