I am looking for an online system/app that will create a bookstore for my business. We want to publish a series of ebooks but would like them housed inside a bookshelf...
Graham J. replied:
There is one already - called Amazon....! It could well be easier to set up a shop within Amazon rather than trying to re-invent the wheel. You set up your own Amazon shop and then use both CreateSpace and their bookshelf app to include only your books . I spoke with some publishers recently and largely they agreed that their online sales now depend entirely on Amazon's systems. Amazon has its own payment system (indeed anyone can use this on their own website as an alternative to PayPal). Having said all this the people most likely to know are Mindy Gibbins-Klein and Sue Richardson . There are several WordPress themes and plugins that help run bookstores too, such as BookStore and MyBookTable.
Ian B. replied:
OK. I've just checked the TED bookstore and see what you mean. They've got the books on Amazon, Nook and iBooks and just have nice pictures and descriptions of them with links. Looks pretty good: https://www.ted.com/read/ted-books/ted-books-library If you don't have a huge number of books (let's say < a dozen) then it'll be easier just to hand crank a web page to mirror that (or get your web guy to do it - "should" cost pennies) than it would be to implement a cart type system with links to all the books.
Ian B. replied:
So in truth, TED doesn't have a publishing ecosystem. They're not handling payment or distribution or anything like that. They just use the normal booksellers. They have a web page which links to their books on amazon, ibooks and nook. And they also have a TED books app which is apparently built on the Atavist platform: https://atavist.com/