Sep 28 2008
10 Things Epublishers Should Do for Readers
In no particular order, the following is a list that I would like to see all epublishers/etailers implement.
- Eternal Bookshelf. An eternal bookshelf means that every purchase you have bought can be downloaded at any time. Most of the larger etailers have this feature but not all.
- Mass Downloads. Along with the eternal bookshelf should be the ability to re-download all of your books. This is necessary in the case of a computer crash or some other computer related malfuction. Fictionwise is the only etailer/epublisher I know of that offers this.
- Buy a book for a friend. The only site that offers this feature is Fictionwise. Amazon does not even offer this for Kindle which makes no sense. When a reader wants to buy a book for a friend, she wants to buy a specific book. She doesn’t want to send a generic gift certificate and hope her friend uses it for said book. I was quite shocked when I went to buy Kristan Higgins’ Just One of the Guys for a couple of friends of mine who had a Kindle and found that there was no option to do such a thing. It would seem perfectly suited to the Kindle’s internet connectivity to allow people to purchase books for others that would magically appear on the Kindle. Wouldn’t it? Harlequin also doesn’t have this feature. Ditto for Samhain Publishing or BooksonBoard, the other epublishers/etailers I visit.
- Paypal. I think every online merchant should allow consumers to pay via paypal. I find this particularly comforting if I am buying from a new vendor whose reputation I don’t really trust. I know that they’ll have very little information about me and that’s how I would like it to be. Additionally, paying with paypal is often so much easier because I need not fill in a dozen fields along with a credit card number that I don’t recall off the top of my head.
- Keep Credit Card information. If a merchant is not going to allow me to pay via paypal then I want them to keep my credit card information on file. Note, that I won’t be giving that to places I don’t feel comfortable trusting with that information but for those that I do, I want that to be an option. Amazon does a good job of allowing customers to keep several credit cards online. Other sites, like Fictionwise or Harlequin do not.
- Gift certificates. Not all sites have the ability to buy a gift certificate, let alone a specific book. Harlequin is a big culprit. Samhain has this weird system of buying a certain amount of credits or something. I tried doing this once and ended up buying credits for myself, not for another person. Sometimes I feel like etailers/epublishers are actively trying to curb my spending habits.
- Wishlist. BooksonBoard and Fictionwise both have a “wishlist” feature. This means a person can browse and place books that she might be interested in a temporary cart. The key is that this temporary cart is always available when you log in. This way you can mark the books you are interested in without committing, but it also helps to remind you of purchases you once thought might be interesting.
- Wide availability. Some epublishers don’t make its books available to all etailers. I find it frustrating to have to buy books from several different online venues. I know I buy less books from places like Ellora’s Cave and Loose ID because I can’t buy them from Fictionwise or BooksonBoard.
- Multiple formats. All books should be sold in all formats at the same time. I have no small irritation with those books that are available in only one format on one site and still another on another site. I.e., why doesn’t Harlequin offer ereader format at its site, but you can buy the same books in ereader at Fictionwise. Or some books are offered in Amazon’s Kindle format earlier than others. I am finding that with Simon & Schuster releases. It is very frustrating.
- No DRM. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is for going forward. Wal-mart just announced that it was discontinuing its servers storing DRM’ed music. It sent out a press release saying that customers better download their music now and burn it to a CD because the music will no longer be available on its servers and no tech support will be offered. In another example of why DRM is bad, one need only look to the recent iPhone App debacle by Spore. Spore was a game put out by EA Sports, a very popular one. It came with draconian DRM and in the space of days, a cracked version was leaked onto the net and over a half a million people turned to the cracked one instead of downloading a legitimate one crippled by DRM. EA relented and released a patched version with less constraints.
How about you commenters? Like something that a particular epublisher/etailer does for readers? Got a suggestion?
Send to Kindle
Sep 28, 2008 @ 05:27:04
I love posts like this because Lyrical Press is always seeking ways to improve our reader’s buying experience. Currently, we offer:
Eternal Bookshelf. Downloads are available for the life of a customer’s account with our store, Once Upon A Bookstore. http://www.onceuponabookstore.com/
Paypal. We accept PayPal.
Gift certificates. We offer a $5.00 gift certificate.
Wide availability. Our eBooks are available on Amazon/Kindle, MobiPocket, BooksOnBoard, Coffee Time Romance and ARe, to name a few. We’ve recently signed with Sony and received a contract from Fictionwise this week.
Multiple formats. With every purchase of an eBook through Once Upon A Bookstore, the buyer receives a download for a zipped file containing four formats. Adobe PDF, LIT, PRC and HTML. Palm PDF and Rocketbook formats are in the works.
No DRM. We only DRM for MopiPocket’s site, where it is required. Our books are non-DRMed everywhere else.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 05:37:51
~Mass Downloads~ Yes, please and thank you! Publishers take the stance that if your house burned down, Borders wouldn’t reissue your print books, so why should they have to give you more links to ebooks when your puter goes boom? Bastages.
~Buy a for a friend~ I wanted to gift copies of an ebook that I really loved from Loose ID. To my shock, there is no way for me to do that. I would have to purchase a gift certificate, which only come in $5 increments, and then they wouldn’t even give me the gift certificate. I had to provide them with names and email addresses, and LI emailed my friends the access number. I ended up buying $10 gift certificates to cover a $6 book. Bastages.
**as a side note, after the first few times this happened, I emailed the authors directly, asking for permission to purchase the ebooks and email them to friends. All have very graciously agreed to allow me to pounce on their copyright briefly. This in not, however, a good solution to the problem, nor even a very palatable one.
