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By Paul Biba

Quite frankly I saw this news in several places and it didn’t strike me as being very important. However, when someone like Eoin Purcell calls it “game changing” I guess that I should take notice. Here is Eoin’s thinking on the matter from his blog. Go over there to get his links and read the full text:

eoinpurcellblogimage1.jpg… I wrote some time ago about the differences between the Tor.com community and the less developed Voyager books community, well now, Tor have taken a further giant leap ahead and launched a new store for the web community that they say:

offers science fiction and fantasy media from most major publishers—the only requirement is that the books in question relate to the genre in some form or another. In keeping with the spirit of our “…And Related Subjects” tagline, we’ve made sure to be as inclusive as possible, and are going to be constantly updating and refining the selection of titles available in the Store.

Smarts
Frankly, this is a game changing move and here is why. Tor has succeeded in capturing a great deal of attention relating to science fiction and fantasy in the online space. They have done this organically by offering decent services and interesting content to fans of the genres. Now they are adding, not so much a commercial layer as a further service to their members. The community is already buying books, they are already reading about books they might wish to buy on Tor.com. By offering a way to get these books to the community they have made life easier for the community members, at a stage when those members have already become used to allocating a great deal of their attention to Tor.com.

Naturally (and so long as prices are reasonable) they will use the site to buy books and not resent the fact that Tor will benefit. What’s more, Tor don’t need to clutter their site with lots of ads for books, links in CONTEXT will suffice. I’ve several times read reviews of books then had to leave the site to find a copy for sale, an in content link would have saved me time, hassle and probably money. …

 
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