FictFact Feature Request

[Harold]

I sometimes re-read favorite books, but it seems difficult at best to re-enter a book, I've already read.

[Diane-OP]

I love the Next Book up feature, and the book release emails for things on my lists. And, I like the independence from Amazon too -

[Nadré]

Sharon wrote: "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 th..."

I agree! It's great that we can assist by adding books and authors if they aren't there, instead of hoping and waiting.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Thank you, thank you for the site. I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to at least have my series progress where I think it is safe.

I no longer trust goodreads. And several of my "similar" book communities are shut(ting) down or having issues (like Visual Bookshelf, Shelfari, etc. -- Leafmarks just announced shutting down July 1 and who-the-heck-knows-what's-up with booklikes rumors).

Fictfact seems so solid, independent, dependable, does such a great job at what it does do...

Any chance standalone books would ever get added? To safely catalog (not wanting fictfact at all to turn into a clone of goodreads or any other site, just to track more books).

An import feature to pull in csv and tsv files backed up from lost or no longer trusted sites? Not even to support the entire file but at least the isbn/asin books that were in series? Happy to send samples if fictfact wants to try.

[Ingo]

Please, no standalone books, fictfact should stick to the KISS-principle: Keep it simple, stupid! Just a few basic functions, not more.

@D.A. misses no commercial use & opt-in
Why do you still use Goodreads, if you do not trust them? And just because I am curious, in what regard do you not trust Goodreads?

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Oh, I wouldn't wish fictfact to turn into a goodreads clone, get more complicated or wish any of the issues caused here by all the commercial interests needing review quotas and average rating minimums, reviews being attacked (or undisclosed being commissioned/commercial ones) and social interactions. But I trust fictfact, including trusting them to be bug free (or quickly address bugs) and for tracking books I read (or plan to) no matter how I tag or rate them.

I've only ever gotten email to my fictfact account email that was the subscribed to monthly newsletter or in response to something I asked.

I'm still using goodreads for Groups. Real life book clubs, my library has groups here, public groups, private groups. Years of provided content and discussions. Years of cataloging (gets destroyed frequently but I've now learned to reimport from backup as frequently and to just track on other sites as well). Friendships or following reviews of readers still using the site. Following author blogs in one place (well will again when they fix the follow author bugs ). Lots of reasons even though no longer trusting them with new content like reviews.

Trust issues include: that shelves (think tags) will stay put (meaning that my book catalog and efforts I put into organizing my books aren't destroyed*), that published editions I own won't be vandalized to reflect the edition currently for sale on Amazon, that third party Amazon marketplace sellers won't be allowed to overwrite a back of book description added by a librarian from book in hand with "I have an excellent seller rating; book is like new with dustjacket" crap spitting on our years of work with staff insisting that the seller because on Amazon is more authoritative than even the publisher or looking right at the durn book, that reviews/ratings within site TOS and review guidelines stay put, that my account email will not be subscribed to things like their new "deals" without my consent, that bugs will be resolved in reasonable time period (like the randomly appearing books and star ratings ongoing for years, all the mess with new follow author buttons and auto-approving author friend requests without being asked)...

The random star ratings are just weird. Not all 5-star or 1-star stuff, mostly 2- stars (average on goodreads but negative on Amazon) showing up.

A new site attracting enough of my friends/reviewers to make the social viable, a good starting book database of published works (even if not in print) we can build just like we did goodreads', that also has groups/bookclubs as richly featured as goodreads could get me to not use my account here for much more than keeping in touch with friends and real life bookclubs not migrating.

*for instance shelves being destroyed because some group of authors on a rampage cannot tell the difference between a peer to peer "p2p" shelf full of traditionally-published industry-standard cloud computing books so attack me for bullying pulled-to-publish "p2p" fanfiction authors and get my carefully researched reading list/shelf of computer books destroyed.

[Sharon]

Whew! I don't have time for all of that. That is why I use FictFact to keep up with my series and Goodreads so someone else may stumble across my review and may read the book. Besides it helps the author and they deserve to be told if a book is good or bad or in between. And the people at FictFact do a marvelous job.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Sharon wrote: "Whew! I don't have time for all of that. That is why I use FictFact to keep up with my series and Goodreads so someone else may stumble across my review and may read the book. Besides it helps the ..."

