Jane’s absolutely exhausted. Nobody’s commented on her new book, just come to her to tell her everything they don’t like about the site. And every time she runs a fix somebody wanted (most of them nice ideas) she has somebody else writing and asking for yet one more fix. Remember she’s not the webmaster—she’s a working writer trying to get her own books prepped for publication after having helped Lynn and me bigtime; so it’s MY turn on the firing range.
Our last fix: we changed the big window to a button. We changed the “Pages” sidebar to “Site Navigation” in major caps, so maybe that will help out people who can’t figure how to find things. That is a widget, and the order of the display is set by the order of the pages in the site. It’s NOT taking any instruction to change the display order by inserted number, so sometimes, well, we’re using a template, not our own design, and sometimes templates don’t do what you’d like them to do.
Meanwhile will some kind people go over and post something pleasant on Jane’s site so she can read something else besides a request for yet one more site-tweak?
Why of course…lovely things to say for Jane. Easy as pie.
You can easily change the page order with this plugin:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/my-page-order/
That is, assuming that the template and other plugins aren’t doing anything weird with the page order…
Thanks, GW. The darned widget has a blank/dropdown for page order, but totally disregards it. I’ll see if that plugin will play nicely with the widget!
Linked big window is great, that’ll stop people like me from getting confused.
The only other suggestion I have concerns the horse pictures. I’d suggest using a static on the shopping cart and on the Finisterre page, and loosing the emoticons. The horse pictures on the Finisterre page look so low quality and since there’s currently no content to be had, the “Coming soon” is quite enough. The non-animated thing is a personal thing, I always feel like all the moving about distracts from the contents of the page.
Is there really supposed to be a comma in “About: Who, and Why”?
The categories are no in the “correct” order.
Closed Circle’s shaping up quite nicely. I hope you’ll have many buying visitors.
From my view point, the CC site is “good enough” that you should spend more time putting books in the shelves and less tweaking it here and there.
As we have to periodically remind Jerry Pournelle, if the choice is between another book and a prettier website; most of us would rather have another book.
🙂
Seconded, thirded, fourthed, and any other number you need! I’ll go remind Jane we love her AND her writing, as long as you promise to remember the same for you, and go write something else, woman!
I swear, I think some of those comments come from sneaky publishers and whatnot, hoping to keep you from being happy with what you’ve accomplished and making a success of it. Grrr. Ignore the rude beasts for a while!
Agree about CC, it’s just fine. Take suggestions, but wait awhile. One thing I’ve learned over the years — as users for input on system design (or software, or websites, etc), you get a real cacophony of idea, many mutually incompatible. Take input, think about it, and make changes you think will achieve what YOU want the site to achieve (mainly selling books !!!!).
Looking forward to that short story 😉
I’m just thrilled that periodically one of you writes something and puts it up for us. Anything else is gravy.
i so agree. The site works fine. Just leave it be. I wouldn’t even say, Take suggestions. I’d say, File suggestions in a safe place and go on about your real work.
I build websites for a living. No matter what you do, someone will have a helpful suggestion as to how it could be better. Half of their suggestions will contradict each other too.
The site worked well enough to sell me books (hadn’t read Hellburner in a long time), so I think it’s just dandy.
Best suggestion for the CC site – More books. Morgaine… Chanur… Union/Alliance… It’s all good. I still have plenty of room on the Kindle. 🙂
I’m with kokipy…..if *I* can navigate the site without problems…..anyone should be able to manage it…..And I am REALLY FOND of the shopping cart and the Finistserre horses…..yes, I know they don’t really match what Finisterre is about, but they add a really personal feeling to the site….(I for one would love a little pin or patch of the pony…..hey, Grateful Dead has teddy bears!) I don’t think there is a danger of it, but PLEASE don’t become so slick that you that you become a cookie cutter. The personal quality of CC makes it *you*.
There will always be nitpickers: unless it has something to do with the functioning of CC I would say on the list of 25 important things to do it should be #250,000. 😉 😉 😉
I understand all of your kind comments advising CJ and Jane to just write, but it seems to me that advice about flaws is important for them. CC is a source of livelihood; marketing is important. It is vital that persons be able to easily and conveniently encounter and/or find and pay for merchandise. Anything that impedes these goals, be it visual or part of the machinery of operation, is important for them to learn about. It’s like software in Beta version
Good luck.
The thing is, CC isn’t “flawed.” It’s working. What people seem to be mostly commenting on is tetchy stuff: “I don’t personally like the way this looks,” as opposed to “I can’t download this ebook or I can’t make a purchase.” When people are actually having problems, Jane and Lynn and CJ are quite fast at making it good.
This is not, and should not be, a hugely commercial site. It should be a smallish, easily maintained site that allows the authors to sell their books directly to their fans. Again, it is, and, what’s more, it already works.
What we, their fans, are trying to prevent, is them feeling obligated to “perfect” something that will always be a work in progress. And thus taking time and energy that, I believe, THEY would rather put into writing more and selling more.
