I have been getting a lot of book recommendations lately from book review sites like Dear Author and author discussions on Twitter. I’d been buying all of my ebooks through Barnes and Noble, but I know that B&N isn’t always the cheapest when it comes to print books, so I was curious as to whether this would also be the case with ebooks. Several people mentioned the website Fictionwise, which is actually owned by Barnes and Noble, but is still a separate site. After looking around and finding enough books that I liked to justify it, I went ahead and created an account there. A large part of the reason that I joined Fictionwise was the attractiveness of their loyalty club, Buywise (Google cache link), which cost $30 a year, and took 15% off of all of their ebooks. I figured that with my book-buying habit, over the course of a year I could save at least that $30 through the program.
So why did I find out today, a mere 6 days after I joined this club, that it had been discontinued? It’s not only closed to new sign-ups, which would suck but be understandable, but it’s also over immediately (that “all existing members may continue to use their benefits” thing is disingenuous, since my 15% discount no longer appears anywhere next to ebooks I might want to buy). That means that people who paid their money, and believed that Fictionwise would honor the terms of its loyalty program, no longer get the discount that they paid for. This sucks. I already wrote Fictionwise a letter using their incredibly unhelpful help form, and I hope that they will give me the refund that I requested.
Humbug.
Update: The 15% off discount still remains (glad I was wrong about that part!) but I’m still waiting to hear back from Fictionwise about bulk order discounts for club members.
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