MyNextList (former FictFact) Users discussion

Starting a thread for requesting new features in FictFact.

I would like to see a series type field. I see seri as falling in 3 different types (or categories).

1. Some series are just 1 long epic story, and won't make any sense reading them out of order.

2. Some are individual stories with a start & end, but make heavy references to prior volumes.

3. And then some series are made of stories with very little reference between them (i.e. book 1 is about a vampire clan in L.A., book 2 is about a different clan in N.Y., while book 3 is in Paris, etc...).

The field should be free form as the above list is only a guild line, and not absolute.

To me, this field important so I know what kind commitment I'll be making before I start.

That would be good information to have, but where is the information going to come from? Publishers almost always claim the new book can stand alone because that is the one they are trying to sell.

Option 3 is what other sites consider "multiverse"/universe/franchise series.

Actually, I'd love to see a way to tag where a book is located. I have access to multiple libraries, plus those libraries have digital options, too. And I have a lot of bookshelves.

Anne wrote: "Actually, I'd love to see a way to tag where a book is located. I have access to multiple libraries, plus those libraries have digital options, too. And I have a lot of bookshelves."

I do that here in Goodreads by creating a "shelf" for location my Nook and Kindle. I wish I had done LIBRARY and OWN.

I've got ebook, kindle, library & own shelves. Very useful, cause its a pb if it isn't on the ebook or kindle shelves.

My suggestion is more of a question rather than a clear solution. The prevalence of ".5" novellas between series books drives me a little batty when one of them obscures my next series book on the Next Book List and less important, when one or more of them lower my series percentage complete statistics. I realize they are part of a series, but a way to alternately separate them from full novels if desired would be helpful.
I read some of them, especially in favorite series, and if they are available at the library; but I don't feel compelled to read all of them, particularly the ones that are mainly teaser chapters of the Next Book.
Thanks for your consideration.

Ann wrote: "My suggestion is more of a question rather than a clear solution. The prevalence of ".5" novellas between series books drives me a little batty when one of them obscures my next series book on the ..."

I totally agree. I wish you could toggle between all titles and only primary books. As it is, I have to mark the stories as skipped in order to see the books. I also hate the way it screws up the completion stats.

I agree and don't really understand why so many authors have started to publish the short novellas between series books. I would prefer to just wait for the next full length book in a series and not have that .5 book in the way.

Deborah wrote: "Ann wrote: "My suggestion is more of a question rather than a clear solution. The prevalence of ".5" novellas between series books drives me a little batty when one of them obscures my next series ..."

We are in the planning stages (development on this will be pretty huge) of changing the system so users can create their own "series" as a list of books from the original series list. That way other users can follow the "official series" or a custom/filtered series (custom book orders, books removed, etc).

Thanks, Brian! We appreciate the effort it will take to make that user friendly system change very much.
Brian wrote: "We are in the planning stages (development on this will be pretty huge) of changing the system so users can create their own "series" as a list of books from the original series list. "

Custom lists is one way, but I don't understand why you didn't just keep the shorts in their own list like you were doing for Jim Butcher's Dresden series prior to 2010. All of a sudden, the shorts started getting interspersed and I liked it better the other way, with the shorts in their own series.

Kerry: You liked it better the other way.

The last few shorts I read, like Reckless or If Snow Hadn't Fallen, where all part of the series and added to the series.
For me that is a love-hate-relation-ship, as currently I think these are too expensive, or if they are added as an extra in another book, it is the wrong one:
I bought Reckless which is listed on FictFact as #5.5 in the Lucy Kincaid-series (correct), only to discover that you get it again with the 7th book in the series, Cold Snap.

And in both cases (Bolton and Brennan) I regard them as required reading, as they add to the background of the heroine (Bolton) or the events are required to understand the next book (Brennan).
So these books belong to me to the series and need to be integrated in the list at FictFact.

Brian wrote: "We are in the planning stages (development on this will be pretty huge) of changing the system so users can create their own "series" as a list of books from the original series list. That way other users can follow the "official series" or a custom/filtered series (custom book orders, books removed, etc). "

Great idea, but how is that going to work when books are added to the official series? If I create a filtered series, I don't want to miss new books, but automatically adding new stories defeats the purpose.

