My Kindle Stuff

Is it me, or does browsing for a Kindle book via the Amazon site pretty much suck?  (We’ll talk about searching later–yuck!) And it’s getting worse!  I hate to say it, but I’m blaming it on all the self-publishing, both for public domain and original texts.  In fact, that’s why I started this blog.  I was trying to find Fantasy books while wading thru mis-genred and general crap–so I started a list, then figured if I needed one, maybe other fantasy aficionados would appreciate the list as well.  Things just grew from there.

I don’t have anything against authors that self-publish, nor do I think it’s an indication of how good (or not) a book is just because someone decides to go that route; God knows I’ve read books from big publishing houses that I felt were awful, so why shouldn’t the opposite be true.  And as my mother used to say “that’s what makes horse races–everybody likes something different”. 

But I am having a horrible time trying to find anything other than Amazon bestsellers without going thru pages and pages of crap.  How many copies of The Wizard of Oz do I really need to choose from?  And with many authors offering sales and temporary price reductions, I can’t just filter by price. And man, there are some dogs offered for $9.99–just sayin’.

In the interest of not wanting to punish all because of the stupid few, I don’t feel comfortable trying to make a case for a self-published category on Amazon, but I also don’t see any other way to clean it up.

Added to this unfortunate fact browsing on the Kindle, while cleaner, is pretty hopeless as well unless you stick to your recommendations or know what you’re looking for.

I want to find new authors, I want to find great little obscure or over-looked fantasy titles–somebody help me!  Every Tuesday, I want to see books just published; or see books published last month.  I want to type in an author’s name and just get books written by that author.  I want to select Fantasy books and get a real and complete frackin’ list.  I want to be able to filter my list.  In short, I just want to be albe to find a damn book to read!

Heavy sigh, I have been reduced to recommendations and release notices on other sites or Twitter; while that is okay, it seems to me that I should be able to search a book selling site and find some new books!