All Romance eBooks / OmniLit to close on 12/31/16

[milady133]

Ouch! Another store closing on me. My problem is not about getting a backup of my books, I've been burnt enough times to get a backup the instant I buy my book, but what hurts me is going through all the trouble of finding another store. I don't want to buy my romance books in Kobo or Amazon, the instant you touch one of them your browser and email notifications get bloated with that genre (in fact with Kobo you don't need to really buy one of them, you'll get the notifications nevertheless) and I like reading a lot of books, not only romance. Besides, I really don't like not having options, I like buying from different bookstores so there's competition and they offer different experiences, ARE wishlist was almost as good as Amazon's, and Kobo has yet to implement it. They had a good series information, better than Amazon and Kobo, so it was easy to find the next in series or the first book in the serie when you found a new author.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by milady133

I don't want to buy my romance books in Kobo or Amazon

It's going to get tough to avoid them, especially if you read any self pubbed stuff. Perhaps a second Kobo account with it's own email address that you can mostly ignore?


The choices are drying up a bit. There's eBooks.com, BAM or Google, but I don't know what they're like on geo restrictions and none really do any self pub (Google has some, but not most) and are missing some smaller pubs. There's B&N which is pretty much restricted to the US and is a chore to get your actual book files from. Smashwords has/had a fair amount of self-pubbed and some small press stuff, or did, but I know some authors I've talked to quite using them in the past couple of years. Some publishers like Harlequin (also has some Avon), Carina, Mills & Boon, Samhain, Sourcebooks, Dreamspinner, Loose ID, Liquid Silver, etc. sell direct but it can get to be a pain having accounts all over the place.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by milady133

Ouch! Another store closing on me. My problem is not about getting a backup of my books, I've been burnt enough times to get a backup the instant I buy my book, but what hurts me is going through all the trouble of finding another store. I don't want to buy my romance books in Kobo or Amazon, the instant you touch one of them your browser and email notifications get bloated with that genre (in fact with Kobo you don't need to really buy one of them, you'll get the notifications nevertheless) and I like reading a lot of books, not only romance. Besides, I really don't like not having options, I like buying from different bookstores so there's competition and they offer different experiences, ARE wishlist was almost as good as Amazon's, and Kobo has yet to implement it. They had a good series information, better than Amazon and Kobo, so it was easy to find the next in series or the first book in the serie when you found a new author.

Try Google Play (they seem to be making a new effort. They sent me an invite to be an affiliate, which is a program they had shut down. If they are looking for affiliates it could be an indication they are trying to drive traffic.) I haven't heard if they have opened up for indie authors again. I just looked for Ilona Andrews latest because I was blogging it (this is her self-published under a distributor) and it wasn't on Google Play, but it's on Amazon and Kobo.

You can also try direct with the smaller publishers. I know I used to buy from Samhain. Not too many indies sell from their own sites, but there are a few of us, so if you find an author you like, try asking if they sell direct. Even the larger publishers are selling direct so if you know an imprint you like, you can frequent their pages as well.

[milady133]

Thanks @AnemicOak and @BearMountainBooks.
The problem as AnemicOak states is getting books on this genre from one single bookstore and not getting them mixed with other books and genres, so my nephews don't snoop into inappropriate content when I share my library, ereader or phone with them (I keep these books in a separate ereader that I don't carry around when I visit and keep away from them when they visit, they're in a separate Calibre library for the same reason).
Google is not a good choice for me, because recommendations would pop up in my Android phone and maintaining a second account for this seems a nuisance, so I think I will have to put a secondary Kobo account into use, I already have three from the time when I "traveled" frecuently and one of them hasn't been used much.
And I'll have to check if it's possible to associate two kindle accounts in the same pc, I don't like buying from Amazon if I can avoid it, but I have some books in my wishlist that are only available in Amazon and it seems this situation is going to be getting worse.

[Terisa de morgan]

Milady, you cannot have two K4PC in the same account... But you can have two accounts in the PC, each one with a K4PC 😁

[library addict]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Try Google Play (they seem to be making a new effort. They sent me an invite to be an affiliate, which is a program they had shut down. If they are looking for affiliates it could be an indication they are trying to drive traffic.) I haven't heard if they have opened up for indie authors again. I just looked for Ilona Andrews latest because I was blogging it (this is her self-published under a distributor) and it wasn't on Google Play, but it's on Amazon and Kobo.

Google Play is still closed to self-published authors who did not have an active account at the time they shut everything down due to multiple spammers uploading copyrighted books. So there are a lot of authors who aren't listed there (either for the new releases or those who just self-publish their backlist).

Originally Posted by milady133

Ouch! Another store closing on me. My problem is not about getting a backup of my books, I've been burnt enough times to get a backup the instant I buy my book, but what hurts me is going through all the trouble of finding another store. I don't want to buy my romance books in Kobo or Amazon, the instant you touch one of them your browser and email notifications get bloated with that genre (in fact with Kobo you don't need to really buy one of them, you'll get the notifications nevertheless) and I like reading a lot of books, not only romance.

I don't really pay attention to what stores recommend me. With Kobo I tend to just ignore their emails. Amazon, I delete books from my recently browsed items. It doesn't cut the romance recs out completely, but it cuts down on them. Amazon tends to recommend whatever the last genre you looked at as the same thing happens if I look at Sci Fi, non-fiction, etc.

