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ePub added to Fictionwise MultiFormat option—plus, 50 percent off on all MultiFormat titles
April 28, 2009 | 7:07 pm
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By David Rothman
Coincidence? Just as Amazon is digesting Stanza, something long overdue has happened—the addition of ePub books to Fictionwise’s Multiformat option. Congrats both to FW and its parent company, Barnes & Noble. No DRM taints MultiFormat books, of course. Announcement follows:
“Today we began adding ePub files to Fictionwise (over 16,000 are already online) and the rest of our MultiFormat eBooks will be online by the end of the week. ePub is an eBook file format that is gaining popularity with both publishers and consumers. As part of our launch of unencrypted ePub eBooks, we are offering all our MultiFormat titles with a 50% discount. Shop your favorite format now!”
Cool! The Solomon Scandals, my own novel, is finally on sale in ePub at yet another major e-store (for $2.98 right now), in addition to Twilight Times Books. Best of all, an option that isn’t Kindle-only comes up on the Fictionwise search engine with the headline in big type without your having to include the “The” in the title. Do you think Amazon someday will be as advanced? Amazon’s search engine glitch continues at my expense.
Meanwhile MobileRead is reporting that a German version of the Cybook is to appear on Thursday with ePub and PDF capabilities (DRM capabilities included?). Will an English-language one follow from Bookeen? Maybe via Adobe Digital Editions? And will Bookeen make an upgrade available for existing users, so we’re not longer so dependent on the Amazon-owned Mobipocket format?
(Big thanks to Logan Kennelly for the pointer. And hats off to Kovid, too.)
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Comments:
And a big thanks to Kovid Goyal as, unsurprisingly, the Fictionwise documents are generated by Calibre. Has the IDPF given that guy a free membership yet?
Yeah, Kovid deserves it! David, congrats for getting your e-book into another major e-store, too! And let’s all thank the lords for ePub and its adoption by all interested parties, as it is the best tool we have to protect us from being run over by the Amazon juggernaut!
Hey David, I finally bought a copy of your book. No drm, half price! Yay.
Christine and Steve…
C: Thanks! When I speak out for low e-book prices, I mean it close to home, too. Enjoy! So happy that people could currently buy The Solomon Scandals at half price through Fictionwise. Some trivia: Although I did Scandals’ first draft in the 1970s, I made many revisions, one of which was to sneak in mention of e-books in the afterword. You’ll see how they fit. The talking Afghan at the Cosmos Club is also toward the end.
S: Scandals was already at Fictionwise, thanks to Lida Quillen, publisher of Twilight Times Books, a big FW fan; but now it’s available there in ePub as well as the other formats. Thanks for your good wishes!
Everyone: I don’t mean to slight other stores carrying Scandals in E or P. Here’s a list.
David
I’m glad to see epub at Fictionwise. However, they still haven’t released their promised eReader software that can display epub. Last night, I downloaded the current version and it still only reads eReader format.
@Joseph: …why would you need it to? Multiformat books are available in eReader format, too, you know.
(Also, Stanza can download from plain-vanilla Fictionwise as well as its own Fictionwise.)
I don’t “need it”, but Fictionwise did promise an epub capable version of the software. I was hoping that they would release one when they started selling epub ebooks.
The reasons I want it are twofold: Digital Editions is currently the most functional epub reader on Windows (and it has issues); multiformat is great, but I am trying to move toward one format (epub) to simplify things.
As for Stanza, have you tried the Windows version? I can’t speak about the iPod version, but the Windows version sucks. FBreader beats it by a mile.