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dcalder · 12-12-2012, 08:42 PM

No waiting necessary in my case because those of us outside of the US and UK don't have a transfer option at all.

Fictionwise never bothered to let me know about the shutdown, either. I only found out because I'd just gotten around to reinstalling Calibre after a Win7 reformat-&-reinstall and I was having issues trying to convert some Secure Mobipocket files that I'd apparently missed De-DRMing when I'd imported them (and which wouldn't De-DRM now, despite having a record of the PIDs that they should have worked with and using those PIDs with the appropriate plugin). When I went to confirm the PIDs on the Fictionwise site, I discovered the news about the Fictionwise shutdown. Argh! So, I figured that I'd start my Fictionwise rescue op with those troublesome Mobipocket files. Except, even after a fresh download, they still wouldn't De-DRM with the PIDs that were registered.

So, I decided that maybe I needed to have Mobipocket installed to get the plugin to work. Well, that was a whole other advanture that I won't even get started on - good thing that I managed to find the Mobipocket installer hiding in some old backup files. When I went to register the new PID at Fictionwise, it wouldn't let me - it said that only 4 were allowed.

Oddly enough, I already had 5 registered - maybe that's why none of them worked? So, after deleting two and registering the new one, I re-downloaded a secure Mobipocket and voila! the plugin managed to free it.

Since the Fictionwise bulk download link will now let you choose to download all of your books (not just 100 at a time) and will automagically split them into groups of under 100 (so, in my case, I ended up with 10 separate zips to download - and most of them did not actually contain 100 books), and also claims that your secure books would be automatically included (a reversal of the past where secure ones were generally not included in bulk downloads), I decided to just go ahead and redownload everything. My Calibre library was kind of a mess anyway, and pretty much all that was in it was Fictionwise books, so I thought that a fresh start would be just as well.

Once I'd imported all of the books from the downloaded zips, my total number of books was significantly lower than the total reported to be on my Fictionwise bookshelf. I'd unzipped and imported each Fictionwise zip separately. Either I had some duplicate purchases or Fictionwise duplicated files in some of the zips, because even with the clean start I had a few "dupes" which I was able to clear up right on import. Those didn't seem like enough to account for the discrepancy, so on a hunch I checked for the secure ebooks. I found that the secure ones actually were not necessarily included (though some seemed to have been, since when I did individually download and import them, they were dupes). Even after manually downloading all of the secure eReader and secure Mobipocket books, my count is still off. A few are accounted for by old eBookwise format books and another batch were old Microsoft Reader ones (also a lost cause), a few were victims of the Overdrive debacle that never got replaced, but I think that I may still be missing another 15 or 20. At this point, I'm just going to be thankful for what I did manage to salvage and make darn sure to make multiple backups of my new, De-DRMed Calibre library.

I'm also going to stop being so complacent about my Kindle books. Most of them have never been downloaded anywhere other than my Kindle. I've never bothered adding them to Calibre, freeing them up, or backing them up. That's changing now. I never want to be performing an 11th hour rescue operation again.

12-12-2012, 08:42 PM	#415
dcalder Zealot Posts: 127 Karma: 9856 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Ontario, Canada Device: Sony PRS-300/Kindle Keyboard/iPad Mini	Really not fun for those outside the US & UK No waiting necessary in my case because those of us outside of the US and UK don't have a transfer option at all. Fictionwise never bothered to let me know about the shutdown, either. I only found out because I'd just gotten around to reinstalling Calibre after a Win7 reformat-&-reinstall and I was having issues trying to convert some Secure Mobipocket files that I'd apparently missed De-DRMing when I'd imported them (and which wouldn't De-DRM now, despite having a record of the PIDs that they should have worked with and using those PIDs with the appropriate plugin). When I went to confirm the PIDs on the Fictionwise site, I discovered the news about the Fictionwise shutdown. Argh! So, I figured that I'd start my Fictionwise rescue op with those troublesome Mobipocket files. Except, even after a fresh download, they still wouldn't De-DRM with the PIDs that were registered. So, I decided that maybe I needed to have Mobipocket installed to get the plugin to work. Well, that was a whole other advanture that I won't even get started on - good thing that I managed to find the Mobipocket installer hiding in some old backup files. When I went to register the new PID at Fictionwise, it wouldn't let me - it said that only 4 were allowed. Oddly enough, I already had 5 registered - maybe that's why none of them worked? So, after deleting two and registering the new one, I re-downloaded a secure Mobipocket and voila! the plugin managed to free it. Since the Fictionwise bulk download link will now let you choose to download all of your books (not just 100 at a time) and will automagically split them into groups of under 100 (so, in my case, I ended up with 10 separate zips to download - and most of them did not actually contain 100 books), and also claims that your secure books would be automatically included (a reversal of the past where secure ones were generally not included in bulk downloads), I decided to just go ahead and redownload everything. My Calibre library was kind of a mess anyway, and pretty much all that was in it was Fictionwise books, so I thought that a fresh start would be just as well. Once I'd imported all of the books from the downloaded zips, my total number of books was significantly lower than the total reported to be on my Fictionwise bookshelf. I'd unzipped and imported each Fictionwise zip separately. Either I had some duplicate purchases or Fictionwise duplicated files in some of the zips, because even with the clean start I had a few "dupes" which I was able to clear up right on import. Those didn't seem like enough to account for the discrepancy, so on a hunch I checked for the secure ebooks. I found that the secure ones actually were not necessarily included (though some seemed to have been, since when I did individually download and import them, they were dupes). Even after manually downloading all of the secure eReader and secure Mobipocket books, my count is still off. A few are accounted for by old eBookwise format books and another batch were old Microsoft Reader ones (also a lost cause), a few were victims of the Overdrive debacle that never got replaced, but I think that I may still be missing another 15 or 20. At this point, I'm just going to be thankful for what I did manage to salvage and make darn sure to make multiple backups of my new, De-DRMed Calibre library. I'm also going to stop being so complacent about my Kindle books. Most of them have never been downloaded anywhere other than my Kindle. I've never bothered adding them to Calibre, freeing them up, or backing them up. That's changing now. I never want to be performing an 11th hour rescue operation again.