Anybody want to buy a "nickel bag" and help us test the new DD.com shopping cart?

[dianeduane]

People have been asking me for some time where they can find various short works I've done. So it seemed like a good idea to publish a collection of short fiction, and some time next week we'll be publishing Uptown Local and Other Interventions. The collection will contain some of the harder to find stuff, like the title story, and various other original works (not licensed stuff, sorry: I can't self-publish the Star Trek or Dr. Who work, for obvious reasons).

However, before we bring this out, we need to test the shopping cart a little, as it's occasionally been acting up on okaying some purchases. So I'm hoping people might try a little experiment and help us figure out what's going on with it.

In 1991 the new newspaper The European did a short story contest, the only restrictions being that the stories could not be more than 2000 words long and had to have a European theme. So I did a short story and sent it along. It didn't win, but I got a very nice letter back from one of the editors saying that if they'd been considering publishing a fantasy story, it would have been a strong contender.

Anyway, it got saved to disk and tucked away, and when our website tech lady suggested that a good way to test the shopping cart would be to give it a small ebook to handle, after a little while I thought of the European story, which is called "The Rizzoli Bag." So if you'd like to read it, please click here to go to the Rizzoli Bag page at the new online store, and use PayPal to buy a copy. The story costs five US cents, otherwise known as a nickel, and is available in two formats, Kindle /.mobi and Nook / iPad / ePub. I would have sold it for a penny, but that would have created problems with the other main currency we want to test, which is sterling.

Five cents is about three pence at the moment, so I'm encouraging the UK readership to swing out and help us sort out the cart's issues -- as it was on UK purchases that the cart started acting cranky, and we want to fix this problem, which seemed to have to do with incorrect or incomplete communication between PayPal and the store. Other currencies are obviously also very welcome: the more the merrier... as the sooner we get the cart sorted out, the sooner we can publish Uptown Local.

If you have any download issues after purchasing, or if you aren't immediately redirected to a download page at the store after your order completes at PayPal, please use the contact form to let Lee the tech lady know what went wrong. Also, since we're expecting a lot of these messages at once if trouble starts, please be patient about hearing back from her, as it may take her some while to get things at the store sorted out.

Thanks, all! And have fun with the story.

Comments

Possibly not yet ready for prime time

[carbonel]

Okay, these are comments made on the fly as I'm going through the process.

When I click on the "add this to my cart" button, it takes me to a new page. Well and good. At the top of that new page is the following text: "You may want to add some instructions for using the shopping cart here. (defined in includes/languages/english/shopping_cart.php)"

I assume that's intended for you, not the prospective buyer.

Onward, though. I click "Go to checkout," and it wants all sorts of information. Most of it is perfectly reasonable, but I balk at my date of birth being required information. Yes, someone could probably find it on the intarwebs, but there's no reason to require it to pay with either PayPal or a credit card. If you just want confirmation that I'm over 21, a click-button for over or under 21 would serve the same purpose without getting into annoying privacy issues.

For that matter, the site hasn't made it explicit how I'll be paying. Before I purchase something, I'd like to know how I'll pay for it.

Also: if I'm paying via PayPal, why is it asking for all this information instead of just asking for my PayPal logon? This site appears to be mixing information-for-purchase with information-for-mailing-list. For the first, you need all the snoopy stuff, but PayPal has it already, and you don't want it. For the latter, all you need is an e-mail address. And there's no reason to ask for a phone number, for either.

People shouldn't have to create a login to your site just to buy a $.05 story. Or even a $14.99 book. There should be an option to pay as guest. That's the whole point of PayPal fulfillment.

Requiring either a Mr. or Ms. salutation is going to annoy a bunch of people. The fact that it beeps at me when I didn't choose one annoys me.

And now, having provided all this snoopy information, the site finally takes me to PayPal, where I log in and pay my $.05. That part goes swimmingly. Then it takes me back to the download site, where I get the story without incident.

So -- the bones of the thing are working properly, but I think the interface needs some tweaking to be made less annoying and intrusive.

Hope you find this helpful!

Re: Possibly not yet ready for prime time

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the notes on this! They're useful.

Also fascinating, as I saw none of this stuff when I was doing testing (leaving aside the address and DOB stuff). That one page with "You might want to add language..." I can fix immediately.

Unfortunately addresses have to be collected in the store at the ZenCart end to make sure that copies of the YW international editions are not sold to North American customers (as Harcourt holds ebook rights for that territory.) There's no way to make PayPal do this itself: I wish there was. ...The DOB thing is just dumb, though, and I have to see if it can be gotten rid of or whether it's hardwired into ZenCart.

That said... we have been considering changing to Ubercart for Drupal, as ZenCart is so naughty and so complex (as Marvin the Martian would say) and so twiddly to set up that Tech Lady and I have been left wanting to kick it at least several times a day.

Re: Possibly not yet ready for prime time

[dduane.livejournal.com]

BTW, Lee has managed to get rid of the requirement for date of birth info. Unfortunately tweaking the address requirements is a more involved business (and as I mentioned, for some books we need it). Would be nice to be able to opt in/out of the address requirement book by book, but there don't seem to be any shopping carts that support such a feature.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

It worked -- but PayPal charged me 4 pence! I'm not sure how they work that out. Rounded up probably (it should be a tad over 3p).

No, I'm not going to ask for a refund *g*. Rounding error, and you are welcome to the extra penny, I just found it amusing.

(Slightly less amusing was having to enter my DoB in US format. OK, it didn't like ISO 8601 format even though that's an international standard, lots of things don't, but selling to the UK that could annoy a lot of people.)

