Also, on the Tech Bytes section of ABC News this morning, in detailing this, they said the largest seller by genre on Fictionwise, was–no surprise to us, I’m sure–romance.

My first thought when reading this post was “there go the good discounts”.

:(

(If I knew how to make a crying emoticon, I would.)

Thank you!! I thought it was a sign of my poor laptop's aging that Amazon pages take forever to load now, and are jerky and weird when they do. I used to like shopping there but now I don't; too many stupid bells and whistles that make it load too slowly.

No, it’s not just you. Not sure when I first noticed it but it’s been months now. Maybe longer than that. I do know I hadn’t been there for a while and then when I did go back, I thought something was wrong with my computer. Now it’s downright painful because, honest to goodness, I swear simply looking up a book almost makes Internet Explorer lock up. Not a good thing. And before everyone jumps on IE, it doesn’t happen elsewhere with heavily interactive sites. So it’s the Amazon site, it isn’t IE.

Not sure what they think they’re accomplishing because it ain’t working. And, you know, you have to actually be able to get on the site and care to complain about it. I can’t even remember the last time I bought something from them, much less spent any productive time there.

By the way, I have yet to spring for a reader of any type. My ebooks are all on my laptops. I looked long and hard at the Kindle and just could not justify the expense given half of the books would have ended up on my laptops anyway.

And how come I didn’t know about the eReader.com site, being I use Fictionwise?

I've always liked them as an alternative to Amazon, more so nowadays because Amazon's pages are so funky about loading. And I absolutely hate Amazon's new page layouts.

Thank you!! I thought it was a sign of my poor laptop’s aging that Amazon pages take forever to load now, and are jerky and weird when they do. I used to like shopping there but now I don’t; too many stupid bells and whistles that make it load too slowly.

Must.

Resist.

Change.

Oh, I’m thrilled for those Pendergrasts, really but…who said that FW had that “indie bookstore feel”…THAT!! I love seeing all kinds of books, shelved in what might be random order. Strolling through and finding what I want. And when my local indie goes down in favor of a chainstore, I’m happy for them, sad for me.

Of course, if we can keep that and ALL the books are available in a format my Sony Reader can read without making me feel like an extra on the set of Hackers…well, then…

And if they’ve changed their mind-set recently and I don’t know about it, please fill me in!

I would keep my hands off editorial, but I’d supply technical doodads and linkage to the B&N ebookstore and PAY the Ja(y)nes, et al. great gobs so they could quit their day jobs and grow DA and SBTB.

Thanks for posting the news!

Oh, and is anyone else having problems with the Teleread link? I think the link is okay but maybe the site is down or something?

But then…one of the nice things I found about Fictionwise was that it was at its heart, an indie kinda place. I got the sense that books at FW were there for no other reason besides FW wanted to sell all sorts of books. Now I’m going to have to wonder if the one person who is B&N’s main buyer isn’t going to have an even bigger chokehold on what gets put up for sale than before.

And what will happen with payments out to publishers? Will tying Fictionwise into a behemoth like B&N mean that publishers won’t receive payments as promptly as before?

I mean, I’m all for ebooks getting the attention they deserve…but I’m also leery of giant behemoths stomping around in meadows with ecosystems that support smaller and more numerous critters.

I guess we’ll see.

But I might as well cop to being a hypocrite as I was also pretty darn happy about the Kindle/Apple news yesterday, because I plan to replace my current cell with an iphone this summer. (even though I’d have been perfectly fine with the Stanza thingie.)