bookpublishing

I found an interesting blog post about what e-tailers are missing in their efforts in e-Publishing. I think it’s excellent that this blogger, Jane over at dearauthor.com, has collected these issues together in a well-formed and easy-to-understand post about a difficult-to-maneuver retailing trend. Many people are hesitant about diving into the world of e-books, and for the reasons listed in Jane’s post, their hesitancy makes sense. But if e-tailers could address these problems, I think they could see an influx of customers.

Here are a few highlights:

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. to Fictionwise is the only etailer/epublisher I know of that offers this.

If only iTunes would do this for music!

Buy a 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.

I would be surprised if this didn’t catch on soon, especially with Amazon.

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.

Paypal is also a good option for people like me who do freelance work that is paid via PayPal. Instead of depositing my money, I could use it toward buying books. Not a bad investment, right? Easy to keep track of how much I’m spending as well.

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.

I would be surprised if this ever happened. It doesn’t make sense from a marketing perspective. However, people are tech savvy and will find ways around it. Some smart hacker will write code to convert one format to another (in fact, I’m told there is a converter out there). Since all books are sent to e-tailers as PDFs, it would be simpler for all books to remain PDFs and all readers to read PDFs, but again, not market-smart.

The rest of the post can be found here.

I think the e-book industry is getting there… but they do have to fill these holes to appeal to the paperback crowd.

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