Edoc Wizard – beautiful in (almost) every way
Amazon.com has a neat program to let publishers sell ebooks online, which they call “eDocs”. Back when the eDoc program first came out my current boss Randy Gilbert registered for the program, got a vendor code and a pdf with instructions on how to use it. It was not user-friendly. It was so difficult, in fact, that until he hired me, he never placed a single eDoc on Amazon, even though he really wanted to. In its own instructions Amazon said that there was an easy way and a hard way to get eDocs posted.
The easy way was to pay some third-party company a hundred bucks per eDoc to place them online for you. However, Randy had already spent about $50 apiece getting his radio interviews transcribed, and he really didn’t think it made sense to spend another $100 apiece just to get them into the Amazon eDoc program. And certainly, with no clear idea how to get them sold once they were there, combined with the fact that Amazon gets 50% of every sale, he was probably justified in that opinion.
The hard way, on the other hand, required putting together a metadata file by hand for each eDoc to be uploaded. Randy’s no fool, but he had neither the time nor the patience to figure this out himself. And besides, he wasn’t interested in paying someone to create a new metadata file each time a new eDoc was supposed to go online. He wanted an automated system to quickly get lots of these products online.
When I first came to work for Randy, the only language I was competent with was Java. So, I built a Java applet that could guide someone through the process of entering the information about each eDoc, save that information to a database, and then convert that information into the metadata file according to Amazon’s instructions. It worked, and the applet can still be used for that purpose today.
After we got a good number of his transcripts online, Randy started getting noticed by other internet marketers who wanted to get their ebooks onto Amazon as well. My solution was good for a single user to create a metadata file and then manually ftp that metadata file to Amazon, along with the eDocs and their covers. It was not so good for having a large number of people using it, keeping their edocs separate, and managing overrides from sales.
When I became more proficient in php, I proposed to Randy that we create a new system for putting up the eDocs, one that would allow us to manage users, track sales reports from Amazon, automate the procedure of publishing documents, and store the eDocs and their cover images. He agreed, and asked me to put something together.
I designed the software requirements, set up a phased development schedule, and created a detailed process diagram and database diagram before I ever set down a single line of code. Randy signed off on the idea, agreed to fund the project at the amount I specified, and then I set to work. Initially, I expected to just create the first phase of the project myself, and then find another person or company to complete it. But when I couldn’t find anyone willing to work within the budget I had, and when my other projects started requiring less of my personal attention, I decided to just do it myself.
(Download the finalized requirements document, or the finalized process diagram)
I love edocwizard.com. Because I never allowed major changes to the scope from start to finish, and because it was so thoroughly envisioned at the outset, the final project has a wonderful consistency throughout it, and performs well with everything it is intended to do. Phase I of the development was supposed to require 2 weeks. I needed 3, mainly because I was forced to split my time with another project. In Phase II, which I began about a month later after finishing up some other unrelated work, I determined that once I started I would be more jealous with my time. I didn’t agree to take on any other new projects, and except for the occasional IT “emergency” all of my work was devoted to the project’s completion. I had originally said I would need 3 weeks for the final phase, and I finished it in 3 weeks exactly.
Currently, we’re in beta testing mode. We have our own transcripts going up still, and now we also have another internet marketer placing eDocs online. Occasionally bugs are uncovered, though with surprising rarity for a project of this scale. And at this point, we’re confident that we’re ready for deployment. It’s just a matter of deciding how to advertise and what business plan we want to use. We’re not sure if we should charge for access, or simply take a percentage of sales, or some combination of both. Once the marketing is in place, edocwizard.com is going to be a very sweet source of income for Bargain Publishers.
To test it out yourself, though without admin controls or the ability to actually publish to Amazon, go to http://edocwizard.com/members/
Username and password are both “public”
For those features that you won’t be able to see because of limited access, check out the screenshots below. Click on the thumbnails for a larger view.
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No other work that I’ve done so far demonstrates my understanding of web development at every level as clearly as this one. I’m a very strong web coder, and honestly not the best designer. While I understand css and html, I’ve never had the sort of gift with design that I’ve always enjoyed with programming, ever since I was a kid playing around with BASIC on my parents’ Commodore 64. I’d like to learn a few more tricks, but I fear I lack the sort of artistry that is innate in a great web designer. However, while my designs aren’t pretty, I try to make them intuitive and user-friendly. And while not gorgeous, I like to think they’re not especially ugly either.
Edocwizard is cross-platform compatible with Firefox and Internet Explorer.
August 31 2007 | php projects | 4 Comments »