~Paypal~ PayPal usage guidelines prohibit using them as a payment method for adult material, so epubs can’t legally use PayPal to sell erotic romance. I know some do, but they will lose their account if PayPal finds out about it.
Bastages.
DRM sux! I’m a techno geek and have multiple reading devices. DRM locks an ebook I buy to one device, so I have to crack the DRM to read a book that I frickin paid for on another device. I’m fairly sure that the intent of DRM wasn’t to prevent me from being able to access material that was legally bought and paid for, but that’s what they’re doing. I also dislike that different devices lock me into purchasing a proprietary format (ie Kindle or Sony). Bastages.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 06:16:45
Not sure how many e-publishers do this, but if they’re storing your info on their own servers (as opposed to using a third-party), there are quite strict standards imposed by the major credit card providers around protecting credit card information. So that may become a factor in whether or not #5 would be possible.
I wonder if you can get around this by allowing people to buy gift vouchers via PayPal instead. It becomes a 2-step process, but at least it’s still an option.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 06:47:16
Good suggestions. I’d also suggest some of them work on their reputations as being more than sellers of Erotica. For example, some sell Young Adult fiction, but there’s no way in heck I’d send my younger friends to their sites! Now, Ellora’s Cave has a good idea with putting their mainstream imprint, Cerridwen Press, on a seperate site. Also, I know Erotica is the big seller and keeps them financially profitable, but ePubs really need to work on providing more and better mainstream as well. If and when they do, they need to work on making it known and accessible.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 06:50:31
AMEN!
I had a fair few ebooks (though I’ve always preferred paper) and then the Infernal Machine decides to have a hissy fit and my library is dead… really put me off.
Paypal – wasn’t an issue for me before – but the more horror stories I hear, the more I want Paypal or another payment method I trust. I’m beginning to think that 2 of the essentials to opening an e-publishing business is a history of mental illness and a long term crack addiction.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 07:23:11
That was the old shopping cart. We don’t actually have a gift certificate option right now because the programmers are still working on it. I’m not sure how it will function when they’re done. Buy for a Friend is on our list of requests for the programmers, but since we’re still tweaking the new cart, that’s on our “second wave” of programming once we get any lingering bugs worked out of our first wave.
I do want to share, that I think consumers should always email sites and give them feedback, let them know what they want. We have tried to actively seek that. But I also don’t want those same consumers to feel that any epublisher/retailer,, no matter who that epub/retailer is are ignoring them or think their requests aren’t valid when they aren’t implemented. The fact is, while it seems like it should be easy to implement every idea, sometimes it’s not always possible, whether because the programming with a particular cart system isn’t possible, or because it would cost thousands of dollars to install something that might not show a legitimate return for the cost.
In the world of online commerce, every business is limited by the shopping cart they purchase. There are free carts, but they are of course limited to what they come with. When you move into paying for carts, and paying programmers, you move on to paying thousands of dollars for every separate function you add, so they have to be prioritized.
I tell you all this because it’s not that epubs or retailers want to make things harder or more difficult, but because it’s not as easy as someone saying they want it and the online site adding it the next week. I only wish it was, because just as much as the consumers want a fantastic cart/website, so too do the people working daily behind the scene to get it “just right”!
You make a really good point. This is something that we’ve discussed frequently at Samhain and one of the reasons we decided to stop accepting YA and move to romance for the interim. Until we’re ready to do a site redesign and do a seperate site for YA, we didn’t feel we could do those authors or consumers justice with the more explicit feel of the site.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 07:32:08
No DRM would be great, especially if it means no more Adobe Digital Editions. I’d never heard of it before I bought two Loretta Chase novels that had been recced here and at SBTB. After almost two hours of fighting with the program I finally got it to work, only to find out that the book didn’t even cover half the screen, which gave me headaches when I tried to read because of the format. The result of this is that, three months later, the books haven’t been read, and I won’t use that ebook seller again.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 07:37:00
I’m curious as to why you think Loose Id does not use Fictionwise. We have for several years.
We have several business reasons for not using Paypal. They’re fairly compelling for us.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 07:48:01
This is a wonderful post, and I agree with every item. I end up using Fictionwise almost exclusively for those very reasons. For example, I recently lost my hard drive, so needed to re-download my hundreds of e-books. The few I had bought at other sites are gone, because they don’t have the ‘eternal bookshelf.’ (I now have a backup system, needless to say.)
Ms. James, thanks very much for giving the explanation about why the other etailers don’t do some of these things.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 07:50:54
I had come to say as much as the others above about the paypal issue. And on another note as an oft user of paypal as a seller, don’t be fooled into believing paypal is all that wonderful. It’s not, it’s just as easily used for fraud as anything else, but usually by the buyer to defraud the seller.
On an aside, Loose Id has been releasing books to FW and ARe fairly regularly now. Not right away like Samhain, but once the first rush of sales are over. (As an author, I like it done this way as the bulk of my sales then give me a higher royalty rate. What I receive is substantially less through a secondary retailer)
As for the eternal bookshelf – yes, I’d be on with that (even though I offsite backup my eBook files regularly), along with the multiple file packages. Moving from reading on my PDA or laptop to my Sony would have been much easier if this was more standard.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 08:00:52
We don’t contract directly with Fictionwise. They pick up our books from Lightning Source like the other eretailers (such as Books on Board, Diesel eBooks, etc.) So any immediate release (or not) is on their side as far as Samhain books are concerned. We have no control over that at this date.
