Dear Author » Fictionwise

Fictionwise Free Evanovich, Grafton and Lora Leigh eBooks

Jane — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 03:26:58 +0000

This is kind of incredible, but if you want the digital backlist titles of Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton or Lora Leigh for free, this is how you do it. Go to Fictionwise and open an account. Buy one of the Evanovich or Grafton titles and pay for it with a credit card or paypal. Once you do that, you’ll be returned the full purchase amount in the form of micropay dollars. You can then use the micropay to purchase every title in the backlist except the ones that are currently on the bestseller list.

If you already have micropay, just use it to purchase the books and the micropay will replenish after your purchase. I’ve “bought” all the Evanovich titles and will be moving on to Lora Leigh and then Grafton. It helps to have a healthy micropay account because then you can buy five or so at a time. Happy buying folks.

Via Books on the Knob.

Barnes & Noble eStore Will Price Match Amazon

Jane — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:07:02 +0000

From a reader at Information Week, Barnes and Noble’s eBookstore aka Fictionwise + eReader will match the prices offered at Amazon. Now if Fictionwise could only get its act in gear and offer the books that are released this week in a timely fashion. Hard to get excited about good prices when significant books are missing from the ebookstore.

Here is the info I got from them in their weekly email yesterday.

All new eBooks are $9.95 or less.

No eBook over $12.95. They aren’t moving all ebooks to $9.95 or less, only newly published ones. Cutting to $12.95 is a substantial cut for many older books though.

All books on the New York Times Bestseller list are $9.95, whether it is new or has been there a while.

15% rewards on each purchase.

Via Publishers’ Weekly.

This Week’s Ebook Specials

Jane — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:27:05 +0000

Orbit is offering AFRAID by Jack Kilborn as an eBook available for $1.99 for the month of April. Winterbirth by Brian Ruckley is Orbit’s $1.00 title. Ruckley’s new release, Fall of Thanes, will be available on 5/3/09 and the other title in the series, Bloodheir, is also available in ebook format. (Someone seems to be listening to reader suggestions that all the titles in a series should be in eform).

Pleasure Unbound by Larissa Ione will continue to be available for $1.00. Four Michelle Rowen titles will be available for the price of 2 (these are funny paranormals). These sales start on April 1st and should be available at different etailers. Sony will for sure carry them.

Fictionwise is having a 50% off sale. This means you pay Fictionwise’s full price (usually some discount off the retail price) and you get 50% of your purchase in Micropay dollars to be used in the future.

Harlequin is offering “sexy ebooks” for $2.99. I don’t know if this link doesn’t work until April 1 or what. Sexy eBooks $2.99 each. We’re bringing sexy back at Harlequin! eBook offer. Ends April 30, 2009

Thursday eBook Tech News Round Up

Jane — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:06:16 +0000

I’ve been criminally negligent in not keeping up with the news in the past few weeks but real life intruded. We’ll have a similar black out at the end of the month here, but in the meantime, here’s some choice bits of ebook tech news:

Barnes and Noble acquires Fictionwise for $15.7 million.
Gaming industry foresees physical distribution disappearing in the near future. (ebooks anyone?)
Allison Brennan expresses fear about the rise of ebooks given that piracy is destroying musicians. Unfortunately Brennan doesn’t see the real problem behind the music industries lack of response to Napster. It wasn’t the failure to educate, but the failure of the music industry to respond to the changing market and allowing one entity, Apple, to come in and dominate the void, creating a monolopy share of the digital download market (80%).
More publishers are getting into the free ebook content game: F&W Media and Random House have created free content libraries.
Stephen King’s Kindle exclusive, UR, has reached sales of five figures in three weeks.
Gizmodo thinks that the Apple tablet isn’t likely and doesn’t make sense. SB Sarah reported that an Apple rep told her that there would be no Mac Mini (ala the Asus or HP Mini). How does that square with the recent rumors that Apple wants in on the ebook market?
Asus showed off a prototype dual monitor laptop. Is this the answer for reluctant ebook readers?
Not content to sell content, Hearst publishing is developing its own e Ink device that will deliver its content. Whee! Another closed system, I bet. Makes lots of sense. Not.
Ebooks is the fastest growing category in the Apple Store. I bet some of that is due to the “Classics” app being featured in one of the iPhone television commercials but that the Kindle App will contribute to this number growing in the future.

Barnes and Noble Acquires Fictionwise for $15.7 Million

Jane — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:15:19 +0000

I have so many words swirling around in my head as a result of the news broke on the Teleread.org blog that BN acquired Fictionwise. My first thought was, good on the Pendergrast brothers who were pioneers in the ebook retailing field. Fictionwise has always been a big supporter of non DRM’ed ebooks and providing content in as many formats as possible.

My second thought is that this is a huge validation of ebooks and the market for ebooks.

My third thought is that Amazon will finally have some real competition. I have to believe that Barnes and Noble, with the Fictionwise acquisition, will marry it’s bookstore/retail end with a hardware device whether it’s an existing device like Sony or a new device.

