@pwalker8. I dealt with neither and haven't looked into at all until just now. As I understand it:
B&N acquired Fictionwise on March 5 2009 and announced grand plans for it as part of B&N's "digital strategy". It would seem that Fictionwise had been doing quite well up until that time.
Amazon gave in to Macmillan on 31 January 2010, and the operation of the price fixing conspiracy took effect then or shortly thereafter.
In March 2010 Fictionwise discontinued its Buywise club, giving no reasons for its decision. It seems logical that a club offering discounts on Big 6 titles would no longer be able to do so under agency, and the club was likely discontinued for this reason, though no reason was in fact given.
In November 2012 Fictionwise announced it was "winding down its business".
Books on Board stopped selling ebooks in early 2013. Bob Livosi, the owner, blamed both the deep pockets of his larger competitors and the lingering effects of agency. So far as agency is concerned he pointed not to the end of discounting but to the way the switch was handled. To quote from the article in Publishers Weekly at
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/...ook-sales.html:
Quote:
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Indeed LiVolsi said he lost access to thousands of titles, some for more than a year, because of the Agency Model switch, and in the process he said, “we lost 70% of our customers.”
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From my brief examination I see nothing in the timeline to justify a conclusion that the dates don't support JSWolf's comments in #57. Certainly they don't establish conclusively that agency was to blame for the demise of both companies. However, they are certainly consistent with this being the case. Based on the little research I have now done I tend to the opinion that agency played a large though not exclusive role in the demise of Books on Board. Fictionwise, as part of B&N, is a more difficult case. It's future was dependant on B&N's plans for it, and the direct cause of its demise was clearly an internal decision by B&N that Fictionwise no longer had a part to play in its "digital strategy". To what extent agency played a role in this it is difficult to say. I tend to the opinion that it was pretty well doomed from the time it became part of B&N. Had it remained independent agency would likely have played a large role in bringing it down anyway, especially given its reliance on its Buywise club.