Fran here again, to let you know where we're at in our quest to stay hip and cutting edge, which is, as everyone who knows us, our ultimate goal. Okay, stop laughing. No, really!
For those of you who are new to the blog, here is my original post about the pitfalls we've run into regarding selling e-books, which is basically the cost. It's best if you read that first. It's okay, we'll wait.
Back? So you see where we're coming from, right?
The update to that is to note that my original calculations were solely about e-book sales. The reason for that is that any printed books, be they hardback or paperback, still have the actual cost of the book, whereas e-books have no upfront costs. They're simply digital, so that's why I based all my calculations there on e-books alone.
And the cost is still prohibitive for us. As I said in February, we can't afford to have our regular website and pay the $225 fee for an Indiebound site. There's just not enough disposable cash floating around for that. I've talked to several Indiebound bookstores around the country, and I have yet to find one that has been able to tell me that their sales through the Indiebound site have paid for those costs, at least at $225 per month. Some stores got in on the ground floor and their costs per month are less, so they're less hard hit, but as near as I can tell, if we pay the current fee, we need to write it off as "stylin'", not functionality.
And we ARE stylin' and cool but we're not ready to be that stylin'.
That being said, we've considered it anyway, and have moved closer to biting that particular bullet. Running it under "advertising" or "promotions" or somesuch. It could work, I think.
Except. (There's always a glitch, isn't there?)
We've looked at other websites, we've researched the required site management engine (we'd never heard of Drupal before, so it's a huge learning curve for us), and we've gotten some ideas on a new website. We've talked to our webmistress and she's been incredibly supportive, and has gracefully offered to back out if/when we go this way, because she's a superstar.
But here's the catch.
Drupal sites and Indiebound aren't capable of handling our inventory. Part of what makes us who we are is our huge collection of signed books, our collectable books, and our used/out-of-print books. The way Drupal is set up, it can list a new hardcover, a new paperback (trade or mass-market), a new audio book, or an e-book. Well, and sidelines, so our caps and mugs and things are easily sold.
But if we want to list all our collectable and used stuff -- and obviously we would, it's one of our great strengths -- they can't help us. We've contacted the Indiebound folks and they've been very nice, but setting up things to differentiate between signed and unsigned books, non-ISBN collectable books, and used books isn't a huge priority for them. They're working on other things and just can't get to it until next year at the earliest.
I understand they're busy, but I'm seriously astonished that we're the only ones (and they make it sound like we are) who are hurting by not being able to list our used and collectable stock. I don't see how this is a back-burner issue, but apparently it is, and I am prepared to be patient while they work their way around to it. Not happy, just patient.
So between the monthly cost of being allowed to play and the fact that we can't offer some of the true gems in our stock to you through their techonology, we're stalled. Other stores have offered suggestions for work-arounds in the current Drupal set-up so that we might be able to list our stuff, but they themselves aren't doing it because it's just too massively time-consuming and unwieldy, and no one knows if these work-arounds would, in fact, actually work.
We can't, at this point, even play on Drupal to figure out if we CAN make the changes necessary to get our beautiful stock on there for you, because in order to even create a dummy site to practice on, we have to shell out the bucks to join. And if it turns out that we can't make them work, well, there we are, waving good-bye to the $225 per month for no content. Or seriously reduced content, which puts us at a disadvantage.
Do I sound cynical? I am, a little. And frustrated. I so desperately want to get this up and running for you, to be able to sell e-books and even have a shopping cart (we've figured out the tax problem on that, I think!) so you can just order online, but I want you to be able to order everything, not just the ordinary stuff you can get anywhere. We have such treasures -- some of the joys are loaded onto Biblio.com, -- and we added pictures of the Jasper Fforde collections there, which are amazing and cool -- but at this point, we just can't make it all work with Indiebound website the way it's set up now.
Next year, they tell me, next year. That's an awfully long time from now, though, don't you think?
If things change, you know we'll keep you posted!
- Fran
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