Sorry if I misread what you wrote, but I’m getting a little antsy about the flow of negative comments regarding the site. Not just here, but in other places as well. I have personally seen someone elsewhere bashing the site because of “uppity authors who are trying to get out of legitimate contracts with struggling publishers.” NONE of which is true, as that commenter was informed in no uncertain terms. But the only good out of that is that is may have sent some traffic to CC that might otherwise not have heard of it. So I humbly beg pardon if I have unjustly jumped all over what was meant as helpful.
Well, and it’s not a challenge above, but an honest give-em-to-me! I’m not as personally involved in the creative decisions on CC’s appearance, and I can take ’em in without it feeling personal: I just take the ones I like and shelve the rest. Jane’s disposition is to angst for hours over each of two even when they’re contradictory. Me, since I don’t do the pix and code that isn’t pushbutton, I just ask her if we can do a certain thing and she’ll tell me up front how much work it is/isn’t, and we decide based on how crazy it’ll make us.
One thing we WANT to do is to move that Store page up in the hierarchy, but it’s a bit of a bear to do. When I’m over the crud and Jane’s had a chance to rest a bit (she’s doing my work and hers) we’re going to attack that with GW’s kind suggestion and see if our template will let us do that or if we have to remove my personal page, let the store move up in the hierarchy, and try to reinsert my page later. I worked enough with Joomla! to know about sequence numbers and pages, but so far the template just won’t turn loose of its order, disregarding commands available in its own structure. Sigh. But that is a priority, and we’ll get it.
Huh.
Nitpickers be damned (more-colorful metaphor elided).
For my money (pun intended), the ground rule should be that any comment or suggestion made to CC shall be weighted before review for inclusion/deletion, said weighting to be accomplished by multiplying it by the number of CC purchases made by the suggestor. And anythimg multiplied by zero is zero!
Jik (or was it Goldtooth?) said it best: “Why you let they bite you ankles?”
Well, I see both sides in the give-and-take of the above several comments. Certainly the site does work; I have read enough comments of those who have bought books (as I have, only a couple, given the parlous state of my budget). On the other hand, the only way the Closed Circle authors have a chance of really getting some freedom from the traditional publishing establishment is to get LOTS of purchasers, many more than the followers of these blogs and the members of Shejidan.
So, while individual and quirky and expressing-the-authors’-personalities is fine, there has to be a balancing act. The total stranger to CC, who drops in because of a link on some blog or a convention flyer, needs to find it similar enough to the mass of sites with which she or he is already familiar in e-commerce, and easy enough to get around in, that she will stay, and buy a book.
It’s so easy on the net to just click on away to another site. And most people don’t want to read all the site history and authors’ pages — they just want to see what’s to buy, make a decision, and go on. Design decisions need to always have that as the top priority.
So, enough philosophy. My one concrete nit-pick of the day regards the lower part of the store page, where the graphic novels are, under “other goodies”. I think the very first words there should make clear that these are actual printed-on-paper volumes, and then the paragraph about foreign postage should be moved to after the listings. When you have been reading through a catalog of e-books, to suddenly hit a request for postage is jarring, especially since you haven’t yet read the description of what the postage is for.
That, I can fix….
[Edit} Gotcha, AbigailM: there is now text explaining what that is, and thank you, plus I am going to suggest we ditch the separate “Freebies” page and put the first volumes back with their sets. I don’t think that separation helps navigation. Jane’s going to have to do that ‘moving’ bit: I’d probably drop something essential down the rathole…And frankly, now that we’ve given freebies to all you wonderful folk who showed up early and joined the site, I’m suggesting we now take the first volume of Jane’s series into for-pay books.
One thing that we do know is sometimes a fuzziness problem is what we wrote in a frenzy of trying to get the site up, and sometimes (as above) we weren’t real clear to anybody coming in with no knowledge that graphic novels ever existed. Let me know if you spot other fuzzy-logic spots, which are at a priority [with me] to clarify.
I’m suggesting we now take the first volume of Jane’s series into for-pay books.
I’d advise against that. Really. Before Closed Circle I haven’t read anything from Jane. This sample sold the other two of the series to me. Without it, I wouldn’t have bought it.
(Btw: I usually only buy paperback – needs less space in the shelf. Some months ago BAEN sold 3 hardcovers to me – each including 2 books of one story arc of 6 books. I got hooked by 4 free available e-books. The early books where not longer available in paper back .. and I wanted to have everything in the same format)
If you want to sell a series give away at least a part of the first book. If you want to sell a single book, give away some sample chapters. In a real bookshop I read usually at least the first chapter before I decide whether I like the book …
I see NetWalkers as more or less 1 book in 3 volumes anyway – so nobody who is a reader and likes the story will read only the first volume.
After I get my tax refund (and therefore, after I actually DO my taxes with three Schedule C’s, all showing distressingly negative numbers) I intend to BUY those graphic novels.
By the way, my earlier comments weren’t criticisms, any site is going to have glitches. And the CC Triad is going to be improving/refining this site forever.
Like AbigailM, I hope that it is VERY, VERY commercial. These are three writers that certainly deserve to eat steak rather than only beans.
Not that this is a democracy but i agree re the freebies, up to and including the part about moving the first uplinks book to the paid category. I always thought that was excessively generous.
Just a data point: I downloaded Uplink, and after reading, bought the others. Definitely a “first hit is free” kind of book!