My fourth thought is similar to that of David Rothman’s at Teleread.org and that is Barnes and Noble should adopt and push epub books to truly combat any monopoly that Amazon may naturally gain through its marriage of hardware + bookstore.

Let me end with extending my congratulations to the Pendergrasts and everyone at Fictionwise. You deserve this good fortune because it’s your hard work and dedication that made it happen.

How to Deal with the Breakup of Fictionwise and Overdrive

Jane — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 10:00:38 +0000

I don’t know if you could tell but I was totally panicked last week when I read about the Fictionwise break up with Overdrive. There are two major fulfillment sources for ebooks other than Fictionwise’s eReader: Overdrive and Lightning Source. These fulfillment companies take the raw text and design of an ebook and convert the text and graphics into an ebook. Overdrive provides fulfillment services for Microsoft, HarperCollins and Random House. It provides ebooks in the following formats: Adobe eBook (PDF and EPUB), Mobipocket (PRC), Microsoft Reader (LIT). Lightning Source provides Penguin and Simon & Schuster ebooks to the public in a variety of formats. Fictionwise owns eReader and fulfills the eReader format for readers.

Fictionwise would take a feed of offerings from Overdrive and provide those books to Fictionwise’s customers. When Overdrive decided to terminate its contract with Fictionwise it meant that any previous purchase of an Overdrive fulfilled book would no longer be available for re-download after January 30, 2009.

This is a big problem for readers. Everytime you buy a new computer, you have to authorize your reading software because of DRM or digital rights management. DRM is a software that publishers think that they should use to prevent piracy. Instead, as you can see by the Fictionwise example, it actually places purchases of readers in jeopardy because once purchased, an ebook with DRM is subject to being lost due to getting new hardware, new reading devices, or even suffering a computer malfunction.

In this case, because each different DRM version of an ebook is considered to be a new copy, Fictionwise had to contact each publisher and essentially ask permission to give a free copy of the book that was being removed from the customers’ bookshelf by Overdrive. Not every publisher has responded to Fictionwise yet but over 80% have agreed to allow Fictionwise to give each customer a replacement in eReader format.

I asked Fictionwise whether Overdrive’s absence would affect the number of new releases available through Fictionwise since in the last two weeks there have been a dearth of HarperCollins, Warner, and other publishers being released. I was told that Fictionwise is addressing its lack of new releases from NY publishers and we should see some immediate changes on Monday and in the forthcoming weeks.

Second, Fictionwise will continue to supply books in Mobi, MS Lit and haven’t been dependent on Overdrive for a while. It will also support Adobe but that is an issue that might take a few weeks to iron out. Fictionwise emphasized to me that it was going to support as many as format as possible.

I think Fictionwise could have done a better job of informing its customers about what was going on by emailing them or putting something on the front page, but it is trying to remedy this situation as best as technology and the law will allow them to do so.

For readers, I recommend taking time out of your day and download your books in your preferred format. Your replacement will be in ereader form and while that is widely read it’s not useable on every device out there. Make frequent backups of your ebooks. While the current federal law prohibits the stripping of DRM even for personal use, it’s the only way you can really ensure that the ebooks you buy are yours forever. Stripping the DRM is something that each reader will have to struggle with on a personal level. If you choose to do so, though, there are tools out there for many formats. More information can be found via googling.

DRM is the bane of the ebook world and it makes me sad to see this happen to Fictionwise, a store I have patronized for the last 4 years almost exclusively. I have to admit, it was a little entertaining to go through my 106 titles affected by the Overdrive/Fictionwise breakup and revisit my purchasing habits. For the record, Madeline Hunter’s ebooks were the first that I had purchased from Fictionwise.

FICTIONWISE ALERT: Please Read

Jane — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:51:09 +0000

THIRD UPDATE: I’m just going to rewrite the post for tomorrow. Fictionwise is working assiduously (my word) to get publisher approval and it sounds like it is all going well. Also, I expressed my despair that so few new titles were available this week and this too is going to be addressed and there should be more new titles and more formats for books available soon. Which is good because I still have $70 micropay dollars left to spend.

SECONDARY UPDATE: I wanted to make clear that Fictionwise is working with publishers to provide replacement copies of all the ebooks that are being affected by Overdrive’s termination of its contract. Harlequin, for example, has agreed to provide replacements. I’m not sure what other publishers have although, according to Fictionwise 80% of the publishers have agreed.

I am trying to get a list of what houses have not agreed to provide preplacements. Please check out Fictionwise’s FAQ for more details.

UPDATE: I checked my Fictionwise account to see what books are affected. I have over 100 titles that will be expiring. Fictionwise suggests not to do a bulk download, but to download them one by one (gah!) but 80% of them are being replaced with eReader copies so far. Fictionwise is negotiating with publishers to provide replacement copies. I hope that works out okay.

I have been a longtime Fictionwise buyer, but lately I have been very, very frustrated by the lack of new content. Case in point, I wanted to buy For the Love of Pete by Julia Harper but only Books on Board had it and only in Mobi. There were a number of new releases that were also not available at Fictionwise this last go around.

