A New, Almost Real, Online Bookstore
July 29, 2008 by Anne Wayman
Filed under Jobs
(www.thegoldenpencil.com)
Canadian Chris Thiessen has created what might be the closest thing to a real book store online at Zoomii.com. What he’s done, near as I can tell, is create an Amazon bookstore, but set it up so you’re seeing the covers on shelves just as you might if you walked into your nearest physical book store. You can wander down various aisles like self-help, business, and sports (click on etc. under categories – you’ll get a list plus a nifty floor plan you can use your mouse to browse through.) Instead of picking up the book and flipping through it, you click on it for a larger display of the cover plus some verbiage that is most often back-of-jacket copy.
It is more like a bookstore – I found several books I’d thought about buying and hadn’t yet just because I clicked on the one next to it. It’s great for browsing. I even had a cup of coffee on my desk and sipped as I wandered through. The only thing that’s missing is the smell of paper and the sound of others reading and thumbing through books and magazines… maybe Chris will find a way to give us that experience too.
I didn’t order any books today, but I probably will.
Thanks to If:book for the pointer.
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Hi Anne,
Yes, very interesting. At first look it is extremely cool-looking. But once you get in there and start navigating, it is a little clunky.
It would be nice if there were larger section headers (Arts, Fiction, etc.) so that you could see them from the zoomed out view. For that matter, instead of listing them like a bulletin board, you could actually create virtual rows of bookshelves with the titles on top of each shelf, just like in a real bookstore.
A grab-hand like you have for PDFs and Google Earth for navigating would be nice too. Clicking left, right, and up and down is a little stilted.
Last comment — very disappointed in the lack of Canadian spelling on the Canadian site, especially given this was created by a Canadian…
Those nit-picks aside, I think this is a great site, and the prices seem reasonable. I really like the idea of actually “picking up” you book from the shelf to look at it!
Lots of potential here — though you know that if it gets too popular, Amazon and Chapters will just copy it, and Zoomii’s novelty will be gone (hope he’s planned for this…)
~Graham
Good thoughts, Graham – thanks