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

[wide_worlds_joy]

Generally around. If I'm considering getting a book, I typically find info about it from a couple places:

My friend's List
Publishers (Llewellyn, Imannon Press, New Page Books in particular (Reviews of their titles))
Random browsing on the Internet

I typically do a bit of research to find the cover blurbs, possibly an excerpt and then I look and see through Google if there is an ebook out there of it.

If it's free, I'll download it and read it, purchase later if I plan on reading it again. Sometimes I ask the publishers for review copies of the ebooks (see list above).

Then if it's an author I already like, or a genre I already like (such as Star Wars or so on) I'll do the same process, look for an ebook.

So it's not really any particular place to read up on it.

[aithine]

Gotcha. Thanks! :)

How sad is it that you have to search all over the place to find that info (blurbs, excerpt, formats available), and you can't just find it in one place, like the publisher's site. Logic is not many companies' strong points--I mean, sheesh, why would you want to give potential customers all the info they could possibly want before purchasing in order to, y'know, encourage them to make the purchase. [/sarcasm] Geez. *g*

[wide_worlds_joy]

I still look at other places even though a site like Amazon does all that on their site. I'd be stupid if I didn't think that publishers didn't edit the reviews of their books submitted to their site. I mean, if I went to Del Rey and looked up a Lackey book and got all that info, I'd most likely only see the good praising reviews instead of those who say "I was hoping to see a new story here, but all I got was a bunch of crap short stories..."

I tend not to trust a publisher's site on their books since they want to sell books, that's their job. So they are only going to show the best and brightest. So I still hunt around for ALL the reviews to see what is being said that's negative about it.

[aithine]

Oh, I get that--sorry, did the blurbs=back cover copy thing for a minute. (I ignore all "this is the best thing I've ever read!" blurbs because I don't know the people saying that at all, even if it's an author I read, because man, some good authors have really crappy reading taste. *g* I trust my friends' comments and reviews much more.)

But really, you should be able to get all the other info (not reviews, I'm with you on that) on the publisher's or author's site, and not have to rely on Amazon or elsewhere.

[wide_worlds_joy]

Yeah, I agree, and I forgot cover blurbs. < sigh > Silly me.

Most times when I look at a publisher's site they only have a couple sentence synopsis and that's all. I do use the cover blurb as a guideline.