It appears that Fictionwise and Overdrive have broken up. This is important because Overdrive supplies over 300,000 books to Fictionwise:

The affected units include some Secure Mobipocket, Secure Microsoft Reader, and Secure Adobe Digital titles, but Secure eReader and Multiformat are unaffected.

You’ll want to go to Fictionwise and download all those titles. If they are secured titles, you might want to think about stripping the DRM (note this is illegal in some countries including the US) because those titles will no longer be available through Fictionwise and if you have DRM issues later, well, you are likely to be screwed.

I said on Twitter this past week that I was done with Fictionwise after my micropay rebate was exhausted because of content issues (i.e., not enough new content). Maybe I’ll come back if they work out a deal with publishers.

MobileRead via Teleread.

Fictionwise Personal Content Server Down?

Jane — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 17:17:37 +0000

I went to upload a new book into my personal content shelf for the iPhone/iTouch at Fictionwise this morning and my previously added books were completely gone. Further, I can’t add any new content. I am sure I have back ups of all the books that I uploaded to the Personal Content Server but if this isn’t a lesson about the importance of backups and not relying on someone else’s server, I don’t know what is.

UPDATED: eBook Sales for the Holidays (books on the cheap for the book reader)

Jane — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 02:00:25 +0000

Updated: There are ebooks for sale at WH Smith eBookShop for 50% off. There are titles there that don’t appear to be in eform in any US ebook stores including A Man in A Million by Jessica Bird that I reviewed the other day. It’s in both Adobe and Mobi format.

Every week, Fictionwise offers 2 or 3 books with 100% micropay rebate. Essentially, it’s a buy one and get the entire purchase amount to be used at a later date. Today through December 31, Fictionwise is reprising every micropay rebate it offered during 2008. This includes a number of romance titles such as the third book to Sign of Seven trilogy, Pagan Stone by Nora Roberts; Darkest Fire by Gena Showalter; Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold; Dark Needs at Night’s Edge by Kresley Cole and so forth.

Thanks Sasha for the heads up.

How to Convert an eBook into eReader Format for the iPhone Using Publish eBook

Jane — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 10:00:20 +0000

For the next few weeks, I’m going to do posts on how to convert ebooks into formats that work on dedicated and multi function devices. First up is the eReader format. Both Stanza and eReader on the iPhone allow uploading of personal content but only in the eReader format. Making an eReader book isn’t hard but it does require some software and depending on your system, maybe an outlay of money. The following works with both Macs and Windows BUT! you need to have MS Word on your computer.

You need to start with an html file. Most ebooks from epublishers come in html format which is comprised of the book file and an additional folder that contains images and styling information.

If your book is in another format, these instructions won’t work. This week will address the conversion using two free programs: Publish eBook and Drop Book.

Step 1: Download Conversion Programs: Publish eBook and Drop Book:

If you have Microsoft Word, download the program “publish ebook.” This is essentially a Word macro that turns any Word doc into a PDB file. PDB is the extension that eReader will view. Once you download the Publish eBook to your computer, open the files and make sure “Drop Book” is included. If not, you’ll need to download “Drop Book” from eReader.com. Make sure that DropBook is placed in the “Publishe eBook” folder. You can place the “Publish eBook” folder anywhere you like, but put it where you will be able to locate the following file whenever you want to do a conversion.

Step 2: Create a MS Word document from the HTML file.

The above program only works with MS Word files so you’ll need to create a MS Word file from the HTML file you downloaded. Navigate to your ebook file.

Highlight the ebook file.
Right click and choose Open with. . .
Choose MS Word.

MS Word will open and there should be the book with cover. Go to File, “Properties” and then fill in the title of the book and author of the book.

Close out of those dialog boxes and choose Save As and choose MS Word doc.

You should now have a MS Word doc in the folder along with the hmtl file and the images.

Step 3: Open Publish eBook and create PDB file.

Go to the Publish eBook.doc. Open it. You may have to “Enable Macros”. Click on the “Publish eBook”. Navigate to the MS Word document you just created. Doubleclicking on the MS Word document will trigger the macro and the Publish eBook document will close and your file will be created and saved in the folder where the “doc” existed.

Step 4: Upload your PDB file to your Personal Bookshelf.

Congratulations. You have created a simple PDB of your book and can upload that to your Fictionwise.com or Stanza.Fictionwise.com Personal Bookshelf area.

Step 5: Further customization using PML.

If you want to pretty up your eReader ebooks, you can hand edit the PML file. To generate a PML file, uncheck this box in the Publish eBook.doc:

Now when you create a PDB, you will get both a PML file and a PDB file:

Open the PML file with Notepad.exe or Wordpad.exe. From here you can add images or chapter marks and any other further PML markup as found here. Adding images, though, is a huge pain in the ass because the images must be in png format that is not filtered or interlaced, must be put in the folder “bookfolder_img” where “bookfolder’ is the name of the folder, and must be less than or equal to 65505 bytes in size.