I do think Loose Id’s plan is wise, though, keeping their books for later release through Fictionwise with the direct contract, because Anne is correct in saying that the authors will make more through direct sales at Loose Id or other eretailers, rather than through Fictionwise, because their requested percentages are higher than other eretailer. I know there are several epublishers who do it this way through Fictionwise, waiting until direct sales have slowed to use Fictionwise as an alternate sale venue. It’s good business, I think. So that’s another reason you may not see some epublishers on Fictionwise, for what it’s worth.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 08:46:50
The one book I was looking to buy was Josh Lanyon’s latest. I will just wait for it to show up at Fictionwise or some other etailer. I just have become increasingly uncomfortable giving out private information to smaller companies given the actions that I’ve seen publishers take like New Concepts Publishing against its authors which is why I prefer to pay with paypal.
I understand the policy of driving more direct sales to its own site but I, as a reader, just prefer the ability to purchase through one site. The reason that I buy from eHarlequin is that I can get the books earlier and maybe that is the concept that I need to apply to epublishers.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 09:05:42
Of course you do, we all want to do what’s most convenient. It’s why I shop at Walmart even while feeling somewhat guilty at times after having seen that Walmart video. And Fictionwise understands this, and it’s why they feel they’re in a position to ask publishers to sign high percentage contracts. Like Amazon and the POD debate, they understand they have a good market share that authors and publishers want to be a part of. It puts each publisher in the position of having to determine how best to negotiate this for the financial health of their company and authors, while meeting customer requests.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 09:29:15
Convenience is a good thing. Authors always push readers to buy books directly from the publisher, or not buy books before the release date or whatever to push up their sales numbers so they can get more money.
I’m kinda missing the part where I’m supposed to care. If a book’s on the shelf, I’m buying it, regardless of where it is or what day of the week the book is displayed.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 09:37:35
Correct me if I’m wrong, but can’t you back up your ebooks in your email? I email files to myself all the time for backup. Even if my computer crashes my Yahoo/Hotmail/gmail accounts are still there. Not that I disagree. Publishers offering that service would be awesome. It’s just another option.
And thirding on the thing about authors not making as much money on Fictionwise. One of my publishers has asked repeatedly if we (the authors) want them to distro through Fictionwise and our answer is always a resounding NO. This is not always a publisher decision; sometimes it’s writers not wanting to lose 90% of their royalties.
And ugh, Paypal. I use it when I have to, but I’ve heard too many horror stories to prefer it, even if they didn’t have those stupid policies about buying erotica. I agree I’d rather use them than give my info to some tiny start-up, but there are other options out there for payments, and I certainly don’t worry when it comes to The Big Four houses.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 09:55:24
I don’t prefer it either because they don’t cover non-tangible goods. Been there and done that with them and luckily for me, the merchant came through. I use them as a last resort. I buy my ebooks from eharlequin or Fictionwise or maybe Powells. That’s it. I can either wait the ebook I want to show up at Fictionwise or do without it. I have enough books.
As for Jane’s article, agree with every item on your list. I keep all my ebooks on a CD and email them to myself for storage. I don’t know what it is – I don’t trust websites because when Random House ebook store closed, you were forced to do that anyway. Keeping CC info, I wish Fictionwise would do this but I get around that by using micropay.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 09:59:34
.
Loose Id is certainly smaller than Harlequin. However we are a fairly large company in epub terms if you care to look at our website info. (Gawd, I hope I did this right.)
Reply
And we do have Josh Lanyon’s latest ebook.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 10:08:27
Third try. I’ll get this right eventually. Link to About Us
Reply
Sep 28, 2008 @ 10:10:18
Thinking bad thoughts right now. Sorry, folks.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 10:24:30
This may be heresy coming from an epubbed author, but I don’t understand the logic that a buyer should have the ability to go to a site (forever, for the length of their membership, whatever) and be able to download (again?) something they bought? I suppose iTunes is the closest parallel to this, and they have that eternal storage thing as well. I find it surprising, but I guess it’s a strategy that hasn’t hurt them. I wish Nordstrom’s worked that way. Dang.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 10:30:20
Since I don’t have an ebook reader, I was more than annoyed when I tried to purchase a Kindle edition of a Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ book for my sister’s birthday. Ultimately I had to log into her amazon account and then realized that the only way to make a purchase on MY credit card was to remove her information, add/remove mine and put hers back in again. So much for a surprise gift of a specific title.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 10:35:05
Jane,
As always, thank you for the feedback and thanks as well to all that commented in the subsequent thread. Our BooksOnBoard team will bookmark and study this and future related posts as we prioritize development plans.
We continue to evolve our ebook and audio bookshop. Recently, we added customer reviews to help readers with buying decisions. We are aggressively encouraging readers to do reviews with BooksOnBoard Reward Dollars offers for those that do them. It is often challenging to get enough detail on an eBook to make an informed decision and we hope that reviews will help increase customer satisfaction with choices.
We also now offer Google checkout (with a 2% discount on the total sale to get people to try it) as it offers a smoother checkout experience for many (though not all) of our readers than PayPal. It saves credit card info, etc., at Google. We are very reluctant to keep credit card info on our own servers because of fraud risks. Also, once the criminals know you’re keeping this information, they target your servers – and sometimes your employees – to get at the credit card info. Google and PayPal have tens of millions of dollars, if not more, in infrastructure designed to block those attacks, plus full-time security personnel and very large IT organizations. eBook retailers are hard-pressed to come up with similar resources to provide that level of protection against hard core criminals; that’s a major reason why some of us do not keep or store customer’s detail, instead relying on Google and PayPal. (With the current banking meltdown, this exposure is escalating, re-assuring us that we made the best decision for our customers in this regard.)
