Is anyone still reading Fictionwise multiformat books?

[GeoffC]

Yes ...

Funny this, I've just received a long-lost-forgotten weekly newsletter .... I must have upset them by asking why they had stopped ...

p.s. "spring60off" (Excludes Samhain Publishing eBooks) this weekend only ....

[TonyR]

Fictionwise (and EReader) were my favorite ebook sources from my earliest days as an ebook buyer (around April 2000) until the agency fiasco last year; I still check the new titles every Monday, but buy very little now unless there's some classic sf from Wildside Press or EReads brings out another Fritz Leiber title. Sad, but it looks like Barnes & Noble bought them with every intention of killing them off. And they've done an awfully good job of that.

Bests to all,
Tony Rabig

[Elfwreck]

I'm still collecting backlist short stories from several authors; as I get good coupons and budget, I buy clusters of ebooks.

They recently released all the Sime~Gen novels, so I bought all 11 of those, 3 of which had never been published. (None of which had been legitimately published as ebooks.) They're also available for Kindle, which I have no interest in, and I don't know of another source for multiformat versions. (The publisher's site has them in epub only--and, of course, no nifty coupons.)

I buy some romance/erotica books from them; while those books are always available elsewhere (and sometimes cheaper), they're not usually available in all the formats, or even more than one format.

I expect to buy a trickle of ebooks from FW until B&N finally kills them, but I no longer push new ebook-reading people at them except for specific titles.

[Assassin]

Originally Posted by rhadin

I stopped visiting Fictionwise about a year ago. Like you, I used to buy a ton of the multiformat ebooks from them and I would visit every few days to see what was new to buy. But I began to lose interest in FW when the filtering wasn't improved (a fate that Smashwords may soon have in my book -- too limited and not well-conceived filtering makes finding books difficult) and finally lost all interest when it became clear that FW was on its deathbed. I started going to Smashwords, but am finding it very annoying to find new books.

I'm curious Rhadin, what additional filtering categories at Smashwords would make it easier for you to find the books you are searching for?
And to others who want to comment, what other search categories do you need?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Assassin

I'm curious Rhadin, what additional filtering categories at Smashwords would make it easier for you to find the books you are searching for?
And to others who want to comment, what other search categories do you need?

• Sort by price. Either ascending/descending, or (better) by price range: "show me everything between $2.00 and $5.00." Or "Everything under $3."
• Sort by length, not just "under/over 25k words."
• Better genre sorting--expandable sub-genres, ability to shift genres without going back to the top menu.
• Better author sorting--not alpha by first name.
• Title sorting, esp. for grouping into series. (Some way for authors to mark series would be nice.)
• Language filters.
• Opposite-of-prude filter: only show me stuff tagged 17+
• Sort by (or at least show on listings) sample percentage.
• Sort by--or have a spot to indicate--original ebook publication, or formerly published.
• Separate/sort by self-published vs publishing company.

Also: LIBRARY SORTING. Ability to tag the free books as read/not-read; ability to show ratings or notes or sort by genre or author or reviewed-or-not or SOMETHING other than time added to library. The current list-only format is fine if there's a dozen books involved. With over 50, it's a bit unwieldy. At 200, it'd be entirely useless.

I wrote a blog post a while back about things I want from Smashwords.

If I could sort for "$3 or less, science fiction or fantasy, more than 50k words, with at least 20% sample," I'd buy more ebooks instead of clicking around the most-recent-releases list trying to find things I'd like.

Being able to sort for "8-20k words, less than $2, has sample" would encourage me to look at more of the short stories.

[Assassin]

Thanks Elfwreck. I'm impressed by your list. You obviously do a lot of searching for books and know what you need to be efficient.

[Assassin]

I took the liberty of forwarding the search wish list compiled by Elfwreck to Mark Coker at Smashwords. His reply:

Thanks, Bob, I'm impressed by the suggestions from the blogger at http://ebooks.dreamwidth.org/28894.html

Can you email me a direct link to MobileRead?

He also forwarded the email to Bill Kendrick who works at Smashwords, I think on tech issues.
I've only been with Smashwords since January, but am very impressed with the response I've received from Mark and his crew.
I suggest that if you have suggestions or issues at the site you use the "Comments" tab at the top of each page to contact them. Response time has always been quick and they've stayed on the problems I've had even when the source was on my end.

