What are the top 5 ebook stores and why?

[Ramen]

I don't have a lot of reading time at the moment, so my digital bookshelves are rather small. My shops are:

• www.BooksOnBoard.com (24 ebooks atm)
• www.BAEN.com/www.WebScription.com (18 ebooks atm)
• assorted (www.books.ch, ...)

There are basically two categories: I'm looking for a specific book or I am browsing.

For specific books, I typically use BooksOnBoard because they have a nice catalog, good prices and MS Lit. If they don't have the book, chances are it is Kindle-only or not available at all. If the pbook is unavailable, I'm kinda screwed.

For browsing, I typically use BAEN. Sadly, BAEN doesn't feature the typical specific book I am after (unless I found the series via BAEN of course) and the general direction of BAEN books isn't really my type. There are still pleasent books there, though.

Via your criterias:

• www.BooksOnBoard.com
  • size of catalogue: Horrible (even the Kindle catalogue is horrible but comparitavley, I'd say medicore)
  • availablity of formats: Only DRM but crackable DRM (lit)
  • price: Okay-ish. Still a bit expensive considering crappy DRM and no housing costs, etc but at least they are cheaper than the pbooks (at least relative to Swiss pbook costs)
  • ease of use: Needs IE for downloading lit books which sucks. Other than that, the new version of the site is too much eye-candy and too little usability. The search function sucks.
• www.BAEN.com
  • size of catalogue: BAEN is a speciality site and as such the catalogue size is optimal (i.e. practically 100% of the covered books available)
  • availablity of formats: Excellent (no DRM; multiple formats; pay for content, not specific format)
  • price: Excellent ($2-$10)
  • ease of use: The site has usability issues and the search function is less than perfect... All in all a bit worse than www.BooksOnBoard.com because of the scripting and cross-site stuff.
• www.books.ch and the rest
  • size of catalogue: Horrible
  • availablity of formats: Horrible
  • price: Horrible
  • ease of use: Ok, actually

[=X=]

Originally Posted by Over

There's a direct discount, before the reward dollars.

Okay I see and agreed. What threw me off was in an earlier post you mentioned getting the "reward dollars" applied instantly to the purchased book, it appears you meant the "direct discount".


=X=

[charlieperry]

How about ebooks.com? That seems to have a good selection.

[llasram]

Originally Posted by Over

Fictionwise:
- General clients pay 17,95USD
- Club members pay 15,26 USD

Books on Board:
- General clients pay 15,26USD

Of course, both of them also have automatic store-credit rebates using their respective schemes. Repeat customers can factor that into reducing the effective price of the book, bringing that down to:

Fictionwise:
- General customers pay $11.49
- Club members pay $9.77

Books on Board:
- General customers pay $13.87

So as long as one buys enough books from the same store to make use of the automatic rebates, Fictionwise is a much better deal.

[=X=]

Ops I never gave my list. List is in order.
I go by Price first then selection
BoB has a MUCH better selection than Fictionwise, but FW has much better deals. They usually have one a month, if you are a Club. Also being a club member gives you access to a lib.

Fictionwise
BoB
Sony

=X=

[llasram]

Originally Posted by =X=

BoB has a MUCH better selection than Fictionwise

Out of curiosity, what are you basing this on? What book sources does BoB provide from that Fictionwise doesn't?

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by llasram

Out of curiosity, what are you basing this on? What book sources does BoB provide from that Fictionwise doesn't?

Overall I found that Fictionwise tends to have more titles actually, but in the past at least they would release this week Tuesday 's - which is the usual street date for most books - next week's Monday, while BoB would release them at 1 a.m Eastern (12 a.m Central) on Tuesday morning/Monday night, so that was one factor that moved most of my purchases there since I would stay late to get the book I really wanted now.

The other is price and there rarely Fictionwise beats BoB - maybe if you pay to be a club member, but that is something I am not interested in at Fictionwise or B&N for that matter - also the fact that for Micropay you - at least used to since as mentioned I have not used Fictionwise for a while - have to have enough money to cover the book, while BoB dollar rewards are freely distributable. I get 7.33$ in my Micropay, I want to use them to buy a 11$ book, not wait for Micropay or purchase more Micropay with Paypal and such...