Ann wrote: "My suggestion is more of a question rather than a clear solution. The prevalence of ".5" novellas between series books drives me a little batty when one of them obscures my next series book on the ..."

Absolutely agree.

Maybe in addition to "skipped" there could be an "Ignored Deliberately" status that would stop telling you about a short and consider it as completed when determining series completion.

If series contains full length novels, series completion should not depend on also reading all the shorts, extras, teasers, POVs, behind the scenes, deleted chapters or whatever (possibly just have the full lenght books be considered the primary works in series that count towards completion).

It's useful to see once that a new short is being published but I'd like to be able to decide if I want to ignore that or keep it in the coming soon or next read displays.

Or at least an option to either set your account to include or exclude them from "next read"/"series completed" or check them off individually some manner to not make them interfere with series completion or next to read lists.

I very seldom read a short that's a different POV of exact same story or all the shorts. Rarely do I feel I have to in order to finish or start a series (only two of thousands come to mind); sometimes I'll get tired of waiting and devour anything series related. Even devouring everything by an author, I don't think shorts within a series of full-length novels should be required to complete a series.

Could the "other" purchase links be put in alphabetical or other order? I like supporting my websites by using their purchase links but it was just annoying to struggle to find the Barnes and Noble link that now is last column after Target and others (I thought they used to be alphabetical).

I understand why Fictfact has to show "Amazon | Others" on the first screen (required to make use of Amazon data feeds); but, once I click "other" it's helpful to have links in some sort of order.

I like the "deliberately skipped" option for shorts. I read them for some series, but for others I just don't care. Some are not actually available, but exist.

I also would like some way to flag a series as abandoned. Sometimes a series just goes to crap. I still want to track the books that I've read, but I don't want it to show up in my Next Up or Series Progress list.

Right now you can follow a series or not follow one. Maybe it could be worked in as an option with this functionality.

I like that idea, a series that was abandoned. That happens to me too sometimes!

I think that if you "remove from next books" it will still show in "My Series "

What I'd like to see is 'Date Read' added (displayed) when looking at an individual book. It appears in the 'Read' list, but that isn't too handy if you are looking for a specific book out of many hundreds....

It would be nice if people could set a preference such as YA, Fantasy, Mystery, etc. and could get a heads up as new series start up in that preference. In other words, an announcement of the first books in new series that are upcoming.
I also think it would be helpful to be able to sort the lists in FictFact by date or other options. It's nice that GoodReads allows various sorting options.

A heads-up on a new series in a fav genre would be great...maybe a way to see when a #1 in a series not previously at FF was added?

fleaBe wrote: "I think that if you "remove from next books" it will still show in "My Series ""

I wondered about that. I also wonder if, if you delete a series, does it decrease your total number of books read?

I would love to see the New Release calendars (when you click to see a date) let you choose to display the results sorted by number in series or even grouped by genre—if genre is a piece of data fictfact has.

Whew! That one new release Tuesday each month that has 50+ books is usually a doozy. (I know I can click to see just new releases for my series; but, it would be nice to see when new series are starting and know what genre they are.)

For example, at http://www.fictfact.com/BookReleaseCa... click on April 7 and there are 80 new books releasing.

I too would love to see the releases by genre!

Sylvie wrote: "fleaBe wrote: "I think that if you "remove from next books" it will still show in "My Series ""

I wondered about that. I also wonder if, if you delete a series, does it decrease your total number ..."
It does, it currently clears the history for those books under the series you've unfollowed.

On the release calendar, I love being able to click so it filters to just books in my series.

It would be helpful for discovering new series if we could have a similar option to just show new releases that were the first book of a series.

I had a question about submitting new books (Is your series missing a title?): I just submitted a new title, and after doing so, I realized I had already submitted it a week ago! Is there any way to delete duplicate submissions? Or to correct spelling errors I didn't notice until after I submitted the request?

Sylvie wrote: "I had a question about submitting new books (Is your series missing a title?): I just submitted a new title, and after doing so, I realized I had already submitted it a week ago! Is there any way t..."

I too have accidently submitted a book twice. But there is a review process that caught it and rejected the second one.

