What will Barnes & Noble do with Fictionwise?
Since mega-book retailer Barnes & Noble acquired Fictionwise, the online retailer of ebooks, I’m very anxious to know what B&N plans to do with the website and their service. In the last year, a majority of the ebooks I have bought have been from Fictionwise, giving me even more interest in the outcome of this acquisition.
The bad news is that B&N has been relatively tight-lipped about how they will integrate Fictionwise into their own online bookstore, and even their brick-and-mortar stores. I went back and dug up the press release to see if it offered any hints, but this is all I could find:
Barnes & Noble said it plans to use Fictionwise as part of its overall digital strategy, which includes the launch of an e-Bookstore later this year.
That statement is really too broad to try and ‘read between the lines’, other than B&N launching their own ebookstore. However, the press release then throws this into the mix:
Barnes & Noble intends to keep Fictionwise as a separate business unit and the founders will continue to operate the business.
This is good news if it means Fictionwise will keep selling ebooks in multiple formats. The prices could be a little lower, but I can usually find some good deals at their site. Although, the statement does beg the question on whether Fictionwise will stay as-is, or get integrated into the future B&N ebookstore.
I came up with a couple of possibilities that we might see later on this year. Here they are, in no particular order:
1. B&N and Fictionwise stay seperate. The only change we see is some sort of minor integration between the 2 sites. My feeling is that this will be the least likely of all the options.
2. B&N fully integrates the Fictionwise site into their own. This, however, would contradict what the above statement from the press release says. I wouldn’t be surprised if this happend. The bad news with this option is that B&N might start imposing their own higher pricing structure into ebook sales, and possibly get rid of the multiple formats Fictionwise currently offers.
3. B&N integrates ebooks from Fictionwise with their website and promotes ebooks in their stores. This might be an interesting option. I’d love to see B&N/Fictionwise offer free ebook backtitles of popular authors as a way of promoting their new books. This could drive traffic into the stores while also keeping people going to the B&N website. They can also offer a free ebook for buy a particular author’s print book. The promotional options here are unlimited.
Whatever changes B&N makes, I only hope they don’t start imposing DRM on Fictionwise, or get rid of the multiple formats ebooks can be bought on right now. I think as long as they avoid those 2 cardinal sins of ebook sales, B&N should find some success by getting into digital book sales. Heck, they might even give Amazon a run for their money.
What do you think Barnes & Noble will do with Fictionwise? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, especially from anyone with any ‘inside’ knowledge (hint hint). Leave a comment below!
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Having published some ebooks on Ficitonwise over the past year or so, I discovered this week that their online stats page (unaudited sales figures) for publishers has disappeared for what they call “legal reasons”. This means publishers no longer have any idea how their books are selling on Fictionwise – and audited reports appear about 2 months after the quarter they relate to. This seems to be a backwards move thanks to B&. Whilst a trad paperback organisation would not have sales figures until all their stores reported them, in the day of the Internet, sales can be collated instantly and reported instantly to publishers and authors – keeping them better informed and up to date with their earnings.
It has always intrigued me that Fictionwise take 2 months to confirm sales figures of electronic products. On my own site we provide online stats for authors and publishers and these are updated at the point of sale – so everyone has an instant view of how they are doing. If we get any dreaded chargebacks we can simply post them through the system which makes the author/publisher instantly aware it has happened. If we can do it with our very limited resources I fail to see why Fictionwise can’t with their vast resources.