Happy blogging.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Assassin

I took the liberty of forwarding the search wish list compiled by Elfwreck to Mark Coker at Smashwords. His reply:

Thanks, Bob, I'm impressed by the suggestions from the blogger at http://ebooks.dreamwidth.org/28894.html

Thanks! That's me too. I copied this from there, and kept this part to just the search features.

I was hoping to spark a discussion about Smashwords features, but either people weren't interested or didn't know Smashwords well enough to jump in with alternate preferences.

I don't tend to send in suggestions/preferences much, because I'm active at Dreamwidth and involved with the OTW, both of which have open-source coding projects that openly *want* multiple suggestions from as many directions as they can get them, which means I get a reasonable amount of practice thinking about improvements & new features--and I know that other sites generally don't want to be constantly bombarded with suggestions.

I expect that, relatively easily, Smashwords could implement a sort-by-price feature and several other sorting options; it'd almost be more difficult to decide how to redesign the layout to add these new features. I expect that implementing a bulk-download feature would be nearly impossible, and it doesn't matter how many people would like it.

[Assassin]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I was hoping to spark a discussion about Smashwords features, but either people weren't interested or didn't know Smashwords well enough to jump in with alternate preferences.

I'm finding it very difficult to get most people involved in open discussions; I guess most are too politically correct to venture an opinion. Heaven forbid they should offend someone with a differing opinion. Even here you see the same signatures on most threads and a new one is a rarity.
I've been blogging at a fairly new site, Great Minds Think Aloud, and with 100 members and about 80 visitors per day it's almost impossible to get people to participate.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Assassin

I'm finding it very difficult to get most people involved in open discussions; I guess most are too politically correct to venture an opinion. Heaven forbid they should offend someone with a differing opinion. Even here you see the same signatures on most threads and a new one is a rarity.
I've been blogging at a fairly new site, Great Minds Think Aloud, and with 100 members and about 80 visitors per day it's almost impossible to get people to participate.

A 95% lurker rate is average. Maybe even good; if you can get 1 in 20 readers to participate, that's a lot.

The crowd at ebooks.dreamwidth.org aren't reticent; I expect that most of them just didn't have enough experience with Smashwords to comment. (If someone had posted a similar list for Lulu, I probably wouldn't have anything to say.)

[starrigger]

E-reads publishes quite a lot of good books, and the FW multiformat shop is a good place to look for them, as the same books will be DRM'd at Amazon, Sony, etc. Granted, some of them are also available at Baen, and probably better formatted there.

Originally Posted by sourcejedi

"Anvil of Stars" was fun as well. But it had a surprising number of OCR errors, and some shocking format errors specific to the EPUB.

I think there must have been a source-file problem with Anvil of Stars. I've been reading it from the Baen (E-reads) edition, and a big chunk was missing and/or scrambled in the middle. I'd had the book for a year before starting it, so I went back and redownloaded it. The new copy is fine.

[Assassin]

Message to Elfwreck, Mark Coker at Smashwords just posted the following info in his Site Update for 5/20/2011.

What's coming next in site improvements? Following the big regrind and reship to Kobo, we plan to tackle discovery and categorization at Smashwords.com, our retail operation. Our categorization systems and search filters are in need of a major revamp. We need to make it easier for customers to discover and purchase. Although close to 80 percent of our sales come from the Smashwords retail distribution network, many customers still prefer purchasing at Smashwords. We need to do a better job serving them, because by serving them we serve our authors and publishers.

Thanks for you definitive input.

[Danielle]

Originally Posted by Assassin

Message to Elfwreck, Mark Coker at Smashwords just posted the following info in his Site Update for 5/20/2011.

What's coming next in site improvements? Following the big regrind and reship to Kobo, we plan to tackle discovery and categorization at Smashwords.com, our retail operation. Our categorization systems and search filters are in need of a major revamp. We need to make it easier for customers to discover and purchase. Although close to 80 percent of our sales come from the Smashwords retail distribution network, many customers still prefer purchasing at Smashwords. We need to do a better job serving them, because by serving them we serve our authors and publishers.

Thanks for you definitive input.

Finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks for posting this.