Lyn Gala ~ Gathering Storm
From: Dreamspinner Press
Dreamspinner Press where do I begin with you? We have needed to have a little discussion about some of your choices for awhile (a while?) now…
This book is simply one example. See, I would have bought this when it first came out but I never saw it.
That’s probably because whenever I go to your website the front page is just a generic failure in selling anything to anyone and I honestly do not have time to climb through your stupid poorly thought out navigation menu on a regular basis to make up for your lack of vision.
For someone trying to sell books, which is what I guess you are trying to do, in various formats be that eBook, or print, or audio which are basically just different formats of the same content. You fail so miserably at exhibiting your most recent creations quickly and easily to potential online customers on your own website that in my opinion you are making Torquere Press look business like and practical and that in itself is so wrong on so many levels.
A constructive quick fix would be to simply go over and try to emulate better organized ePublishers like Loose Id and their front page or Samhain even with their “overly verbose” version of a front page. It’s not hard to have a minimally decent simple front page to sell your latest eBooks you know. Even Liquid Silver got their act together eventually and believe me they look ten times better than when they first started out.
My real question for today is why do you use drop shadows on the cover pages IN your eBooks?
My pet cat can probably do a drop shadow too. Do you think drop shadows add anything to the cover art? You paid some graphics artist really good money to do a proper eye catching cover for you so you feel it necessary to add the amateurish drop shadow? Maybe it’s me but I don’t understand why anyone wants to go back and relieve the 90′s and all those bad “free” Java photo effects. It was a cheap effect back in the day and now it’s just cheap and old and been done to death.
I just wanted to point out a few issues I see… carry on.
Tags: BDSM, Dreamspinner Press, Gay Romance, Lyn Gala, TBR
Ali wrote,
Amen
Link | January 2nd, 2011 at 9:48 am
kel wrote,
I really like a lot of Dreamspinner’s offerings, so I make the effort – for the authors – to buy from their site, but it drives me batty. As a ui gal, I’d love to see their site traffic patterns. Two things I’d love to see? New stuff on the front page and links to an author’s other titles from the book pages.
Link | January 2nd, 2011 at 11:31 am
TeddyPig wrote,
kel,
I am mentioning all this because it does the writers such a disservice.
They literally get buried under that single column New Releases format. And as I pointed out I had to find out about this book after the fact from some other website.
PLUS if you publish both eBook and Print and whatever other format at the same time every time then why do you need more than one announcement for that shit?
Simply have one displayed page for the book and cover and blurb etc etc and then hyper link to the other formats and their pages for eBook, print, audio etc from that page.
It might save some room there if sales space is so limited by one column.
Hell, they have three columns on the front page.
Link | January 2nd, 2011 at 11:44 am
kel wrote,
There are so many cool ways to organize material – I wish epubs would think about how they use their space. Especially now that more books/short stories are being released every week! Like you, I miss out on a lot.
Link | January 2nd, 2011 at 1:16 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Right Kel and no website is ever a “one and done” deal either.
Samhain needs to clean up all those words they have tacked onto their front page over time it’s getting scary crowded.
Liquid Silver needs a real “coming soon” page that looks decent.
I wish more of the older ePublishers would start looking at other typical retail tricks like offering series package deals where you can buy a whole pile of an established author’s older titles at a special price and stuff like that.
I mean if you want to churn your older stock of eBooks then start thinking of having more sales and package deals like Harlequin does with their Blaze books thus getting newer readers interested in some of the old stuff or other authors and getting eBooks that may not have sold as well the first time around or have been sitting around for a while included in a special package deal.
I am sure their authors would appreciate a few more chances at some sales even if it might mean less money.
Harlequin has some other good ideas besides just their prices.
Link | January 2nd, 2011 at 1:35 pm
di wrote,
Maybe I need to readjust my expectations, because Dreamspinner’s site hasn’t bothered me…much (the multiple/individual listings for each format is annoying). It’s an improvement over what they use to have and compared to some other epublisher sites…
It did take me forever to buy Gathering Storm, though. My problem wasn’t the site, it was the blurb. It’s since changed, but the original blurb made it sound like there was M/F — it was set up as if Vinnie were choosing between Charleston and his boss RJ. I’m super-picky about my M/F & M/M/F and it took me reading and like the author’s other book — Urban Shaman — and being desperate for something to read to finally give it a chance. I’m glad I did, but I really wonder how many sales they lost who were like me and assumed there was some M/F, that wasn’t there at all.
