Should i publish on smashwords

Smashwords now has another option for preparing your book called "Smashwords Direct". This is definitely the way to go if you already have an EPUB version of your book available. This is the method we used to prepare our books for Smashwords.

Keep in mind that you still need to meet the Style Guide, which may require changes to the EPUB file from what you might use in other places. For example, you must add the Smashwords branding to the first actual page of your book. In addition to your book file, you will also need to have an ebook cover image that meets the detailed specifications provided on the Smashwords website.

If you don't already have a cover you may need to create one yourself or pay a contractor to create it for you. Smashwords also has a list of low-cost cover designers on " Mark's List ". After you complete the Publish form, click Publish. Smashwords will first check to make sure the Publish form is filled out completely. You will be sent back to the form to complete any missing items. When this is accomplished Smashwords will upload your ebook, ebook cover image and book information.

Once Smashwords receives the information it will display the conversion page where you can watch in real time as the Meatgrinder technology generates multiple ebook formats for your book. This takes anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes. Once the conversion completes, the AutoVetter technology will instantly analyze the book and report back if it identifies any potential formatting errors. Whether you have errors or not, the next page you'll see is the conversion confirmation page to tell you the conversion is complete.

With this step completed, Smashwords will provide you a link to your new ebook page where your book is available for immediate sampling and sale. If errors are found you will receive an email that will summarize the errors and provide instructions on how to fix them. Once your ebook as been successfully converted you can manage it via the Smashwords Dashboard. From the dashboard you can upload a new version of your ebook or cover, change the price, change the title and categorization, track the sales of your book and a variety of other activities.

Smashwords works with the largest number of retail booksellers of any ebook distributor. This is one of the most important benefits provided by Smashwords. Once you are able to submit your book and have it approved by Smashwords, they handle the conversion and interface to all the different retailers for you. This can be a significant time saver.

Accumulated sales during the preorder period causes your book to rise in the bestseller lists once it is released. While convenient, if you use the free ISBN from Smashwords they are listed as the publisher rather than yourself. This results in all of the problems we discuss in our section on ISBN numbers. If you decide to update your cover image, book description or anything else, you do it once at your Dashboard and then Smashwords updates all the retailers.

Time-savings, simplicity and reach are the primary reasons why the vast majority of our authors and publishers choose to consolidate their distribution with Smashwords.

Literary Agents! View The Literary Agent's Indie Ebook Roadmap presentation, which explores how literary agents can assist their clients' ebook publishing efforts.

Smashwords proudly supports libraries, and we're working to make our ebooks available to every library in the world. Click the "support" link at the bottom of the page to request our fact sheet. Read our Frequently Asked Questions. Learn how to get the most out of Smashwords! Includes a NEW glossary of ebook terms. New to ebook publishing? Don't miss the Smart Author podcast mentioned above. This primer demystifies ebook publishing.

First, register for a free account. This allows us to create a permanent online library where you can access your purchased books in any format. At the top right of every book page is a shopping cart logo. Simply click on it to purchase the book and then enter your credit card information and follow the simple instructions.

How do I access my shopping cart? When you purchase a book, you click the shopping cart icon on the upper right side of the page and it takes you to your shopping cart. How do I access a book I purchased? After you purchase a book, you'll receive an email confirming your purchase. Click on the Library link at the top of the screen, and scroll down to Purchased Books. Click on the book you want to read. This takes you to the book's page, where you can scroll down and download the ebook format that works best for you, or you can read online using the HTML or Javascript reader.

Go to the Apple App store and download the free Apple Books app if it's not already preinstalled on your device. Once installed, use the Safari browser from your device to navigate to Smashwords. After you purchase a book, click to your Library. Next, click to the book you want to read, then scroll down the book's book page to download your book as an. Click that. It'll open in your Apple Books app and place the book in your Apple Books library.

Alternatively, you can also try the free BlueFire reader, also in the App store. If you have other favorite e-reading apps installed, it may also give you the option to open the books in your other e-reading apps as well.

How can I read a Smashwords ebook on my desktop or laptop? It's easy to read ebooks on your desktop or laptop computer. For a higher-quality reading experience, download an e-reading application. An e-reading application, also called an "e-reading app," is software designed for reading ebooks.

Several of the available formats at Smashwords are easily read on a personal computer or tablet. How to read the most common formats:. In addition to being a great e-reading app for desktop computers, Adobe Digital Editions is useful for Smashwords authors who want to inspect their epub files.

