Four Amazing Words

He said that they tested various phrases on the Highrise homepage for the call-to-action button. They originally had used various permutations of “Free Trial” and “Sign-up for Free Trial”. Then they tested the phrase:

“See Plans and Pricing”

This resulted in a 200% increase in sign-ups. That’s right. 200%.

via Carsonified » How to Increase Sign-ups by 200%.

On reflection, when comparison shopping a service or site, I’m much more likely to continue investigating if they have a “Plans and Pricing” link that makes it easier to figure out how much it actually costs.  Some sites make me go through a signup or purchase process just to find the prices, and, those, I often bypass as not worth the effort.

H/T TimOReilly

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.

via Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others – Pogue’s Posts Blog – NYTimes.com.

What poetic irony that the already purchased books were George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984″.  Could you imagine Microsoft of Apple remoting into your computer and deleting programs?  How is this acceptable behavior?