If you want loyalty don't piss me off ...

I recently read a tweet from @NicholasHoareTO and there was something about it that bugged me.

The tweet went like this:

"Dear customer, please don't use our store and staff to put together your online shopping list. :("

First of all how do you know dear store and staff that that is the reason a list is being made? I use my iphone and write notes about books I see all the time and I never or at least rarely order them online - and so what if I did? Don't you sell books online? Well you have a website but I can't order anything from it so perhaps I will just "steal" "your" catalogue and order them from somewhere else? Is that what you want?

Secondly, yes I am your customer - I might even be following you on twitter and you might even be pissing me off with your snotty tweets therefore I may not buy those books from you after all.

I know you have a reputation to keep up Nick Hoare but if you are going to use social media and your website presumably for the good of your business - don't complain when others use you to benefit their consuming. Be gracious, be helpful and all that other stuff that good retailers do who want to gain customer loyalty and then perhaps you will get customer loyalty.

 

Posted via web from Tim's posterous

The real story behind Stieg Larsson and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Times Online

It has gone on rising. On a French beach last summer Mark Lawson, the critic, noted that “almost every sunbather of every nationality was reading one of Larsson’s novels in the numerous translations”. His three books, the Millennium trilogy, have been filmed in Sweden, and Hollywood is planning its own versions.

via entertainment.timesonline.co.uk

This is the kind of reporting that will no longer be available when people are reading on their iphones, ereaders and such - like the way I read Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and am now reading The Girl Who Played with Fire.

That aside - pretty good article on the author Steig Larsson who died at the age of 50.

Posted via web from Tim's posterous

What a view.

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

Yesterday was a big fail on the part of Amazon and all of the other ebook providers, but mainly I suppose the fail was on the part of the publishers. I only think of the Kindle as the fail because this is what I had at my disposal as an ereader other than my iphone and computer. I have had the Kindle since christmas and I have yet to use it for anything other than a conversation piece.

Well as I said below, yesterday my daughter was home "sick" from school and slightly bored. (In actual fact the Kindle is hers - she was given it by one of early early early adopter friends and when she got it I thought cool, I can use that.)

So back to the story. She was home "sick" and we decided we should get the next installments in the series we were reading - Anne Mazer's Sister Magic. A fun read, lightly illustrated with line drawings and not something you need to have hanging out taking up shelf space. Perfect, I thought, finally a use case for the Kindle. In my oh so confident fatherly voice I told her we could get the series and start reading right away. Here I was willing to invest in about 5-6 books at one stop! Talk about impulse shopping.

Well the Kindle disappointed, Amazon disappointed, did publishers ever disappoint? No, not unless I pursued the reason why the ebooks weren't available. And this has to be a concern for any ebook vendor out there - perception! Who gets blamed when a book is not available?

Now I happen to know the behind the scenes story with agency pricing and publisher preparedness for the digital age but my impulse was still to think the Kindle sucks! Not only could I not get these books I wanted, but I also couldn't find about 4 other titles I wanted to read in digital. I am on an apocalyptic bent of late. I saw a table display at an Indigo store filled with fascinating titles like Slynx, and Battle Royale - and decided I would read these books in their digital format. Somehow it seemed appropriate to think the apocalypse would be brought to me on my iphone. I did decide to check Kobo first, Stanza's catalogues next and finally Amazon (don't like Amazon drm and that is that). Nowhere to be found -(note - I did not blame the iphone for not having the books).

The apocalypse would have to be provided by trees if at all. I may just forget this latest trend in my reading and if I do too bad authors, too bad publishers and too bad bookstores - my money is going to go toward investing in a good concrete bunker and a subscription to popular mechanics.

ebooks wherefore art thou ebooks?

Old age is something that crawls up on you. It can appear as hair loss, muscle mass decline, lung capacity limited, chronic back ache or underserved demographic in the ebook market.

With all the talk of dedicated ereaders being targeted at older people I find it odd that I am unable to find the books I want to read. Maybe this has absolutely nothing to do with my age but just my reading habits and the reading habits of my children.

It was not long ago that I over-enthusiastically commented in a tweet that I thought it was interesting how the conversations around the digitization of publishing were no longer about content but about price etc. Well I admit here that I was naive. It is still about not having content. I have avoided using the kindle because I don't like the drm. I don't like being tied to their device, even though I can synch up with the Kindle app on the iphone and my laptop and apparently on the ipad as well. But still come on Amazon what is it with this silly propriatary format? You really should know better. And that aside where are the books I want to read!

In the digital world I find I am mostly being sold romance books or business books or classics. But when you step outside of the digital mainstream you are in a wasteland. I just recently was influenced by a display in a bookstore that showed a lovely theme of reading that I was willing to delve into, but for practical reasons -including the aforementioned old age and a recent back problem, I wanted ebooks. I have been able to be a more focused reader on my digital devices than ever before. Don't know why I just am. So I could see myself ripping through these titles -but alas not to be. I just can't find the books anywhere. And who do I ask to special order them for me?

Another disappointment came when my daughter was home sick from school and we wanted to continue reading a new series we had discovered. We have avoided the ebook world for kid's books thus far because the books we were reading were richly illustrated but this series would have worked perfectly on the kindle. Yes I was even willing to buy the books from Amazon in the infamous "60" second download to get going - but once again not to be had. And again who the heck to ask to get a special order around here? No one!

So ebooks - publishers, I beseech you and wonder at your dismal failure to reach the masses with your so called vaunted content. Get your content out there so we can read it when want where we want how we want!