Riley wrote: "Sylvie wrote: "I had a question about submitting new books (Is your series missing a title?): I just submitted a new title, and after doing so, I realized I had already submitted it a week ago! Is ..."

Yup we (usually) will catch the duplicate and reject it accordingly. Spelling errors we catch if it's glaring.

Good to know, thanks!

I'm curious to know if FictFact has thought about creating an App for their site. It would come in handy when book shopping.

Melissa wrote: "I'm curious to know if FictFact has thought about creating an App for their site. It would come in handy when book shopping."
It's on our development backlog. Sadly we are a small volunteer site so it's going to be a while before we get any real traction on building a dedicated app.

For the time being you can try our mobile site (http://m.fictfact.com).

Thank works. Thanks!

Maybe until there is an app a way to print/export the last read and next to read in series list. Export to PDF, ePub, text, spreadsheets or HTML files would work great for most folk and devices. A way to text the file to a cell phone number wouldn't hurt.

Maybe a poll to see what notes, checklist, form, or inventory apps your members are already using in case useful to just create the relevant lists for those apps until writing your own. For example, google docs, Evernote, etc.

I would like if you could order series on 'how many books read' or left in a series, to see which series I've read the most books in order. There are those series like J.D. Robb's Naked in Death, where you may have read more book than any other series yet you are not even 50% through!

I also would like to have the option to change a series from "Following" to "Abandoned" and have it go to the end of my series. I have been pushed to pick up an abandoned series, so I don't want to delete it and I don't want to follow all the new releases and have to mark skipped.

option to change a series from "Following" to Abandoned..."

There is the option of "Remove from next books" (do this from Next Books page) - you are still following, but it only appears in "My Series"

"My Series" should also give you the stats you are looking for!

I would like to sort/order My Series progress. 1. In progress. 2. No starter 3. Current. This priotitizes the series I need to finish first.

Now the sorting puts in progress in the middle

I just thought of something that would be useful (to me anyway). I'd love either a blank row or a solid black line that I can use to divide my "next to read", "next to listen to" and "haven't started yet" books.

Good idea----

In my list of seri I'm following, I'd like to see a column that includes a date my next book is to be released. It'd be nice to see all of this at a glance, instead of drilling down into the individual series.

Also...

As someone who (a) likes to read series work in order and without gaps and (b) likes to stockpile series books even if I'm not going to get around to reading them for ages, I'd like to see an "on hand" option in the drop-down menu for each book on any given series page. Then I could scroll through a series and easily see which titles I might be missing (because they're not "on hand.") At the moment, I'm sorta kinda using the "To be read" option for that purpose, but it's kinda kludgy to misuse something like that, IMO.

Another option would be to have a user-defined entry in that same drop-down menu list. I'd set it up as "on hand" above, but someone else could name it something else and use it for something else.

Sounds like we need to create a spreadsheet!!!

Jim, I'm the same way....getting books far ahead and marking them as "to be read" and I agree it's awkward.

Tom, what I usually do is group all of the series with release dates in a certain area (below my currently reading and currently listening groups). Maybe an easy place to add the date would be under My Series. The next book is already written there so it might not be too difficult to program in the date. Of course I don't know a whole lot about programming so what I'm suggesting might not be possible.

Jim wrote: "As someone who (a) likes to read series work in order and without gaps and (b) likes to stockpile series books even if I'm not going to get around to reading them for ages, I'd like to see an "on h..."

You could go to book ownership, mark the book as owned and then run a "Book Report" (http://www.fictfact.com/profile/bookr...) on the books you own.

Brian- I will have to check that out- I do the same as Jum! Thanks!

I would like that books not yet released to be excluded from my series count. I have several series that, physically are current, but because the next book has an official release date my series is listed as not complete.

Wouldn't it be awesome if we could link our Fictfact and Goodreads profiles? That way it could sync your read/reading books automatically...

Even though that might be nice, I'm really glad that FictFact is independent of Amazon. I mean, I like Amazon a lot but they are kind of taking over a lot of markets. And I like it that I actually know the names of the people who run it! :)

I like FictFact as it is but do understand how much work goes into running the site. Just want to say thank you for the site. I send in books to be added all the time and your response is always there.