|
Fictionwise had unique features that made them an attractive store to shop at. They presented some innovations to competing that were different from B&N's site. In general the books were more expensive but as part of that purchase they allowed you to bank money and buy additional books. They also allowed you to set price alerts for specific books so that you would be notified when it hit your price point. This allowed them to see what price point people were likely to buy at. The fact is that those innovations were directly killed off by agency and Fictionwise became yet another ebook site that most people hadn't heard of. There was no reason for B&N to keep it operational because it could offer nothing different from their primary site. I suspect they kept it running for a couple years because it still supported some old ebook formats and then killed it in 2012. Judging from what I read/observed on MobileRead, I'm sure that if B&N released the sales data you'd see a steep drop in sales when agency was implemented. People spent the money they had banked and moved to other sites.
|