Fictionwise Sale

Fictionwise is having a Labor Day sale - 10% off all ebooks, using the coupon code LABOR09. In addition, this week they have changed all their New York Times Bestsellers to have a 100% MicroPay Rebate (store credit), if paid for via PayPal or credit card. These are not readable on the Kindle, but can be read on some other ereaders, including the Iphone, depending on the format purchased, and all can be read on your PC (all formats of these books have DRM, which limits their use, but copies stay in your library, although Fictionwise does, like all ebookstores, recommend you keep backup copies as well as backup of your DRM key, if needed to unlock the books). With Fictionwise, you can always redownload the book, if your reader changes: if you get a new netbook, just add the mobipocket PID and redownload the book (you maintain the list of up to 4 authorized PID's and can change them at any time); the same process is used if you need to change the credit card used for the Ereader format (Fictionwise's own that, no doubt, Barnes & Noble will use on their ereader later this year).

When you are looking for something to use that store credit (MicroPay) on, check out their magazine selection. They have Asimov's Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine ($2.99/each/month Kindle), amongst others, all at lower prices than Amazon (even without the sale, they are $30-$33/year versus $36 at Amazon), with no DRM and in multiple formats. You can also purchase individual copies, going back several months, rather than only starting with the current issue. Click HERE to see all the magazines, or search for "subscription" in the title to just see those.

If you join the Buywise club ($30/year, with multi-year discounts), you get another 15% off all their titles (plus one free title up to $10 list). If you joined the club, bought a few bestsellers and a couple of magazines, how would that work out, pricewise? You would want to use several orders, to maximize the discounts.

First, use the discount code for 10% off and pay $29.95 for the membership. Once this order has completed, you'll get the 15% member discount on all future orders, for one year (and you can use the coupon code you get with it for a free book, up to a $10 list price; for this one, you can't count any discounts, but it's usually good for something that is out in paperback already).

Next, buy your bestsellers. Let's say there are four you want, all of them with current list prices (or sale prices) of $20 (to keep things simple - there are some there that are more and many that are less). With a 15% member discount, plus the 10% off discount code, above, instead of $17 for the book, you'll pay $15.30 per book. You'll be charged $61.20 for the four books when you run the order thru (using either PayPal or your credit card), all of which goes back into your account after payment. In fact, since the order is over $50, you'll get an additional 10% in your account due to their large order bonus rebate (which you only get when paying by PayPal or credit card). So, your account will have $67.32 in it at this point.

With that credit, you pick two of the one-year subscriptions (we'll pick Analog and Asimov's, the two more expensive ones). The 10% discount doesn't work on these, but you do get the 15% member discount, so that $28.02 each. After checkout, you'll still have $11.28 in micropay credit and the coupon code for a free book you received for joining their club. Your total outlay is more than if you purchased the two magazines thru Amazon ($91.10 versus $71.76), but in addition to the two years of magazine subscriptions, you have four NYT bestsellers (which would be $9.99 each on Kindle, most likely), $11 .28 in credit (enough for another book or two) and a coupon code to get a $10 book. If you added the bestsellers at Amazon, you'd be out $111.72, or about $20 more and have at least two fewer books to show for it.

Of course, you don't have to use that store credit on magazines. There are a number of multiformat books in the Fictionwise store, which work on the Kindle and other readers, as well as DRM'd books (that are not Kindle compatible), often at competitive prices. The multiformat books are often from independent authors, but those who either have a very large number of books or work with small publishing houses, as Fictionwise doesn't have the same type of DTP system that Amazon has, so authors with only a few books cannot list there (then again, you also don't have hundreds of duplicate public domain titles - searching for Pride and Prejudice returns 12 books, not 245). I'll admit, you aren't getting the same low prices as Amazon's DTP authors, but it can be a good deal to supplement your reading.

You can also just let your store credit build up - so far, Fictionwise has been having a big sale once or twice a year that even includes the magazines, dropping the good prices into the great range. They've even had 100% rebates on store memberships, lowering the upfront cost even more. And I've seen some 25% off all (not just ebook) coupons, as well as a year-end 100% rebate on every "featured" book they had for a year, for those that missed their earlier sales. They seem to have a 100% rebate on four or five new titles each week and have said the Twilight series will be at 100% rebate for the indefinite future. No doubt a lot of these sales are now being funded by Barnes & Noble, as the competition for readers heats up between them and Amazon. If you decide to close your Fictionwise account, it appears you can get a refund of your micropay balance (at least, according to their faq pages), but expect it to take a lot of time (up to 60 days, it says) and possibly have some strings attached (I would not expect it to include those 10% large transaction rebates, for example, if all you bought were 100% rebate books, as this would give you the books for free, plus a 10% bonus).