North Light Shop - Digital Download Deficiencies

Going round in circles - trying to download to no avail

This is all about how the North Light Shop makes it difficult for international customers trying to download a digital copy of The Pastel Journal

I've become a big fan of digital downloads of books and magazines - but while iTunes and Amazon work fine for me (and sync between my Mac and iPad beautifully)  it is possible to encounter difficulties when trying to buy/download from suppliers who are less well attuned to digital downloads.

Art Magazines from North Light Shop

I used to subscribe to various American Art Magazines but gradually got fed up by the time they took to arrive and the cost relative to the content - given the amount of content available for free online which was of comparable quality.

The other major problem was the massive postage cost for international customers which made a journal which is available for a reasonable cost in the USA a very expensive proposition when buying as an overseas customer.

It's a challenge that a lot of publishers of journals and magazines face.  It's also a challenge which must be losing them custom and customers.

One of the delights of the Internet is that it is now possible to order individual copies of magazines as digital downloads.   That means I can get a copy as soon as the magazine is published.  It's all very fast - see/buy/download/receive.  The admin process is extremely speedy on other sites.  The only time I have to wait is the time to receive the download.

This is why some of the publishers of art magazines now make digital downloads available from their website stores.

Which is fine - so long as they work!

This is the story of trying to buy the April 2011 copy of the Pastel Journal which has the Pastel 100 winners in it.

It was always a copy I looked forward to getting and I'm very happy to try and download a digital copy for $7.99 (although I would expect the publishers to realise at some point that they will achieve a lot more sales when they start relating the digital file to cost ie there are no paper or printing costs involved with a digital file)

This is the process I followed - which ended up in this blog post.

• Read Pastel Journal Blog - see article about the Pastel Journal 100 edition and click the link to the 12th annual Pastel 100 competition
• Arrive at North Light Store 
• Bonus:  I note the following This item does not have shipping or handling fees, but does count toward your order total to receive free shipping on other products.
• Realise I need to set up an account and do so.  Get rather irritated by an antiquated American ecommerce system which assumes all international addresses work in exactly the same way as American ones.  It's something I've seen a lot of in the past but much less so nowadays hence the irritation at having to make "England" a province.  It's a country!
• Click through the North Light website menu to get to the Pastel Journal and choose the digital download option for the Pastel Journal 100 issue (April 2011)
• Next I click the link and.......

• Billing information has been automatically inserted
• Just the payment information to complete (what a pity they don't offer Paypal which is used by soooooooo many people these days for international payments)
• see the shipping information but do not complete this as they don't need it, the digital download is coming to my computer.  It's not a CD coming to my B&M address
• HOWEVER I do note that there is no option for "digital download" in the shipping information!  Which seems very odd to say the least
• Odd that is until I press "continue"
• The next thing I get is a screen demanding that I complete a shipping address.  This states the following

Invalid First Name For Shipping Address
Invalid Last Name For Shipping Address
Invalid Shipping Address 1
Invalid City For Shipping Address
Invalid Postal Code for Shipping Address
Invalid Ship Country

• So now I wonder what to do - which is never a situation I like to be in when in the middle of a transaction on a secure website
• I try choosing default and that loads my home address and announces that it's going to send me my digital download as "international printed matter"
• I try the same process twice more with identical result.  Nope I didn't do anything wrong.  The system running on the North Light Store does not appear to be one which can cope with digital downloads of files!  Either that or somebody forgot to ask the webmaster to include instructions specifically for digital download customers.
• This is the point at which I begin to "lose it" and......
• Start this blog post instead.  I give up!

So - a question for you

Has anybody SUCCESSFULLY downloaded a digital file to an international address from the North Light Store?

• If so, what did you do?  Did it arrive as a digital download?
• If not, why not?  Plus what did you next?

Online publishing platforms - the numbers compared

This post focuses on the relative traffic, size and impact and reach of the different online publishing sites.   This is because many artists now like to be able to publish their artwork or sketches in books and some also publish art instruction online. 

Online publishing platforms

I'm focusing on three publishing platforms.  Their own descriptions of themselves are quoted below.

• Blurb

Make your own book with Blurb online. Create photo books, wedding books and more. Design and publish professional quality books to keep, give or sell

• Lulu

Lulu.com brings the world of online book publishing to you. Looking to self-publish? Lulu's print on demand (POD) solutions make it quick and easy. Create a book in minutes, publish with the click of a mouse, distribute, sell and print books to order. It's that simple.

• Issuu

Explore a world of publications by people and publishers alike. Collect, share and publish in a format designed to make your documents look their very best.

Below you can see what the unique monthly visitors are for the different sites when their website URLs are plugged into compete.com - a site which provides comparative site profiles.

Comparison of the USA traffic for three online publishing sites: issuu, lulu and blurb

Compete's data comes from a statistically representative cross-section of 2 million consumers across the United States who have given permission to have their internet clickstream behaviors and opt-in survey responses analyzed anonymously as a new source of marketing research.  compete.com

These stats came as a bit of a surprise to me.

1. I'm surprised that Lulu is about twice as big as blurb.  I knew it was bigger but not that much bigger
2. I'm amazed at how just how big Issuu is and will be seriously looking into this as a vehicle for publishing my work in future.  Capturing the corporate audience with repeat readers is obviously an excellent way to grow your business.  It remains to be seen whether it does the same for independent publishers.

Bear in mind that

• the above are predominantly statistics for an American Audience. 
• You only really begin to get an appreciation of the global audience for Issuu in the Quantcast pages (see below) - and that's because it's so big.  
• The US audience for Issuu is only around 25% of its global audience.

This is what each of the sites look like on Quantcast which is one of my favourite analysis sites in terms of a demographic analysis of visitors by sex, age group, earnings and college education status.  It appears to indicate that each of the publishing sites appears to attract the same sort of audience for their services.

Click the link in the title to see the full Quantcast page.

Blurb on Quantcast - ranks 7,096 in USA

Lulu on Quantcast - ranks 2,740 in USA


Issuu on Quantcast - ranks 158 in USA



In conclusion:

• Issuu is HUGE compared to the other two platforms - but only delivers online publications
• If you want to have your book or publication about your artwork found online by readers independently of your website or blog then you need to look very seriously at issuu
• If you want to produce a physical copy of your book for distribution to clients or galleries then you're better off looking at Blurb or Lulu.

This is a very much a first look at these three sites in comparison to one another.  I'll be revisiting them. 

What do you think?

In the meantime if you've got experience of any of the three sites and would like to share your experinces please leave a comment below.