Closed Circle. We don’t have everything up, but there is a hint of content. We haven’t got an actual ‘anything’ yet, but as Lynn says, you can go push buttons and kick the tires and provide whatever comments you like in whatever venue you like. Now you can see what Lynn’s been working on. Jane and I haven’t a clue about how to get onto the site’s inner workings yet, but we’ll talk to Lynn tonight and will get our info.
In the meanwhile, Jane has another of her cover slideshows up, and we’re just brimming over with fun things to look at.
Very happy to see the progress at last.
Comments in stream of consciousness, and after a few lovely Sierra Nevada Pale Ales:
on the CJC page:
red text on beige background is hard to read (and the light blue is worse).
would prefer left-justified text vice center (or right — the “Adminstivia page works)
Overlap problems with larger text sizes, eg “The Writing Life: a Writer’s Journal,” is partially obscured by “vols. I-III”.
One font with two sizes would look nice — bigger for headlines. Minimize use of color.
No hyperlinks yet (one assumes that is correct behavior)
ordering/buying on “MLA” page is looking good (formatting is a bit messed up, but the basic interface can be seen) — note that a link to differences in PDF and Mobi might be worthwhile. On the other hand, why not just sell a license that isn’t tied to the delivery format ?
clearly a work in progress! cheers and thanks, looking forward to my first purchase !
Yep, Lynn just loaded my text off a generic try I made on the ‘hidden’ site, and font didn’t stay sized when she uploaded it to this version. I think the overlaps will get fixed fast once we can manipulate the text. Myself, I prefer black text. But Lynn knows more than we do on setting up this shopping cart thing. I just want to make sure people end up with the product they’re aiming at, and I’ll go with whatever format makes that certain.
Looks so exciting. this may be my computer rather than the site, but the font size seems a little small – if its worth nitpicking at this stage? clearly a comment about form not substance.. but my aging eyes are longing for the reading glasses.
We’ll fix that, I’m pretty sure. Black type would help.
Pushed buttons, kicked tires, danced around in delight…
HEY EVERYONE, IT’S REALLY HAPPENING!
Yes, it’s a work in progress, but standing ovation to Lynn Abbey who created this from the ground up, learning a new programming language all the while, in just a few short months. Magnifique!
Yay, verily, yay.
Kudos, Lynn, and many, many hugs!
The “wait 5 seconds or be transported” on the foyer page isn’t working for me (Firefox 3 on Linux); it gives me “/html/director.html does not exist”; there’s no problem if I just click the “enter” link. PDF download of blog entries, works. “Printing” them, works. Is there a way back to, say, the CJC page from the “show cart” page without going through the foyer? Ordering seems to work (didn’t try past the “paypal” button).
Weird! I’ll relay that to Lynn.
Our navigation paths still have to be laid down: this is just proving the thing can display. But the font colors and sizes are an artifact of a passage composed on another system. We’ll fix that too. That entry navigation issue is old and we thought we had it fixed, but we’ll get it, one way or the other.
I’m on safari on a mac and I’m having the same problem as Jaxartes.
I fell for four of your Fortress books today at the bookstore, but the didn’t have the first, and I was hoping you’d put it up on Closed Circle. Hooray for progress! I look forward to picking up some of your eBooks.
Wait 5 seconds to be transported goes to an ugly 404 page not found: IE8 under Vista Home Premium on a Sony Vaio.
Please change the colour scheme – red on blue with that tan-coloured background is nearly impossible to read. Black font on blue would be OK if the blue were not as saturated a colour. Even increasing the display to 125% the red-blue made my eyes blur after a while.
Left justify, ragged right; please …. Once again, for those of us trying to age gracefully it is just easier on the eyes and I don’t have to hunt around to find the beginning of the next line.
forgot to mention … I cleared out the cache and tried the 5 second timeout a second time with the same results.
It’s a bonafide problem, the entry delay. That’s going to get fixed. If you want to look around, just hit the ENTER and you will get there.
