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Originally Posted by pwalker8
I agree with you, Worldwalker. As someone earlier mentioned, a publisher's customer isn't technically the end reader, but rather the bookstore buyer. On the other hand, the bookstore buyer isn't the person who is going to be visiting the website and the bookstore buyer is a lot more impressed with what your throughput is than the glitz on your webpage. A publisher want to generate buzz about their books and especially about their upcoming books. I'm not so sure the new website does that.
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When I looked at SF Publishers a few years ago, the one thing I wanted to see was not only what was just published, but what was scheduled to be published. Baen used to do this very well, others not so much. The new design has that schedule at one link off a menu at the top that you can see even if you have flash turned off.
The point of the advance schedule was pre-ordering (which was also the initial reason for the design of the webscription program. If you know a new book is coming a couple months ahead, then you might be convinced to pre-order it at your local bookstore. This drives the number ordered by those bookstores higher, and makes the print run larger.
But honestly, the same thing can be said for ebooks - if I know in advance, I can either pre-order or at least know to look for it. All the other parts are nice, but I want to know what's new (and the publisher wants me to know that so I buy the new stuff.) Old things and backlist catalogs are great, but the publisher is living off the cashflow of what's new.
I could wish they did it without the big flash stuff, and I do wish they had better notice that more is below that first page of flash.