LOL, but can you imagine fictfact ever removing a series from your profile because you were just tracking your reads without caring if helped an author or not, rated a book in series too low or tagged it with an abbreviation they didn't understand? I honestly trust fictfact never would under current ownership.

That's a big part of what I mean by trusting fictfact with my book catalog but no longer trusting goodreads. (And, no, I don't usually write nasty reviews -- I keep the equivalent of a 4.5-4.98 stars on Amazon.com average rating where I do review -- not because my reading reviews (consumer product opinions) have anything to do with wanting to churn out promotions for commercial interests to help authors but more just because I usually don't finish books I don't like then don't take time to review them unless a rating-less review when I can easily pinpoint why not for me but might appeal to someone else).

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

I actually don't ever remember having to report any bugs with fictfact. No doubt they've probably had to stay on top of things on the backend and have had some bugs fixed before lots of members noticed -- but very, very pleased with fictfact site performance and uptime. Wonderful job.

[Jim]

Ingo wrote: "Please, no standalone books, fictfact should stick to the KISS-principle: Keep it simple, stupid! Just a few basic functions, not more.

I agree with you completely. Avoid mission creep, keep doing what you do well, and don't try to be all things to all people. Far too many ventures already have a tendency to bloat and then bloat some more, and I don't want to see FictFact join that list.

[Sharon]

I so agree. Even when I did Beta testing, I found no bugs to report. Whoever does the design for the program and forgive me I don't know all the tech talk but they do a marvelous job. This program is a huge upgrade from the previous one and it was perfect from the get go. I have nothing but 5 stars for FictFact.

[Shane]

You can add a TAG to any series you follow. This can be the categories you want. You can then search by tag to see only those

[Teri Pre]

I'd love to find a site (and I know it would be a small one!) that would let you track non-fiction series. I've asked to add a couple but I can understand why the requests were denied. This is, after all, a fiction site.

If anyone knows of a similar site for non-fiction books, I'd be interested!

[Sharon]

You can always start a site for non-fiction books but I don't know of one.

[Teri Pre]

Wish I knew how to do it Sharon! :)

[Sharon]

I don't either which is why I appreciate sites like Fictfact and Goodreads. Goodreads does keep up with single books and if you follow an author you like and keep up with their websites you can be notified when they release a new book.

[Teri Pre]

I don't know what I did before FictFact and GR!!

[Debbie]

Teri Pre wrote: "I don't know what I did before FictFact and GR!!"
Me too Teri! People mention Facebook all the time, between reading, Goodreads, Fictfact and paperbackswap who has time for Facebook or housework?

[Teri Pre]

:)

[Shirley]

Lol- throw in fantastic fiction & yep - house work & FB over rated!

[Teri Pre]

I like FB so I can follow my book sites, authors and crocheting sites. Sigh...so many books, so little time!!

[Shirley]

Haha! Yep! Plus having to work to support my book habit!! I'm with you, Teri!!

[Debbie]

This work thing really cuts into reading time...

[Shirley]

Haha! Yes it does- also why I love receiving ARC's!

[Teri Pre]

Yeah....darn work! ARCs??? I'm still reading best sellers from 2014! I keep getting further and further behind!!

[Shirley]

ARC's - advanced reading copies- have not got many - & now not so much time- but cool with new authors!!

[Teri Pre]

I know what ARCs are but I don't even have time to read books from 2 or 3 years ago...and I read and listen A LOT!!!

[Shirley]

Hehe!! Sorry for the unnecessary definition- I'm lucky sometimes my work is slow & I can read - & my daughters are grown & that allows free time to read at home! Lol

[Dee]

Teri Pre wrote: "I don't know what I did before FictFact and GR!!"

LOL. I was just thinking recently how it used to be hard to keep up with new books and/or authors. Now with the internet and sites like GR and FictFact, it is not a problem.
The thoughts were prompted when I got an update from FictFact about a new book from an author I used to read but got to a point I could not find any new ones. Went back and discovered a bunch of books by her I had not read. :)
Yes, I am old hence knowing how it was before the internet.

[Teri Pre]

Oh I remember before internet! The library was my best friend! It still is of course, but I no longer have to bundle up when it's freezing out. I can browse and read from the comfort of my home.

