An electronic bookstore – Information for journalists

The presentation of the Mladinska knjiga publishing house, which has been available on the Internet since 22 June 1997, is mainly intended for individual users, readers and book fans.
For professional users, such as librarians, teachers and institutions, the information on the internet will be a welcomed support in searching, as we can browse the catalog by several criteria (by title, authors, product types, content sets or collections). The majority of the presentation is currently intended for the catalog of products (books, videocassettes, CDs, audio cassettes) from the publishing and sales program of the publishing house.

Individual permanent sections are especially highlighted, such as:

• a book catalog,
• special offers, pre-orders,
• magazines,
• notices,
• ordering.

All book and other editions (cassettes, video cassettes and CDs) from our publishing and sales program are sorted in the book catalog. The catalog is constantly being updated with new results. That is why 2,400 product titles are currently entered in it. In addition to basic information (title, author, product type, number of pages, binding, retail price, availability), most products also have a cover image and a brief description of the content.

Special benefits regularly include monthly promotional sales with up to 50% lower prices. We will also be adding the offer with special benefits for “browsers”.
Under favorable offers, all pre-orders for important book editions are presented, which we sell before the issue at special, lower prices. Some important projects are additionally presented (possibly with a video).

The weekly news especially highlights the headlines that are new this week. They stay among the novelties for a month, then they automatically move to the regular book catalog.
In the magazine section we find presentations of three magazines published by the newspaper of the Mladinska knjiga publishing house. These are Ciciban, PIL – Pisani list and Gea. All three magazines present themselves with a summary of the content from the current issue and they are also already announcing the points of interest from future issues to the readers.

A special feature of our presentation is the Notice section, where all “browsers” and subscribers of our publishings can also subscribe to regular notifications about news regarding the publishing house. Thus, when entering their data and e-mail address, they will receive up-to-date information on all news to the e-mail address they have entered. The title of the book written in the notice is linked to the catalog, so when you click on it, we will take you to the place in the catalog where the novelty is entered.

Each product is presented with a select and order button, which allows you to enter any number of products and copies into the order form. You send this form by e-mail via the server directly to our computer information system, where the order is processed and displayed the next day as an order to send the ordered products. Delivery from our warehouse to the post office is guaranteed within 24 hours, so the book is with the customer within two to three days (depending on the speed of the delivery).

Currently, the sales catalog only supports the option of paying upon delivery (redemption shipment, payment upon receipt at the post office), but in the future we will also allow customers to pay by credit card, in the case of pre-orders and also in installments. The content of the catalog is taken care of by employees in marketing communication, general sales and newspaper services. Data transfer from the main computer database is handled by employees in the publishing houses computer center, and software and network access is handled by an external partner i-Rose from Laško.

An even better tool for professional use is a special electronic catalog that we have developed in our computer center and is already used by our representatives to order books in bookstores. In the future, we will also use this tool to enable direct ordering for stores and larger customers. As we are aware that the internet is a very lively and rapidly evolving medium, we at the Mladinska knjiga publishing house will constantly take care of updating and expanding the offer on our pages. We also want feedback from our readers, as we strive to satisfy all our customers.