Cozy Mysteries discussion

Mods: This seemed like the most logical place for me to post this. If you'd like me to post this in a different folder here in the group, let me know.


For those of you, like me, who use FictFact to keep your series reading organized, you'll be saddened to learn that the site has closed. If you go to the site now, you'll see this:

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!!

There is a link where you can download your book data as a .csv file until July 1. If anyone knows of a site that might work as a substitute for FictFact, please let me know!

If anyone has had an issue with logging in to get this download and knows a way to get this fixed - please let me know - I am unable to get my csv file.

THey made a code change to fix that. Try again. Right now i'm getting server time out but i suspect that's because everyone is trying at once -- but the login issue is fixed.

Barb wrote: "Mods: This seemed like the most logical place for me to post this. If you'd like me to post this in a different folder here in the group, let me know.


For those of you, like me, who use FictFact ..."

I quit using FictFact a couple of years ago because their information was incorrect for some book series. I usually use FantasticFiction which is always up to date, with books to be released up to 2 years in the future. It's always accurate, too. The only drawback is you do not get email notification, like you did with FictFact.

FantasticFiction

Can you mark of what you've read?

The thing that Fictfact did was allowed me to have, and put in order, a "next book list" so that I could quickly decide what I wanted to read next. I am completely lost today.

Yes -- i'm surprised at how bereft I feel!

Joanne that's what I loved and I don't remember to do that here. I guess I'll have to get into the habit of shelving the next book when I finish one.

I just tried to download the list and it's basically useless. Series all out of order, lots of lost data. Sigh.

you could open it in excel, convert it to an excel workbook then do a custom sort first on series then on series position and it would be in the order you describe, Mary. That would get you close to what you want.

It did open it in Excel and I just don't think I want to deal with putting in the work to organize it and then add books going forward. Much easier to just use shelves here.

But it's good that they are allowing people to do that.

Jennifer wrote: "Yes -- i'm surprised at how bereft I feel!"

This is me.

After a very disappointing weekend, this was not the news I wanted to wake to when I was checking if I had read a book in a series this morning. I am floundering a bit lost now. I loved FictFact and checked it almost daily when I saw new books or wanted to check my series status.

Seems you either used it a lot or not at all. Surprised our Goodreads authors are not putting on a little pressure here. This was an excellent way to see new titles from people you are following.

Mary: Harry Dresden's Love Slave wrote: "Much easier to just use shelves here."

So do you have a GR shelf for every series you read? I've toyed with that, but I have wayyy too many series in progress, and it would take forever to set up my GR shelves that way. What I need is a *fast way to find, for example, a series in which book #14 is next up.

It would be ideal if GR had a column for series position, but with everything else that needs to be fixed, I'm sure a request for a new feature would be ignored for years.

I'll miss the emails from FictFact, letting me know when a new book has been added to a series I'm following, or when an author I follow has started a new series. Those usually came weeks before there was any announcement about them on GR.

No I just created a Next in Series shelf and used Fictfact (when they were still up) to go through and mark my next books on that shelf here. So now I can at least bring that shelf up and see where I am. I'll just have to be better about updating that shelf when I mark books as read.

I did save the CSV file to Excel in case I want to do something with it at some point but I doubt I will take the time to make the data usable for me.

It's easy here to see what the books of a series are and where you are in the series. But I loved that on Fictfact I could bring up a list of where I am in all my series and it automatically added the next book when you marked something as read.

Guys, GR does list books in a series on a writer’s author page. For example, if you go to the page for this month’s featured author, Carolyn Haines, it shows she has three series. If you click on the one for “Sarah Booth Delaney,”

https://www.goodreads.com/series/4358...

It shows there are 20 books in the series (plus a few short stories and boxed sets). It will show which books you’ve marked as “to read” or “read.” If you want to save a little space on your personal GR shelf, set up shelves for favorite authors instead of series, since many cozy writers have multiple series. You can set up a shelf to encompass multiple pseudonyms, too — such as “Haines/Burnes” or “Connolly/Atwell.”

Heather L wrote: "Guys, GR does list books in a series on a writer’s author page....It will show which books you’ve marked as “to read” or “read.”"

Yes, but it's a lot more cumbersome to use than FictFact was. On FF, I could click on one link and it would populate a list of the next book in every one of my 200+ series, telling the position number of each of those books, which I found very handy when a challenge task asks for "book #9 of a series" :)

I do have a series-next shelf that I'm diligent about maintaining, but not all GR books show the series position number on that shelf, so it's much more tedious to search that way.

I hope Amazon changes their minds or that FictFact gets another monied backer. FictFact is (was?) one of the best sites, if the only, that allowed for easy tracking of series and emailing users when nexts-in-series were coming. I know I can use GoodReads shelving to get something similar, but it won't be the same, No, FirctFact wasn't always perfect -- no, they didn't always get those in-between novellas or short stories that were part of a series, like newsletter-only epilogues or followups -- but what is? Still, they were the best I found at what they offered readers. Just like GoodReads is the best at what they offer readers. Though similar, for booklisting/tracking, it's not the same. FF didn't offer the communities that GR does, but I didn't need it to.

I built an Excel spreadsheet to track my series and reads long before I found FictFact, but when I did, I moved my favorite series there right away so I could get updated information via e-mail. It's been a while since I updated the spreadsheet, but I guess I'll need to do it now. Please don't let anything happen to Stop You're Killing Me or GoodReads!! Though I research others, they (along with FictFact) are my go-to sites for updating mystery series. I guess I'll be paying closer attention to those newsletters I get that feature release dates. Better hit and miss than nothing at all!

My cinical mind hopes this isn't Amazon's way of eliminating competition because they plan to offer a similar service. They already eliminated the Amazon RSS feeds I used to get for new releases. Tracking my reading and to-reads is getting harder!

I think it's about dollars Amazon has raised the pay of their employees. I figure that extra cost has to come somewhere, and it's not only FictFact affected.

I too am dismayed aboutFictFact as I depended on it to keep me clued in on new books and keep me organized with my series. I gave small amounts to FictFact for several years once I heard about Amazon dropping them. I know FictFact was depending on member donations to survive, but I suppose that didn't pan out.

I am saddened by this. I used FictFact a lot and enjoyed how it held my place in a series.

Mary, Mary, Just a bit contrary wrote: "Can you mark of what you've read?" no, you have to keep track of it