Further to my recent post on the IDPF survey of eBook sales, I have started an 18-part series where I take a look at the 18 e-publishers individually (one every week) to get an idea of how they market their digital products.

I’ll be looking at these websites from a purely buyers perspective with my e-publisher’s eye scanning for little bits we can and can not do to improve our publishing businesses.

In part 3 of this series I take a look at Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

Ellora’s Cave publishes romantic titles (err, not quite my style). Their website is of the basic web commerce kind, with a prominent “view shoppng cart” link in the top left corner. That tells you immediately they are selling.

I clicked on the first book I saw - I didn’t want to browse any further, just way too many naked male bodies for my liking ;-)

You are greeted with a nice large flat cover of the title, with a decent description. You also can read a short excerpt which opens up in a new page. Each title also has it’s own ISBN.

There is a prominent “Buy Now” button below the price. You are taken to a basic checkout page to view your order, continue or checkout.

In a bit of poor layout they tell you that you have only 5 days to download via the link provided after pruchase as no replacement will be given. Hmmm. A bit rough around the edges and not very well engaging - especially at the most critically of places: when you’re just about to check out.

The price doesn’t tell you which currency it is in - I’m presuming it’s US Dollars.

A Verisign seal of approval is also placed on the page.

When you do finally click to checkout you are taken to a “e-Book Order Form”.

Here you fill in your name and email and select a password. You are also given the option of which format you’d like to download your purchase with - each with an eye pleasing button: Adobe PDF, HTML, MS Reader, Palm PDF, Mobipocket and Rocketbook. I like this.

After doing that you are taken to the payment page.

You are immediately issued with an Order ID, which is another plus factor in building trust in the buyng process.

The payment page is a bit clunky looking but gets the job done. You can pay via PayPal or MasterCard, Visa, Amex or Discover card.

What I learnt…

• standard e-commerce type sites you see a million times are getting old fashioned, imo (very web 1.0ish). I’d like to see something different - a bit of differentation.
• Once again, an ISBN really works wonders.
• Your checkout page should be tweaked and worked on until perfect - don’t give a prospect a reason to back out now.
• Providing and instant order ID gives out confidence that you are dealing with a real order.
• Offer your product in as many formats as possible - it gives the prospect some satisifaction that they are part of the ordering process and not just going through the motions.
• Be clear about pricing, the currency involved, the terms.

Hope you got some good insight into ebook marketing from part three of this series. I must say I’m also learning more as well from this exercise - much more than I expected.

By looking at other publishers websites with a buyer’s perspective it totally focsues your attention on what works and what doesn’t.

Next week I’ll take a look at E-Reads in my 18-part series.

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• #1 - How They Do it: Digitalpulp Publishing
• #2 - How They Do it: ellibs