Books removed from fictionwise?

[HarryT]

No, they have never promised that your books would be available indefinitely. They can't, because the books actually come from the distributor's server; FictionWise don't store them themselves. The book is only available for as long as the distributor continues to supply that book, and that's something that FW has absolutely no control over.

If you buy a book in a "secure" format, then you're only buying it in that one format. You can't, for example, buy a book in Mobipocket format and then later re-download it in eReader format. Only "multiformat" books have this capability.

I thought, when you bought a book it was yours, or at least yours to read.

It is, but it's your responsibility to keep it safely backed up, not the bookstore's.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A lot. But they all seem to be back again now.

They may be back for download from bookshelves, but Fictionwise still has under 46,000 books for sale.

This I calculated by adding the numbers in each fiction and non-fiction subject. (45882)

It can be quickly cross-checked, by adding the numbers shown for multiformat and secure eReader formats. (44629) This doesn't quite match the sum I found, either because some books are listed under more than one category or, more likely, because there are some non-multiformat books that aren't available in secure eReader format.


Fictionwise currently seem to have no Secure Mobipocket ebooks or sale at all. None.

[langshipley]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It is, but it's your responsibility to keep it safely backed up, not the bookstore's.

I agree, backing up is always our own responsibility. It is always safer knowing it's on your own hard drive than someone elses. You never know about unforeseen circumstances, like now.

I freaked when this happened and so many authors I had purchased where no longer available on FW. Fortunately, I was able to download the books that I had purchased from the last 3 months to my iPhone (temporary for reading) and to my PC (permanent for storage).

[langshipley]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

They may be back for download from bookshelves, but Fictionwise still has under 46,000 books for sale.

This I calculated by adding the numbers in each fiction and non-fiction subject. (45882)

It can be quickly cross-checked, by adding the numbers shown for multiformat and secure eReader formats. (44629) This doesn't quite match the sum I found, either because some books are listed under more than one category or, more likely, because there are some non-multiformat books that aren't available in secure eReader format.


Fictionwise currently seem to have no Secure Mobipocket ebooks or sale at all. None.

Do we know the "before" number?

[langshipley]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A lot. But they all seem to be back again now.

Are you sure? I have been searching on authors that I had purchased previously but still do not seem to be available, quite a few of them actually, but previously purchased books are available to be downloaded from one's bookshelf.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by langshipley

Are you sure? I have been searching on authors that I had purchased previously but still do not seem to be available, quite a few of them actually, but previously purchased books are available to be downloaded from one's bookshelf.

Ah, OK. I was just going from my own bookshelf - I didn't check to see if they were actually available for purchase.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by langshipley

Do we know the "before" number?

I didn't think to check before the books disappeared. But if it was less than 100,000 I'd be very surprised.

Hmm... secure books on their site are now a little below 20,000. Let me look at secure ebooks in my bookshelf.

Of the 13 secure eReader books on my bookshelf, 12 are no longer on sale.
I have 477 secure Mobipocket books, so I can only do sample. Of the first 25 in alphabetical order, only 4 are still on sale (& none of them in Mobipocket format)
Of the 8 microsoft lit files, 2 are still on sale.

so out of 46 books, only 7 are still on sale. That's about 15%. There are about 20,000 secure ebooks on sale at the moment, so before the change there might have been 130,000.

Take that with a pinch of salt, of course. It's based on a very small (possibly unrepresentative) sample.

Does anyone have hard figures?

[TallMomof2]

You can't go by what's available for sale. All of my secure mobi ebooks that have a download link can be downloaded even the ones that are no longer sold. I have a number of mobi ebooks that are expired and without checking every one it appears that those are the ones that were withdrawn when one of the content servers stopped using Fictionwise. The same is true for my secure eReader and Microsoft Reader ebooks. It's only a handful of my secure ePub ebooks that have a download link are not downloadable.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by TallMomof2

You can't go by what's available for sale. All of my secure mobi ebooks that have a download link can be downloaded even the ones that are no longer sold.

But last week those books were simply not there on your bookshelf. That's what I'm saying has changed since then, so clearly progress is being made to restore "missing" books.

[TallMomof2]

I didn't check before today but there are no books missing from my bookshelf. There is only one book I hadn't downloaded, it was a preorder, and it's always been listed. I just can't download it.

[chlorine]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But last week those books were simply not there on your bookshelf. That's what I'm saying has changed since then, so clearly progress is being made to restore "missing" books.

Weird. AFAICT my wishlist has shrunk, but my bookshelf has never lost any books and has always shown all the books I've purchased (even though many are not for sale anymore, and at least one can still not be downloaded).

[HarryT]

All my Mobi books were just gone. Now they've reappeared.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It is, but it's your responsibility to keep it safely backed up, not the bookstore's.

Wait... I have gone back to borders several times and told them I lost a book I had bought previously. They happily gave me a new copy.


















NOT !!!

BOb

[langshipley]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

That's about 15%. There are about 20,000 secure ebooks on sale at the moment, so before the change there might have been 130,000.

Take that with a pinch of salt, of course. It's based on a very small (possibly unrepresentative) sample.

Does anyone have hard figures?

I don't have any hard figures but if I go by what happened to my wish list, that shrank by 2/3 so that's about 67% fewer books than before. Very sad.

[shadowcat1017]

Originally Posted by langshipley

Do we know the "before" number?

I don't have hard numbers, but in January of 2009, they lost one of the content aggregators that supply them with ebooks, and they negotiated with publishers to allow previously purchased affected eBooks to be substituted with eReader versions. From the FAQ that Fictionwise put out during that crisis, they wrote:

Approximately 300,000 eBook units were affected. This is less than 4% of all eBooks sold by Fictionwise.

Based on that figure, they claim to have had 7,500,000 books for sale. I question that number -- it sounds pretty high to me -- but I'm guessing they were doing some sort of math based on how many of their books were available in multiple formats. Regardless, the number of individual books that are now available for purchase does seem to have dropped by 50-65%. I went through about 6 pages of my bookshelf (out of 29 ), and started counting how many are still available for purchase and how many aren't, and about 54% of the books that I own are no longer for sale. So very sad.

Does anyone know why some ebook stores seem to have recovered while others haven't? I mean, I just did a quick search for Nora Roberts (as a very popular author with a large catalog for comparison), and Fictionwise, Books on Board, Diesel Books, and Mobipocket.com each only had 7 - 10 of her books available, but Amazon's Kindle store, Sony's reader store, and Barnes & Noble.com all seem to have pretty much her entire catalog of ebooks available. Is it all about the power of the big names (Amazon, Sony, B&N) vs. the little guys? Do we think that Fictionwise and the rest will ever recover? Since B&N.com seems not to be having any problems, and since they own Fictionwise now, it seems likely to me that Fictionwise will just be phased out.