Barnes & Noble Nook eBook Store: A Click Away from “Adult” Content

By Wesley Fryer On July 21, 2012 · · Add Comment

Today I visited a Barnes and Noble store in the Fort Worth area and had a bit of a shock when I searched the Nook eBookstore on one of the Nook Tablet eReaders on display in the center of the building. I wanted to check if anyone had written reviews of my eBook, “Playing with Media: Simple Ideas for Powerful Sharing,” and was really surprised (as well as disappointed) to see the search results. Barnes and Noble evidently has numerous “erotic media” titles for sale for Nook, and those titles come up when you search their eStore for “Playing with Media.”

Strangely, a web search for “Playing with Media” on the web version of Barnes and Noble’s Nook eBook store also brings similar, “adult” eBook search results but also the children’s Nook app, “Five Little Monkeys With Nothing to Do.” There is some real irony here in the gaze of the monkey to the right.

Programmers for the Nook eBookstore would be well-advised to address this “situation” immediately. A search on the Amazon.com Kindle eBook store for “Playing with Media” doesn’t yield any results like these. Apparently either Amazon doesn’t offer titles like these for sale, or has search filter requirements which avoid inadvertant / unintended search results of ‘adult’ material.

To add further irony to this situation, right next to the booth displaying the Nook Tablet was the following table for Kids’ Nook apps. I didn’t test one of the Nook Tablets at the kids’ table, but I’m guessing the search interface in the Nook eBook library was the same.

Whether you (or your kids/students) search the web-version of the Nook eBook store or search on an actual Nook eReader for a book title: Beware. The search results may surprise you.

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