The bit I wrote earlier this month about why Monopoly sucks taught me a few things.
- Most people agree with me on this subject.
- A few people are still passionate fans of the game despite that. And as long as they’re having fun, more power to them!
- Altogether, these people are capable of crashing my site.
I was just about to head out of town when I posted that little rant here, and so many people started reading it and pointing others toward it that it buried my site hard. The poor little server it’s on just couldn’t keep up. As an emergency measure, I reposted it over at GeekDad.com, and many thanks to my friends over there for helping me out so fast.
So, now I’m going to get a bit technical. I set up and run my own website using WordPress because I’m just geeky enough to enjoy it, so this crash became my problem. I knew how to fix it, but I couldn’t do it instantly. Here’s what I did.
Most times when your website crashes, the smart thing to is install a caching plugin like WP-Super Cache. Unfortunately, I’d set up my book-selling shop here using the Jigoshop plugin, and Jigoshop doesn’t play well with caches. I’d been itching to rework the site anyhow–to redesign it so I wasn’t so tied to a single shop or theme. This would give me more flexibility for the future, so I decided to ditch the shop entirely and set myself up with something else.
I grabbed a plugin called MyBookTable, which actually got funded via Kickstarter last year. I didn’t back it at the time, but it’s matured nicely since its initial release. I like the layout of the pages it generates, and they’re responsive, which means they’ll look good on large monitors, laptops, tablets, and even phones. It even links into the reviews at GoodReads, so you can see what other people think about my books. The plugin also provides several Buy buttons for the most popular book retailers, and it has a premium option for a Universal Buy button, which I can use to point to other websites, like my friends at DriveThruFiction.com.
At the same time, I set myself up on Gumroad. This is a snazzy sales service that helps creator sell downloadable things (like ebooks) on the web. It looks good, has reasonable rates, and friends like Tobias Buckell recommended it. I then used the Universal Buy buttons in MyBookTable to point toward the pages in Gumroad, so I can sell people my books direct.
Just look for those “Buy Direct” buttons on the pages for the books I’ve published myself. You won’t see them on the books other folks have published for me. I’ll point you toward their own site instead.
I hope this will offer a more straightforward way to buy my books. As a means of testing this new system out, I’m offering up a copy of Hard Times in Dragon City to the first 40 people who buy it through that Buy Direct/Gumroad button for only $1 each. Just use this offer code to get that 80% off: test123.
