Fictionwise 60% off sale

[elf]

This weekend, Fictionwise is having a 60% off sale, with coupon code 070111. It's probably good through the 4th and might last a day or two longer than that. It doesn't work on Samhain Press books.

Possible ways to spend some money on ebooks:

* Collect the complete Darkover collection, 89 novels & short stories. (Search for keyword Darkover in their advanced search page; it's incredibly annoying that FW doesn't have a link-to-search-results option.)

* Pick up the Sime~Gen series by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah. (Don't look at the book covers. I need to post about that; those are absolutely the *worst* ebook covers I have ever seen.) The order listed is not quite correct; if you want to try a couple to see if you like them, I suggest starting with House of Zeor and then First Channel.

* Dabble in M/M, also known as "original slash," with the works of L.A. Witt. I especially liked Cover Me and Rules of Engagement.

* Grab some magazines--recent issues of Analog, Asimov's, Ellery Queen, and Alfred Hitchcock's before they go Kindle-exclusive like F&SF. (Damn. FW used to carry back issues for years. Wow, B&N really is working to kill off Fictionwise.)

* Check out some award winners; search for the name of an award and pick up something that looks interesting, even if you've never heard of it:

• Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang: Nebula Award(R) Winner, Sturgeon Award Winner, Seiun Award Winner, Locus Poll Award Winner, Hugo Award Winner
• Sandkings by George R.R. Martin: Hugo Award Winner, Locus Poll Award Winner, Nebula Award(R) Winner
• Second Chance by Selena Kitt: EPIC eBook Award Winner
• Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary) [Andrew Mayhem Thriller #1] by Jeff Strand: Dream Realm Award Winner, Inscriptions Engraver Award Winner, Bloody Dagger Award Honorable Mention (the next one in the series won awards too)
• Mothership - Book One by Tony Chandler: EPIC eBook Award Winner
• Rogue's Hostage by Linda McLaughlin: Lories Award Second Place Winner, Romantic Times Top Pick, Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award Nominee
• Or check out the other award winners by category (Use the dropdown for different awards, and expect a lot of null answers; FW's selection isn't what it used to be)

* Or poke around and find something completely random and throw it in the shopping cart.

Comments

[jumpuphigh]

I don't ever think I have actively tried to navigate around FW. Wow. Its organization is non-existent.

[elf]

Well, yes, but Smashwords makes it look *good.*

I do a lot of clicking on author names & publisher names. And keyword searches. At least their search engine works; site nav is iffy (but damn good for something that started ten years ago). The problem is that it hadn't really been upgraded in a long time--and then it got bought out by Barnes & Noble, who seem to want to let it die slowly.

It's still, dammit, about the only large source of multi-genre multi-publisher non-DRM ebooks, and it gets new ebooks from several publishers (the Sime~Gen books are from earlier this year). But its appeal to people who don't already know what's there & how to navigate is low, and a lot of the older links are just broken; when B&N discontinued features, they didn't remove the links for them. (Like the gift ebooks, and the buyer's club info, and so on.)

[jumpuphigh]

True. I have tried to navigate Smashwords before and it definitely makes FW look good in comparison. But I wanted to sort the 89 Darkover books and couldn't do it at all. Not by price, or author, and certainly not by word count (although I'm not sure I've seen that option anywhere). At least they had word count for the stories.

[elf]

You can sort them! (At least, I can sort them; dunno if it's a logged-in-only option?)

Search for keyword "darkover"
Get list of 89 stories
Under top section with keyword, is "sort by" dropdown:

[jumpuphigh]

My results don't have that option. Weird.

[elf]

???

?????

What, I have access to the Early Adopter site layout?

What do your search results look like?

[jumpuphigh]

Ok, in running the search again, I can set how to display the results from the search page but once I've run the search, that's how it stays. If I want to change the order, I have to rerun the search.

[elf]

Try doing it without the advanced search, just the basic search from the sidebar on the left, set to "keyword" instead of title or author.

[jumpuphigh]

It is just utterly ridiculous that it works when I do it from the sidebar. Thank you

[elf]

Would not want all the options available from the advanced search! You might find books that way!

(I'm sure it made some kind of sense when they coded it.)

[jumpuphigh]

I don't even know why I'm looking at the website. I've downloaded well over 20 books from AO3 in the last week or so. Plus, I have hundreds of things on my ereader already that I haven't looked at since loading them.

/iz addict

[finch]

Already having things to read never stopped me when physical storage space was an issue, it sure as hell doesn't stop me now. XD

[jumpuphigh]

I've started deleting things read off of my ereader as I read them except in cases of "will reread this multiple times and don't want to bother sideloading it again" just so I can track how much I have unread. Last time I checked, it was over 400 books. Some of them may be short stories but I don't put anything on my ereader that is less than 10,000 words.

[finch]

I cycle things out pretty regularly because I read comics on mine and those are pretty large files, so I don't know how many I have unread, but I'd suspect I'm not too far off from you. ;)

[jumpuphigh]

I was not this bad when it was physical books. Although, I did have the same problem of bookmarking fanfic to be read later. Now, though, I have things bookmarked (for conversion to epub) and things stored on my device. *sigh* I have the same problem with TV shows and movies. My New Year's Resolution this year was to watch all my DVDs that I haven't watched - some of which I haven't even taken out of the plastic coverings. *double sigh* I'm not sure I'll be able to keep that resolution. At least it has caused me to stop buying DVDs until I do.

[finch]

Ooh, thanks for the links. I remember hearing good things about the Sime-Gen series, I'll check those out.

(And for anyone reading, I'll second the rec on the Ted Chiang collection, I love his short stories.)

[kake]

Ooh, thank you. I bought the Ted Chiang (for a total of $0.77 given the 60% off plus the $3-odd credit I've had sitting around in my account for ages).

[kate_nepveu]

Thanks!

[stasia]

Thanks for this! And wow, that website is seriously in need of reorganization.

Sheesh.

Stasia

[runpunkrun]

Thanks for the recs and the links and the code!