Fictionwise more expensive?

[ddavtian]

Hi all.

Few months ago I paid $30 to become a Fictionwise club member, after that I try to buy my books from them. Now I notice their prices are higher (sometimes more than twice) than Amazon or Sony prices. I own Sony readers and an iLiad, so Amazon prices are only a reference point for me. I usually buy books in lit format, but now I'm not sure if it's worth to pay much more for that format.

Here is an example:
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life. Hardcover is $23.10 at Amazon, Kindle is $9.99, Sony store has it for $11.99, BoB shows $9.79 and Fictionwise price is $25.29 (for club members, after micropay rebate).

I wrote to Fictionwise about price differences, didn't hear anything from them. In last month I've bought few books from Sony because Fictionwise didn't have them or price was higher.

Is this typical? Do you see such large differences for your shopping list?

David

[CleverClothe]

For new hardback releases, Amazon sells them at a loss. It pays to have deep pockets.

You will notice that the list price is $35. Hopefully the publishers will stop over pricing their ebooks.

(BTW, BoB's price is $29.58)

[bbusybookworm]

Fictionwise does tend to overpriced for some books, and while writing in can help at times, it often doesn't.

I've faced the same problem for some books, and I ended up buying them from BoB when they had a sale. The only drawback was that as I've started to buy more and more of my New books in eReader as I can easily also read them on my iPhone (And converting to Mobi is easy, ereader2html and then Mobipocket creator).

Still, I'm glad that there is some competition between the bookstores to keep them honest

[ddavtian]

Originally Posted by CleverClothe

(BTW, BoB's price is $29.58)

I was right and you're right :-)
There are two pages on BoB:
$9.79, http://www.booksonboard.com/index.ph...2573&v=details, Adobe, Microsoft, eReader, MobiPocket (OD)
and
$29.58, http://www.booksonboard.com/index.ph...0571&v=details, MobiPocket (PX).

[=X=]

Originally Posted by ddavtian

Hi all.

Few months ago I paid $30 to become a Fictionwise club member, after that I try to buy my books from them. Now I notice their prices are higher (sometimes more than twice) than Amazon or Sony prices. I own Sony readers and an iLiad, so Amazon prices are only a reference point for me. I usually buy books in lit format, but now I'm not sure if it's worth to pay much more for that format.

Here is an example:
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life. Hardcover is $23.10 at Amazon, Kindle is $9.99, Sony store has it for $11.99, BoB shows $9.79 and Fictionwise price is $25.29 (for club members, after micropay rebate).

I wrote to Fictionwise about price differences, didn't hear anything from them. In last month I've bought few books from Sony because Fictionwise didn't have them or price was higher.

Is this typical? Do you see such large differences for your shopping list?

David

Their prices usually are close. BoB usually is slightly cheaper, but having a membership Fictionwise puts them ahead of BoB.

The example you chose is a bad example SnowBall is part of a sales promotion "NY Times Bestsellers" for $9.79 or less.

=X=

[Lemurion]

Since FW no longer sells MobiPocket(OD) books they are limited to the MobiPocket(PX) books which are more expensive. It's not that they're wanting to sell for a higher price but that their supplier is charging them more.

[slayda]

If you insist on newly published books with established authors, they all are too high, IMO, even Amazon. And they are not really selling at a loss, they just don't make as much profit as other places. (Actually the seller is probably making about the same but the publisher makes more at the higher price. That's why it is rare for me to buy such a book. I use Baen as a yard (meter) stick for ebook prices in general and unless I think I have to have a newly published book. So $6 is about my upper limit. I'll wait until the price comes down.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by =X=

Their prices usually are close. BoB usually is slightly cheaper, but having a membership Fictionwise puts them ahead of BoB.

The example you chose is a bad example SnowBall is part of a sales promotion "NY Times Bestsellers" for $9.79 or less.

=X=

Especially when Fictionwise's memberships is FREE, as it was a few months ago when I rejoined.


Don

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Especially when Fictionwise's memberships is FREE, as it was a few months ago when I rejoined.

Don

Basic Fictionwise membership is free; the BuyWise club that gets additional discounts costs $30 for a year.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Basic Fictionwise membership is free; the BuyWise club that gets additional discounts costs $30 for a year.

However, FW had a 100% micropay rebate on BuyWise memberships a few months ago - which is what Dr. Drib was referring to.

That made FW a much better deal. I know, I took advantage of it.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Basic Fictionwise membership is free; the BuyWise club that gets additional discounts costs $30 for a year.

When I signed up for the BuyWise club last September, it had a 100% MicroPay rebate, and I've seen reports of people renewing their membership with a similar deal.

