Cornwell Internet spend a lot of time on publishers’ web sites, whether we are looking for information about our clients’ publications, or for some other reason – we even buy books ourselves, occasionally. On the whole, unless the site is one we built ourselves, we are not impressed by what we see. Roger’s favourite example is the site on which you could not find a book unless you knew in which month it had been published.

Ungratefully, we are also prone to complain when publishers renew their web sites: they have been known to delete the whole site and replace it with a page promising ‘new site coming soon’ (often with a completion date which they overrun). Then, when the new site appears, we have to change all our links because material has been moved – or deleted!

So here’s double congratulations on your new site to ISIS Publishing, the audiobook specialists. It isn’t perfect by any means, but it’s a huge improvement on the previous version. The search feature now works with Firefox! Eack book groups under one title the different formats in which it is available (tape cassette, audio CD, MP3 CD…) so I can link to a title and allow the visitor to choose which format they want. Better still, I can now link to a title full stop – the old site was so constructed that you could only link to the front page.

One result is that where previously I would link to ISIS titles on Amazon, because their site allows me to link to individual items, now it is actually easier for me to link to ISIS’s own site, encouraging potential customers to go to them direct. This has to be good news for them, doesn’t it?

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