Fictionwise has shut down!

[pdurrant]

Me too. I'd love to be able to post that my fictionwise library had finally turned up at nook.co.uk.

No sign of it yet.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

I'm going to miss them! RIP Fictionwise! Thank you for lovely discounts and wonderful books.

I was one of the lucky ones who got their library transferred early. I still find myself lost at B&N. I miss FW!

[jersysman]

I never received a letter or anything from Fictionwise. Luckily, I did not have many (around 20) books on their site and so I just downloaded them all to my PC. I did enjoy a few of those super discounts and will miss them.

[cromag]

I'll miss the discounts, as well. As will the folks who put out Ellery Queen's and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines. I still buy Asimov's and Analog at B&N, but the loss of discounts -- and the additional hoops I have to jump through -- means that it's no longer worth the trouble to get them.

[Blossom]

Well here's something interesting...Tonight I open one of my FW epub's from B&N with winrar only discovered it was epub made with Calibre!

So I went back to original one with DRM still on it and sure enough it's Calibre version converted with calibre (0.6.16) from the opf.
So I opened up another one calibre (0.5.1) and calibre (0.5.14) well you get the picture....I had no clue B&N was using Calibre.

These are all straight from the nook site not added to Calibre. Open one up and take a look for yourself. You don't need to remove the drm to read opf in notepad.

[EowynCarter]

Publishers not able to use real software.... (Becasue seriously, calibre converted code suks). I ussually spot someting weirdo with the code before I see the cause of it.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Publishers not able to use real software.... (Becasue seriously, calibre converted code suks). I ussually spot someting weirdo with the code before I see the cause of it.

It's not all FW now Nook books I have found several that are available in epub from the publisher elsewhere are indeed the publisher's version in my Nook Library but those that aren't available as epub were converted with Calibre.

I'm just shocked because the formatting was horrible. Not saying Calibre is the blame just someone who doesn't know how to use the program. I went back to my original copy from FW and converted with Calibre and it looks perfect. Geesh!

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by Blossom

It's not all FW now Nook books I have found several that are available in epub from the publisher elsewhere are indeed the publisher's version in my Nook Library but those that aren't available as epub were converted with Calibre.

I'm just shocked because the formatting was horrible. Not saying Calibre is the blame just someone who doesn't know how to use the program. I went back to my original copy from FW and converted with Calibre and it looks perfect. Geesh!

To calibre's defense, conversion is a tricky business. And if the original file is garbage, well... garbage in, garbage out.

Using calibre professionally is not option, unless you use sigil after to clean up. Well, even the adobe software or jutho wouldn't give you something absolutely clean.

[GeoffC]

weeps

empty !

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

To calibre's defense, conversion is a tricky business. And if the original file is garbage, well... garbage in, garbage out.

Using calibre professionally is not option, unless you use sigil after to clean up. Well, even the adobe software or jutho wouldn't give you something absolutely clean.

As I said in my post above the original FW version converts perfect. Who every converted it didn't know what they were doing and the Nook version is horrible, not Calibre's fault because my version looks fine after I converted to epub. So who knows what they did to it.

[hwlester]

I believe Baen uses Calibre on their multiple format books. I've not seen any issues with theirs, so obviously they found a template that worked and used it to batch convert the books.

[Lemurion]

I think the difference is that Baen has been doing eBooks for a very long time and care about the quality of their product.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Well here's something interesting...Tonight I open one of my FW epub's from B&N with winrar only discovered it was epub made with Calibre!

FW used Calibre for their Multiformat ePub's from the time they first started offering ePub as a format.

The formatting of most FW multiformat ebooks has always been shoddy. According to a few publishers I talked to it had to do with FW's rules for submitting books and FW was very unresponsive to pubs when it came to fixing problems.

[gstew]

Backstory... I opted in day 1, got a few books transferred then with the bulk coming a few weeks later in the process after a few calls & Cust Support tickets. But just before F-wise shut down for commerce, I purchased most of the items on my wish list which didn't appear to be available from B&N, some 40 or so books and stories. These have been AWOL in my B&N bookshelf since then, even after quite a few more calls & tickets.

I checked today about a week after my last call to CS & I am AMAZED, THEY ARE THERE in my B&N bookshelf!

That lines up with my impression that the last time I called CS, they seemed to be more knowledgable about the process and provided more complete, believable, and realistic answers.

While I had already re-backed-up my F-Wise & EReader items... and with the help of those posting details in this thread, liberated them, it's nice to have them all in one bookshelf with an ok reader for access.

That doesn't excuse that the process has been a slow-motion, self-inflicted trainwreck since the beginning. And with the post-Christmas news about B&N's disappointing sales, I plan to DL, liberate, & archive the rest of my items that I'd purchased directly through B&N.

I am still amazed at how inept this process has been. I guess that my experiences with B&N's website (try searching for Science Fiction writers Robert Reed or John Barnes to see what I mean) and Fictionwise after their purchase (I fought with them to get an Android version of EReader that'd decrypt their DRM on my Android 4.0.4 phone... and they never came through) should have prepared me.

And what makes me so sad is that they could have made us old F-Wise & Ereader customers raving fans if they had just done this transfer well! Or even just provided good information and support after their initial epic fail!!!

But it does say something to me that they did what they said, at least for me. And will say more if everyone here has gotten their F-Wise & Ereader bookshelves transferred over before they shut down this process.

Thanks all here for all the news and support.

And everyone who hasn't gotten their books yet, my advice is just keep on calling CS & submitting tickets.

Greg in Mississippi

[pdurrant]

Good grief! I just went to nook.co.uk and I have books in my library! I actually have books from Fictionwise transferred to my nook UK library!

Now to see how many!