Books removed from fictionwise?

[Rumpelteazer]

Originally Posted by langshipley

Does anyone know when the publishers will be putting their books back onto Fictionwise?

I don't know about Fictionwise but BooksOnBoard expects/hopes to have most books back in the store by mid April, according to the newsletter they sent out this today.

[brudigia]

That would be most unfortunate. I still have some money left as Micropay and just renewed my Buywise membership in December.
I understand it may not be their fault, but I would like to know if they ever said anything about this. Anybody has a statement or something like that ?
Or are we guessing ?

Originally Posted by pdurrant

No. Possibly never*.




* OK, probably not really never. But quite possibly not for several months and perhaps not even for years.

[suecsi]

Well at least I can currently re-download everything from Fictionwise, regardless of publisher. I thought I'd double check I have everything downloaded and backed up and good job I have (apart from one book).

I bought Martin Cruz Smith's - Stalin's Ghost - from BoB last week and forgot to download at the time. All my others from BoB are already downloaded and backed up. But now I get an error message:-

Error Code: 80131904
Error Description: Failed call to fulfill the title.
Error Details: The requested title has been restricted. (TransactionID
= booksonboard~00003486031_9B57CD08-E309-400F-8F3C-E6D3121BB386-410)

I know it is one of the agency titles.

So even though I have back ups of the others, I thought I'd just try and about half of them I can't download any more.

Hopefully I'll get a refund from BoB unless they are planning on putting it back up there.

[Storm27]

Originally Posted by suecsi

Well at least I can currently re-download everything from Fictionwise, regardless of publisher.

I still can't download about half my Fictionwise books.

Books from both HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster in eReader format are giving me the error message: "The requested eBook title cannot be downloaded at this time due to difficulty in communicating with the retail site. Please try again later."

Mobipocket books from Hachette, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins are giving an error message as follows

Description : Error : Download is not authorized for this retailer.
Source : download.asp
Number : -1

Mobipocket books from Penguin are working fine.

I do have most of my books backed up or at least recoverable, but following a computer crash I've currently lost 3 recent purchases in eReader format that weren't on either of my reading devices.

[TallMomof2]

I have about half of my purchased DRM books aren't available right now including one I hadn't had a chance to download.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by Graham

While Fictionwise probably could have handled this better, it's worth pointing out that BooksOnBoard did send out such an email and have been condemned for scaremongering in order to drive sales ahead of the change.

The fact is that the price increases will not be across the board, and the new model could also see some prices fall. It's all very confusing as it's been driven through by these five publishers at very short notice, probably in order to get the new pricing in place by the time the iPad launches.

Until the dust settles it's not at all clear what the outcome will be, and how the prices will really be affected.

It's also the imposition of sales tax on eBook sales in some states according to this new model that's going to have a significant effect on some stores and catalogues.

Graham

I don't know what you're smokin' bud, but I'd like to try some-IMO you're fantasizing if you believe prices won't increase with these changes. Except, maybe, for a few token books intended mainly to support claims that they didn't increase prices across the board. Watch out for claims that they didn't increase average prices either-they'll compute 'average' as meaning what you'd pay if you bought one copy of each book in their catalog. A true average would be the total cost of all copies they sell divided by the number of copies.

IOW, if they sell 100,000 copies of a best-seller at $20 each and 100 copies of a new author's short story at $1 each, the average price is $19.98, not the $10.50 they'll try to claim it is.

Somebody mentioned that BOB hid/ghosted wishlist books that were no longer for sale-and thought that others would do likewise. Again, I'd like some of that happy-dust. I've found that since B&N bought FW they've become less interested in working out customer problems, i.e. most responses I've received have been politely worded requests that I go away.

One thing that I think *will* work out with FW is the books that can no longer be downloaded from the bookshelf. They've left those entries in the bookshelf so, assuming the books are eventually made available again you shouldn't need to re-purchase them. (Won't affect me-I not only download my books immediately, but I back them up to my computer, liberate them so I can read them on any device I own, and then back them up to offline storage. So I'm protected, but I do note that it's a lot of work for most people. Work that shouldn't be necessary but, due to DRM & the unreliability of online 'storage' sites, is.)

[suecsi]

calvin-c

I'm usually so good at doing the same as you but missed out on this one book. A refund would do, though I'd rather have the book back!

Will just have to wait and see

[langshipley]

I'm seeing the term DRM a lot. What is that please?

[Graham]

Originally Posted by langshipley

I'm seeing the term DRM a lot. What is that please?

Digital Rights Management. This is a layer wrapped round the file of an ebook that limits what the user is permitted to do with it, ostensibly to curb piracy. In some cases (library lending) it can serve a useful purpose, but as with DRM on music sales it can prevent a legitimate purchaser being able to use the book in a way that seems reasonable at some future date (such as transferring it to another device) which causes considerable frustration and outright anger at times.

There are a number of different DRM systems in use, which just serves to make things even more confusing.

Searching for more info on the following will reveal the particular attributes of each:

Adobe ADEPT
Kindle (or Amazon) Topaz Mobipocket
Apple iBooks (or iTunes, or Fairplay) DRM
Secure Mobipocket
Secure eReader
Secure Microsoft Reader
Barnes & Noble DRM

There are probably others (is the Kobo DRM yet another?)...

Graham

[langshipley]

I'm going to try that. I have also downloaded the iPhone app for Kobobooks and will do so for the Amazon Kindle as well.

I think it is unfortunate for us because Fictionwise did have the largest selection of eBooks on the market.

I hope everyone wakes up and comes to their senses soon.

[texasnightowl]

I can honestly say that at the moment I haven't even tried re-downloading previous purchased books from Fictionwise...and I'm almost scared to try. Thankfully they were all in Calibre already.

What is troubling to me is the fact hat I randomly selected about 10 of this week's "new books" and none of them were available in either mobi or epub. I've had more poorly formatted books in ereader or ms reader than I have in mobi or epub, so I would really prefer not to buy ereader or ms reader formats!

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by langshipley

I'm going to try that. I have also downloaded the iPhone app for Kobobooks and will do so for the Amazon Kindle as well.

I think it is unfortunate for us because Fictionwise did have the largest selection of eBooks on the market.

I hope everyone wakes up and comes to their senses soon.

Not even close unless you define market as 'books only available by purchase'. If it's simply 'books available' which is how I would define it, then Project Gutenberg outclasses it by at couple of orders of magnitude, I think. (IIRC 2 orders of magnitude is 100X?)

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

I don't know about Fictionwise but BooksOnBoard expects/hopes to have most books back in the store by mid April, according to the newsletter they sent out this today.

You mean they actually communicated something about this problem, finally?!

Jeez, they've been my favorite place to go for years, but lately their customer service has been abysmal.

[Rumpelteazer]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

You mean they actually communicated something about this problem, finally?!

Jeez, they've been my favorite place to go for years, but lately their customer service has been abysmal.

When this whole thing started they were the first to post a statement on their website about it, though it was called "scaremongering" on this forum. They also announced it in their email newsletter on March 26/27.

I've had some dealings with their support lately and they responded quickly and did everything to help me solve the problem.

[langshipley]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

Not even close unless you define market as 'books only available by purchase'. If it's simply 'books available' which is how I would define it, then Project Gutenberg outclasses it by at couple of orders of magnitude, I think. (IIRC 2 orders of magnitude is 100X?)

Actually, I was referring to currently published (new) books that are still in print rather than the wonderful stuff that comes out of Project Gutenberg which I also visit regularly.