Something for the weekend: our new ebook store opens

by Diane Duane
Screengrab of new ebookshop front page at ebooksdirect.dianeduane.com

ETA, May 31, 1315 UTC: Due to our Shopify facility inadvertently being set for the wrong time zone, the 20% discount offer described below terminated too early. So we’ve reset it and extended the offer to last until 0001 Pacific time on June 1. Sorry for the mix-up!

***

Okay, so it’s a “soft opening.”

Those of you who’ve been following the do-it-yourself-ebook-publishing saga here will know that for the past six months or so, Lee the Tech Lady and I have been in a more or less constant battle of wits with the Zen Cart software we installed at the turn of the year. After a while it became obvious to both of us (and also, tangentially, to Peter, who had to watch me wandering around tearing my hair and muttering) that Zen Cart was winning. This is not good. Software should not get in the way of what you’re trying to do. And software should definitely not make you feel stupid.

But things have taken a better turn. We found out about Shopify, and it took me very little time to realize that this was what we needed. It’s taken a week or so to set up the new store, but it’s been a relatively pain-free week — in the same way that putting a BandAid on a scratch compares favorably to brain surgery (which dealing with Zen Cart often resembled).

So here’s the new store’s address:

ebooksdirect.dianeduane.com

It’s not yet in its final state — we have some design issues we’re still dealing with — but it looks OK, and all the products are in place. And we have a few opening-day specials for those of you who enjoy such things.

First of all, for those of you who’d like to help us test out our shopping cart to make sure that it works with real money (not that I have any serious doubts in this case, but you never know…), we’ve made available as a standalone purchase the very very short story “The Rizzoli Bag”, which has been used to test our cart before. This will cost you USD $0.05, aka Five Cents or even a Nickel (call it 3p Sterling). And also available as a standalone again (as it was during St. Patrick’s Day week) is the much longer short story “Herself,” which we’re offering for USD $0.99 or ninety-nine cents.

Finally, should anything else in the store take your fancy — such as the Young Wizards International editions (for readers outside the US and Canada only) or the ebook versions of the Door Into… series, for this weekend only we’re offering you a 20% discount for purchases of USD$10.00 or more. This offer runs out on May 31st, but you can use it two times between now and then. Just quote the coupon code somethingweekend at checkout.

Young Wizards fans may also want to visit the page with details about the new revised Millennium Editions of books 1-4 — the first cover rough/template is up. (No art yet: that’ll be along in June.)

ETA: Due to a couple of incorrect settings at the store, the first few orders had to be hand-approved after payment was made. Since then we’ve changed the settings so that authorization, payment and order fulfillment (meaning the link to your file being emailed to you) should all happen automatically. Sorry about the hiccup.

As regards the old store: we won’t be closing it just yet, but we’ll be freezing it so that no new orders can be placed there; and we’ve removed its link from the DianeDuane.com site and the YoungWizards.com site. As soon as all present order issues with the Zen Cart store are complete, we’ll send out one final email to the old store’s users with the new shop’s address so that they can get re-download links from the new Shopify facility if they need them.)

Anyway, thanks, everybody! And those of you who’ve seen this posting via Twitter, please feel free to retweet it if you have a mind.

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27 comments

sally_maria May 29, 2011 - 9:58 pm

Sorry to bother you, but when I try to use the discount code, it says “The maximum number of uses of the discount have been exceeded”. Obviously it’s been a very popular offer. 

Anonymous May 29, 2011 - 10:18 pm

Oops! Sorry about that — had a toggle mis-set. It’s fixed now.

sally_maria May 30, 2011 - 11:41 pm

This is no doubt truly incompetent of me, but this time I couldn’t see the box for putting the discount code in at all – and I clicked through expecting to find it and the sale completed. Or was the deadline midnight on the 30th? That’s fair enough, but I’m surprised the box disappeared rather than just showed the code as out of date.

Anonymous May 31, 2011 - 1:28 pm

It’s not your fault! The offer unfortunately did end too early because the shop was set with its home time in BST rather than in far-Pacific, which is where we thought it was. (eyeroll) I have to run out and do an errand, but as soon as I’m back I’ll hand-refund you 20% of your order. 🙂

sally_maria May 31, 2011 - 7:53 pm

That’s very kind of you, thank you. 🙂 I hope that at least I managed to break the shop usefully.

