Making eBooks Work, Part 2: Fictionwise6 May 2002 Fictionwise takes an unusual approach to selling ebooks: sell the reading public what they want at prices they can afford. Fictionwise started in 1999 as a website devoted to selling short science fiction pieces at reasonable prices. With some stories priced as low as 30 cents, they still did a booming business. Brothers Scott and Steven Pendergrast had an idea about ebooks. They thought that ebooks worked better if they were short. People didn't have the patience or desire to read massive novels on computer monitors or tiny handheld screens, but shorter material was ideal for reading at the bus stop or over a lunch break. Fictionwise started with about 100 titles and grew from there. The titles they started with worked, and in a big way. Many were award-winning stories by big name writers, stories that had long been out of print. One of the most popular in those early days was Damon Knight's "To Serve Man", the basis for one of the most chilling episodes of the "Twilight Zone." Fictionwise took off, and is still growing. In fact, they've grown so much now that their name doesn't really make sense anymore. They still offer fiction, of course, including lots of full length novels -- so much for no one wanting to read longer works on PDAs! -- but they also offer lots of nonfiction as well. They've expanded their original 100 short story titles into a massive collection composed of: Fiction
Nonfiction
Whatever you like to read, chances are they have something along those lines. One of the reasons Fictionwise works is that they are one of the few "stores" to make micropayments viable. Historically, micropayments didn't work because it wasn't worth the credit card transaction fee if you were charging less than five bucks or so. The vendor actually lost money after paying the credit card company. Fictionwise allows you to put money into their account system by charging your credit card in $5 increments. If you're buying something that costs more than $5, you can choose to pay either with your Fictionwise account or by ordinary credit card. Under $5, and the price of the story is deducted from your account balance. Not only does this neatly sidestep the transaction fee problem, but it also keeps customers coming back since it's rare to come up with a shopping cart that deplenishes your account to exactly $0.00. If you have money on their site, you may as well spend it, right? I admit that I've added $5 to my Fictionwise account more than once just to spend the $0.15 still in there. Another Fictionwise innovation is their Buywise Club. They charge a membership fee -- $29.95 for one year, $54.95 for two -- but then offer a 15% discount on all purchases, one free ebook (up to $10), club specials and quantity discounts. It's a lot like the "frequent buyer" clubs at Barnes & Noble, etc. and it will save you money if you buy enough ebooks. Fictionwise also has one of the most generous affiliate programs of any website I've ever seen. If someone comes to Fictionwise via an affiliate link, they are "owned" by that affiliate for three months, even if they don't buy anything on that visit. It makes Fictionwise a very profitable site to link to, which increases their traffic. Fictionwise has a number of features to enhance customer satisfaction. One of them is the ability to select your preferred ebook format and download all your purchases in a zipped bulk download. You can download everything, just stuff you bought within a specific time frame, basically anything you want. They make it very easy to reacquire your books if you need them again later. If you're on the road and have a travel sync cable for your PDA, your entire ebook library (well, stuff you bought from Fictionwise, anyway) is just one quick download away. Another nifty feature is Fictionwise's rating system. Readers are encouraged to rate books they read as Great, Good, OK or Poor, and the accumulated ratings are displayed as a little bar graph on the book's page on the website. This helps weed out the stuff that sounds good, but reads bad. You can even search by rating, and Fictionwise offers listings of current best-rated and best-sellers. Fictionwise offers more than just books. They also offer popular SF and mystery magazines. You can get the latest Asimov's Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and Handheld Computing Magazine from Fictionwise every month. If you actually buy them every month, it's cheaper to order them as subscriptions, then download them from your bookshelf whenever you can. You even get notified via email when a new issue appears in your bookshelf. Fictionwise "gets it." Like Baen Books (spotlighted last week) they flaunt conventional ebook wisdom in a number of ways. Fictionwise offers most of their titles in a wide variety of formats, including Adobe Acrobat, Palm Doc, Rocket/REB1100, Microsoft Reader, Franklin eBookMan, hiebook, iSilo, and Mobipocket. Between these, nearly every platform of PC, handheld computer or dedicated reader is covered. You still have to have some kind of "reader" to display any ebook, but ebooks from Fictionwise will work with pretty much anything you have. (Note: some books are not available in Rocket/REB1100 format due to a contractual issue with Gemstar, the company that owns the REB reader technology.) For most of their titles (there's one significant exception I'll get to in a moment) Fictionwise distributes their titles with no encryption at all. Some formats (Microsoft Reader, Rocket eBook, iSilo) are compiled into binary formats that can't be easily decompiled into text, but even those formats are not tied via DRM to any specific user or device. Fictionwise believes that DRM only scares away potential customers and offers little real protection, since most digital formats have already been hacked. They also note that their unencrypted ebooks are more accessible to those with disabilities, and that many of their best customers are blind. Fictionwise does what they can to discourage piracy. The following warning is displayed near the beginning of most books: "NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the purchaser. If you did not purchase this ebook directly from Fictionwise.com then you are in violation of copyright law and are subject to severe fines. Please visit www.fictionwise.com to purchase a legal copy. Fictionwise.com offers a reward for information leading to the conviction of copyright violators of Fictionwise ebooks." So far, Fictionwise says they haven't had a problem with piracy. The one exception I referred to above is the Secure MobiPocket format. Some books are offered only in this format, which employs DRM to tie it to a specific Mobipocket ID. This was a necessary compromise to gain access to titles that would normally be the exclusive province of epublishers with stronger DRM, like Palm Digital Media or Amazon.com. Most of the contemporary bestsellers on Fictionwise are offered in this format, which is readable on Palms, Pocket PCs, Franklin eBookman readers, Psion devices and desktop PCs. On the whole, Fictionwise proves that ebooks can work, but that the "conventional wisdom" of the industry may be suspect. They sell short stories and novellas individually -- something almost all other publishers, e and otherwise, have rejected out of hand -- they treat their customers with trust and respect, and they are as flexible as possible in regards to how their books are read. At every turn, Fictionwise has done what the rest of the publishing industry considered crazy, and they've been wildly successful doing it. Jeff Kirvin
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