dduane

Okay, so it's a "soft opening."

Those of you who may have noticed that I've been working on the do-it-yourself-ebook-publishing thing may also  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 DianeDuane.com 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-time 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, we're offering the Dreamwidth community a 20% discount for purchases of USD$10.00 or more. Just quote the coupon code dreamwidth at checkout. Usage will determine how long this offer lasts, so if you see something you like, don't assume the discount is going to be there indefinitely.

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.)

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!

Friends,

It's up at last.

There are a lot of places where this notification needs to be posted, and a lot of explanations and profound apologies to be made... but for the moment it just seems best to get the news out.

Chapter Seven is now available online for subscribers: it's linked to from the normal TBM subscriber gateway page. The same old username and password that worked for previous chapters will get you in. (If you can't find your login info, email me and I'll send it out to you pronto.) HTML and PDF versions are there right now --  the mobile .prc versions will go up in due course, as soon as we receive the conversions.

If you're not a subscriber, the chapter will go public on the 28th of the month. Look for the link to its gateway page in the left-hand menu at the project page at http://www.the-big-meow.com. (And for those of you who might feel inclined to subscribe, the subscription button is at the top of the left-hand column, along with info about what you get.)

Once again, I'm deeply sorry for the immense delay. I'm going back on the old one-chapter-per-three-weeks schedule: Chapter Eight will be going up in mid-August. Additionally, the book has become a couple of chapters longer in the course of being restructured -- check the project schedule for the anticipated posting dates.

Thanks again, everybody, so very much, for your patience during this past crazed and difficult year. More info shortly.