Diane Duane June 1, 2011 - 10:19 am

No probs! On its way to you now. Best! DD

Anonymous May 31, 2011 - 1:28 pm

It’s not your fault! The offer unfortunately did end too early because the shop was set with its home time in BST rather than in far-Pacific, which is where we thought it was. (eyeroll) I have to run out and do an errand, but as soon as I’m back I’ll hand-refund you 20% of your order. 🙂

Anonymous May 31, 2011 - 1:28 pm

It’s not your fault! The offer unfortunately did end too early because the shop was set with its home time in BST rather than in far-Pacific, which is where we thought it was. (eyeroll) I have to run out and do an errand, but as soon as I’m back I’ll hand-refund you 20% of your order. 🙂

sally_maria May 29, 2011 - 9:58 pm

Sorry to bother you, but when I try to use the discount code, it says “The maximum number of uses of the discount have been exceeded”. Obviously it’s been a very popular offer. 

dianeduane May 29, 2011 - 10:18 pm

Oops! Sorry about that — had a toggle mis-set. It’s fixed now.

sally_maria May 30, 2011 - 11:41 pm

This is no doubt truly incompetent of me, but this time I couldn’t see the box for putting the discount code in at all – and I clicked through expecting to find it and the sale completed. Or was the deadline midnight on the 30th? That’s fair enough, but I’m surprised the box disappeared rather than just showed the code as out of date.

dianeduane May 31, 2011 - 1:28 pm

It’s not your fault! The offer unfortunately did end too early because the shop was set with its home time in BST rather than in far-Pacific, which is where we thought it was. (eyeroll) I have to run out and do an errand, but as soon as I’m back I’ll hand-refund you 20% of your order. 🙂

sally_maria May 31, 2011 - 7:53 pm

That’s very kind of you, thank you. 🙂 I hope that at least I managed to break the shop usefully.

Andrew Timson May 30, 2011 - 12:45 am

Diane, I had an order on the old store that I hadn’t yet downloaded (I didn’t realize we only had a week to do so!). I sent an e-mail to the shop-management@dianeduane.com address a few days ago, hoping to have those reset; does this mean that I don’t need to bother, and will be able to redownload from the new shop in a few days?

Anonymous May 30, 2011 - 11:32 am

Lee’s sorted that out now, I believe? Let me know.

Andrew Timson May 30, 2011 - 12:29 pm

Yep, she got to it this morning. 🙂

Andrew Timson May 30, 2011 - 12:45 am

Diane, I had an order on the old store that I hadn’t yet downloaded (I didn’t realize we only had a week to do so!). I sent an e-mail to the shop-management@dianeduane.com address a few days ago, hoping to have those reset; does this mean that I don’t need to bother, and will be able to redownload from the new shop in a few days?

dianeduane May 30, 2011 - 11:32 am

Lee’s sorted that out now, I believe? Let me know.

Andrew Timson May 30, 2011 - 12:29 pm

Yep, she got to it this morning. 🙂

Andrew Timson May 30, 2011 - 12:47 am

Unrelated, so I’m not posting it as a reply – the links for individual books on your International Edition page (linked from the sidebar) still go to the old store.

Anonymous May 30, 2011 - 11:13 am

Yes indeed they do. For the moment it’s OK. Lee will be replacing them in a day or so.

Andrew Timson May 30, 2011 - 12:47 am

Unrelated, so I’m not posting it as a reply – the links for individual books on your International Edition page (linked from the sidebar) still go to the old store.

dianeduane May 30, 2011 - 11:13 am

Yes indeed they do. For the moment it’s OK. Lee will be replacing them in a day or so.

Young Wizards New Millennium Editions: a little more info | Out of Ambit May 30, 2011 - 11:55 am

[…] not happening instantly, we’re now running smoothly. (Just for everyone else’s info: the 20% discount offer runs until tomorrow, May […]

Steph asdf May 31, 2011 - 8:15 pm

Not sure where you want any site issues reported, so apologies for spamming here.

I’m using Chrome, so these issues might be browser specific.
If I click either checkout button, don’t finish checking out, and return to the cart (via any method), then click the other checkout button, Paypal reports that the order is invalid until you click Update in the cart. Also, both checkout buttons seem to go to the same Paypal page.I still don’t see the coupon code box, which should be there again according to the update.

Diane Duane June 1, 2011 - 11:31 am

No probs: you had to drop a note about it somewhere. 🙂 Thanks for that. I’ll ask Lee to look into this and see what’s going on.

Steph asdf May 31, 2011 - 8:15 pm

Not sure where you want any site issues reported, so apologies for spamming here.

I’m using Chrome, so these issues might be browser specific.
If I click either checkout button, don’t finish checking out, and return to the cart (via any method), then click the other checkout button, Paypal reports that the order is invalid until you click Update in the cart. Also, both checkout buttons seem to go to the same Paypal page.I still don’t see the coupon code box, which should be there again according to the update.

Comments are closed.

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