For the most part, I don't think Fictionwise is responsible for the outrageous pricing on their site (for example, Stephen King's The Stand has a list price of $50!), as many of these books have the same price at BOB or Diesel. I've picked up some of these books with the outrageous price when they've had 100% rebates, but it means I've been racking up a larger MicroPay account than I would like.

[shadowcat1017]

Hi, there! Long time reader, first time poster, here.

I've been buying exclusively from Fictionwise for about the last four years or so -- I just really hate the idea of having my bookshelf spread out across 3 or 4 different sites, and I like the discounts and rebates that Fictionwise offers. I frequently compare the prices at Fictionwise with ereader.com, mobipocket.com, and booksonboard.com, and I've usually found that the base price is the same across the board, with the difference being what kind of discount you can get from the various sites. There are occasional differences, but for the most part, they're pretty comparable. (I've never checked on Amazon's Kindle prices, since I don't have one.) Lately, I've been noticing a lot of books with prices outrageously out of line -- books that are brand-new in paperback format, that have never even been published in hardback, are being sold in e-format for anywhere between $14 to $25, and again, this price is usually the same at all four websites, although one of them might have a particular book available at regular price. I went back and forth with Fictionwise about this issue -- since I spend so much money with them, I thought they'd be more likely to listen than the other sites -- and what I was basically told is that the publishers set the prices and they have absolutely no control over it. Their last e-mail to me said:

If you believe this to be unfair, please contact the book's publisher.
The publishers set the prices.

We've been telling the publishers this for years, but the more that they hear from real live consumers the more quickly they will get the message.

Most of the books that I'm referring to are published by Macmillan or one of its subsidiaries. I sent an e-mail to as many of the address I could find on the contact pages for those various subs, but never did receive any response. It was a long e-mail, so I won't post the whole thing, but here are a few choice bits:

I started doing a little digging, both through my wish list and through the Fictionwise site, and I found that a large quantity of your books are listed for $14, despite the fact that many of them have only ever been published in mass market paperback. Quite frankly, I find this completely reprehensible. In fact, I consider it to be price gouging. Why would you set the price of an electronic book, which has absolutely no costs for paper, ink, binding, shipping, storage, etc., at almost double what you're charging for a print copy? I completely understand and support the practice of pricing an ebook higher when the corresponding print copy is in hardcover. I understand that you wouldn't want to undercut the sales of your hardcover books by making it available in ebook at a substantially smaller cost, but I cannot understand how you can set the price of a book that has never even been published in hardcover so high. [. . .] When doing a search on Fictionwise for books published by "Macmillan" and "Palgrave Macmillan", which actually includes many of the other Macmillan imprints, I found that out of 437 books listed, only 10 of them sell for less than $12! This is completely ridiculous.

Then, when browsing on this forum, I found this post:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...1&postcount=71

So I'm not the only person who's noticed this trend. Anyone have any ideas about who we can annoy to get this issue rectified? The more people we can get to speak out against this, the more likely anything will actually change. (Ok, that was Captain Obvious speaking, but seriously, how the heck to we go about getting heard here?)

On another note, what is Mobipocket (OD) vs. (PX)? I'm not familiar with this, and I'm wondering if the fact that FW doesn't sell OD books anymore is why some prices have jumped. I have a bunch of Janet Evanovich books on my wishlist, and I would swear they used to be priced at $14, but now they're $18.95 (not including my club discount). I'm pretty sure that some of the prices on my other wishlist items have jumped up too, which is the first time I've seen anything go up in price!


(PS - I just noticed there's been no activity on this thread for a month -- perhaps I should have chosen a different thread for my rant. ;-))

[slayda]

I know a little on the Mobipocket (OD) vs. (PX) issue. OD is OverDrive. Not sure about PX but they are the repositories of the Mobipocket ebooks. Fictionwise does not keep the books themself. So when you download a book from Fictionwise, you actually DLing it from PX (since OD & Fictionwise are no longer doing business together). And that is the extent of my knowledge.

Fortunately I only had a very few OD books when they parted ways. I'm not sure whether the OD & PX organizations have anything to do with setting prices but they might.

[DixieGal]

I still think that overall, FW's prices are the best. Some books may be more, some less, but I think there are more less than more more.

The thing to do is sign up to be notified of sales, coupons, etc. Just this week, they sent out a survey. Upon completion, they sent a 25% off coupon. I used it to get a $7.xx book (cheap already) for $5.xx. I thought that was great!

[sassanik]

I usually buy at Fictionwise, I have to agree that it is easier to have most your books at one site!

However I will buy books at BoB, generally my reason for doing so is that BoB often has new releases earlier than Fictionwise. Fictionwise only releases new books on Mondays, which means if they did not put it on that list then you have to wait a week for it. Hey what can I say? I get impatient! :-)

I think that the competition between Fictionwise and BoB is a good thing.

If I price seems high to me at Fictionwise I check BoB and see what their price is.


Amy