Please choose the appropriate forum for this topic. Thank you. I've heard a lot of people comment on how flawed the Audible Search facility is, and just thought I'd add to this so maybe someone can help me find the book I want.

I'm trying to search for 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson.

Not an impossible feat one would think. Ha, how wrong you all are.

Searching on the title of the book finds nothing, nadda, zip.

Searching Bill Bryson finds:
In a Sunburned Country (Unabridged)
A Walk in the Woods
I'm a Stranger Here Myself
Neither Here Nor There

I know Audible has the book as it's in a lot of peoples recommended books lists, but I'll be buggered if I can find it.

Please feel free to berate me if I'm being stupid, but it's nowhere to be seen.

I would really like to listen to this book, so any help would be appreciated.

Cheers
Bag

No berating but I just typed "short history" and went straight to it.

Andy, you stupid fool! j/k

I just typed "Bryson" and "Bill Bryson" and it came up under both.

(I believe you that it may not have worked before, but it seems to work now).

BTW, there are 2 versions available.

Abridged-Narrated by Bill Bryson

Unabridged-Narrated by Richard Mathews

The abridged version leaves out a lot, but this is one case where having the choice of listening to Bill Bryson narrate it makes it worth going for the abridgement.

Still, if you want all the details, Richard Matthews does an admirable job narrating the unabridged version. He's just not Bill Bryson.

Thanks for the replies guys but it's still a no go!!!

Tried searching again using your suggestions and it's still not there (on my machine anyway parannoya )

I've emailed Audible Support about this issue. At first I thought it could be because I'm in the UK and not all books are available to us but if Chris_IT could see it I should also be able to see it.

I'm also running a Mac with OSX, not sure if this could make a difference or not.

Has anyone else had any beefs with the search engine???

Just to prove I'm not that stupid... Honest!!!

Here's my search results.

Andy--

That indeed is very strange. When I type "Bryson" in the search, I get 7 results, with Short History being #2--abridged and #3--unabridged).

Very curious! Post back when you hear from Audible.

dordale

I think Bill Bryson books were banned in the U.K. because he moved back to the USA.

Comon, Guys, give Andy a break. He is victim of the publisher/copyright issues discussed elsewhere in this forum. That is, non-Us subscribers do not have access to all the books that US subscribers do.

See your pm's Andy

Quote: Originally posted by Chris_IT
No berating but I just typed "short history" and went straight to it.

Oops, this forum member notes he is from England.

Curious, then.

try this link to Short History

Prolly won't work since it is the link I got off while logged in.

Thanks to all for checking for me.

I've PM'ed the following to a few people and just thought I'd add it on here also.

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I'm still a bit confused that it never even came up in the searches though, as I've found other books that arn't available outside the US and it just has a big banner at the top of the page informing that I can't buy this book.

And the other Bryson books are available to me as I've got 'In a Sunburned Country' (Very good book by the way).

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I'll let you all know what Audible say when (if) they get back to me...

Cheers
Bag

It's one of the annoyances of not living in the US that searches won't return any results for books not available outside the US.

Yet you can often see stuff on the home page which you can't locate in the searches (if you link directly you'll get a page which says 'Sorry, this item is not available for sale in your geographical region' or similar).

What used to bug me enormously is that I would get emails from Audible promoting special deals on books which I couldn't buy!! Yet Audible clearly knows where I live (because I can't buy the books, right?). But they may have fixed this in recent times.

IMHO it would be much better if searches did return all results, but flagged them with some sort of icon if they are not available in your region so you know what you are missing out on!!