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Originally Posted by jbcohen
The best advice that I can give you at this point is the catagories that you use in your catalog needs to have very descriptive catagories and needs to go down several levels.
For example at the top level you need catagories like fiction, mystery and thriller and scifi and fantasy. The mystery and thriller catagory would break out into mystery and thriller.
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I'd say "Crime drama," and break that into "mystery" and "thriller."
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Thriller would break out into technothriller and political thrillers, while mystery would break out into sub-catagories such as hard boiled detectives, amateur detective and police procedural.
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And, potentially, historical. There's a difference between wanting modern detective novels and wanting to read Sherlock Holmes-era, or Cadfael-era, stories.
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Personaly I have not used b&n becuase their catagories are not broad based enough and I can not find the catagory that best suits me.
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I've given up on expecting useful categories from ebook stores; I want useful search options instead.
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Too few catagories makes it impossible for your customers to find the appropriate one for them while there does not appear to be any penaty for having too many catagories.
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Too many result in customers giving up because it's too confusing, especially if they're dabbling into a genre they don't normally read in.
I can name a dozen or more subtypes of romance novel, and maybe two for mysteries. (I see you've listed three above. I couldn't articulate the differences between them.) I'm sure plenty of other readers would have the opposite problem. If I click on "mysteries," because a friend suggested I try some, and I'm faced with 9 subcategories, I may just give up. Definitely, the main category needs to work as its own filter, with the option of using subcategories as well.
Too many categories also means needing to decide exactly where each ebook fits; even if the authors decide that when they submit them, they may be unable to pick which specific subcat is most appropriate.
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You will also need to provide different formats such as epub, pdf and mobi (for kindlers) and also perhaps a printed format for those that are not up to date with the electronic reading trend.
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It looks like they have PDF, EPUB, MOBI and LIT, with many titles only offered in some formats. (A lot of pdf-only titles.) No info about DRM.