I would like to be able to pay in M&Ms, as I have a message here in my strategy notes that that's going to be the unit of my pay from now on.

Taste the rainbow of fruit flavours, Anna. TASTE IT!

Oh, crap, that's Skittles. Er... what's the M&M strapline? Wikipedia doesn't tell me, although it does say this:

"Hard rock band Van Halen requested a bowl of M&Ms to be waiting for them backstage with all the brown ones removed in their tour rider. If they found a single brown one, mayhem would occur and trashing of the backstage area was par for the course. Lead Singer David Lee Roth explained the reasoning: "We have a very technical tour operation and if they didn't remove the brown M&Ms, then they sure as hell did not read that the tensile strength of the stage needs to be 250 PSI."

I have both, and find both to be easy and convenient. All much of a muchness to me...

I do have a google account and hadn't realised they offered this facility so it's been good old Paypal here for years and never had any bother with it.Somehow I just feel that Paypal has had its share of woes and security issues and seems to address them very responsibly so I feel confident with them, google remains an unknown in this sphere this end. I'll now wait for someone to say that Paypal is the biggest flaw-ridden shambles going and they wouldn't dream of using it!

I have both, and I find all things Googly far easier to use than anything else on the internets. I dealt with Paypal quite a lot back when I was involved in eBay some years ago, and I always felt like there was so much trouble around the edges of that system that only became clear when you used it a lot.

On the flip side, I believe that everyone in the world should have Gmail. I will send invites to anyone reading this who wants one.

And, incidentally, I will be splurging on several available Snowbooks as soon as my bank account allows, and buttons for more books become available. Being in the US, I don't want to pay amazon.co.uk for shipping when I could be paying Emma directly.

I actually knew that information about Van Halen. Sad. Couldn't those brain cells be used for better things? M&Ms used to be "melts in your mouth, not in your hand" but that was 15 years ago, and I haven't watched TV in eons so it could have changed.

Emma,

I like google , its clean and spiffy but paypal wouldn't stop me buying though! I am ashamed to say that I spend much of my book money on Amazon or The Book Depository these days though!
Eoin

I have a Paypal account and have had for years.

I think the key here though is ease of setup.

For one, you don't actually need a Paypal account to buy via Paypal, so putting a Paypal button on the site makes buying easier.

Two, more people have Paypal accounts already, and possibly have money already in them ready to go.

Three, ease of setup with the merchant tools. Paypal will actually generate the correct code for you to simply paste on to a page. You just put in the item name, and the price you want. It will even encrypt it for you, then it just gives you the code to paste in.

Paypal would seem to be the established leader here. From a marketing point of view, you could use Paypal now and have the option to use Google checkout in the future when it has a larger user base.

Nora Blonde

I've used Paypal for years and never had any problems - it's frighteningly easy to use, not like spending money at all!

I've not heard about Google Checkout but, if you go with that rather than Paypal, yes, I'd be happy to set up an account so I could buy direct.

Dee

Go gmail! Go gmail!
Paypal is fine too I suppose.

Firstly, KatherineC - 'melt in your mouth, not in your hand' was the slogan for Mintrels not M&Ms. As far as I can remember, M&Ms are johnny-come-lately import from the USA and so their slogan isn't as conditioned into my brain as that of the sweets of my childhood.

To get to the point, we use Paypal for our on-line shop and people like it. These days with so many people using Ebay, a lot of people already have Paypal accounts and so are quite happy using them and so far we've had no problems with them.

We also have a PDF of an order form that people can download and post with a cheque if they prefer.

The other alternative is that your bank could provide you with a terminal so that people can send you their card details although I think people would prefer Paypal to that. You can have virtual terminals on-line so that when people ring you to place an order, you can take it over the phone. The fees are lower that Paypal's but you pay rent on the terminal so you need to calculate how many orders you need before it becomes cheaper.

I certainly wouldn't sign up for a gmail account simply to buy a book - I'd just go to Amazon.

Another vote for PayPal here. I've reached saturation point with online accounts and registrations and can't face another!

I've found Paypal invaluable for running a small book publisher - especially if you have customers over the water in the US.

I'm with Paypal too - scandalous commission rates are sadly not outweighed by the convenience of already having the account (and having money in it ready to spend).

KatherineC - thanks for the offer on gmail, but I don't know why I should want it when I've already got a webmail-capable email address. Please enlighten me!

I like how the M&Ms keep popping up amidst the discussion of on-line transactions.

Vanessa -- 'Melts in your mouth...' actually WAS the M&M strapline in the US, since we don't have Minstrels.

John A-W: because Gmail works better than any other webmail I've used. This post in my blog explains a specific good that Gmail has done and a specific ill that Hotmail has done in the recent past, but more general superiorities include the space, the deletion system, the spam filter, the label system as opposed to folders, the fact that my inbox has 900-some messages and I can still find the one that I need if necessary with their search engine, and above all the fact that you have to be invited by someone else in order to have an account. It lends an air of snobbery that I badly need, being a US resident. :)

A really good initiative, Emma.

I'm afraid it would have to be a cheque option for me. Especially if I can pay in guineas and florins.

PayPal is almost on my radar, but so far I've not been tempted enough to get involved with it.

I'm not interested in changing/adding email accounts.

And bring back peanut Treets.

Kind Regards,

Derek

Paypal I think may work better--I think Papal is the default? Google has got fingers all around I guess! Paypal!