Many ebooks reduced by 40% at BooksOnBoard

[Yapyap]

I managed to cut down on my BoB wishlist thanks to this - bought 13 books for ~$53 total over a couple of days.

I've never had any problems buying from BooksOnBoard (I've been a customer for about two years now); the only reason why I buy relatively little from them is that they have a smaller selection than Kobo or Amazon and the books are often a bit more expensive than Kobo (well, more expensive than Kobo with its frequent coupons anyway).

[koland]

Same here - had an account there for many years, never any issues (there might have been one or two book snags, due to bad publisher content, but always quickly corrected). I have a bit under $5 credit there, they keep reminding me to use (but, I have to wait for a >$5 book, to avoid the transaction fees...)

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by koland

I have a bit under $5 credit there, they keep reminding me to use (but, I have to wait for a >$5 book, to avoid the transaction fees...)

Depending on what you like to read, Susan Higginbotham's historical fiction set in medieval War of the Roses England is mostly just $2.25 (Sourcebooks is having an official sale which they could have timed better with the freebie promo earlier and they're $2.99 elsewhere). I'll be signing up for a BoB account and buying these myself shortly.

Or if you're not into history, Severn House's Severn Select line has a bunch of semi-classic reprint mysteries by established modern backlist authors for mostly $4.21 each after discount, which is roughly the same price as with a decent Kobo coupon. I bought the introductory volumes for all of these when they were $2.99 last year (price has gone up). The Mrs Pargeter series of cozies was surprisingly enjoyable and I'd buy more in the series. The Tim Heald/Simon Bognor books and Simon Brett's other Charles Paris (adapted for BBC Radio) series were okay (I'd buy and read future volumes if on very good sale), but I really liked Paul Johnston's futuristic dystopian Scotland murder mysteries and went back and got the lot with some recent deep-discount Kobo coupons.

[ATDrake]

Well, I now have 20 books purchased as part of the sale and Books on Board have $80 of my money.

And it turns out they give a minor extra bonus discount for people who've just newly signed up and go through the checkout immediately with a minimum purchase price, which is nice of them, in addition to the 30% off new member coupon valid for 24 hours from signing up with the expiry time listed in your welcome email, which is also nice of them, but is sadly not applicable at all since apparently the lesser 25% store discount trumps it on recent releases.

Unfortunately, said new member checkout discount does not come with an expiry warning like the coupon, and disappears in just a few hours while you decide to browse the site to see what to get using it, which is… very disappointing.

As a result, I have a bunch of books bought under a secondary test account which are technically not under either my real name or my preferred username since apparently the database is such that neither of those can be changed (and probably not merged/transferred, either), which is also disappointing.

Oh well, guess I won't be using that review submission feature to try and earn extra reward money after all.

With that in mind, back to Kobo where the prices are generally regularly better with coupons, even considering the current BOB sale, although it does turn out that DAW/Penguin books are treated as non-Agency at BOB for Canada, at least, so I'll have something to potentially purchase in the future if Penguin don't ditch Agency prices and become couponable again at Kobo.

The moral of this story: if you're thinking of becoming a new customer because of this sale, plan everything you want in advance and check it out immediately upon signing up.

[mikaelalind]

I like Books on Board. The only pickiness I have is that all the backlist titles I want is in pdf.
Also, I wish they specified when their campaigns ends. "For a short time." Two days? A week? Two weeks?

[Blue Tyson]

They do have books from Solaris there too, which is interesting those appear discounted to me.

Guy Haley's Champion of Mars which is new was 5.24 and the older ones were 4.19 I think. So that's a good deal. Paul Kearney etc. His Macht Ten Thousand Anabasisesque military sold as fantasy but magic or supernatural elements = zero [e.g. it has aliens and memory metal armour] is very good, for one.

[Blue Tyson]

So found one:

The Mammoth Book of Short Spy Novels

It has:

The Giggle Wrecker by Peter O'Donnell

Which as far as I know is the only official ebook version of any Modesty Blaise story.

Also Octopussy by Ian Fleming and a few others, so grabbed this one.

http://www.booksonboard.com/index.ph...rtin+Greenberg

[Avalona]

I managed to get about a third of the Discworld books over the last few days (and some other books besides). And now I think I have enough in rewards to buy a book that's over $10. ._.

