Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisI
I've seen wish lists for new features in the Reader but let's face it, if it doesn't help Sony make more money you are going to have a long wait.
Since the money is in the books, not the hardware, my question is:
What could Sony do that would make you buy more books from them?
[SNIP]
Any other ideas?
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Here are my ideas, from most to least important in terms of their impact on my household.
- Make it possible for me to buy books from them without running Windows. I'm not, Not, NOT willing to run Windows just to buy books. More generally, I should be able to sign in to my account from any web-ready OS and purchase and download books that are good to go on my Sony Reader(s). There's no reason to require Windows, rather than any standards-compliant browser. I'm willing to type in a key-code from the reader, and to give up reading encrypted content on my desktop -- after all, I won't buy any encrypted content anyway!
- Dump DRM (where publishers permit). And lean on the publishers to permit it! Baen's done just fine this way; others should follow suit. I won't purchase any DRM-crippled books unless I can remove the DRM for personal use. I've already had one electronic library orphaned along with its device -- I refuse to let this happen again. Please note: I do not 'pirate' books. I don't upload copies with DRM broken. I simply insist on being able to read my (legally aquired) content on whatever device I happen to have now or in the future. DRM attempts to prevent me from doing this, and so destroys the value proposition for me. Your mileage may vary.
- Fix their pricing. Baen makes a decent amount of money with DRM-free ebooks priced at $6 each (less when purchased in bundles). As for the authors, well, David Drake reported that when he made one of his "Lord of the Isles" books available at Baen ($5, no DRM) he made more money off electronic sales there than he did from the total electronic sales of all his non-Baen books combined -- including the very same book elsewhere. (Overall reports have Baen making about as much from e-Sales as from hardcovers -- not enough to run the company, but nothing to sneeze at either).
- Fix the searching capability on Sony's store. I've done searches by Author that miss books that I know are available at the Sony store.
I've also searched for titles (spelled correctly!) and had them come up empty; but an author search finds the book OK. There's no excuse for this kind of problem -- searching just isn't that hard!
- Fix the browsing at their store. Look at Fictionwise, or Amazon, or BN.com, for Ghu's sake! Any of these has a better shopping experience than does the Sony store.
- Broaden the selection at their store. On average, whatever I'm looking for, they don't have. In SF and Fantasy, they should carry everything from Baen, Tor, Ace, Roc, etc., etc. But they don't. How hard can this be? In Romance, we know that Harlequin is making lots of things available in bits. But does Sony have them? Nope.
- Mine the long tail. It's ludicrous to have books n and n+1 of a series available in bits, but not books 1..n-1! (I recognize that this is a publisher problem too...)
- Offer sample chapters for EVERYTHING. At least the first chapter of any novel; first 25% is better. And you should be able to read the samples either online (using any browser!) , or on your Sony reader.
In terms of making sales to me, they'd have to fix BOTH of the first two to even have a chance -- each of those is a complete show-stopper. The others are improvements that would help, but aren't complete show-stoppers.