Canadian iTunes Store (Getting) Better for Book Lovers
I merchandised the front page of the chapters.indigo.ca website a long time ago. We used to change the story on the front door several times a day. They still do. When I asked my boss why we went to all the effort, especially when most customers were sidelinking in from Google, she responded “we have to do it to show that we are paying attention.”
The last time I checked out the audio section at the Canadian iTunes store, I thought it was pretty clear they weren’t paying attention to the audio book category. The merchandising was lazy, stale, or simply auto-generated. It didn’t make me want to buy books at all. The Canadian authors section was particularly limp. The US store wasn’t much better.
I am not sure if it was Amazon’s bid for Audible — an iTunes provider — or if it they simply hired the right resource, but they have pulled their socks up.
The Good
- Apple is actually talking to authors. Look at that! I just ran across the Meet the Author page and podcast. It is recorded in NYC so it naturally comes across a wee Barnes-and-Noble-esque. But they still get and A for effort.
- iTunes has kids books, lots of kids books — and the books are cheap (ish). Scholastic has just added books starting at 95 cents. It is also nice to see the Narnia books featured on today’s mainpage. Yes I know, the movie is coming out.
- The side stories are fresh (kind of). There is a great selection of picks for Earth Day in the Canadian store. In the US store the Staff Picks section actually includes titles from this month. There is an Oprah section. Also in the US, a Black History Month section. Ah — Black History Month was over a month ago.
The Bad
- Instead of improving the Canadian author section, they simply removed it.
- No staff picks on the Canadian site either. Does that mean staff isn’t merchandising the Canadian iTunes? A pity.
- There is still some classification issues. Casino Royale was here…
- Limited selection: Audible has books iTunes doesn’t have.
Rants About Audio Books unrelated to Apple
- Not enough CanCon — more Canadian publishers should step-up
- Parsing the digital files — the breaks between the individual files don’t correspond to individual book chapters
- Publishers not submitting meta-data to Gracenote — come on Penguin, you are gonna pay squillions of dollars for Alan Greenspan’s bio and then cut corners with the audio?
No Comments Yet