Originally Posted by milady133

Besides, I really don't like not having options, I like buying from different bookstores so there's competition and they offer different experiences, ARE wishlist was almost as good as Amazon's, and Kobo has yet to implement it. They had a good series information, better than Amazon and Kobo, so it was easy to find the next in series or the first book in the serie when you found a new author.

Competition is good for readers. It's a shame we've lost so many independent digital bookstores.

I get what you're saying about not wanting to share your browsing history/all books with other people though. Thankfully that is not an issue for me. I only share books with my mom. She (a) wouldn't care and (b) I load her tablet so she doesn't see all my Calibre libraries anyway.

[GeoffR]

I used to buy regularly from OmniLit, for a while they had the best rebate and buy-10-get-1-free schemes, but once the books from the big publishers like HarperCollins stopped being elegible for the rebates there wasn't really any extra incentive to buy there instead of other retailers. I probably wasn't their typical customer though, as I never bought any of the self-published romance books that seemed to be the core of their business.

[AlessiaBrio]

I created a very basic form to try to gather some data. With only 43 responses thus far (out of tens of thousands of ARe publisher accounts), the figures are quite disturbing.

https://goo.gl/forms/4vPPKhNgCDurfbFH2

[JSWolf]

I've never pre-ordered an eBook. There's no need. It's available to buy on the day it's released.

This is just another casualty in the Apple price fixing scandal. The problem is that Apple gave the BPHs the power to screw the customer and they took it and ran with it. A number of eBook stores had a working business model where they could discount, have loyalty rewards, and/or rebates. Fictionwise and BooksOnBoard are two exaples as well as ARe. With the BPHs screwing customers, they really are causing more shops that sold their books to go out of business.

In the end, it looks like all we'll have is Amazon, Google, and Kobo.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by AlessiaBrio

I created a very basic form to try to gather some data. With only 43 responses thus far (out of tens of thousands of ARe publisher accounts), the figures are quite disturbing.

https://goo.gl/forms/4vPPKhNgCDurfbFH2

I put my books up there (even though they are not largely romance, they are more romantic) because it had a good reputation for being able to sell books. And the first couple of years I did fine, even as a kind of subgenre author. That really started to taper off and I even took them down at one point to try KU. I put 3 of them back up late last year, but they never sold very well after that point.

I do agree with John that when discounting was no longer allowed on big 6 it hurt vendors terribly (and Amazon associates because those are now the deals people look for and there are less of them). It has also hurt Kobo and is probably the main reason they have cut back on coupons so much (although there is always a tendency to run something like that for a time and the offload that expense back on publishers or authors -- that's a natural flow. But they probably had huge cost hits on their coupons. Notice that they've gone to a points system/membership model and some of those points can be used on publisher books as far as I know.)

It's a tough market!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

I do agree with John that when discounting was no longer allowed on big 6 it hurt vendors terribly (and Amazon associates because those are now the deals people look for and there are less of them). It has also hurt Kobo and is probably the main reason they have cut back on coupons so much (although there is always a tendency to run something like that for a time and the offload that expense back on publishers or authors -- that's a natural flow. But they probably had huge cost hits on their coupons. Notice that they've gone to a points system/membership model and some of those points can be used on publisher books as far as I know.)

It's a tough market!

It never needed to be a tough market. Agency pricing never needed to happen. I bought a lot of eBooks from BooksOnBoard & Fictionwise. Then Apple got involved in eBooks and both shops had to stop their successful business models. They had nothing special to offer after that. They no longer could compete. So yes, I do think that Apple and the BPHs have caused the closure of a lot of little eBook shops. They did it to level the playing field against Amazon and failed very badly. They only made Amazon stronger. What they should have done once the realized they were not going to take down Amazon was to abandon agency pricing.

[milady133]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Milady, you cannot have two K4PC in the same account... But you can have two accounts in the PC, each one with a K4PC 😁

I'll Google it when I have time and I'll ask you later if I don't find how to do it. Thanks!

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

This is just another casualty in the Apple price fixing scandal. The problem is that Apple gave the BPHs the power to screw the customer and they took it and ran with it. A number of eBook stores had a working business model where they could discount, have loyalty rewards, and/or rebates.

Agency pricing doesn't prevent reward and rebate schemes. HarperCollins was still allowing rebates on purchases of its books at OmniLit for a long time after the change to agency pricing, and Kobo's current superpoints reward scheme allows points to be earned from all ebook purchases including those from publishers using agency pricing.

[BearMountainBooks]

Rebates are never as popular as out and out sales or coupons though. I don't know if that affected Omnilit or will affect Kobo. I buy all my Baen books via kobo using the coupons and I have not joined the rebate/membership program although I may have to!

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

There's always Smashwords. At least one of the indie publishers I like (Piccadilly Publishing) sells there. But I still buy their books from Amazon, because Smashwords currently just feels like such a mess.

Maybe if Smashwords courted more indie publishers and the site was given a facelift, they could be competition?

Smashwords has always been a mess, and what is terribly sad is that the site owner desires that it remain so.

If they would implement just a simple keyword system to tag content I would buy there over Amazon. And evidently this has been brought up consistently but will never happen with the current ownership. Kind of like Steve Jobs and large screen phones.