We also continue to work to get more titles from the publishing community. For example, we carry Samhain titles and have podcast interviews available for some of their popular authors like Jess Dee, Lorelei James and Jayne Rylon – with more to come.
Re: DRM – the real problem is often not the DRM itself, but the software implementations of it. The reader software can make downloading a DRM’d eBook very painful. It’s the primary reason we keep a 7 day a week support operation going. We do find that it is rare that customers have problems with DRM’d product if they install the reader software first before downloading any ebooks. Very recent changes in Adobe Digital Editions and Mobipocket make this even easier for first time users. (Unfortunately, in both cases, the changes from each were un-documented, leaving those who had already been using the software with some odd problems that they and our support team continue to work through.)
As an eBook retailer, we do not have the power to change the Adobe, Mobipocket or Kindle DRM, but we can help readers work through those problems – and provide aggressive feedback to the software makers. We provide support, help pages and graphic tutorials on our site. For those customers who lose all their books in a hard drive failure or machine change, we also help with re-setting titles so that they can be downloaded again. This is normally done within 2 to 4 hours (sometimes minutes) of receiving the request. We do firmly provide and believe in the concept of an eternal bookshelf although there are some nuances to this associated with rights that some of the publishers still have not sorted out for digital content.
We would really appreciate further feedback and ideas on Buy for a Friend. In looking at the other options already out there for eBooks, we have not seen anything that meets the high standard we want for our customers. If a workable mechanism can be identified, we would like to add that to our development plans. Currently, we offer it for the Cybook and other hard goods, but are not clear how to effectively offer this for DRM products. (In this regard, DRM is, indeed, a major hassle.)
Thank you again for the thoughtful feedback. Everyone in the eBook market, whether publishers, retailers, authors, or readers, benefits from this kind of dialog.
Sincere regards,
Bob LiVolsi
CEO
BooksOnBoard
Sep 28, 2008 @ 10:36:05
I think there are lots of good points made above, on both sides of these sticky issues. So I’ll just add my 2 cents to the request list. This is sort of like the Eternal Bookshelf, but what I’d really like is the ability to download in *more than one format*.
I’m fairly new to reading ebooks, and sometimes I think I want an Adobe PDF, to read on my laptop, but then later I wish I’d bought something I can read on my Treo. One of the reasons I still get paper books is that, actually, they’re *more* portable, IMO, than most ebooks.
And yes, if I bought a dedicated ereader, that would be more portable, but after reading this and many other discussions on the subject, I’m even less ready to commit my hard-earned money to one of those, than to a particular type of ebook! *:?)
Sep 28, 2008 @ 10:44:58
Hm, buying a book for somebody else that magically shows up on their Kindle… I don’t know about that. Magically shows up somewhere that the gift recipient can choose to download it, yes, but I would have an issue with books randomly showing up on my device or computer, even if I wanted them. But I may be misunderstanding something about how the Kindle works here. I don’t own one.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 10:49:41
Ciar – If there wasn’t DRM, I think that a persistent bookstore wouldn’t be necessary but if, for example, you buy in ereader, the DRM is associated with a credit card. If you’ve lost that CC and had it replaced, you have to go into ereader.com or whereever you bought the book, enter the new credit card, re-download the book and then re-enter the necessary DRM information on the reading device. If you didn’t have the ability to redownload with the new DRM authentication information, you wouldn’t be able to read / access the books you had downloaded in the past.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 10:50:51
I closed my PayPal account as I had too many problems with them. As far as using any of the start-ups, I don’t!
I love the new eternal bookshelf at Samhain. It is so convenient. I just wish that I hadn’t bought some of the books,(sorry, Angie)as they were TURKEYS! On the other hand, I have found a wealth of good reading material on their site.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 10:55:51
Ciar, I have dead rainforest books I bought decades ago. They’re still in good condition. I have commercial pressed CDs, likewise. I also have a stack of floppy disks (remember those?) and CD-Rs which are no longer readable. Bit rot got them. Some of those aren’t more than five years old. You can lose an entire collection of print books, of course, but it tends to be a lot easier to lose all of your ebooks.
The bookshelf system offered by e.g. Fictionwise isn’t something that I think readers are *entitled* to, but it is definitely a major convenience to have a system of off-site back-up included for electronic files at the point of sale, given the poor lifespan of the media commonly used for backing up at home. And the poor compliance with backup protocols. :-) Yes, I preach the gospel of back up early and often, but I don’t always do it myself. Having an automated system like the FW bookshelf is definite “added value” from a reader’s perspective, especially if you’ve ever had the trauma of having a hard drive die when you haven’t run a back-up recently. The bookshelf system gives ebooks the life expectancy people expect from their experience with print books.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 11:17:52
I changed my Passport info with MS because I forgot it and they didn’t have my updated email address to send it to me, so I didn’t think it was a big deal to change it. Wrong. I can’t access those books anymore. Didn’t know it at the time but had to learn the hard way.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 11:34:38
An excellent list.
I was shopping at a site where the books can be purchased in multiple formats rather than directly downloaded to a device. So, technically, I should be able to buy 6 copies of a book to give as gifts, because (as it pointed out in no uncertain terms) one book = 1 use. No sharing allowed. I don’t object to that at all, but then why is the Quantity defaulted to ’1′ and a note that says, ‘because this is a download, you don’t need to purchase more than 1 copy’?
