Comments on: Barnes & Noble to shutter Fictionwise, eReader, and eBookwise

By: ingeborg

ingeborg — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 21:53:42 +0000

I say for the next year ebooks would be more popular and possibly be implemented to most schools then, At http://bookboon.com/ , textbooks are focused and to the point, books which are addressed to students at both undergraduate and postgraduate level

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 13:11:05 +0000

Is there a replacement of sorts for Fictionwise? Somewhere that sells “multiformat” E-books like Fictionwise used?

By: Binko Barnes

Binko Barnes — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 04:14:07 +0000

There’s one big lesson here for everybody to take home and ponder. Namely, if you are a good boy or girl and play by all the rules that are put in place by publishers and government, then you WILL get screwed over eventually.

The conclusion is to NOT buy any ebooks or any other digital media that is encumbered with DRM or is otherwise dependent on any corporate controlled hardware, software or server.

By: Geert

Geert — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 01:14:41 +0000

@terry
Register you Fictionwise account with US address, and do the same for your ereader unlock code credit card address. Just Google a valid US address.
If you do not have an US VPN, install Hotspot Shield (free) on your PC.
Start the VPN. When the VPN is active you should be able to download all your books.

By: Sue

Sue — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 00:31:26 +0000

So far I’ve just gotten the Fictionwise email, but with the ereader reference mentioned by C. A. Bridges above.

I have 363 books showing in my Fictionwise account and 489 in my ereader account.
So far twelve books have been transferred to B&N — they were all multi-format but, interestingly, one of the twelve is from my ereader account.

The FAQs say that we’ll be able to move the ereader and FW books to separate B&N accounts if we want, but there doesn’t actually be a way to do that.

Another email just arrived, while I was writing this.

Dear Customer,

Thank you for opting to transfer your Fictionwise or eReader Bookshelf to a NOOK Library.

We are continuing the transfer process which is ongoing during the week of November 19, 2012. If you have more titles that are eligible for transfer, we will deliver those titles to your new NOOK Library. You do not need to do anything more in this process as any transferrable remaining titles will appear automatically in your NOOK Library.

Thank you for your patience and we look forward to serving you.

Sincerely,

The NOOK Team

I guess they’ve been getting a lot of emails

By: Zora

Zora — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 19:58:10 +0000

I sent an email to support at B&N complaining about the error messages I was getting and I got a canned reply telling me to read the FAQ. Bastards.

By: Terry

Terry — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 13:36:13 +0000

I received my “fictionwise notice” email from B7N yesterday as well. As I live in Canad, my email was different. I was instructed to download copies of all my books on my bookshelf before 31Jan2013. Unfortunatelt, when i began that process, I discovered that approximately half of the books which were originally purchased in secure ereader format are now :unavailable for download in my region”. I was not given an offer to convert to another format or download as epubs. Therefore, half of my e-reading library is gone. These books were fairly purchased to support the authors, and if I purchased as traditional paperbacks, would be on my shelf for future enjoyment. I’ll miss Fictionwise. No thanks to B&N.

By: C. A. Bridges

C. A. Bridges — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 13:31:17 +0000

And I just got an email offering to transfer my eReader books which, when clicked on, said it would move my Fictionwise library. Confidence level: sinking.

By: Felix Torres

Felix Torres — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 12:00:34 +0000

@Zora: I had the same message. So did a few others over at Mobileread.
Of those that did manage transfers, most are only seeing a fraction of their titles move; as low as 9%.

By: C. A. Bridges

C. A. Bridges — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 00:25:28 +0000

I clicked the link to transfer my files. Nothing’s shown up yet. I tweeted about it to @nookBN and got this in response: “@cabridges We’re sorry for the inconvenience and are working to resolve this issue.”

One odd thing: my link said to transfer my Fictionwise files. The follow up email said it was to move my ereader files. I assume both are moving, but it would be nice if they didn’t sound like they were confused about what they were doing.

By: Zora

Zora — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:25:57 +0000

I tried to transfer my Fictionwise books to Barnes and Noble. I got an error message claiming that my email address didn’t match their records. Hmmm. My email address is the same one that’s on file at Fictionwise. WTF? I’ve emailed support and have yet to hear from them.

By: Rob Preece

Rob Preece — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:23:50 +0000

This is sad news. For years, Fictionwise was my biggest distributor and it still regularly generates hundreds of dollars in quarterly royalties. More important, from my perspective, they were very active in giving new books by small publishers front page space (try doing that on Amazon or BN). I remember watching one of my books climb their best-selling list and the first time one of my books became “most liked.”

That said, their discount structure was never especially publisher-friendly and with Amazon’s matching program and royalty program, it was easy to lose money selling through Fictionwise (because you sold few books on FW but Amazon price-matched and dropped your royalty from 70% to 35%).

I’ll have to rush over to FW and spend my credits before it’s too late.

Some day, some one will write the history of eBooks. Peanut/Palm/eReader and Fictionwise will both be key elements of that history.

Rob Preece, Publisher

By: Greg M.

Greg M. — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:20:07 +0000

I used to buy from Fictionwise before 2008; I liked them a lot even though I was using the Microsoft Reader on my Dell PDA. Once I switched to Kindle I never went back.

They did a lot of good things. They allowed me to migrate some of my old Reader titles to a new format when the .lit bought the farm so i could access the books on my iPad.

I guess the option to migrate to B&N is nice to have, but I’d rather not switch to Nook Books. My wife now “owns” the iPad and I have the Kindles and Kindle Fire for reading. If Amazon ever made their Special Offers mandatory, I’d go for Nook or Kobo, so I might store my old books there just in case, but the odds are against me ever really using them regularly.

By: Marilynn Byerly

Marilynn Byerly — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:56:12 +0000

Fictionwise also fostered the small ebook publishers and their authors. Even after the big publishers FINALLY started offering ebooks, you were as likely to see one of my books featured as one of the big publishers authors on their site and their newsletters.

RIP, Fictionwise, you did good.

By: Ross Presser

Ross Presser — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:00:29 +0000

I too got my letter this morning and immediately came here to share the tears. Fictionwise was great. It pioneered DRM free books when nobody else thought they could last. Unfortunately it seems almost no one remaining thinks they can last either. The only DRM free publishers are Tor and Baen, right? Thank heaven for Calibre.