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Buying a book from the Stanza store
January 9, 2009 | 1:24 pm
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By Chris Meadows
Let me be clear on this: I give Stanza a lot of grief. I like it on the whole, but there are some areas that I feel could definitely use improvement, so I try my best to call attention to them—partly because I feel that it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, and partly to head off any inaccurate word of mouth (such as the idea that the Stanza reader can’t download from the eReader and plain-vanilla Fictionwise stores) that might get started out of confusion.
But this also means that I often forget to call attention to those areas where Stanza performs well. And one of those is the in-application store. Blogger Adrian Graham has posted an entry walking through the process step by step, illustrated with screenshots of each step, and this process highlights a few areas that Fictionwise’s eReader could stand to emulate.
The process is admirably simple, and very similar to the process of downloading a free title from Feedbooks or the other free sites in Stanza’s on-line catalog. It just requires traversing a few menus, clicking the buy link, filling in the payment information, and downloading.
It is important to note the difference between Stanza’s store and eReader’s: in Stanza, it is possible to do everything from browsing to buying to downloading to reading within the Stanza application itself—much as you can do with the Kindle. eReader and Fictionwise still require making the purchase in a separate application (be it Mobile Safari or a desktop web browser) and then downloading it from within eReader.
It’s worth emphasizing that this is done entirely within the Stanza application, from browsing to reading—there is no call to the Mobile Safari web browser to handle the shopping process to slow things down while the app loads, or confuse the buyer with different interfaces. The store is completely self-contained within Stanza.
The process is seamless from start to finish, with an interface that is for the most part sensible and easy to understand. (The smallness of the “buy” link, pointed out by Adrian, is one of few areas that could stand some improvement.)
Experienced e-readers, who are used to the rigamarole of buying a book, downloading it to the desktop, then hot-syncing it to their gadget might scoff at the significance of this, but the big reason the Kindle has taken off as fast as it has is that very simplicity to the average consumer. Now Stanza is offering that same level of simplicity to readers, with their own store.
Fictionwise really needs to learn from Stanza’s example and add some kind of browsing and buying access to its stores from within its eReader app. If there’s one thing Amazon and Lexcycle know, it’s that the easier you make it for customers to buy your books, the more often they will.
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Comments:
I get so puzzled when I read a post like this. I don’t know if some distinction is being made that’s over my head, or what. I buy books from eReader.com, and I do it through the eReader app and download the books directly into the iPhone. I click the little + sign, choose “eReader Mobile site” from the menu of destinations that pops up, and I do my shopping. Yes, it’s a web-based experience, but it’s a mobile-optimized version of the site, and I can search and purchase and download, then I’m dropped right back at my booklist, where I started.
Are you just saying you don’t LIKE using the mobile eReader store that’s accessed from the app? Granted, the experience could be improved. But I often feel like people are saying there’s no way to buy a book and download it to eReader all from the phone, and there definitely is. I find it just as easy as pie (once the account is set up via the web, of course).
I’m saying that from a user-interface point of view, Stanza is going to be a lot less confusing to the average consumer. Selecting a book is just a matter of picking from a series of menus. It’s simple, quick, and easy, and you don’t have to swap between apps, even with eReader doing the swapping, to do it.
I don’t have any problem using the mobile website. But it’s an additional level of complexity for Joe Sixpack, who has other things to think about than the technology.