Continuing discussion on a previous post...

[aithine]

What would make you take a chance with an unknown small publisher to purchase directly from them? Formats available, no DRM, payment methods, what? (Yes, I have a reason why I'm asking, no I'm not going to share it right at this moment. *vbg*)

Comments

[cyprinella]

Formats, no DRM, price and have to have some sort of known quantity to them. For example, one of my authors published with a publisher I hadn't bought from. But since I liked the author, I bought from that publisher. Formatting ended up being crap and I won't go back unless that author goes back. I have web acquaintances starting up a small press and I'll be buying at least a few from there to support them.

[aithine]

Oh ugh. I sympathize.

What sort of information would you like to have about formatting before buying? A note saying all HTML formatted files are valid XHTML, that sort of thing?

[cyprinella]

And the worst part? Story wasn't very good either!

Mostly I just look for what kinds of formats are offered. I buy .lit so usually it's not a problem for me to convert it and keep all of the formating intact. If I were buying other formats, knowing that sort of information would be good. For example, the HTML file I got from the publisher I mentioned, was some fancy IE file that had all the pictures encoded somehow. Great if you use IE for everything, but didn't open in Firefox and couldn't be converted as is for my Sony. For pdfs, knowing the size and what it's optimized for would be good. Samhain does two different pdfs - one for screen reading and one for Sonys. If you did end up DRMing stuff, knowing what software you'd have to have would be important. I've heard a lot of bitching about Adobe's Digital Editions and compatiblity.

[aithine]

LOL That figures. *G*

People who code only for IE should not be allowed on the internet. I'm just sayin'. Sheesh.

(And we're definitely not going to do DRM on any format. I'd hurt something if I did, given how much I bitch about it. *vbg*)

[cyprinella]

Our new office webmaster only codes for IE. Our website looks like shit compared to what it used to. It makes me very, very sad.

[aithine]

*head implodes* That's just so wrong.