Downloaded but not yet read -- the KDU file manager happily opened the epub file as a ZIP file and displayed the parts and let me read it (I don't have an e-book reader, but epub is a really nice simple format and if I really need one I could write one in an hour or so) but I'm at work...

I look forward to the collection...

[mrs-norris-mous.livejournal.com]

I got charged 5 cents but I have paypal set to charge me in the request's currency. The data of birth format was annoying when it already had asked that I was in the UK. I can open the book :)

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Worked for me!

[silvergryphyn.livejournal.com]

I had no problems and didn't get asked for my DOB. I was able to download and put on my Kindle via Calibre without incident. :) I'm in the US.

[dduane.livejournal.com]

That's super -- thanks! (And good -- we got rid of the DOB thing and I was wondering if it would find a way to sneak back.) :)

[murphys-lawyer.livejournal.com]

Downloaded and worked fine. 4p seems to be the norm for GBP purchase.

Are you collating names and addresses submitted against IP addresses logged? "Sure, I'm from lil' ol' Engerland (snerk)..."

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Good. Re IPs: nope, no need for that: we can see the "origin" currency in the transaction report from PayPal.

[fgherman.livejournal.com]

Worked like a charm for me - fun story too.

PayPal quirk?

[mbernardi]

Just bought this story and a Young Wizards book too. Though I specified £ on your site, PayPal got sent a $ amount which was then converted back into £, I seem to have saved 16p in the process.

Re: PayPal quirk?

[dduane.livejournal.com]

:) Fascinating. Plainly either PayPal is overriding the Cart's settings, or the Cart is overriding PayPal on incoming. Or something. At least you made money on the deal. :)

Anyway, I'll see if I can work out what's happening. But so far all the UK transactions today seem to have worked OK, which is good: before they were getting stuck halfway. But Lee had a word with the settings at the PayPal end, which I think may have solved our problems.

Re: PayPal quirk?

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Oh, looking at my PayPal account (I remembered that I needed to add an email address) it charged me $0.05 as well even though I bought in GBP. So probably the exchange rate changed in your favour between the time you left the cart and the time PayPal actually did the transfer. This probably explains the 3p/4p differences as well.

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

If you have neither an e-book reader nor an iPad, is there any way to read the story?

[jilumasam.livejournal.com]

Now this is what I needed to know....a kindle app for my PC would be very nice...

Now if I can get that set up, I'll try downloading the "nickle book" and then if it all works and I can read it on my PC, then I'll be delighted to buy the story collection....

[dduane.livejournal.com]

You can also download a super free epub reader from http://www.ibisreader.com

Ibis reader

[mbernardi]

That's a very cool tool and it seems OS independant too.

Re: Ibis reader

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I used it for most epub things until I finally got a copy of Calibre. But it's still good for using on the smartphone.

[ibneko.livejournal.com]

Worked for me. [insert whiny noises about having to provide an address and a phone number for an ebook purchase.... although it's ZenCart limitations, I see.]

There also appears to be a link expiration date (just a week, eh? 02/25/2011) as well as a download limit for the ebook. Hum. Not a big fan of that. It's like I'm renting it...

[dduane.livejournal.com]

I take your point about the phone numbers -- we don't want those; we're in the process of trying to get rid of them. (It requires some tweaking of the store templates.)

But the addresses are a necessary evil. There are some things we sell in the DD.com store -- specifically, the unedited / un-updated versions of the Young Wizards books -- which I can only sell outside North America. For those we have to have addresses to compare to the PayPal addresses, so we can be sure that we're only selling to people we're authorized to, and so we can prove as much if my US publisher asks for an audit. Unfortunately the damn cart has no provision for requiring addresses for some products and not for others: so we have to get them from everybody. But we will never share them with anyone else.

As far as the expiration dates go, we can probably set them to "never". Let me look into it.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

No, not like renting. You have a limited time to pick it up from the store, and you can try up to 5 times (I suspect that if you tried and failed 5 times and you then talked to D she'd try to help you, because she's nice like that, but 5 should normally be enough), but once you have downloaded it then it's yours and it's up to you to keep it safe. Just like a dead tree book, you can't go back to the store a year later and say "I lost my copy, can I have another?" (Except that e-books are a lot easier to back up than dead tree versions.)

The Amazon Kindle store is like renting, since they keep everything on "the cloud" and expect you to fetch it from there each time, so they can also kill it without warning (and they can even remotely delete it from your Kindle), but with this it's just like any other software, it's up to you to make a backup. Most places which deliver their software online have similar restrictions to their download links.

[scarfman]

You have Doctor Who work?

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed: just one official piece (and a couple of precursor fanfics). Check over here. (http://www.dianeduane.com/The-Effect-Of-Dimensional-Transcendence-On-Mozzarella-Cheese)

[scarfman]

Thank you. Now that I look, I'd seen that before. But I hadn't seen Meetings on the Stair before. Thank you.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Worked fine for me here in the UK - downloaded and on my phone with a minimum of fuss.

[danceswthcobras.livejournal.com]

Worked for me.

[dduane.livejournal.com]

That's super!

We seem to have all the bugs worked out but one -- all the transactions seem to be stuck at the "processing" stage. They may have to be marked completed manually: the docs don't make it entirely clear just what Zen Cart is supposed to do at this point. (mutter)

Oh well. On to Uptown Local...

[wizardonduty.livejournal.com]

Will the Uptown Local and Other Interventions book be published as an actual paper book, or just as an ebook?

The redirect and download worked wonderfully at the website.

[shmuel.livejournal.com]

Chiming in a bit late, it worked fine here (using Opera)!

Though I would second many of carbonel's notes; in particular, I resent having to choose between "Mr." and "Ms." (But I know you're aware of this and that it doesn't have an easy fix.)