TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

How THIS e-book fan buys

By Ficbot

What are e-book buyers thinking when they shop?

I can’t speak for all buyers, but if you want to know why I buy or don’t buy from various sites—well, here’s the lowdown. No ESP needed. I hope this is useful to retailers and aspiring self-publishers of e-books, although most of the sites named here don’t accept titles from the latter group.

Self-publishers face a daunting learning curve these days. So many stores, so many formats, what to do? Many novices begin with Amazon—Amazon makes it easy, and enjoys a large market share. But the company’s Kindle side officially focuses just on the United States, leaving out me and many other voracious readers (I’m Canadian). Sorry, Amazon. Here’s where I am buying e-books.

Stop One: Fictionwise

Fictionwise (screenshot), which normally does not deal with the self-published, is my preferred e-book store, for several reasons. Firstly, the Fictionwise site is the most pleasant of the big storefronts to navigate. I have checked out its main competitor, Books on Board, and can never seem to find things there when I just browse; I need to have a certain title in mind.

I also have time/effort/resources already expended on the Fictionwise Buywise Club for frequent buyers. This makes Fictionwise often the cheapest source for me because I get a member discount. I also get rebates from them when I buy certain books and I can use these rebates to keep buying more. I have an incentive to shop there because I get money back to spend on other things.

Additionally, Fictionwise has the largest selection of DRM-free multiformat books. I have switched devices several times during my patronage and appreciate that each time I do, I can go back and re-download my past purchases in the format I need for my new device. It is very important to me that my purchases are readable in the future because it is, to me, the great benefit of e-books over print books. I have had to give up print books in the past due to lack of space to store them. With that not being an issue with e-books, I like the idea that I can keep them forever. I would not want to buy an e-book that was so infested with restrictive DRM that its future usability on a device of my choosing would ever be in question.

I also appreciate that Fictionwise offers e-magazine subscriptions as part of its inventory. Again, for me, this has been a space issue in the print world. I like that I can subscribe to a magazine, be able to download it in the format of my choosing, and keep it forever just like a book. I have been reading Asimovs this year and might change to Alfred Hitchcock next year. It’s been a treat for me to get a new issue added to my bookshelf every month.

Finally, I appreciate the one-stop shopping aspect. I like having a record of all my purchases in one spot, and I like being able to log in at any time and have all my past purchases right there for reference and re-download. It’s so much easier than having to back up individual files myself from any of a dozen different solo author websites!

Stop Two: eReader.com

I have not bought from eReader.com (owned by Fictionwise and also closed to self-publishers) yet, but its recent price-matching of Amazon’s $9.99 for new releases and best-sellers, has put eReader on my radar, and it offers different promotions from Fictionwise which might make one book or the other a better buy from eReader at any given moment.

Unfortunately the DRM-locked eReader format is not readable on my Sony. If it’s a real bargain price and an author I love, I may go for it since I can easily read it on my iPod Touch. But I prefer to do the bulk of my leisure reading on the Sony; and if a book cannot be easily and quickly used with that device, I hesitate to buy it. I can say without hesitation that the $1,000 and change I have spent on e-books so far would be at least double if DRM were not an issue and I did not have to worry about such things. Publishers and authors have absolutely lost real, legitimate sales from this!

Stop Three: Smashwords

This is another Web site which has recently entered my radar but from which I have not yet purchased. I love that in nearly every case, you can sample part of the book for free to make sure you’ll like it. Plus, Smashwords is friendly to independent writers and offers many self-published titles that other sites don’t carry.

I have already bought one e-book based on a sample; a prior Fictionwise read of mine had the first chapter of the author’s other book included as a bonus, and I liked it enough to buy the second book. Also, if I do read a book and I enjoy it enough to recommend it to friends, the sample allows them to check out my recommendation without a big commitment of time and money. They can read the free sample and make their own decision.

The only problem I have had with Smashwords so far is that I am unfamiliar with nearly all the authors. I have a lot of backlog in my To Read pile right now, so I have not had a lot of time to go exploring. But an author adept at self-marketing who gets on my radar could absolutely convert me into a Smashwords customer. That Web site is absolutely built on a model I could get behind!

Stop Four: Baen Books

As a reader, I love Baen Books’ business model (the company tends to give away the first book for free in hopes of hooking you into the series) and love that Baen offers a range of formats in a DRM-free approach similar to the Fictionwise multiformat offerings. The only reason I am not a more avid customer: I don’t read a ton of conventional sci-fi. If someone recommends something to me, I will absolutely check it out and see what it’s about. But as with Smashwords, I need someone to get me there first. Unfortunately Baen isn’t for self-published writers.

Now, where don’t I shop, and why not?

• Amazon, for the obvious reasons (no Sony support, and more importantly, no Canada support).
• Scribd (okay for browsing short documents, but every long document I have ever downloaded from Scribd has been an absolutely horrifically messy PDF with no proper line breaks and has looked terrible on my Sony, although I understand that Scribd is working to phase in ePub for many titles).
• Bookstores with restrictive DRM and onerous usage limits (for example, a previous device I had where all books could only be read on the device which bought them, and even if you changed devices to another device from them, that was that)

As for author web sites, I addressed that a little above—I tend to favor store sties. But I will say that an author who puts together a good package may yet convince me. One author who has caught my eye has all 30-odd books available in a bundle from his Web site at a substantial discount over buying them separately. Once my to-read pile is under control, that author may get a sale from me. But for the most part, I do prefer to one-stop-shop when I can.