Chapter 9. Direct Sales Channel
Direct Sales Uncover Hidden Trends for Publishers
By Joe Wikert
One of the most important reasons publishers should invest in a direct channel is because of all the data it provides. Retailers are only going to share a certain amount of customer information with you, but when you make the sale yourself, you have full access to the resulting data stream.
As you may already know, when you buy an ebook from oreilly.com, you end up with access to multiple formats of that product. Unlike Amazon, where you only get a Mobi file, or Apple, where you only get an EPUB file, oreilly.com provides both (as well as PDF and oftentimes a couple of others). This gives the customer the freedom of format choice, but it also gives us insight into what our customers prefer. We often look at download trends to see whether PDF is still the most popular format (it is) and whether Mobi or EPUB are gaining momentum (they are). But what we hadn’t done was ask our customers a few simple questions to help us better understand their e-reading habits. We addressed those habits in a recent survey. Here are the questions we asked:
- If you purchase an ebook from oreilly.com, which of the following is the primary device you will read it on? (Choices included laptop, desktop, iOS devices, Android devices, various Kindle models, and other ereaders/tablets.)
- On which other devices do you plan to view your ebook?
- If you purchase an ebook from oreilly.com, which of the following is the
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