Next week: Using Open Office Writer (free).

Stanza Partners with Fictionwise

Jane — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:35:00 +0000

http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com SB Sarah emailed this breaking news release to me. Stanza has partnered with Fictionwise to provide DRM content via the Fictionwise store. It's brilliant and I really applaud Fictionwise for allowing its store to be partnered with Stanza because Fictionwise could have easily said, no thanks, we've got ereader. Stanza has licensed the ebook Reader platform so the books that you buy are in eReader format.

This is how it works.

Open Stanza on your iPhone.
Choose Online Catalog from the Library screen then Fictionwise Book Store.
Choose the Fictionwise library
Add to Cart
It's bookstore content is formatted for the iPhone (unlike every other retailer Stanza has partnered with thus far).
You have to create an account with stanza.fictionwise.com. (I did NOT like this because I want to use my fictionwise account. Please get these integrated).
Enter your email address associated with the Stanza.fictionwise account and password. Click the auto-fill login so you don't have to enter this information again.
Got to Checkout or Continue shopping.
You can either enter your credit card information here (no option to pay with paypal so booooo!!!) or at the website. I choose to both sign up and add my cc via the website using a full sized keyboard. If you add the card and set it as primary, you do not need to re enter the information but you must add the three digit security code from the back of your card. Press Continue.
Another page loads and some graphic button (I think "authorize") is supposed to show up but did not. After clicking the Authorize area, My purchase was complete but the book did not download. Instead, I backed out of the purchase area all the way to the beginning to re-read the instructions on how to use this thing.
Now you have to go the "My Bookshelf" link at the bottom. (Wow, could Fictionwise and Stanza make this harder and less intuitive? I think not).
New page opens up to download book. I get a download popup request. I press "Download." I am now at the 13 minute mark.
I now have to enter my unlock information (Name and CC). The book downloads and I am now ready to read it.

Verdict? Great idea, but lousy execution. I'll be sticking with buying online via the Fictionwise store where I can use my micropay dollars.

eBook Odds and Ends

Jane — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 09:00:54 +0000

I am still digesting and working on a post regarding the Google BookSearch Settlement. If you have thoughts on it, feel free to email me (jane at dearauthor.com). I’m fairly concerned about the future impacts and my initial feelings are ones of concern. Today, though, I thought I would give some bullet point items about ebook technology and some brief thoughts about the current slate of ebook reading programs for the iPhone. I’ll be doing the annual eBook Reader Purchase Guide in the last two weeks of November (after the Google BookSearch Settlement post next week).

Dorchester eBooks

There are three major romance publishers who either do not release their books in ebook format or do it irregularly. Those are Dorchester, Tor, and St. Martin’s Press. Keishon noticed that Shomi books were appearing in the Kindle and Sony stores. Upon further searching, many Dorchester books are available for the Kindle. There are C. L. Wilson‘s books in Kindle format and more. I have heard that Tor will be coming out with eBooks, first in Kindle and then other formats.

I asked one print publisher why Kindle is getting so many books first and was told that Amazon will convert the book to ebook format for the publisher. I don’t know if this is true for all publishers. For example, Grand Central provides the ebooks in ePub to vendors and then the vendors must wrap the ePub container with the requisite DRM (i.e., MS Lit, eReader, Mobi, etc). I guess Kindle and Mobi (both owned by Amazon) are just more on top of the game.

eBook Sales Are Booming

According to IDPF, eBook sales are growing. This quarter sales were $13 million compared to the same quarter last year sales of $8 million. The numbers are derived from the sales reports 12-15 trade publishers who report their numbers to IDPF. While the numbers are small compared to the overall size of the publishing industry (over $1 Billion in sales), each positive quarter is promising for this segment of publishing.

The Classics iPhone App

Recently a new ebook reader app was added to the iPhone Application Store. Classics runs $2.99 and contains a library of thirteen books. While the books are lovingly coded into an iPhone friendly format, I found the application to be highly irritating. The animation for page turning cannot be turned off (you can see the animation at the previous link) and there is no adjustment for font size. There are actually no preferences which the user can set. This application is unusable for anyone who wants to read anything other than the selection provided by the developers. Further, if you want to control your own reading experience, you are better off downloading the “classic” titles off Project Gutenburg for free.

Stanza

Each iPhone ebook application has its strengths and weaknesses. Stanza’s strength is the neat coverflow feature; the ability to edit the title and author of a book straight from the iPhone; and the ability to organize the books into collections on the iPhone. It’s weakness are that each book has to be converted individually; getting ebooks from the computer onto the iPhone requires the book to be “opened” on the desktop and for the iPhone and the computer to be on the same network; and no notes feature.

iPhone Bookshelf

iPhone Bookshelf has the best “bookshelf” feature. iPhone Bookshelf allows you to setup a bookshelf on your home computer that can be accessed anywhere you have cell signal. Further, it reads a ton of different formats without manual conversion, meaning I can drop an html file for a book I downloaded from Samhain without converting it manually. This sets iPhone Bookshelf apart, in my opinion, and makes it worth the $9.99 price. With the update, there are few crashes (although it does hang from time to time at the end of a section); the ability to “go to” any part of the book; and “live” html links. The weakness is the hanging; no notes feature; no ability to edit title and author; no collection, tagging, etc.

