Dear AuthorThe ladies at Dear Author.com, having given us a great guide to the Tower of eBabel, are at it again–this time with advice on evaluating e-bookstores. No, it isn’t billed as such; rather, this is a review of a particular publisher‘s storefront. But along the way, some generic criteria emerge in effect from Jane and Jayne.

I’ll take Ja(y)ne’s list and add a few wrinkles of my own. At a time when you can get the same title at a variety of e-bookstores, here are a few things you might consider in evaluating stores beyond the prices:

–Ease of navigation.

–Whether there are excerpts of books, and how long they are.

–If reviews are included. Amazon, of course, has a great mix of reviews not just from professional sources but also from readers. What’s more, though it’s no substitute for the Amazon reviews, I like Fictionwise‘s little charts showing how many readers rated a book as “Great,” “Good,” “OK,” or “Poor.” Hardly scientific, but better than nothing.

–The length, ideally a word count. File size would be nice as well.

–A place to list books that you may want to buy in the future.

–A shelf from which you can download books again–ideally with no time limit. No certainty, however. Consider the fate of eBookAd’s customers when the store site went down the tubes–the supposedly permanent shelves vanished.

–Mainstream payment options such as Visa and PayPal.

–Immediate download after payment. In fairness to stores, some keep prices down by fighting fraud aggressively, and they can mean omitting this feature.

–E-mail confirmation of your purchase.

I would also add other criteria such as general aesthetics and of course the number of titles carried, and their overall quality, but generally the Dear Author ladies have it right.

So what else should you consider when evaluating a store, and which stores do you like, and why?

The library angle: Yes, many of these same criteria would apply to the display of library e-books online.

5 COMMENTS

  1. All good criteria, but one thing I really like about Amazon is something I’ve only heard of happening once, but would like to see more of. When Anne Rice published Blood Canticle, the readers were so upset that they angrily began posting horrible reviews and personal attacks against her on Amazon, to the point that Anne herself came in and posted a counter review in which she bashed those that were bashing her. Now, I’m not big on the bashing part – obviously the Internet doesn’t need any more flame wars than it already has – but I like the fact that the medium brought the author down from a pedestal into conversation with the readers. Neil Gaiman’s blog is a better example, but obviously it isn’t a neutral forum like the Amazon review listings. Anyway, I’d like to see more opportunities for that sort of interaction come into play with the advent of ebooks.

  2. One advantage of e-books is that they provide a good opportunity of users with disabilities to access written treasures. However, after brief evaluation of several e-book stores I found that most of them totally ignore the issue of accessibility and for visually impaired people it is impossible to meaningfully navigate these sites, browse their content or even make the actual purchase.
    So, just as any website, e-bookstores should be fully accessible and this criteria should be taken into account.

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