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Acquisition
IntroductionWe need to collect real world acquisition scenarios for each of the four types of supported classes:
The following do not include a discussion of how the client/user discovered the entry. Stories1 ShelleyShelley has found Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist for $18.99 as a PDF in the Catalog provided by nerdishbooks.com using Reading System X. Nerdish Books allows her to pay via PayPal. Shelley has a PayPal account, so she is sent of to PayPal in a web browser by Reading System X, enters her account information, and returns to Nerdish Books. At this point, the browser receives the PDF content, which is intercepted by Reading System X, added to her library, and displayed for her. {KHF} 2 HamidḤāmid has found How Barack Obama Won in the Catalog provided direct from the publisher, Vintage. He has discovered it using Search Engine Y using the web browser on his laptop. Search Engine Y shows that has three options for purchase, all of which require a credit card:
{KHF} 3 RobRob is a longtime user of Reading System Z. He needs to get better at singing, so he finds Singing Live: The Performing Skills Guidebook for Contemporary Singers in the default aggregated Catalog provided by Reading System Z. He does not care what the format is (Reading System Z has selected a Mobi file for him), the file (stored by Z), or who the publisher is. Rob has already entered his Google Checkout account information long ago into Reading System Z, which saved it. Z filters Catalog results to exclude titles not available using Google Checkout. Rob is shown a "Read now for $8.99CAD" and happily clicks it (he buys anything he wants--as long as it's less than $10CAD). Seconds later, he's learning more about singing. {KHF} 4 ValdaValda has found Inherent Vice in Reading System B. Reading System B has an existing partnership with the publisher and offers Valda an EPUB version for $7.99 using PayPal. She enters her PayPal credentials and Reading System B records the transaction (to report to the publisher later). On the backend, Reading System B requests a one-time URL for the content from the publisher (Reading System B doesn't have a copy of their library, they control it). Using this one-time URL, it downloads the EPUB for Valda and loads it into her personal library. {KHF} Walkthroughs1 Shelley + PayPal (HTML)(For story Shelley #1)
<entry>
<title>Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist</title>
<id>urn:nerdishbooks.com:1166</id>
<dc:identifier>urn:isbn:</dc:identifier>
<author>
<name>Dean Allemang</name>
</author>
<author>
<name>James Hendler</name>
</author>
<updated>2009-08-12T00:44:20+00:00</updated>
...
<link type="application/pdf"
href="https://www.nerdishbooks.com/book/1984.pdf"
rel="http://opds-spec.org/buying">
<opds:price currencycode="USD">18.99</opds:price>
<opds:paymentgateway>https://www.paypal.com/us/</opds:paymentgateway>
</link>
</entry>{KHF} |
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I will be initially implementing integrated EPUB reading and purchase. I plan on initially supporting scenario 3 (Rob), where the content will be an epub. I may also support scenario 4 (Valda) if there are content partners who can support that acquisition profile.
I am not planning on supporting scenario 1. I will indirectly support scenario 2, though as a reading system that is largely outside my concern (users will be able to add their own EPUB files, however they've acquired them).
I'll implement 3 but I'd like to redirect the user if there's no payment method associated to the account. Purely from a UX perspective, I find that 2 (what most people currently used with pre-OPDS/Stanza) is very confusing.
A good set of toy case studies for acquisition of free content would help clarify some of the steps packed into these examples. Alexi finds a copy at a library, but it's not in a format wanted; she needs conversion. Barbarosa finds a few copies that seem to be the same and needs to choose one -- how can he compare them to figure out which one is best? Chelmsley is browsing some very large documents that can't fit entirely on his reading device. He wants to add a marker and the part that he is reading to his collection. Du Ming is looking at a file only part of which her reader can decipher, and wants to provisionally acquire this copy while continuing to query for decipherable copies. Emiliano can only find a zipped bundle of a work including three formats and a detailed set of images, and wants to preserve this origin data while unpacking it and keeping just one of the formats (discarding the rest to save space). Fikru wants to acquire just the metadata and summary of a record to keep in his local list of interesting works. Greudin wants to merge a copy of the work he just found with an existing copy -- perhaps overwriting and storing the diff, or combining rich media while storing their different texts, or even merging by hand. Hieu has more space than Chelmsley but no bandwidth, and will need a month to finish acquiring a work she desires, and wants to be ensure that the acuisition process never corrupts the file being gathered, even if that means she has to ask for some parts of the file many times. Her brother Hoan also wants to be able to acquire an identical work from multiple sources - whether it has expressly been bittorrented or not; file checksums might help him confirm identicality.
Etc...