Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
It was purchased by B&N, fourteen months after it's biggest acquisition (Motricity eReader), for $15.7 million. That's quite a small sum by internet standards and suggests to me that Fictionwise churned through its venture capital without ever becoming profitable.
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Is it a small sum? Remember we're talking before eBooks really took off as a large business (or were just starting to). Do we know what FW paid for eReader? What Amazon paid for Mobi a couple of years before? We're talking a small company where the owners wrote the code behind the store and often handled CS themselves.
Not saying you're wrong, but I'd be interested to know the scale of things money wise in the 2000-2008ish era. FW selling an estimated 1.5 million ebook content units in 2008 was pretty big at the time, but wouldn't be now. What did things in the eBook world go for back then, what were the economics? Also the FW sale was a buyers market which may have affected the $15.7M + earn out payments total. The Pendergrasts were looking to sell and eventually move on to a bio-tech venture with their other brother where they are now.
Basically B&N bought FW for eReader and started dismantling it for Nook just like Amazon did with Mobipocket for Kindle. Once they'd done that they saw little reason to keep FW & eReader around.