Fictionwise’s eReader

Of the three, the eReader program is probably the best reading application. With the update, there is a great bookmark/highlight/notes feature. The way to take a note is to press your finger on a word and wait a second and then drag to highlight the text you want in the note. Sometimes the keyboard does not appear for notetaking, rendering that portion of the application unuseable from time to time. The weaknesses of the eReader program is that the notes portion doesn’t always work; no ability to edit title and author; limiting font sizes (small, medium, large, etc); no ability to form collections, tagging, etc.

For the iPhone Bookshelf, I would like the ability to edit the title and author straight from the iPhone as well as tag books with paranormal, favorites, etc. It would be great to be able to create a “playlist” of books that I want to read. It would also be great to be able to share that “playlist” with others. For example, we have a Recommended Reads monthly feature and I would love to be able to share that list with other users of the iPhone in a short and pithy way.

***

Those are my thoughts for today. Later on, I’ll be posting an update from Liquid Silver on the changes to their eBookstore. I’d love to hear from readers of eBooks as to what they wished they could change about their existing eBook reading software and what they absolutely love.

Do Exclusive Publisher Portals Make Sense?

Jane — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 09:00:25 +0000

Note: I mentioned below that several ebook vendors were having big sales this week including BooksonBoard. I read the BoB promotion to require a minimum of $100 to get the 50% rebate. This is not accurate. There is a 50% rebate/reward for each book purchased through today regardless of what you spend.

Arstechnica, one of my favorite tech blogs, had an article up last week about EMI’s decision to open an EMI only music store. Ars argued that an EMI only music store was doomed to fail for two basic reasons

most music customers don’t know the label of their favorite musician
music buyers want to find their favorite music easily and in one place. “Research has shown that when consumers are looking for music they want it all in one place.”

These assumptions don’t necessarily carry over to the niche romance ebook reading market. Ellora’s Cave has a brand name in erotic romance of which most ebook readers are aware. For several years, EC was really the only game in town and thus it made sense to drive readers to its exclusive portal. But the ebook market and ebook publishing has evolved since 2001, the birth of Ellora’s Cave. There are over 60 epublishers in business today. Fictionwise, eBookwise, BooksonBoard, eReader, Mobipocket, All Romance eBooks, and Kindle serve as legitimate retail outlets for ebooks.

There is a push from major forces in the entertainment industry such as Amazon and Sony to increase ebook reading. Even the iPhone has created still another avenue for ebook readers. But Amazon, Sony, iPhone, Fictionwise, eBookwise, BooksonBoard, eReader, Mobipocket, and others have one thing in common. They still do not sell every ebook published today.

Part of that is due to self imposed limits. For example, Fictionwise “partners with publishers who can provide 25 or more titles by at least five different established, professional authors.” But some of the problem is that e-publishers are self limiting. Ellora’s Cave, for example, does not list its titles at any other vendor. The only way to purchase EC books is directly from the EC site.

EC’s webtraffic, according to one independent metric, has a ranking of 55,719. Fictionwise.com has an Alexa rating of 30,164. In a google search for “romance ebooks”, All Romance eBooks shows up first. The first epublisher to show up in that same google search is Alinar Publishing followed by Liquid Silver. I browsed through the first ten pages of search results. Ellora’s Cave didn’t show up. Neither did EC show up on any of the paid advertisements that appear on the right hand side of the search results

What about the search term erotic romance? Ellora’s Cave is missing from the first page of those search results. Hot romance reads? New Concepts shows up. Sexy romance reads? Amazon. BDSM books? Nope. BDSM romance books? Nope (DearAuthor has the second link on this search result).

Erotica ebooks is the first search where EC appears and it’s the very last of the front page search results. Liquid Silver shows up before EC. How about “romantica ebooks” since EC has trademarked that term? Diesel eBooks, an etailer, shows up first.

Apparently part of the reason that EC books do not appear on websites like Fictionwise.com is due to the fact that these e-vendors take a high rate of the royalty. Fictionwise, it is reported, takes 50% of a small print publishers royalty. If a publisher’s contract does not take into consideration third party retailers, then the publisher’s cut is reduced decreasing its willingness to see sales escape from its exclusive portal. But the question is really whether the loss of sales from lack of widespread distribution is made up by increased royalties at the exclusive portal.

Obviously, that is not an answer that I can give hard numbers to as I don’t have sales figures from Fictionwise and an ebook publisher to compare. Anectodotal evidence given in this thread suggests both that authors are better off being sold through a publisher’s exclusive portal and that the widespread distribution means better sales overall.

