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More Fictionwise/agency model news
March 31, 2010 | 5:18 pm
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By Paul Biba
Received the following email from Joanna and thought I should pass it on:
It’s a newsworthy day 
Apparently Fictionwise has removed books from the agency publishers as they ramp up for tomorrow’s big change. Someone on Mobile Read reported that the titles are off the website and have been removed from people’s wish lists as well. I can confirm that my own wish list of 3-odd books is down to 3 titles now, and some of them are already at the higher prices (although a book on my Kobo wish list seems to have gone down in price!) Many people are upset because they thought they had until tomorrow and were planning to use of micropay and such when they got home from work. They thought they had until tomorrow. Several are also concerned that the titles will not reappear on their wishlists once they come back on-line again. If so, I know I certainly won’t remember what all of them were. The publishers will simply lose that eventual sale.
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Comments:
At a guess I’d say they needed to start pulling them early so they can’t be sold (violating the new contract) until they go through the long repricing process. It’s not like they can just throw a switch and have the new prices appear.
One encouraging sign: Robert Jordan’s first Wheel of Time novel, The Eye of the World, now has a publisher’s list price of $6.99 at Amazon.com (they’re still discounting it another $1.40, but maybe Amazon does have a switch they can flip).
That novel until recently had a publisher’s list price of $14. Going by this one example it looks like ebook price = paperback price. I hope so. Though, really, they should have it a bit lower that paperback. There may be some dispute about how much less an ebook costs the publisher to distribute compared to a paperback, but nobody denies it is less. Pass those savings on, please.
I lost dozens of books from my wish list, including one i was going to buy *now*
Not impressed, ereader.com
I wish I knew that Fictionwise was going to be removing the books from my wishlist. I would have thanked them for the service. I had already removed books from the publishers that are moving to the unethical price fixing scheme.
I hope this comes back to bite them as copyright abuse because of “unclean hands”.
Here’s what I sent in to ereader.com this morning:
Good morning ereader. A funny thing happened yesterday. During the day, i browsed the new arrivals (approx. 379 titles). I added several titles to my wish list. Then, I saw two titles of interest and added them to my cart. “Wait,” I thought to myself, “my lunch break is almost over, I’ll do that when I get home.”
Later that evening, when I logged on, I was astonished to discover hat (a) one of the titles I had intended to buy was gone from the store (b) my wish list had somehow melted to 229 titles and (c) the new arrivals had dropped to 181. What the heck is going on, I wondered.
Then, as I thought about it, I realized what was going on. You have implemented the famous agency model imposed by publishers.
Now I won’t argue whether the publishers were right or wrong to do this, but you had some options that for some reason you chose not to implement.
(1) A notice of some sort would have been nice, so customers like me wouldn’t be completely in the dark and wondering what was going on. Maybe just a small blurb on your home page, hmmm?
(2) Instead of wiping my wish list, since you clearly had an up-to-date database of which titles to remove pending pricing updates from the publishers, all you had to do was link those titles’ product pages with a special splash page announcing something like “for reasons outside of our control, this title is currently unavailable.”
You elected not to do this. As an individual consumer, I have to make you aware of the consequences of this behaviour, which amounts from my point of view, to extremely poor customer service:
1. I will not visit your store again until September 01st. This means that this little operation of yours has cost you 5 months of my business. If you bother to look at my bookshelf, you will see that this would have amounted to quite a few books. No longer.
2. If, the next time I log on, my wish list is not restored to its former state, I will wipe it. This means you will have lost any opportunity to sell me those titles. My list was quite sizeable, I’ll grant you, but chances are that over time I would have ended up buying 30 or more of those titles. If the titles are permanently gone without notice, the entire method has lost its value.
If I were you, I would pass this email up the food chain and make management aware of this. Perhaps they can do the math as they wonder how many (other) customers will react like me.
I do miss Fictionwise’s old focus on the customer. My father is also disappointed with the change at Fictionwise. His commentary: “I knew this would happen when Barnes & Noble bought them. I won’t even go into Barnes & Noble stores. They always want to rob you blind.”
Worst of all, if you purchased a book that they have “removed”, you cannot download it. Even Amazon keeps a copy of your book on file, so even if it is removed from sale, those who have already purchased it retain access.
@Karen in TN: Really? I just checked my FW bookshelf and I can still download everything on it. The majority of the non-multi-format books I’ve bought there show “No Longer On Sale” if I go to the book’s page, but I can still download them from my bookshelf.
I’ve noticed as well that removed books in eReader format (ie with DRM) can’t be downloaded now. When I search for the authors on the main site, none of the books are available. For titles which are still available for purchase, there’s no download problem. It’s especially irritating since their “guaranteed download” deal was one of the reasons I purchased DRM content from them.
I tried downloading onto my iPod Touch today and had the same issues with books I bought before being gone. It’s fine to say ‘always download a backup to your computer’ but a device like the iPod Touch does not have the ability for side-loading. You download via their app, or you don’t download at all. It’s a problem.
This is just sad! After all these years being loyal to EReader and Fictionwise, AND to the publishers as a result, I can’t download a whole host of books I ALREADY PAID FOR (to the tune of around $300)? I can’t download them to my PC fopr backup, not can I read them anymore on my iPhone. Paid for and gone! ROBBERY!
Publishers will win I guess, as I am inclined towards going back to paperbacks or FREE audio books from my library! When I see the paperbacks anywhere from 2 to 5 …Yes FIVE… dollars LESS than the Ebook I wonder what the motive really is?
I give up, as I have been burned several times on EBook purchases over the years as retailers came and went (INCLUDING Barnes & Noble … lost all my .lit books, just vanished!… and enough is enough. The library options are looking better and better for books I will read (or listen to) just once anyway. At least I can bring them back if I don’t like them!
This industry needs to grow up. I know it’s tougher for them as less people read like they used to (thanks to our wonderful education system I guess), but is this any way to treat loyal customers?
I have also been a customer of Fictionwise since soon after the site was started. Normally I log in every couple of weeks and do some browsing and buying. I heard about this agency thing from Books on Board last month, but did not see anything about it on the Fictionwise site. Expecting that they would let their customers know – especially loyal buywise members I didn’t pay much attention.
Logged on this morning looking for a couple more Tom Clancy novels and the search comes up blank. Go to my wish list and the 40+ books are down to 4. What the %$#C. No notices or anything posted on their site. Took 20 minutes to even find an email to let them know that the website is all messed up. Two hours later I get a form letter back saying that due to some distribution issues books have been removed. If and when they come back then my wishlist will be repopulated.
I am the type of person to never complain, but I fired off an emotional email and let them know that I have spent several thousand dollars over the years in their store and they don’t even have the courtesy to let a good customer know about impending (or in my case already implemented) changes. I still have $165 in micropay dollars that I will need to use up somehow, and after that my business with these guys is gone elsewhere.
Same here — I wish I hadn’t bought so much Micropay in their last big sale.