Comments on: Question: Why Don’t Publishers Sell (More) from their Websites http://blog.bookoven.com/2009/03/06/question-why-dont-publishers-sell-more-from-their-websites/ we make books Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:01:33 -0700 hourly 1 By: David Nygren http://blog.bookoven.com/2009/03/06/question-why-dont-publishers-sell-more-from-their-websites/comment-page-1/#comment-2108 David Nygren Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:52:08 +0000 http://blog.bookoven.com/?p=1607#comment-2108 Yes! I, too, have heard publishers dismiss the suggestion that they would be better off selling directly to their customers as often as possible. Their reason (along with pointing out that customers just never liked doing this kind of thing in the PAST) is always something to the effect that it would just be insane to expect a potential customer to go through the extremely laborious and inconvenient process of going to the publisher's web site to make a purchase. Really? And then when you look at those same publishers' sites, it's clear why no one goes there: it's essentially wallpaper. There's nothing to draw the potential reader in. It's basically just a list of books. No place for readers to engage with each other, with the publisher or with the authors. Not only do direct sales have the financial benefits of cutting out the middlemen (whose value becomes questionable when we're talking about ebooks), but just as importantly it gives the publisher a chance to draw readers into some kind of dialogue so that they come back again and again and, eventually, buy more. Yes! I, too, have heard publishers dismiss the suggestion that they would be better off selling directly to their customers as often as possible. Their reason (along with pointing out that customers just never liked doing this kind of thing in the PAST) is always something to the effect that it would just be insane to expect a potential customer to go through the extremely laborious and inconvenient process of going to the publisher’s web site to make a purchase. Really? And then when you look at those same publishers’ sites, it’s clear why no one goes there: it’s essentially wallpaper. There’s nothing to draw the potential reader in. It’s basically just a list of books. No place for readers to engage with each other, with the publisher or with the authors.

Not only do direct sales have the financial benefits of cutting out the middlemen (whose value becomes questionable when we’re talking about ebooks), but just as importantly it gives the publisher a chance to draw readers into some kind of dialogue so that they come back again and again and, eventually, buy more.

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