I can say from personal experience that I would buy more Ellora’s Cave books if they were made available at Fictionwise or some other retailer and it is because, as stated in the ArsTechnica article, I like a one stop shopping place. More and more e-vendors are building up loyalty programs to encourage readers to buy from one store. Fictionwise has its micropay rebates. BooksonBoard and eReader have reward dollars. These programs are designed to reward customer loyalty by giving back a percentage of a sale to use toward a future sale.

Further, e-vendors offer sales and loss leaders to encourage more purchasing. Fictionwise has its weekly 100% micropay rebate offers whereby you get the entire book’s purchase price rebated back to you in the form of a credit to be used later. Currently Fictionwise, eReader, and BooksonBoard* are offering 50% rebates on their entire catalog of books.

No epublisher’s exclusive portal offers these constant discounts, not even Harlequin who does offer the occassional coupon. These vendor promotions do not decrease an ebook author’s royalty as the promotions are absorbed by the vendor. But sales and promotions do increase reader purchases. How many Ellora’s Cave authors are missing out on sales at these vendors during these promotions? That is true for any number of epublishers who don’t have their entire catalogs on these e-vendor sites. (I.e., Josh Lanyon’s book, Death of a Pirate King, still is not in the Fictionwise or BooksonBoard catalog).

K.Z. Snow commented that epublishers might strike a balance by driving traffic directly to the publishers exclusive portals for the new releases and allowing the old releases to gain new readership by allowing those to go to the third party vendors. I think that is what is happening with Lanyon’s book. But for this one reader, I won’t be buying the book from Loose Id’s site. I’ll wait for it to show up at Fictionwise where I am flush with micropay rebate dollars I’ve earned from previous purchases.

When EC was the only erotic romance epublisher in town, selling your books only at Ellora’s Cave made sense. Seven years later, does exclusive publisher portals mean more money or lost sales?

*The 51% rebte applies for purchases totaling $100 or more. For those who do not like the rebates and rewards programs, the normal straight discounts will return after this program ends. BooksonBoard also allow readers to get Rewards Dollars on purchases made exclusively with Rewards Dollars, a double-dipping option not available elsewhere.

Independent Publisher Sale – 25% Off

Jane — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:50:02 +0000

From the email:

Fictionwise has always been proud to be the only eBook retailer to actively promote and support independent eBook Publishers.

This week, we are featuring all Independent Publishers by offering big savings on nearly 20,000 MultiFormat eBooks! For a limited time, all MultiFormat eBooks are 25% off through October 5th.

see below:
http://www.fictionwise.com/Z133282T951/ebooks/multiformat.htm

The multi-format books do not have DRM and include books from Belgrave House, Samhain Publishing, and Amber Quill Press. Go forth and buy. Support your indie publisher.

eReader.com Has Free Harlequin Giveaway

Jane — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:12:12 +0000

To encourage iPhone/Mobile readers to try out its mobile ebook reader, eReader.com is giving away thee full length Harlequin novels. These are downloadable by anyone with an eReader account and not a dedicated device giveaway (like Kindle giveaways). The giveaway is only good until September 12, 2008.

The books include:

Risque Business by Tawny Weber
The Tycoon’s Very Personal Assistant by Heidi Rice
His Expectant Ex by Catherine Mann

I read the Catherine Mann book and it’s not bad. It’s definitely worth downloading for free.

REVIEW: Ereader and Bookshelf App for iPhone

Jane — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 09:00:39 +0000

You may not have heard, but Friday saw the release of the newest iPhone. It’s a 3G phone that sold for $199 (8 GB) and $299 (16 GB). Also released on Friday was the newest firmware for the iPhones and iTouches which made available third party applications for the first time*.

Two of the third party applications were for ebook reading on the iPhone. I’ll review them both here. The eReader application is made available through Fictionwise and Bookshelf is coded and designed by an individual by the name Zac Bedell. My favorite is definitely Zac’s Bookshelf and while it costs money ($9.99), it is definitely worth the price.

EREADER APP

We’ll start with the eReader application. eReader is the software program that reads Secure PDB files. These Secure files are wrapped in a DRM that is unlocked by your name and credit card associated with your account at either Fictionwise.com or eReader.com. I believe that eReader.com is the only place you can currently purchase eReader books.

There is no way to add eReader books or any other previously purchased books NOT in ereader form to the iPhone using the eReader program. This is hugely important to me because the majority of my purchases are NOT in ereader form. Thus eReader is largely NON functional for me at this time.

It’s lack of functionality due to format differences, however, is not the only reason I’m disappointed with the eReader application.

