glenlan's Posts

Thank you, thank you, thank you for listening!

Now if only I could get paid for my work too… 

Glen 

Blurb,

Regardless of when you roll out the SYP program, which seems to be d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g on and on since last year, in the interim please will you simply add the ability for me to see how many copies of each of my books have been sold.  This cannot possibly offend anyone’s privacy concerns.

Because I live outside the US I am unable to participate in your Set the Price option, and so have (reluctantly) decided to allow my books to be sold at cost, just for the exposure.

Now I find that I cannot even get statistics on the number of books sold.  I am making you money and getting nothing in return, not even statistics.  This has got to be an easy fix, please do this as soon as possible.

Also please expand the hit counter to differentiate by book.

Blurb, please add the ability for me to see how many copies of each of my books have been sold.

Because I live outside the US I am unable to participate in your Set the Price option, and so have (reluctantly) decided to allow my books to be sold at cost, just for the exposure.

Now I find that I cannot even get statistics on the number of books sold.  I cannot understand your reasoning for this.  I am making you money and getting nothing in return, not even statistics.  This has got to be an easy fix, please do this as soon as possible.

Also please expand the hit counter to differentiate by book.

Glen

Bruce,

How can you say that the production barcode lives in harmony with ISBNs? The standard for placing ISBNs is clear and internationally accepted as the bottom right corner of the back cover, the same place the production barcode is being placed. Why not simply accomodate this by moving the production barcode someplace else?  I think ISBN trumps procuction barcode.

Glen

Basically go see how Amazon does it – their process works well. 

As a design principle try to never put the user in a position to get an error message.  Consider an error message a statement that you (not the user) has failed. So, use intelligent defaults (like "1" for the quantity) and allow the user to change it later if necessary.

Don’t assume that the user only wants to buy one book.  Right now the act of adding to the cart (if you remember to put in a quantity) starts the checkout process.  This is why people are confused, because they are used to sites where they add something to a cart, and continue shopping until they decide to checkout. This means having a Checkout button always visible – probably on the top of the screen. Every one of my friends is asking me where the "Checkout" button is – they are used to this.

Add the ability to create Wish Lists to remember books for later.  I saw a great book on your site and later couldn’t remember the name (I can visualize the cover though), and now it is lost to me.

Organize the bookstore better.  Whenever you have to scroll though hundreds of books the user will lose interest.  Add sub categories if necessary, anything to keep the result set small enough to be meaningful.

I love the idea of Staff Picks, but when there are hundreds of books on the list it loses its significance.  Never more than 20 on a list, aim for 10.

Add a star rating system for people who buy books to give feedback on books.  See the movie database www.imdb.com for a great example of how to do this.

Why do Tags I set for my books get re-sorted seemingly randomly?  I spent time putting them in a logical order, but they then dislayed completely differently – and not even alphabetically.

Provide a list of all Tags as an alternative means of finding stuff.  so instead of guessing what to search for the user can actually see what keyword tags already exist.  This would be great for authors as well to help reuse existing Tags. 

Call them "Keywords" instead of "Tags".  "Tags" is techspeak.

Video your grandmother trying to buy a book on the site and use the experience to improve your design.

Allow me to see metrics of my book sales, even though I cannot join your Sales feature because I don’t live in the US. And separate it out by individual books not just a total for all books.

...if I think of more I will post it later.

Cheers – Glen

Here is a message I have submitted to Tech Support that I thought everyone on the forums should be made aware of.  I will post Blurb’s reply, but in the meantime I would welcome your thoughts and comments.  Has this happened to you, and are you concerned over this? Message to Blurb 2008-01-14: 

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3" color="#000000">First of all I want to thank you for the incredible quality of the two books I recently received. After the binding problem with my first book, I wanted to re-try the quality of both a hard & soft-covered book, and I can say the results are spectacular. After the binding issue I had with my first proof in December, I was pleased to see the binding was excellent on both the hard and soft cover books.  I had also read some chatter on the forums about laminate quality on soft-cover books, and again I can say that the quality on the one I received is excellent.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3" color="#000000">You can feel a “but” coming here can’t you? </font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3" color="#000000">But…</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3" color="#000000">I am very disturbed to find that these two books both have barcodes printed on their back covers, and inside the back page.  I did not expect this, and nowhere in BookSmart was there any indication that that these would appear.  The blurb logo is clearly fixed on the back page, so I know to expect it and allow for it.  But there is no such warning for this barcode. </font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3" color="#000000">I am in the process of finalizing a commercial version of a book and have my own ISBN barcode placed in the required bottom right-hand corner, which is exactly the same position where this rogue barcode is placed.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3" color="#000000">I do not want these barcodes on my book, and am concerned that they will overlay or clash with my correct ISBN barcode. Since I plan to allow people to buy direct from your website, (at no profit to me I might add, because I live in Canada – that is another issue for another day) I am deeply concerned that my customers may receive books with this rogue barcode corrupting my ISBN barcode.  And since they are buying directly from you, I have no means of checking if this is happening.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3" color="#000000">You need to stop this practice of placing barcodes on books without the author’s permission. What assurance can you give me that when people order my book from your site they will not contain this unexpected barcode?  Will you recompense me for books that do place this barcode over my ISBN barcode? </font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3" color="#000000">I did notice that the last two books appear to have been printed on the West coast, while my first printing was from the East coast. Does this mean that your printers are not consistent?  If so can I specify which printer I want to use to prevent this from happening?</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3" color="#000000">I love you service, and am happy with the quality and the customer service I have received, and wan to continue to use Blurb.  However, you have to iron out these quality control problems quickly.</font>

There is also an email address on the Class Action site that you can use to communicate directly instead of using the form.

Apparently not, and I agree this is a vital piece of information that should be made available to the publisher (us).

A Canadian law firm in Vancouver have initiated Class Action lawsuit  agains UPS for their outragous brokerage fees.  If you have been stung be sure to sign up here:

http://www.poynerbaxter.com/UPS.htm

Glen

...and that last post should read "50th" birthday, not "5th"!

I got that faint streak on my first 10×8 hardcover book.  it was on random images, but always in the same physical position that made it look like a physical problem with the machine – like a guide roller running over not quite dry images maybe? 

Second printing is on the way, will report in later how it truns out.

Glen

Blurb,

Once again I second this person’s point, and re-iterate that although it is incredible how well you deal with problems when they happen, the real issue seems to be the need to get quality control fixed so these problems don’t arise in the first place.

Glen

... and no wisecracks about my lack of grammar & spelling quality control in my last post!