I remember the last time I had visited Amazon to choose some business titles and photography books. A few minutes later, I decided that I was completely lost and quit browsing, as I had no idea about the quality of the books I have chosen. The problem is so simple: too many publisher, too many writer, too exaggerated marketing lies book names and so little reader feedback/review. The last successful buying attempt of mine is dated just after Strategy+Business editors announced their Best Business Books 2006 selection (The articles needs free registration). I guess it is very understandable. We are in the era of user feedback: we are more likely to buy from a high-rated ebay merchant, go to the movie with a good imdb score and subscribe to the top blogs in technorati. I guess, one of the least-benefited areas of user-feedback-era is book shopping, as Amazon’s listmania or rating mechanism falls short of what we look for.

At that point, StumbleUpon -which is a world built entirely upon user feedback itself- brought me a wonderful website called Suggestica, “Suggestions from Trusted Authorities”. The model is quite simple: Experts like Thomas Peters, Charles Branson, Bill Gates and Edward De Bono talk about a book here and there, Suggectica collects the books and reviews, catalogs and tags them, and presents you a leaner choice-universe and user-interface on top of Amazon.com’s. The first thing I would be happy to see was the feedback for experts’ reviews, which would enable us to rate Branson’s suggestions…

They seem to be making money by directly closing sales of suggested books through Amazon.com, as you can immediately add a book to your cart and Suggestica directs you to Amazon.com in the last step of purchase procedure.

With just about 20 minutes of browsing, I have found 4 books, and this time stopped browsing because of expenditure-overloading. Yet, still better than choice overloading I think…

In the meantime, StumbleUpon surprised me for a second time with LibraryThing.com. Even though it lacks a web 2.0 interface, its aim is quite innovative (but niche). Post your list of books and the site will match you with friends of similar interests. Then, you can decide on your next book by taking a look at your friends’ lists and reading reviews. Another great, simple and effective idea to shine your way through Amazon’s endless streets of shelves…