Brian’s Comments (group member since Jun 25, 2014)

Brian’s comments from the MyNextList (former FictFact) Users group.

A former FictFact user is currently working on a replacement (https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...). You should see if you can get into the beta.

We have no immediate plans to launch a new site.

FictFact is not coming back. We are working on a new project with some elements of FictFact.

Thenia wrote: "Hi everyone - I think it's time we moved the discussion somewhere else.

I created a new group for anything related to the new site - you can find it here. Please feel free to join the group and a..."

I'd don't want to be a stick in the mud, but please change the name of your group to "FictFact replacement" or similar. We still own the FictFact name and I don't want people to be confused.

Esther wrote: "Anne wrote: "Okay. Books loaded. Let me know if you need anything else."

Brian did share his existing code; it's on github."

We only shared a very small part of the codebase. FictFact.com, the email system or the next book engine are not open sourced.

That’s not the source for FictFact.com. Those are the projects we’ve been able to open source so far.

Esther wrote: "Lisa wrote: "Esther wrote: "Brian Kirsten wrote: "Esther wrote: "I believe it did get info from Amazon, but Amazon is not the only bookstore out there. I'm a web dev, and I know that Barnes & Noble..."

We had every single affiliate program we could sign up to on FictFact. NO ONE SPENT MONEY ON THEM EXCEPT FOR AMAZON.

You'd have to figure out how to host, run and support it.

Our little volunteer three person team had a long talk about all of this. We don't think we want to run FictFact anymore. We learned a bunch of things in this process and have realized that FictFact doesn't really fall into the category of "sustainable" business. It needs to be able to support itself as well as support the people who "support" it.

After Amazon "kicked" us out of their program we came to the realization that even though "a lot" of you have let us know that you'd paid for the service, we still believe the changes that need to be done to get it running again wouldn't be covered by subscriptions alone. And sadly we were kicked out of Google's ad program years ago (that's a different longer story), so advertising hasn't been a viable solution to solving FictFact's money woes.

We have talked to some folks about integrating the tech into their system but sadly that hasn't gone anywhere. We're thinking of perhaps open sourcing the software (https://github.com/fictfact) so maybe someone can take it on someday.

We don't want a GoFundMe or Indigogo, thank you.

It's sadly not that simple.

If we turned on FictFact today, just covering hosting costs wouldn't cut it. We'd have to re-develop how book data gets into the system, as well as develop a system for subscriptions. Right now we are dealing with paying two months of AWS with no income coming in.

At this point we are talking with some folks about FictFact living on somewhere else, but please do not hold off on downloading your files in the hopes that their will be some sort of reprieve.

Deb wrote: "Brian, what would be needed to make FictFact happen again? I know you are talking to people, but could the users get together to make it work? What infrastructure is needed? What is the average mon..."

FictFact had a donation button on every page for nearly 10 years.
We averaged $60 in donations a month. The income we generated from Amazon affiliate sales barely covered hosting.

We surveyed users several years ago on paying for the service and a majority had no interest in paying for the service.

We are talking with folks to see if it can live somewhere else. At this point though it's looking like FictFact.com will not be returning.

MommaBear wrote: "Brian Kirsten wrote: "We recently lost our primary source of income, Amazon Associate sales. Due to a minor error on our part, we unknowingly had in infraction of their terms. We tried to appeal af..."

Our series email service is a custom system that we would have had to do modifications to add the notice.

Esther wrote: "Brian Kirsten wrote: "Esther wrote: "I believe it did get info from Amazon, but Amazon is not the only bookstore out there. I'm a web dev, and I know that Barnes & Noble, BAM, and several others ha..."

We had affiliate accounts with over a dozen different bookstores. Amazon accounted for 99% of income (next on that list was iTunes which barely earned enough for 2 coffees at Starbucks).

We're trying to figure out how we'd get the next books and tracked series data out to users.

The problem is those systems are dedicated pieces of software that we'd have to run and with our income getting pull out from under us running that software isn't possible.

We'll let you know if we figure something out.

Esther wrote: "I believe it did get info from Amazon, but Amazon is not the only bookstore out there. I'm a web dev, and I know that Barnes & Noble, BAM, and several others have API's available. I think it could ..."

This has nothing to do with access to the Amazon API.

We recently lost our primary source of income, Amazon Associate sales. Due to a minor error on our part, we unknowingly had in infraction of their terms. We tried to appeal after we corrected the issue, but was not successful and they terminated our account. Over the years, we have had donations from our wonderful supporters, but it is not enough to cover our operating costs. We are extremely sad to have to close down the site after almost 10 years. Thank you for all your support over the years!!

Thanks! Fixed it.

Teri Pre wrote: "I totally understand why Brian. I remember the survey and agree that an ad-based site is more practical than a subscription-based site. And maybe I'm getting curmudgeonly in my old-er age but I lov..."
A big thing for our (small) team is making FictFact more mobile friendly. Nearly 50% of our traffic nowadays is mobile (phones and tablets) and we'd like to improve that experience.

Teri Pre wrote: "I like FF because it's not affiliated with other sites, although I've noticed that they've had to go with ads to help them cover expenses. "

Yes this is correct (the ad thing). We recently did a survey to figure out the best way to cover expenses with FictFact, and it seems most folks want ads over a subscription based service. We're still trying to figure out some sort of supporter based system (similar to Reddit Gold) that will enable us to have actual paid employees that can focus purely on FictFact. That way we can develop more features and expand the site even more.