MobileRead Book Challenges discussion

I'm not sure if I can post this here, but I think there are several of us using FictFact to track our book series.

A couple of hours ago they posted the following on Facebook:

Dear FictFact Members,
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 and they terminated our account without a warning. We appealed the decision to Amazon but was denied. 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 on Friday, May 17th. At that time, we will provide a link to download your book data. Thank you for all your support over the years!!

Not everyone might have seen this and since I haven't received an email about this yet I thought it might be a good idea to post here.

Just in case of problem with the download I made a quick list in Google sheets of my various series. But I have to think of a better system to keep track. GoodReads just isn't practical for tracking series IMHO. Until I've figured out something I'll keep lists in Sheets and I will have to subscribe for author updates on Amazon.

If anyone has any ideas how to keep track of series please share them.

Wooooooooow!

WTF. And today is the 17th!

Wow, indeed. With a bit more notice (like maybe the minute they found out about this) maybe their users could have helped scramble together a solution of some sort. In the comments on their FB post, there are authors offering to buy ad space, people willing to contact Amazon in protest... None of this will help now that it's already done and decided.

There's no mention on their website or on their Twitter. I haven't gotten an email yet. It's very strange.

Amazon's alerts aren't very reliable for me, most of the time they notify me months in advance, weeks after a release or not at all. I liked how you got an email on Sunday if a book of one of your series was going to be released the next week. You can look at a releases calendar on MR, but it lists releases by all authors you've read and if it's a book in a series it doesn't say so.

On MR someone mentioned Track New Book, so I'm going to try it out.

I've been checking and I can't locate a link to download my details.

This sucks...and GR is not the best place for things like series (or anything). :(

The website's been closed now, there's a link where you can log in and download a .csv file of your list. I'm glad I made my own list yesterday, since I'm not good enough with Sheets to create something out of that.

I've taken a look at the Track New Book website and it seems you have to subscribe to authors/subjects/keywords one by one. You can't make a profile from where you can manage your subscriptions. So I don't think it'll work for me.

For now I'll use my spreadsheet to keep track of what I'm reading and use GoodReads' release calendar and my planner to keep track of new releases.

I've just signed up for an account on Fantastic Fiction. You can follow authors then, you can add them, keep track which books you've read (won't be using that function) and there's a release calendar which does list if a book is part of a series. You can set to receive emails when books by your author is added to their profile and when one is going to be released.

The only drawback is that at the moment there's a limit to how many authors you can follow, which is 100 at the moment. I first added all authors from my series, but I removed those that I'm now that interested in and the deceased authors. I can find them easily enough on the website.

So I now have a list of 45 authors I follow, I'll probably add more authors in the coming days, those that don't write series.

THAT is a humongous pain in the ass.

:-(

I've used Fantastic Fiction but it's not my fave. LOVED Fictfact and the ease of tracking. IDK if I'll be bothered with Fantastic Fiction. Especially since I read a ton of SFF and Romance. My authors are probably over 100 in 2019, let along lifetime. :(

I'm at 99 authors, so getting close. Some of my followed authors are dead or no longer writing so when I run out of slots, I can just delete those whose books I have finished. I was rather amazed though that I filled up those author slots so fast. It's kindof like buying a new device with twice the space and filling it up in 4 days.

Stephanie wrote: "I'm at 99 authors, so getting close. Some of my followed authors are dead or no longer writing so when I run out of slots, I can just delete those whose books I have finished. I was rather amazed t..."

I'm at 56 authors, so some space left. But I only use it for alive authors. Someone at MR said that there's also a 1000 book limit, though I haven't been able to find that.

Fantastic Fiction made some changes, it seems.

They used to have a limit of 100 authors and 1000 books per account.

Now the limit for authors is still 100, but the number of books owned/read is now 5000 and your wishlist can hold 100 books.

I only put my most favourite authors on my list, so far I've 60 authors and 482 books.