[Sharon]

I remember before the internet too and going to the bookstore. I miss those days sometimes but oh how I love my Kindle and buying on line. I wouldn't want to give up that convenience and my hands just want hold heavy books or turn pages anymore. Plus the space I save having hundreds of books in one tiny Kindle.

[Teri Pre]

I've gotten to the point that I just can't read regular print books, and the selection of large print books isn't what it could be. Thank goodness for the large fonts on my Kindle. My friends laugh because they can read it from across the room!

[Betty]

I mostly use fict fact to know which book to read next. It would be nice to have on the next book to read list an indication regarding if I own the book.

[Teri Pre]

There is. Click on the book and over on the right there's a place where it says Book Ownership. Click on "edit" and own away. :)

[Sharon]

Yes, I click away in that little box. Just about everything I can think about adding, the developers have already done. There is a box that says willing to lend. Maybe, we could add a box to make our library public if it is digital so people could contact us to borrow a book. Don't know how that would work but if my book is lendable, I am willing to lend. Not all of my books are lendable as I do ARC reading for some authors... So Just a thought.

[It's Me - Yvette]

I'd love to be able to see how others rated the same books that I've rated. We can see # of ratings and an overall rating for the book, but we can't see how others rated the same books. This would be a great feature as I weigh my "friends" ratings higher than folks that I don't know. Just a thought...

[Shirley]

That's an excellent suggestion 'It's Me-Yvette!! This will help point out new authors & books I might not have looked at!!

[Sharon]

I like the idea of sharing stars, also. Maybe we could start a group on the fictfact discussion groups. My poison is anything science fiction and since adult writing is a challenge to find "clean" books then I am up for some sharing of authors that I shouldn't miss and books that are good. I am even open to lending my ebooks. I do have books in other fields, too.

[Ingo]

Maybe I am wrong, but some that last few ideas (message 85-88 Sharon / Shirley / It's me - Yvette) would copy some more of the functionality of Goodreads over to FictFact.

If you want that, ok, I do not, what I would like to see would be a linking between the sites, so I rate a book on Goodreads and mark it as read and that gets marked as read on FictFact and rated.

There are several reasons for this, one is, I do not like to do the same work on different sites, and you can already link Goodreads with 2 kinds of blogs, where you write a review on Goodreads and you mark a box and it gets published on the blog.

One other reason, and I stand by that, the "KISS - keep it simple stupid!"-principle, I do not like too much function or too many options on one site, it gets too complicated (Goodreads is an example for that).

What do you all think about that?

[Teri Pre]

I think what you're asking FF to do (be linked with GR) is defeating your KISS principle. 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.

[Brian]

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.

[Teri Pre]

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 love the site just the way it is. :)

[Brian]

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]

I have a question and it sort of fits here since we talked about a non-fiction series site.

I had a couple of series rejected because "Sorry, at this time we do not list non-fiction books on FictFact. Thanks, Richard"

Well, there are at least two non-fiction series that I know of that are listed and I'm sure there are more that I'm not aware of.

Reasons?

[Ingo]

Without wanting you to rat someone out, it might help to name these two series, there may be a reason, or it was not obvious to FictFact that they are non-fiction?

[Teri Pre]

( slinking in, hoping that they don't get deleted)
*Wicked History by various authors. They're histories of various dictators.
* The Last Lion by William Raymond Manchester which is a 3 part autobiography of Winston Churchill.

And there may be more! :)

[skw]

I've seen several entries here about abandoned series. Here's what I did.

On the right side of your profile page is a place where you can set up your own lists. There's a blue button that says "add list". I set up a list called "abandoned" and put my abandoned series (serieses?) in it. Then I went to each series I put there and "skipped" all the rest of the books in each.

Step 2 is to go to Next Books tab and click on the blue button that says "View All/Organize". Find your abandoned series in this list and when you hover your cursor on that line, there's a drop-down menu icon on the right side. One of the choices there is to "remove from next books".

Here's what this accomplishes: You've isolated the series you've abandoned. But you haven't lost your history of what you've read and what you haven't,

Here are the drawbacks; It doesn't remove the series from the "ALL" list, but then, nothing gets removed from that list unless you "unfollow" a series. And it doesn't remove the series from your Book Release Calendar. New releases in the series will still show up there. But that's not necessarily a bad thing because that will be your cue to go into your abandoned list and skip the new release. (Maybe we can get FictFact to automate this eventually.)

It works for me. Try it and see if it works for you.