THis kind of problem is why I’ll tell you guys it’s out there, but I’m not putting the go-there-now-we’re-open on the website, because here I’m just collecting info and reactions and we can talk back and forth. I’m sure Lynn will look in on this thread too, when she gets a spare moment, so don’t think you’ll hurt our feelings. Legibility, flowability—all important. I know the font is wonky because I wrote it in straight typescript, and it’s turned up in varied sizes and colors. Once we get in, we’ll start cleaning things up and adding features and links. THink of it as a great big building with sawdust on bare concrete floors and bare sheetrock. Now we sweep the floors and start painting and putting up pictures.
I’ve fixed the Director/Welcome fiasco…again. It’s an artifact from the earliest incarnation of the testbed site. Every time I think I’ve purged all references to the no-longer-extant director.html, it arises from backup files.
For those who are having problem with font sizes and font spacing — try doing a control-+ to resize the workspace. As best I can tell, it will load at what ever your browser thinks is your default size, but control-+ and control– will resize it. (It works for me with Firefox 3.5.2 and Internet Explorer 8.)
Font colors RSN
Lynn
Thanks, Lynn! You’re a gem.
Heh. That was Lynn, reporting the entry screen should behave now.
Nope, can’t read red on blue at all. (it would also be a horror for someone color blind I suspect)
Red on tan is a little better but not good. The green on tan is excellent, pretty near perfect – as would be black or probably deep blue.
I agree with the others, the font colors are currently rather terrible and a pain to read.
Since I don’t use Javascript, getting the email address would be rather a hassle in case of a problem.
And keyword and description are still set to Joomla on some pages (especially the main page).
If I see this right, the center column requests a font size of 12px, that request probably overwrites the browser default and probably gets smaller the higher the screen resolution is.
The foyer link way down the page is too small, easily overlooked and should link to the first page with real content not to the entry page (it’s like getting thrown out and having to get back in again). My first reaction was to try to click the logo to get back to the beginning, almost all sites lead back to the main page via their logos or company names at the top of the page.
I’d also consider the two entry screens to be excessive, I’d leave the second on out since the most prominent links on that lead away from the Closed Circle.
Off-topic, but Jo Walton has posted a thoughtful review of The Paladin on the Tor.com blog.
Some thoughts:
I agree with other comments about the colors and the size of text. To say that users should use control-+ to resize is not acceptable. If 90% of people who come to the site find the text difficult to read then the default size should be changed. Readable text is a priority.
Entry screens are just irritating in general – and two of them is twice as irritating.
I assume you are going to be adding a proper menu at some stage. There seems to be a place for a drop-down menu at the top of the page.
A shopping cart is not really necessary. Usually people will be buying one book at a time. A quick, clean, and easy solution is to have a purchase link for each book individually. The quantity field in the shopping cart is redundant – it will be very seldom that anyone will buy 2 copies of an ebook. If they want to, they can do it via 2 transactions.
A full content management system like Joomla is not really necessary, because the content won’t be changing that often. You already have blogs for news, discussions, etc. A better approach would be a fairly simple, but slick and professional-looking CSS website.
If I was designing the website, I would have a landing page with photos of the three of you and brief biographies, each linking to a page for that person
Each writer’s main page would have more details about that person, a link to her blog, and a list of books on sale. Each book would have a separate page with the cover and description, reader comments, links to good reviews, a sample chapter, and a purchase link for that book.
The site should have a good menu. A drop-down menu along the top seems to be the fashion these days. A multilevel menu giving access to every page in the site with one click would be good.
See http://www.stunicholls.com/menu/index.html for 38 free examples of professional-looking menus. There are hundreds of others around.
The most important thing is that the website should have a good feel to it, and users should enjoy browsing it.
Couple of other things — set up the visual branding (typeface, colors, etc) to match WWAS (or vicey-versey); each of three could have distinct branding. Put a small-ish CS link in a prominent location at the TOP of all WWAS pages — make it as easy as possible to buy !! The 3-ring logo with “buy ebooks” or just “ebooks” under it or integrated into the logo might work.
The site was glacially slow to load for me (Firefox/Mac), and I hate splash pages. At the very least put text links on the page instead of just an image map.
Also, please change the colour scheme – it’s nearly unreadable. Red text is generally used to indicate something important (like a link), and the contrast to both the light blue and tan aren’t strong enough to make the page readable. I am not a fan of sans serif fonts, but long passages in bold are even harder to read.