I also hate having to go from site to site to shop, and am far more likely to fill my order with books available at eBookwise or Fictionwise rather than having to hit the boutiques.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 11:39:34
I really haven’t bought from anyone other than LI and Samhain, so I don’t know that much about other etailers. I know LI explains on its site why they don’t PayPal anymore. I do wonder, however, if there’s not another similar pay service available. I’d be surprised if there’s not, given that other erotic sites would presumably have the same problem. They seem big on making things as convenient as possible for their customers. Does anyone know of such a service?
Sep 28, 2008 @ 11:46:42
Paypal does have problems, but as a non-US citizen I find it incredibly useful. I ended up having to get a credit card to purchase items from US sites, since very few accept most European debit cards. I’d rather pay by paypal and have the money come from my debit account than pay by credit card, especially for relatively low price items.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 12:31:18
I’m glad the bookshelf could meet one of the requests we’d had for when we were updating the bookshelf. Like I said, we’re still working on getting gift certificates and “buy for a friend” implemented in the cart.
And, Bev, don’t apologize to me. I would find it shocking if there was anyone who loved every book a publisher produced, Samhain or otherwise! It’s the reason we have a dozen editors–everyone has different tastes and loves different things.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 12:53:28
If a publisher [like me, with only 1 title (mine) and 1 in the works (not mine)] wants to be on Fictionwise and ARe (don’t know about the others), they have a minimum number of titles with a minimum number of authors before they’ll sell your book(s). It’s going to be a looooooooooong time before I-as-publisher will be able to meet that requirement.
I’d love to get on BooksonBoard because I like their site better than Fictionwise’s, but I haven’t emailed them about their requirements.
My only payment option is Paypal and will stay that way because of the reasons Bob stated.
Angela said:
Ditto that! I need a tweak to my shopping cart that doesn’t bear up under ROI right now.
Oh, I don’t know. That sounds like enforcement by “I know it when I see it.”
Kerry said:
I’ll offer a zip bundle with all the formats I produce.
As I said in another thread, I am simply in love with Samhain’s new shopping cart. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if they made that their default home pages with links BACK to the current site for details, etc.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 13:22:21
The problem with “eternal downloads” is that if a publisher sells a fair number of books, eventually the database that is storing all the orders becomes unweildy and sluggish. At Loose Id, we sell far too many books every day to keep more than two years’ worth of orders in our live database. Old orders must periodically be archived to keep the ordering system working at top speed.
Other sites may not see our volume, or, like Fictionwise, may use a different system for ordering. We have had no complaints from actual customers (as opposed to non-customers) about our system. Most computer users realize that the responsibility for backing up files is theirs.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 13:32:28
All great suggestions Jane, I always appreciate your insight to the reader’s mind.
Angie is right about the extensiveness and price of building the perfect cart. One reason why Liquid Silver’s has been “in progress”.
We opt to delay offerings through Fictionwise and ARe due to the lower royalty rates for both our authors and ultimately us. While we’re in the business of providing great reads to our readers, we’re also in the business of making money for all involved in creating the books, editors, artists and authors.
While we don’t currently have a bookshelf, it will be one of our options for our new cart, and we’ve recently discussed offering all files in one zip download. For now, if you lost a Liquid Silver book or need a new format, you can email us directly to request that.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 14:05:05
I want eharlequin to stop cutting me off when I’m trying to buy ebooks *sob* As near as I can tell, they won’t allow a purchase larger than 150.00 via credit card for their ebooks. (in a single transaction) It’s embarassing to admit how many times I’ve gotten that pesky error message that I’ve exceeded their allowable single purchase limit or whatever it says (I don’t have the verbatim message) but as I spend an obscene amount of money each month buying ebooks from Harlequin, this policy makes me say “huh??” and scratch my head. Don’t they want my money?? Don’t they want to sell me these books?
Instead I have to go delete books from my cart to get it below 150.00 so the sale can go through *sigh*
Yeah, yeah I know, technically I could go do another order to include those leftover books, but why should I have to?
Sep 28, 2008 @ 14:15:57
You seem to be approaching the wish list from a techie standpoint but my pet peeve with epublishing sites is the lack of information about “coming soon” titles. It drives me crazy to go and see maybe a cover and nothing else. No blurb, nothing. Usually not even a release date. I make all my purchasing decisions based on blurbs and nothing else. So seeing a cover with no info and no release date? I probably won’t even be back because why would I be? I’m not going to remember to go back on the publisher’s release day each and every week on the off chance I’ll find something that intrigues me.
The other thing that really has nothing to do with the publisher but is related to the whole lack of information. There has been a few times when I saw a cover on a coming soon page (no information mind you) but it might be an author I recognize or it might intrigue me enough that I actually go hunt down the author’s website in hope that IT might provide me some information about the book. Only to find absolutely nothing there either at which point I just write the entire thing off in my irritation *g*
The rest of the list really isn’t as important to me because if I want the book bad enough, I’ll find a way to get it, but if the publisher tells me nothing about the book other than it’s “coming soon” at some date some time in the next year then I’m not going to be very motivated to keep looking back for when they decide to update me.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 14:56:01
My main peeves, aimed at the publishers rather than the stores, not already mentioned are:
1. Don’t sell ebooks at hardcover prices. Or, if you must, actually reduce the price when the paperback comes out.
2. If the latest book in a series is available as an ebook, make the earlier ones available as well. There are lots of anal people like me that need to start at the beginning.
3. Release the ebook at the same time as the paper book.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 15:11:57
“1. Don't sell ebooks at hardcover prices. Or, if you must, actually reduce the price when the paperback comes out.”