[KJohnson]

Thank you for the feedback and questions. We are going to keep the 40% plus 8% rewards running through end of May for Memorial Day holiday. But we have added a 32% discount on Front List non-agency plus the 8% rewards, effectively kicking the net on front list up to >40% off since rewards are calculated off the publishers list and not the sale price.

So it puts the back list up over half off, and if you contact our support@booksonboard.com they will match the individual specials you might see elsewhere. We think the across the board discount plus rewards puts us better than most anyone else for average mixed cart of titles, for this promotion.

Browsing for non-agency - best answer is no, one cannot sort out for display of only non-agency. Agency is the imprints of the big 6, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, Random House, Simon&Schuster, if you find a title/author you like and it is non-agency, all that publishers titles will be discounted. What I do when browsing a genre is ignore clicking into any title ending in .99, as all agency titles end in .99 increments as my understanding is.

The new user discount code - email support, they can send you the current code if you missed your 24 hour window. However, please note that the code is also applied for off the publisher list price on non-agency, so for this promotion since we are way beyond that code discount, no additional benefit in price is realized. It does not add an additional discount off the discounted prices. Sometimes for heavily reduced prices customers think the code is not working, but it's discount has just already been exceeded.

PDF - the current promo should also be discounting the pdf formats (and any other formats including Audio Books) please contact support if you find something not discounted and they can adjust price for you.

Rewards for reviews. I do not believe that you need have the title in your accounts bookshelf in order to review it. So that is a lot of quarters out there for those wanting to get up over $5 or to get their rewards up to the price point of that book on their wishlist during this promotion.

Thanks again for suggestions and questions.

Kurt Johnson
BooksOnBoard

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by KJohnson

But we have added a 32% discount on Front List non-agency plus the 8% rewards, effectively kicking the net on front list up to >40% off since rewards are calculated off the publishers list and not the sale price.

Huh. Wish I'd waited a bit before picking up the 2 frontlist titles I'd bought earlier, since I had problems with my account that left it locked since creation (now mostly resolved) and I still haven't downloaded any of my books.

Originally Posted by KJohnson

The new user discount code - email support, they can send you the current code if you missed your 24 hour window. However, please note that the code is also applied for off the publisher list price on non-agency, so for this promotion since we are way beyond that code discount, no additional benefit in price is realized.
[...]
Sometimes for heavily reduced prices customers think the code is not working, but it's discount has just already been exceeded.

In the case of the 2 frontlist titles I referred to earlier, they only had a 25% off discount when I bought them, and the signup coupon would simply not work and give the new user 30% off discount price off of the list instead of the then-standard 25% promotion, which was a bit disappointing, since they were somewhat pricey in relation to the other books I bought from the same publisher.

So it's not a case of the 40% trumping the coupon, because the discount for those 2 books was never that high to begin with.

Also, I was referring not to the new user signup coupon, but some sort of additionally sporadically offered bonus discount that sometimes intermittently shows up in the cart upon checkout.

Thanks for taking the time to reply to people's questions and comments, and also for holding the sale.

[Blossom]

I tried to buy a book and it went through but when I click the download button I got a 404 error. This is just not my day. I submitted a support request. This is the first time I had to do this. I guess I will get to see how well their support is.

[Blossom]

Wow! I'm really impressed! I submitted a support request at 2pm and they got back with me within a couple of hours! Problem is fixed and I just got my book!

I also noticed when I bought this book I wasn't charge a 0.25 cent transaction fee like in the past when I bought under $5. If this has been done away with then B.O.B has just moved up on my lists of places to shop for ebooks.

To me good Customer Support is the second most important thing I take into consideration when buying. The Price is first.

[MrTeatime]

Looks like this is going again!

Just picked up "The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy" for £7.79 (plus rewards) which is the cheapest I've ever seen it. Sadly, the RSC Shakespeare eBooks (which, haven't obtained the full set brand-new for £11 in dead-tree format, I'm pathologically opposed to paying anything but a deeply-discounted price for ) are not eligible this time around either :/

http://www.booksonboard.com/index.ph...0rasmussen&s=0

Incidentally, Bret Easton Ellis's works are all classed as "Non-classifiable" making them ineligible, when they can plainly be classed as Fiction:

http://www.booksonboard.com/index.ph...ellis&s=0&c=gb