BoB overall is a much better proposition for me - Fictionwise may be a better deal if you stick with them long term - which for me is a big no, no - I want to buy today here and reserve my choices for tomorrow, and I will take whomever offers me better choices that way. If someone will appear with better prices than BoB, I will happily switch

[llasram]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

The other is price and there rarely Fictionwise beats BoB - maybe if you pay to be a club member, but that is something I am not interested in at Fictionwise or B&N for that matter - also the fact that for Micropay you - at least used to since as mentioned I have not used Fictionwise for a while - have to have enough money to cover the book, while BoB dollar rewards are freely distributable. I get 7.33$ in my Micropay, I want to use them to buy a 11$ book, not wait for Micropay or purchase more Micropay with Paypal and such...

I can see not wanting to be locked into a bookstore, but I like Fictionwise's support for DRM-free content. When I realized how much money I was going to be spending on e-books, I went ahead and paid for a club membership, then have mostly spent non-Micropay there in >$200 batches for the additional 15% micropay rebate. That seems to leave me with an about $50-$70 micropay balance I can slowly drain down -- and prevents that whole "not enough micropay to actually buy anything" problem :-).

[basschick]

booksonboard.com - fast, friendly, personal and very helpful customer service.

fictionwise.com - multiformat books with no DRM and fast courteous customer service. btw, the club is worth joining if you get a lot of 100%, 50% or 25% micropay rebate ebooks.

and baen, of course - they were the place that first got me reading ebooks

[HarryT]

I've found customer service at both FictionWise and BooksOnBoard to be friendly and efficient. BoB respond faster, but FW's response time (typically 2-3 days) is still perfectly acceptable.

[TallMomof2]

Fictionwise - As a club member I find them to be the cheapest for most books. Release date doesn't bother me since I have so many books in my queue that new releases won't be read for quite a while. I put new releases on my wishlist and usually wait until I have $200 to take advantage of the 15% rebate. 100% and 50% rebates I take advantage of immediately.

Kindle Store - Sometimes the Kindle store will be cheaper and I'll purchase the book from there.

No ebook store has *all* the books I want.

[=X=]

Originally Posted by llasram

Out of curiosity, what are you basing this on? What book sources does BoB provide from that Fictionwise doesn't?

Good point,

I'm basing my search on Non-Fiction books primarily on the Investing there is large amount of Books that BoB/Diesel carry that FW does not. When it comes to Fiction/SF/Fantasy. Both tend to carry the same amount, I have only had one instance where BoB had a book that FW did not.

[pagansoul]

Don't any of you use your 'Public Library' to take out books? Before e-books I used my home town (Rutherford, NJ) library weekly. When I moved to San Francisco I stopped reading almost completely, to much keeping me busy to sit and read. When I moved to Georgia I got more time but purchased all my books at Flea Markets and such. Around 10 years ago I started reading on my computers. I have CDs of all Public Domain books in different formats from Gut (txt), one that is in pdf and another in MOBI. I discovered Rocket Readers, Microsoft Reader and Adobe Readers. I have about 100 ebooks from Planet PDF and even more from Manybooks.com (also pdf). On my PC I had Mobibook reader and have not a few free books on there, about 300 DP SciFi/Fantasy/Gothic. I would buy ebooks from Fictionwise but no more than once a month. I would buy the rare p-book from Amazon which is where I first read about the Kindle. I had not thought of having a reader outside of my Macbook before that time. I waited for the Kindle to go down in price and got it this year at $300. Since then I get all of my purchased ebooks from Amazon. Wispernet is just so easy. I just found out about BAEN and BOB from you guys and have not used Fictionwise since Kindle. I just started looking at it again because I read on my iphone and transfered by bookshelf on to it.

This all boils down to I use Amazon for all my ebook purchases not because it is better but because its easy if you have a Kindle. I take out audio books from the library and plan to check out their ebook collection, soon. I just have so much backlog in my Kindle that I don't need to buy anything for a while. I only read about a book a week and have enough for the rest of the year.

[Amalthia]

my favorite is Baen (because as someone else pointed out they charge for content not the format of the content)

but I've also used booksonboard for titles not sold by Baen.

[RWood]

Late as usual.

For me the top ebook places for me are:

• Free
• MobileRead
• Baen Free Library