It is buggy. It crashed on me twice while I attempted to read a book I had purchased. Second, the page turning bothers me.
Page turning. I think the eReader tried to emulate the look of an e-ink reader and thus it features an animation that mimics a page turning. Compared to the smooth scrolling of other ereading software on the iPhone, this seems clunky and unnecessary. Further, the page turning lags (probably due to the animation). You must brush your finger across the screen to turn the page instead of a simple tap. Sometimes I had to brush my finger two or three times and sometimes I had to wait a few seconds to achieve the page turn.
Look and feel. The title of the eReader stays visible at all times, taking up 2-3 lines of text. In landscape mode, the title remains in regular mode.
Find feature. There is a find feature so that you can search the text for a word or phrase.
Modifications. The only personal modification that you are allowed is to change the font size from small, medium, large, and huge and the font from Georgia, Helvetica, and Market Felt.
Location in book or percentage of book read. There is a small indicator bar at the bottom of the reading screen that fills with blue the farther along you are in the story.
Advancement through the story. The only way to advance farther into the story is through the find feature or through the table of contents. The table of contents is accessed by tapping the open book icon on the lower lefthand side. You cannot scroll through the book or advance any set number of pages or go to a certain page.
Deleting files. You press the edit button in the bookshelf and are presented with the red delete button. That allows you to delete files from the iPhone.
Bookshelf. You can access both the eReader accounts and Fictionwise accounts but only one at a time and only if you have different login information (username/password combos) for each. If you mis enter the username or password, the Bookshelf will look empty but you are not informed of your error. This needs to be changed. I thought the Bookshelf access was simply not working for the longest time. You can download individual books or the entire bookshelf. Do not try to download the entire bookshelf when accessing the Fictionwise.com bookshelf. You’ll get lots of errors and few complete downloads.
Over the Air eBook Purchasing. You can purchase an ebook from eReader.com from the iphone using the credit card you have on file. The purchase only requires the three digit code from the back of your credit card. There are four screens, I think, that you are required to go through to make your purchase. The ereader.com site is not iPhone optimized and it took 5 tries before I was able to successfully complete a purchase. I’m not sure if the eReader.com site was being hammered on Friday or what, but it was slow and frustrating. That said, once I did complete my purchase, I was able to go to the eReader app on the iPhone, access the Bookshelf and the new purchase was available for download.
Fictionwise.com Issues. I had 7 or 8 books I had purchased at Fictionwise.com that were secure ebooks but when I logged into my Fictionwise Bookshelf from my iPhone, I had no idea which books were eReader books and which were the various other formats. I have over 300+ ebooks in my Fictionwise library and I was only able to download one successfully. I must have totally screwed up something because I haven’t been able to download another ebook from my Fictionwise Bookshelf.

Things the eReader is missing:

No autoscroll or hands free reading.
Landscape control. I read in bed alot and if I lay on my side, the iPhone accelerometer senses that the phone should go into landscape mode. This is fairly inconvenient as I struggled to position the iPhone “just right” to get the phone in regular portrait mode. Other iPhone reading apps have a lock to prevent the phone going into landscape mode.
Alternate backgrounds. There are no alternative backgrounds. This is somewhat important because even at the lowest brightness setting, the black on white text is very bright in the dark. Having a white on black setting or an offwhite on a dark grey background would be better for your eyes. Previous iterations of the eReader allowed for a number of different backgrounds for personalized reading.
No Bookmark feature or annotation feature. eReader remembers where you left off in your book when you close the application but it does not allow you to make any personal bookmarks. It does have a table of contents feature accessed by the small book icon in the lower left hand corner. There is also no way to make a note or annotate the ebook in anyway.
No organization of content. The books are downloadable from eReader and Fictionwise, but they are listed alphabetically by title. There is no other way to organize the books. There is no rating system, no tagging.

The eReader program is bare bones. It has little features and for those who have an extensive existing library of ebooks not in eReader form, this is not functional. Despite the free price tag, I haven’t opened since I purchased the book for review purposes. Until and unless eReader makes it possible for a reader to convert existing books into eReader form and then allow them to get those books onto the iPhone, the eReader app is only good for those who buy eReader books or for Iphone users new to ebooks. The one and only advantage that I see that eReader has over Bookshelf is the ability buy on the fly. Even if the eReader app had a way to get existing ebooks onto the iPhone, I was still very disappointed in the look and feel of the application.

BOOKSHELF APP

This application costs $9.99 and is well worth the money. There are flaws to the application. I found it very buggy for longer files but have communicated these issues directly to the programmer and have been informed that upgrades are on the way (maybe as early as next week). The real amazing thing about this program is that Bedell has created a very easy way for users to get ebooks that they have already purchased onto the iPhone.