Overall, I am starting to get very excited about this project. I am, right now, extremely dissatisfied with what is available to me as a reader. I want more books. I want to see more writers able to spend time writing, even if they don’t make it full-time.
I *do* feel that there is a need for good editing in the process of publication. In the case of backlist the material has already been edited once, and y’all have acquired skills over a number of years – but for newer, less experienced writers putting out unedited material tends to be pretty catastrophic. A neutral third party who can step back and work with the writer to make the story tighter and more focussed is worth their weight in gold – and not everybody has first readers of that quality.
For the record…Carolyn is and always has been my “editor” as I am now hers. I’ve maintained for years that she convinced me to start writing so she could train an editor that would tell her when she was creating word salad.
I never got any real editing from my NY editors.
On Groundties, my first book, all I got was “make it shorter, because Warner won’t publish a first novel this long” and a suggestion of entire scenes to be cut, which were all very significant scenes. I managed to make it shorter, but it suffered in the process, and I firmly believe I lost readers because of it. It was a lot of story. It required some breathing room to process the information, and all that breathing room had to go. After that…I got nothing except an argument over the spelling of grey and single vs double quotes.
This is not my idea of helpful editing.
From what she says, Carolyn got useful help from Don back in the early days, but since I’ve been around, her books go out pretty much untouched…by New York. I’ve learned to speak up, as she does with me.
In their defense…I’ve seen the slush pile and the drafts many authors turn in, and the product we produce, being each others’ first editors, is, in all honesty, in a whole different league.
I guarantee, our quality will not suffer for lack of input from New York.
It was a lot of story. It required some breathing room to process the information, and all that breathing room had to go.
I wince in sympathy. Those are the books I like to read, and those seem to be the only books I am capable of writing. Will you be republishing a revised version?
(My response to ‘you need to write a book under 100K’ is: ‘And where would you cut _Pride and Prejudice_?’)
My remark wasn’t targetted at anyone here – at people who have been honing their storytelling skills for many years and who have built a network of people who can give them good, honest critiques and who can put those critiques into action. I’m reluctantly coming to the conclusion that the traditional publishing model is failing, and failing in substantial ways (and have blogged extensively about this) – but I can also see the problems associated with moving, on a larger scale, to a self-publishing model… or to something else. And I’m wondering how that something else will look and still fulfill the needs of readers – eg tightening stories, ensuring readability, and preselecting them so it becomes easier to find books that are right for you. (Not that New York is doing great on all of those scores right now – I walk into bookstores and come out without things I want to read – that’s unheard of. And it’s making me rather mad. I want to go into a bookstore and find books I like!)
Fortunately all members of Closed Circle do have extraordinary first and second readers! Moreover, none of them are self indulgent writers who need firm editors.
How, as readers, unless we get a sufficient sample, will we be able to distinguish between people who understand the importance of editing and those who don’t?
I don’t think it’s just about being self-indulgent. Those writers (and they’re sometimes coming out of New York, too) exist, but there’s a lot of middle ground. Plus editing skills are a related-but-separate skillset. Some people are great editors and so-so writers, some people are great writers and so-so editors.
On the third tentacle (because hands are bothersome when you are counting) many writers will finish a draft, polish it, maybe with a couple of beta readers, and send it off to their editors. As opposed to others who will finish it, polish it, send it to first readers, get it back, edit it from the ground up, polish it again, and *then* send it off. Depending on the quality of the editor/critters and the writer’s self-editing skills, the quality need not be different.
Some general comments:
They say ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’. However, it’s only necessary to say this because people *do* judge books by their covers.
In the same way people judge companies and individuals by their websites, right or wrong.
If a website is clunky, amateurish, or badly-designed it conveys a certain image to prospective readers. They will (wrongly, but understandably) expect your books to be the same.
Keep in mind that you are designing a *BUSINESS* website to sell ebooks. Approach it from this perspective. The purpose of the website is to promote and sell.
Devoted fans will read every word on your website and buy all your books, no matter how your website looks. But to attract new readers, and particularly younger readers, you need a slick, cool website. Site design does matter, especially to those who have grown up with the internet. And what was an acceptable standard 10 years ago is NOT acceptable today.
