Five Great Reasons to Publish on Smashwords
| February 24, 2011 | Posted by Richard Freeland under Ebook News, On Publishing |
I kind of stumbled onto Smashwords when I decided to publish Equinox – Six Declinations, my collection of horror/fantasy short stories, as an ebook. I was researching ebook publishing and Smashwords caught my eye.
What is Smashwords? Simply put, it’s an ebook publishing and distribution platform, started by Mark Coker, an author himself. Authors who want to publish in ebook format can use Smashwords to meet their needs. Publishers, ditto. And readers can find and purchase published ebooks direct from the site. Smashwords offers multi-format, DRM-free ebooks, ready for immediate sampling and purchase, and readable on any e-reading device.
So why should you publish your ebook on Smashwords?
Five Reasons to Publish on Smashwords
- Massive Distribution Network – Smashwords ebooks are distributed to major online ebook retailers, like Apple iPad iBookstore (Smashwords is an authorized Apple Aggregator); Barnes & Noble; Sony; Kobo (their books also go to Samsung, powered by Kobo. Used to go to Borders, too, but they’ve since gone bankrupt), and the Diesel eBook Store. And – coming soon! Distribution direct to Amazon. Smashwords continues to work diligently to open new markets.
- Catalog Distribution - Smashwords books are distributed into the catalogs of mobile e-reading apps such as Stanza on the iPhone and iPad (used by 3.5 million+ people), and Aldiko and Word-Player on Android devices. Smashword’s Premium Catalog option ensures that your manuscript is formatted correctly before the published work can be distributed to the major retailers.
- Immediate Sales Potential – your book is instantly made available for immediate sale at Smashwords.com’s retail operation.
- The Power of Affiliate Sales – Smashwords books are also promoted via a network of Smashwords affiliates.
- Author/Publisher Control – authors and publishers have complete control over sampling, pricing and marketing of their written works. You can set sampling as a percentage of the work. Set the price for your ebook yourself (even offer it free, if you want). And each author gets his own unique page with author bios, photos, and a list of his or her works.
There are many more reasons for publishing on Smashwords, and I’ll address those in another post. But here’s a statistic to take to the bank: As of the end of 2010 Smashwords was listing 28,000 books from over 12,000 authors and publishers, and growing exponentially.
And just so you can’t say I never gave you anything, here’s a sixth compelling reason to publish through Smashwords – it’s all free.