Absolutely! With a lot of readers still not on the eBook bandwagon, high prices for a non-paper book don’t exactly make them want to take a chance. In my opinion, they shouldn’t cost more than the cheapest grocery store paperback, $4.99, because that is their competition.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 16:33:57
This same issue happened to me with my Adobe ID. I now have different IDs on different computers with different books on each. I’d love to be able to consolidate them and have multiple IDs work on my Adobe DE files. Then, someone could switch IDs for whatever reason but still be able to read the (legitimately purchased) ebooks you already own. In one place.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 19:23:09
I absolutely agree about charging hardback prices for ebooks. I usually buy at Fictionwise, and with the Buywise membership, they’re usually heavily enough discounted that I can bring myself to buy one if it’s something I really want. But it really irks me when the book then comes out in paperback, and they don’t reduce the ebook price, so that I can buy the paperback for substantially less than the ebook. (I am assuming there’s a good reason for this but it is annoying.)
I also don’t understand why all of a series isn’t in ebook form if they’re from the same publisher. I had to buy the first two of Nalini Singh’s Psy series in paperback, then the rest in ebooks, for example. Again, I’m assuming there’s an excellent reason but I wish it wasn’t that way.
I’m enjoying this thread a lot. It’s really interesting to hear the explanations from the publishers and etailers themselves.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 20:07:30
I also don’t understand why all of a series isn’t in ebook form if they’re from the same publisher. I had to buy the first two of Nalini Singh’s Psy series in paperback, then the rest in ebooks, for example. Again, I’m assuming there’s an excellent reason but I wish it wasn’t that way.
I had the same issues. I wrote to Fictionwise/eBookwise and asked, and they responded by saying it was totally up to the publisher as to which books they put out in digital format, and which format they choose to put them in. Since I have the eBookwise, my choices are a bit more limited. But yeah, it’s a pain to have part of a series on the reader and part of it on the bookshelf.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 20:39:05
“5. Keep Credit Card information”
That’s dangerous ground, which could easily leave a seller open to legal problems, especially in Europe where they have strict data protection laws.
It’s not feasible for smaller sellers to have the level of security necessary to protect against determined criminal hacker attacks. Such would cost at least six figures per annum.
- – -
@ Maya:
“they won't allow a purchase larger than 150.00 via credit card for their ebooks”
We have a limit like that at LSB too. The reason is to reduce the amount we lose every month to credit card fraud. Every online seller has to have such safeguards if they want to stay in business for long.
Mike Feury,
Liquid Silver Books.
Sep 28, 2008 @ 22:21:37
Maya says:
YES! Add that one to the list along with all the others– give me a release date at least, and hey, while you’re at it it, maybe a blurb.
BTW, am I the only one that remembers when EC and the other epubs had to stop using Paypal because of the subject matter they were selling? Then, I don’t know what happened, but suddenly they were able to use it again.
But in any case, I look at it this way- epubs are in the business of selling books. They are NOT in the ecommerce security business. So, if I have to choose between buying directly from an epub and giving them my CC info or buying that same book from a site like Fictionwise because I feel they are more secure, then Fictionwise it is.
And that’s not just me being overly cautious. During that time when epubs couldn’t use Paypal I bought directly from epubs and months later received letters from two of the smaller ones informing me that their security had been breached.
Sep 29, 2008 @ 00:47:32
I’ll agree with everything but the credit card requirement. After seeing too many news stories about company databases being “compromised”, I’m okay with having to re-enter my credit card information every time.
Sep 29, 2008 @ 03:48:18
Kerry D. says:
My main peeves, aimed at the publishers rather than the stores, not already mentioned are:
1. Don't sell ebooks at hardcover prices. Or, if you must, actually reduce the price when the paperback comes out.
2. If the latest book in a series is available as an ebook, make the earlier ones available as well. There are lots of anal people like me that need to start at the beginning.
3. Release the ebook at the same time as the paper book.
I totally agree with you Kerry…
I don’t understand why ebooks are sold at hardcover prices. I’m learning to be more patient on when I buy my ebooks and will generally wait for a discounted price.
I hate the fact that I can’t buy all of the books in a series in ebook format – still waiting on Lora Leigh’s Harmony’s Way and Wild Card, some Christine Feehan, Nalini Singh, Sherrilyn Kenyon, etc to be released in ebook format. I am now at the stage where 97% of my book buys are ebooks and I buy very few paperbacks. When the publishers don’t release books in ebook then they generally miss out on a sale as I will borrow the print book from the library if it is available.
Another peeve is that quite often the ebooks don’t have the bonus features of hardcovers or paperbacks e.g excerpt chapters for the next book. I have Christine Feehan’s Dark Celebrations in ebook, but the ebook did not include the recipes that were included in the hardcover, yet I still was expected the same hardcover price for the ebook.
Sep 29, 2008 @ 08:50:25
I am practically the Patron Saint of Late Adopters and I am the type of person who requires six months to learn her new cell phone number. Although I kinda sorta want an eReader these posts scare me witless that I’ll end up with one kind of hardware and somehow buy lots of books in an incompatible format or in the right format but I mess up the download and since “only one” download is deemed appropriate for ebooks I never actually get to read. And? I also lose my credit cards with shame-making frequency and I can’t imagine having to resynch a new CC number so that I can read books I’ve already purchased. Gah.
Since I read 6-8 books a week the cost of switching to ebooks (and my perceived potential for an expensive failure) seems very high. Perhaps what publishers could do for folks like me who are intrigued but wary is to get very remedial, technology-wise.
