When using Google Books yesterday, I was offered to fill in a survey. Besides asking whether I am aware of various new ways to sell e-books, they asked for a general feedback. Below, with minor edits, is what I wrote.
Google Books is a great tool of course, but there are quite a few things that can be improved:
1) Sometimes the font is too small - and zooming in the browser does not help (i.e., it's still illegible).
2) Old books are occasionally scanned in careless ways, especially when they are "centerfold" type pages that no one bothered to unfold prop
erly. (Can't find a good example right now, but this one comes close, complete with the image of the scanner operators' fingers: Regni Sinensis la Tartaris Tyrannicle evastati depopulatique concinna Enarratio
3) A fair number of books are mis-dated, and the cool new NGram viewer has made it painfully obvious. Just ask, for example, "Who wrote about railways or railroads 300 years ago?"
4) It seems that the mechanism for Google Books "importing" reviews from the "usual places" elsewhere (i.e., Amazon.com, I reckon...) does not always work. E.g., the review existing this Roel Sterckx's book at Amazon does not show at the books's page at GB
5) How do you insert hyperlinks into reviews anyway? Even at Amazon you can insert a link to another Amazon product (via its ASIN); at the very least, Google Books should allow one to insert a link to another book at GB.
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