That doesn’t mean that a website has to be complex and elaborate, or have fancy flash animations or anything. On the contrary, simple and clear is usually better. But it must look professional.
I did a quick search of websites of prominent SF authors, and I was surprised by how bad most of them are. This is your chance to do better.
Here are a couple of good links about web design. I’m sure you can find many more.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/31/10-principles-of-effective-web-design/
http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/designing-tutorials/9-essential-principles-for-good-web-design/
Really appreciate the input, and agree on many points (we needed to get a base up in order to start tweaking). Re: the question of a shopping cart …. we’re hoping for cross marketing. One hopes that visitors to the site who come in for something specific will cruise about and add things to the cart on impulse…same as any marketplace…like what they get and come back for more. Isn’t that the concept behind marketplaces from the time of … probably Neanderthal? 😀
And as in most things, what constitutes “effective” varies with the consumer. The nice thing about the way we’re going about it…so publicly and all…is that you can give us your reactions and we can respond in a way that is considered, but appropriate for us, not some megacorp, (or a minicorp trying to pretend it’s a megacorp). I sincerely hope Lynn is following this thread. Over on C&L, I personally found all the visitor input exceedingly useful in my cover design for Harmonies, and I’m sure the same will hold true for the CC website.
This, however, is one reason I’m personally trying to tone down the off-blog advertising for the site until we’ve actually got CC up and running. You all are in on the growing pains, and helping us work our way through them, not with the same solutions as everyone else, the way we’d have if we farmed this out, but with our own.
We’re very grateful for the input.
There is a definite art to web design. It s a very complicated process, one that involves separate but equally important skill sets: front-end design and back-end functionality–visual beauty, programming code, database writing… its daunting to say the least.
Green Wyvern in this above post is exactly right. No matter what, Closed Circle must hold itself to the highest standards of efficient, competent design and functionality. You cannot compromise.
I tend to think of graphic design as jewelry on a beautiful woman–especially on book covers, for example. The right graphic design can enhance her beauty. Done right you don’t even notice it–all you know is, she’s the most striking thing you’ve ever come across. Done wrong and it detracts.
But web design is not the same. Web design is interactive graphic design. Its about the flow of information–but more, a lot more. It conveys its own presence, it elicits an emotional reaction. And when its tied to commerce–even casually—the choices you make in terms of design can and will influence the viewer’s decisions on whether or not they trust to do business with you.
I think you know my professional respect and my not insignificant personal affections for the both of you. I admire what you are trying to do with your project. I want it to succeed, beyond your wildest expectations.
But–you absolutely have to at the end of the day, find people you trust and listen to their advice on this matter. If your best attempts fall short–buy a front-end, professionally designed template, or pay a professional to take what you’ve got and work it over, or go down to Gonzaga and see if you can’t offer a graphic design class a chance to do a real world project for a nominal fee. This is so very critical. I realize you are some distance from going live and I know there has been a tremendous learning curve. That’s why I am not willing to pull out the non-repo blue pencil yet…. but the decisions you make here will indeed greatly impact the overall success of what I know to be a long held desire. No question….
One also asks if there will be a link to the Home page. I understand it’s in beta, but in order to get back to the selection of authors, I need to hit the back button on Firefox 3.5.2.
Other than that, I have no other suggestions.
I’m late to the party; agree about pretty much everything, though. I increased the font size, but the colors aren’t fun to read.
Really don’t like that splash page, although it’s pretty to look at. The links don’t seem intuitively obvious; assuming I would go to a list of available CJC books, I clicked on her name, and found myself back here. Eventually figured out the “foyer” thing, though at first when I wanted to go back to the beginning I repeatedly clicked on the Closed Circle icon at the top of the page. Nothing happened, of course, but it “felt” like the place to go. That “past, present, future” selection just doesn’t make sense to me, and doesn’t help me navigate.
And, what about the totally new user? Perhaps some can be found to give input? Would they immediately recognize that they have found a site where one can buy ebooks?
Leaving for my Canada train trip, probably won’t see Closed Circle again for a couple of weeks, so I’ll be looking forward to the updates when I get back.