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

[elf]

No DRM is a big plus for me; if it's a topic I'm interested in, with reasonable prices, that's the clincher.

Formats helps for repeat business--I can't read .lit docs without converting them, and I'm not sure I can download them at all because I don't have the software to register my computer as a .lit device. I prefer epub. Or rather, I prefer zipped HTML and I'll put it through my own software because I don't trust a lot of the choices publishers make about formatting. But if they're well-formatted books (no half-inch margins for my 4" wide screen), epub is simplest for me. PDF is okay because I love PDFs and I can convert them easily--but a lot of other people don't, and can't.

Taking PayPal helps. I don't want to give my financial information to dozens of sites, and I'm less likely to make that initial purchase if I have to give info to a site I might not buy from again.

Good site code. Good searches, good shopping cart software. Not that I consider these "important," exactly, but if anything at all is glitchy, I'm less likely to remain at the site. (I use Firefox 2.20, and have dialup internet at home; "glitchy site" is fairly common for me to run into. And I'm unconcerned with rebuttals of "well, you should upgrade to DSL!" Businesses that rely on high-speed connections obviously don't want me as a customer, and I respect that choice.)

Included in "good site": good grammar & spelling on the blurbs, no annoying blinky stuff, limited/no flash, easy-to-read layout. Links to info pages like "These are the formats we use, and here's links to the software you'll need to read them" and "Here's our bonus purchase policy spelled out in great detail" and "Here's our returns/bad file credit policy" are also good things, and would help me believe the site was worth risking my money at. "Click here to send email to our customer service dept" is not a good thing. (Well, not if it's the *only* customer service info.

Recommendations. I bought from Freya's Bower because one of the authors was recommended on some of my email lists. I'd never have found the site by random browsing, and wouldn't have bothered buying from them.

[aithine]

All excellent info, most of which I've already taken into account, yay! *vbg*

Businesses that rely on high-speed connections obviously don't want me as a customer, and I respect that choice.

Exactly. And me, too, with the voting with my feet because of a crappy site. (I can't tell you how many times I've had to talk someone through the whole standards/browser/connection speed when working on a site--man, what a long discussion. The argument that usually ends up making my point? It's not about being good citizen and having a site that's accessible to all. It's almost always the "you're losing sales with that site" argument. Arg.)