It is buggy when reading long files. I read the entire Susan Mallery, Irresistible, on the Bookshelf App Friday night. (Great book by the way and read on the recommendation of reader Jennifer. Thanks Jennifer). It crashed several times and the scroll to the next section feature scrolled so far in advance each time that I had to backtrack. Today, I broke up the file into chapter segments and experienced no issues at all but I would rather not have to do this. I also suffered some random crashes and freezing while attempting to change preferences.
Page turning. I prefer the page turning capabilities of this program much better than the eReader. The page turning is essentially a scroll feature. Tap toward the bottom and the next paragraphs scroll up immediately. I never experienced a lag.
Look and feel. The title of the app disappears and reappears with a tap allowing the reader to enjoy a full screen of text. On a small screen like the iPhone, every pixel of real estate matters.
Modifications. You can change the font and the font size based on any font that is recognized by the iPhone. I didn’t count all the fonts, but there were alot. There are five color themes: White on Black, Black on White, Blackboard (a softer black), Emerald on black, and Black on Cream (this was more yellow than cream).
Landscape lock. You can lock the accelerometer from recognizing the phone is in landscape mode.
Autoscroll. Alot of people like this feature, but I have never really used it. It scrolls the text of the book at various speeds so you don’t have to tap to advance the story.
Bookmarks. You can add your own bookmarks to a book and because you can name the bookmark itself, it could be used as a tiny annotation feature.
Deleting files. You can only delete a file using the trashcan while you are in the file.
Bookshelf. This is the best aspect of Bookshelf App and I would have paid $9.99 just for this functionality alone. Two caveats, you must have java machine working on your computer (most computers do but you can download the Windows version here) and I recommend reinstalling Bonjour downloadable here. Shelfserver is a small java based program you run on your computer. It allows you to access any folder you authorize from the iPhone. With some help from JS Wolf at mobileread and Zac Bedell, I was able to set up a Shelfserver on my home computer that I can access anywhere and that I can allow other iPhone users to access. I hope to be able to collate some of free fiction and extended excerpts for iPhone romance readers through a Dear Author ShelfServer some time in the near future. Soon I’ll give step by step instructions on how to set up the Shelfserver to be accessed over the internet. Essentially this means I can access every ebook I have purchased anywhere I am so long as I have my Iphone. It does not require a wifi connection.
Content Organization. You can organize content on your computer and when you download the book from Shelfserver, it keeps the same folder structure. It also lists items alphabetically but because I can organize my own content, I can name my folders with last name, first name of the author or any other way a person like.

What the Bookshelf App does not have.

No Over the Air eBook Purchasing. Bookshelf App does not read secure ebooks and therefore, you cannot purchase new ebooks to be read over the air, even unencrypted ones from Samhain or LooseId. I encourage those epublishers, though, to contact Bedell and find a way to allow readers to purchase books and download them over the air using his program. I would think that would be a win for everyone.
Find feature. There is no find feature.
Annotations. No annotation feature.
Advancement through the story. You can scroll through sections of the book that are loaded but not the entirety of the book. You cannot advance a set number of pages or go to a specific page.
Location in book or percentage of book read. In a different ebook app, the programmer had placed a faint percentage indicator to let you know how far into the book you where. I really like to know where I am in a book and its hard to know when you are reading a digital file.

Both programs have their issues and neither make the iPhone into a Kindle Killer yet. Currently the Bookshelf App is the one with the most features and it is the only one that allows you to access your existing files. Currently it supports the following formats.

Plain Text [.txt]
HTML with images [.html]
FictionBook2 with images [.fb2]
PalmDoc / AportisDoc [.pdb]
MobiPocket (unencrypted) [.pdb, .prc, .mobi]
Plucker with images [.pdb]

I’ll likely continue to buy MS Lit books and convert them. I recommend Bookshelf App, even at the $9.99, for anyone who has an existing ebook library.

*Note: The third party applications were the first legitimate release. If you had jailbroken the iPhone before, you would have been able to install third party apps not sanctioned by Apple.

Fictionwise’s eReader Available as an iPhone App for the New Iphones

Jane — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:49:56 +0000

Apple’s AppStore is live and there are a couple of free ebook readers including Fictionwise’s eReader. According to the description, eReader allows for “direct wireless transfers of your content to the device’s internal storage for offline reading.” This says to me that you’ll be able to buy from Fictionwise directly from the iPhone just like you would be able to with the Kindle.

Is this the tipping point for eBooks? The Kindle Killer? I’m off to the Apple Store tomorrow for my 3G iPhone and Sunday I hope to write up my experience with the new iPhone Reading Apps.

Fictionwise Working on eReader Program Compatible with the IPhone

Jane — Tue, 06 May 2008 17:20:20 +0000

In my inbox I received an email stating that Fictionwise is working on making eReader compatible with the iPhone. Fictionwise bought eReader a few months agao. This is excellent news for MAC users and PC users alike. I love reading on my iPhone.

eReader is not my favorite mobile reading platform but something is better than nothing.

Fictionwise Extends Its Storewide 50% Sale

Jane — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:20:48 +0000

I forgot to blog about this on April 1 (I was having some technical difficulties that day). Fictionwise is having a 50% off storewide sale on all its ebooks extended to 10 Am Eastern Time on Friday, April 4. The way that this works is that you buy the book with paypal or a credit card and you get a 50% micropay rebate. So it’s kind of like buy one, get the second one half off.

Via Fictionwise.

Fictionwise Buys eReader from Motricity

Jane — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:42:35 +0000

Teleread.org reported that Fictionwise has purchased eReader store from Motricity. I think this is pretty great news and not because consolidation is good, but because as David Rothman points out in his article, the Brothers Pendergrast who own and run Fictionwise, are very plugged in to the e-community and offer a number of books on its site free of DRM.