I realize that ultimately the obstacles keeping me from taking the plunge are almost completely out of publishers’ control. They can help me understand and navigate the ebook world, though this might come under the heading of “20 percent of your customers require 80 percent of the effort”.
Sep 29, 2008 @ 09:10:51
One option for an Eternal Bookshelf is to store them on Bookworm, which is my site for saving and reading epub books online. The books must be in the ‘epub’ format, and they can’t have DRM. I realize that excludes a lot of existing e-books, but the main goal of Bookworm is to push for widespread adoption of the open ‘epub’ format.
Once they’re uploaded to Bookworm you can either read them through your web browser, or download them to a device that can read the epub format, such as the Sony Reader or the iPhone (using Stanza).
However, in general I agree: if I’ve bought from an online store I should be able to re-download those purchases perpetually.
Sep 29, 2008 @ 10:08:25
It’s interesting that this topic comes up now, because this morning I went to Fictionwise’s website eager to pre-order several books coming out from Avon Romance only to discover…
…that right now, they’re only being offered in Mobipocket! A format I can’t use. Which means I’ll either have to go to Books on Board (and spend money where I didn’t intend to, because I had Micropay saved up for these purchases) or wait until Fictionwise gets these books in MS Reader format. Which means waiting until after the release date–and when you’ve been looking forward to something for a while, you know how frustrating that can be. Plus, the books might not be available in MS Reader until after the “rapid rebate” period ends. Sure, it’s only a few extra saved cents here and there, but in this economy, every little bit helps.
So add me to the chorus wanting number 9 to happen.
Sep 29, 2008 @ 10:15:18
About entering credit card numbers:
There are easy, safe and effective ways to automate this, and all other routine data entry like name, address etc. It’s been years since I typed any of that stuff into an online form.
Google toolbar certainly has “form filling” ability, maybe other toolbars too. I’ve used RoboForm for 7-8 years–it just works and saves me time daily.
Sep 29, 2008 @ 13:16:50
Really good points and I’m glad they’re collected here for e-tailers to note and FIX. I don’t even buy e-books yet but I’m still concerned about these missing pieces. Folks that do provide these options are going to win over the customers who aren’t sure they’re ready for the e-book plunge! I’m glad this also addresses many e-tailers, more than just Amazon.
Jess
http://bookpublishing.today.com
From Print to E, Some Items To Consider | Booksquare
Sep 29, 2008 @ 14:11:13
[...] related thoughts, Jane’s post “10 Things Epublishers Should Do for Readers”. Great minds and all [...]
Sep 29, 2008 @ 15:23:56
Here here about accepting PayPal and removing the DRM. Quite frankly, the publishers/sellers are punishing the good, trustworthy people for the few bad apples. And it’s unsettling to see how DRM is blowing up in the customers’ faces rather than the company’s. There was a snafu a while back concerning Microsoft’s digital music player/Zune music player and it was not pretty. I can understand them wanting to protect their property, but they need to do so within reason. Crippling the functionality of a file is not the way to go.
Times Emit: Apt’s links for September 29th
Sep 29, 2008 @ 19:33:36
[...] 10 Things Epublishers Should Do for Readers | Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, … – Quite right. [...]
Sep 29, 2008 @ 22:11:47
Pink Petal Books (http://www.pinkpetalbooks.com/) also offers nearly all of these features.
Eternal Bookshelf. – We are offering this feature with our October releases.
Mass downloads – I’m afraid we don’t offer this feature, but we do offer all formats in one zip file when you purchase. No more thinking “which device do I want to read this book on.”
Paypal. Yes, we accept PayPal. We also have our own merchant account and accept credit cards too. :)
Gift certificates. We offer gift certificates in any amount, and you can send gift certificates to a friend. So while you can’t directly purchase a book for a friend, you can certainly purchase a gift certificate for them.
Availability – our ebooks are available on Amazon/Kindle, MobiPocket and all of its affiliated stores, our website, and Jupiter Gardens, LLC’s shop, our parent company. We will be adding other venues going forward and the next venue we hope to add is ARe early next year.
Multiple formats with NO DRM – With every purchase on an ebook through our store, we offer one zip file with PDF, PRC, and HTML. LIT will be coming soon! And we only offer DRM on MobiPocket because they require it.
Thanks so much for this post.
Sep 30, 2008 @ 10:14:54
Eternal Bookshelf. An eternal bookshelf means that every purchase you have bought can be downloaded at any time.
Which is one of the reasons I like the new Samhain/MBAM platform so much. When I was on hols, I was able to log on and download the books that I hadn’t read yet, instead of mass e-mailing them to my Gmail account.
Sep 30, 2008 @ 11:56:21
We at DailyLit love this kind of post too–it’s great to know what’s on readers’ minds. In fact, reader feedback often directly guides what features we develop and what books we acquire.
Since DailyLit sends books in installments via email or RSS, not all of the items in the list apply to us. But, I thought I’d chime in because we do offer many of these features:
1. Eternal Bookshelf: Our readers can easily resend installments of books to themselves. Many of our books are free, though, so folks can read them as often as they’d like.
3. Buy for a Friend: We offer a gifting feature that allows folks to gift any DailyLit book (even free ones) and include a personalized message for their friend.
4. Pay by PayPal: We’re working on adding PayPal–something our readers have asked for–but we’ll continue to offer payment by credit card too.
7. Wishlists: We recently launched BookLists, another feature our readers had requested. BookLists allow our readers to create a list of the books they’re planning to read on DailyLit as well as a list of their favorite books–or any other list they’d like (for instance, I recently made a list of the best Halloween books). We also display all the books our Members are reading/have read on their profile pages.