Link | January 2nd, 2011 at 3:56 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
No di it’s really obvious how bad Dreamspinner is in fact it does not even have to be based on my word alone everyone can check this stuff out it’s not like it’s some industry secret. This emperor has no clothes and there is no excuse.
Do your own comparing even! Go compare their front page to Liquid Silver or Samhain or Loose Id or Cobblestone Press or Aspen Mountain Press or even Ellora’s Cave for christ’s sake.
The links are all available on the right hand side of this page.
NONE of those other Top ePublishers NOT A SINGLE DAMN ONE of them wastes their entire front page on a bunch of nonsensical inane navigation links like Dreamspinner does. Almost the whole damn front page except for a couple of spinner boxes on the side is without a single book showing.
I honestly thought they were still working on things when I first saw it so I never really bitched about it because I figured they knew better but were having some issues but it has been a long time now and months have passed and obviously books have been published I have never seen and it’s sad.
Especially for the writers that never got a chance to be seen because their own publisher buried them in that confusing website somewhere. I would fix that first and worry about the blurbs later actually.
Link | January 2nd, 2011 at 4:27 pm
di wrote,
I wasn’t disagreeing with you, merely saying I had lower expectations/it didn’t bother me as much. Yes, the front page is a total waste, but I just skip it and go directly to the “New Releases” page. Is that good design? No. Does it bother me as much as you? No. Should they change it? Most likely.
Of course, I may be a different shopper than many folks. I tend to watch the new release closer than some readers might. And I rely more on newsletters/new releases announcements (via email). So, for me blurbs are more important. I see what’s new and if the blurb interests me, go to the site to buy. I need an idea of what to buy, just browsing is a bit overwhelming for me. I might browse so I’m not just buying one book, but I need a hook to send shopping in the first place.
So, your example of Aspen Mountain being better doesn’t work for me. Yes, they list the newest releases on the front page, but that does me little good, as rarely as I shop at their site.
As far as I can tell, they have no new releases mailing list/group (like every other epublisher). Oh, I’m on at least 3 mailing lists/groups for them and it’s a total waste. Maybe once every 5 months they’ll send out a notice about some random book receiving a good review. Not a peep about new releases. When I do go to shop there it’s beyond frustrating. I have no clue what titles I’ve missed in the past 5 months. And their navigation links on the left-side of the page are a bit jumbled mess and of no real help. If it wasn’t for author promotion, I would never know about new Aspen Mountain titles.
Link | January 2nd, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Teddypig wrote,
Well, my point was obviously the blurbs mean nothing to anyone if you go to the website and do not happen to run across the book the week it comes out.
I think most shoppers are pretty lazy. I know I am. They will check out new authors and new books but the effort has to be made to present them in an obvious and accessible way.
I agree newsletters can be important for sales and promotion but personally I think of them as spam.
The first thing I honestly do when I am looking for something new to read like sometime usually around Tuesday I do exactly what most shoppers would do I go to the front page of each ePublisher website and look for what they are selling that week.
It’s a simple and expected fact that first page front and center for all the Top ePublishers is right where you will find their latest products for sale even on websites you say are hard to use like Aspen Mountain Press that is the plain simple truth.
Some ePublishers even go a little further and have a Recent Releases section that extends several weeks back so you can conveniently catch up.
The only roaming I usually do these days is go to the authors page and look for familiar ones which I click on to see if I missed anything recent.
If Dreamspinner wants Amazon or All Romance eBooks to sell their books better than they can then I will just stop going to their website because it sucks but I figured I would explain why first.
I do that with other ePublishers that have crappy websites or terrible unsecured checkout interfaces and I can start doing it with Dreamspinner it’s just too bad for the writers being published there.
In the end what concerns me really is I can’t actually tell how many more opportunities to buy a new writers work I missed and this is something Dreamspinner could fix if they wanted to.
Link | January 2nd, 2011 at 6:37 pm