I kinda like the white on black that this theme has, but I do know it’s not as legible. I’m trying to get time to work on a more personalized blog theme that will probably be more “traditional” in that sense.

White text on a black background is and always has been worse to read than black text on white background for most people [1][2].

Once in the 80ies one did use white or green or amber letters on black background – since the awfull cathode ray tube screens of that time did hurt the eyes that much.

Nowadays everybody uses TFT screens, so that reason is gone.

I might agree, that if you have a fotography web page the pictures could look more colorful. But if there is more than one line of text use black on white as once Gutenberg did it, nearly every online newspaper does it, amazon does it, google does it (and they all know, why).

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[1] “Black text on a white background is the safest combination and much more legible than white on black — white backgrounds also look more professional.” http://articles.sitepoint.com/print/colour-checklists-web-design,
[2] “Black text on a plain background elicited reliably faster reading performance
than on a medium-textured background. When compared to reading light text on a dark background, people read black text on a white background up to thirty-two percent faster.” http://usability.gov/pdfs/chapter11.pdf – http://usability.gov/guidelines/index.html seems to have some other good sources which might help to develop the look and feel of CC and your web pages.

First thing: You don’t have to do, what every visitor or customer tells you. It’s the decision of you three what you put on your web pages and how you put it there. And it is only your decision, not of any body else. And it is also the decision when to do it, if you want to.

But: it might be a good idea to collect ideas of fans / visitors / customers. Lots of SF-Readers have very much experience in using the web (Techies, you know … my first browser was mosaic … ).

There are semi-standards how good web shops look like – for a good reason – they want to sell. You have a high quality product to sell – and it is worth the best presentation possible. (We fans hope you to have much success, we hope your shop will develop to the best shop, will sell lots of books to new readers and will create more fans and let you live and write in all comfort possible. And inspire other authors to do the same …)

So you have started, which is a good thing. You can collect first experiences. Put books in your shelves. Write. Collect ideas of your visitors (“here we collect ideas to improve our shop” – and don’t publish these ideas but collect them and think about it).

And then: Read about Web design. Read about Shop-Design. Read about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Maybe there also is a fan who works in the web business and likes to assist you … (you could pay in exchange to some books ;-))

I’ve waited long for the opening of CC and bought already some books there. My impressions of CC are mixed: “friendly, very homegrown, very US” and “why have they no link to X, where have they hidden Y, why is Z behaving different than in most other shops …”.

To say the truth: there might be some room for improvement in usage and design. (I’m not a web designer, but sysadmin who takes care of some very big professional media web pages in Europe.).

Of course there is a cultural difference in typical design styles between Europe and the US, so take my ideas with a big grain of salt :-).

Good writing, good sales & good success (and don’t forget to sleep)!