10. DRM: This is a contentious issue, and we’re sensitive to both sides–readers on one hand and on the other authors/publishers who (not unfairly) want to protect their content. We’ve tried to balance both sides by using other methods (including the serialization format) that allow us to make our installments DRM-free.
Here’s how we handle a couple other issues that have come up in the comments:
-Pricing: We’re very sensitive to our readers in terms of pricing. We also have more than 700 books available completely free, which we hope encourages folks to give ereading and DailyLit a try.
-Software/hardware incompatibility: We use existing email/RSS technology, so our books are available on any device on which you can read email or RSS (desktop, laptop, Blackberry, iPhone, etc.)
@Maya/Patron Saint of Late Adopters
More than $150/month on ebooks? Wow! And they say folks don’t read anymore!
@Kerry Blaisdell
If you’re looking for more portability you might check out DailyLit. Our books can be read wherever you get email or RSS, including on smartphones like the Treo.
Thanks so much for this post, Jane, and thanks to all of the folks who have commented so far. It’s an interesting conversation for everyone and it’s always great to get feedback.
Sep 30, 2008 @ 20:31:01
One more suggestion: Publish all ebooks with an *active* Table of Contents! A listing only “table of contents” is not enough for an ebook. The Table of Contents should be “active” meaning all chapter titles actually LINK to THAT chapter. This is especially important for reference works, collections and non-fiction works.
Sep 30, 2008 @ 22:41:03
General toss-out question: Is this important to others, too? I like this feature myself, but does anyone else?
Oct 01, 2008 @ 06:26:32
I think an “active” table of contents would be great, but it’s not a ‘deal breaker’. I can tell my reader to go to a page, so I can get there. Also, my reader lets me bookmark and highlight, so if I need to find anything again, I can get there quickly.
Oct 01, 2008 @ 14:44:12
I liked the idea of a linked Table of Contents when I first started reading ebooks…then discovered how very rarely I used it. So as MoJo said, it’s not a “deal-breaker” for me.
That said, I agree with Gerald that in reference books and collections I’ve missed it. It would be nice to be able to hop to “this” chapter in my computer reference book (or even a diet book) or “that” story in an anthology (especially when the first story I want to read is the last one in the ebook).
The Casual Optimist - Midweek Miscellany Oct 1, 08
Oct 01, 2008 @ 17:49:37
[...] 10 Things Epublishers Should Do For Readers : a nice wish list from Dear Reader. [...]
This week’s Guardian Technology letters and blog pingbacks in full by Techno News Feed
Oct 14, 2008 @ 07:49:08
[...] SPORE>> In another example of why DRM is bad, one need only look to the recent iPhone App debacle by Spore. Spore was a game put out by EA Sports, a very popular one. It came with draconian DRM and in the space of days, a cracked version was leaked onto the net and over a half a million people turned to the cracked one instead of downloading a legitimate one crippled by DRM. EA relented and released a patched version with less constraints.dearauthor.com [...]
Nov 15, 2008 @ 16:21:04
Sorry to be so late to the party but I just found this website and this thread. Your top 10 (minus saving the credit card information) perfectly expresses my wants as an e-book reader.
My hot spot on the top 10 list is the lack of availability in multiple formats. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written to publishers requesting this. While they always acknowledge the communication, their responses always give me the impression that what they actually heard was “blah, blah, blah”.
My e-book stores are ereader.com and their parent, fictionwise.com. After much experimenting with e-book readers, my personal preference is the Ereader software as my preferred e-book reader. It really does everything I need it to do for desktop reading as well as for reading on the go. Being forced to use MobiPocket or MSReader or Adobe, etc. because the Ereader format is not offered by the publisher just makes no sense to me. The publisher has effectively handicapped themselves right out of the starting gate and greatly increased the chances that I’ll bypass their book in favor of another offered in my choice of reader.
Kerry D’s additional 3 points are also excellent especially in these economic times. I have yet to see a publisher give an explanation of the reason why e-books are priced the same as print books. Perhaps they don’t want to confirm their profit is higher? And why does the e-book price for some publishers (not all) not drop when a hardcover or trade print book is released as a paperback? Why am I as an e-book reader expected to pay the hardcover/trade book price forever??? My solution – don’t buy the book in either print or e-book. A no win situation for everyone.
I don’t believe any one e-book format will ever be acceptable to everyone so why not have multiple formats to maximize selling opportunities?
I spend the majority of my disposal income on books and 95% of that is for e-books. Rarely do I purchase print books anymore. When I do buy print, used book stores are great resources and how does that help either the author or the publisher? It is, however, reality.
Thank you for a great topic.
Why Can’t You “Buy for a friend” on the Kindle? | HarperStudio
Dec 03, 2008 @ 13:30:27
[...] not the only one. Jane from Dear Author lists “Buy for a Friend Option†on her excellent top 10 things Epublishers Should Do for Readers. A book is one of the most personalized gifts one can receive. I'll admit that seeing a note in [...]
L-Book from a reader’s point of view « Jae's Fiction
Mar 29, 2010 @ 15:27:31
[...] Dear Author blogged about the ten things e-publishers should do for readers: [...]
Oct 25, 2010 @ 21:13:30
I completely agree with your statement about the inability to purchase a Kindle book for a friend. You’d think Amazon would figure out a way to let you do this. They should let us sign up for a Gift Username that we can give out to our family and friends. People could then purchase Kindle books for friends as long as they know a person’s Gift Username. I’m sure there are other forms of authentication they’d need to implement, but I can’t imagine they couldn’t figure something out!