For Android devices, download Aldiko, a free e-reading app. Most computers come pre-installed with Adobe Acrobat if not, click here to download it for free. After you install one of the above apps, simply return to your Smashwords Library, click to the book you want to download, then click to download the appropriate file format. Your web browser should ask you if you want to use the app to read immediately, or if you want to download the book to your computer if you download to your computer, the Desktop is a good location to drop the file so you can find it.

Please note there are many third party e-reading software applications, and Smashwords cannot provide you customer support on how to install or use them. Most have online help files. How do I read books on my Android device? Download the Aldiko app from the Google Play store. Then use your web browser to navigate to the Smashwords store at www. I enjoy reading samples on my Aldiko reader on Android, but I'm getting an error on the purchased book Before you download the full purchased version, try deleting the partial sample from your Aldiko reader.

This usually solves the problem. How do I download books to my Kindle or Kindle Fire? You'll find links to all your purchased books in your Smashwords Library. There are two options for loading Smashwords ebook content to your Kindle or Kindle Fire:. USB Connection. Plug your Kindle into the USB slot small rectangular slot of your computer using the cable that came with your Kindle the Kindle Fire doesn't come standard with the USB cable, so you'll need to obtain the cable separately, or, use the email option described in 2 below.

When you attach your Kindle to your computer via the USB cable, it makes your Kindle appear as a hard drive on your computer. After you purchase the book, from the book's book page click to download the "Kindle". MOBI format. Next, navigate to where you see the Kindle show up as a hard drive on your computer.

Next, just drop the book's file it should end in file name of. Then disconnect the Kindle from your computer and the book will be ready to read. If you already downloaded the.

Amazon's support page provides complete details. For Kindle Fire only, Click here for how to set up your free Kindle email address, and how to load ebooks or email ebooks to your Kindle Fire using either the email or USB cable method.

How do I download books to my Kindle from my Mac? First, go to your web browser's Preferences and click Downloads. Make sure to click on the box that directs your browser to ask you where you want to save downloads. If you don't do this first step, your files may go to your Downloads folder, and then it will be difficult to move them to your Kindle.

Next, click to your Smashwords Library to find the link for your purchased book. Then click to download the. MOBI file. When your browser asks where you want to save the file, navigate to your Kindle's "Documents" folder, and drop the file there.

After a few seconds, unplug your Kindle's USB cable and you're ready to read. How do I add an ebook to my Kindle App on Android? Download the.

Plug your Android device via USB into your computer. On your Android device set it to 'USB storage' this may be a pop up query, but you may have to activate it from your device settings. Eject or dismount your phone safely from the computer before disconnecting the cable. I tried to download a MOBI book to my Kindle with the instructions above, but it's not showing First, make sure you're placing the file into the Kindle's "Documents" folder.

In some situations, if you power down the Kindle and restart it, the file transfer will work. How do I download books to the Sony Reader? Sony is no longer an ebook retailer, yet many readers continue to use the Sony Reader to read ebooks. Here's the step-by-step: 1. You'll know the Sony Reader is connected when you see the Reader Library software pop up on your screen. Go to your web browser, and click to the Smashwords Library where you can click to the book page for the book you want to download.

Scroll down the page to the table of download options. Click to download the EPUB version. Your browser should pop up a window asking if you want to open the file with the Reader software, or if you want to save the file. Select the save option, which will allow you to download it. This is where you'll save the file. After you save the file there, wait about 30 seconds and then you can unplug the Reader from the USB cable and your book is ready to read.

For the Nook, just attach the Nook to your personal computer via the USB cable makes it appear as a hard drive , and then download your books directly to your Nook's My Documents folder.

How do I download books to my Kobo Reader? Connect your Kobo Reader to your computer using the USB cable and then drag and drop books to add them to your library. In another window, go to the location of your ebooks on your computer and drag and drop them into the Kobo library window.

These instructions are excerpted from Kobo's online documentation. If you have better instructions, please contact us. Do I get charged for reading a sample? No, samples are free. Are books returnable if I don't like them? All sales are final. This is why most authors allow you to sample much of their book for free so you can try before you buy.

Can I share my book with friends? Smashwords books are licensed for your personal reading enjoyment only, so you are not legally allowed to copy, share, or email the book to others, and you are not allowed to resell or distribute the book to others. Smashwords authors are trusting you to honor their copyright and hard work, so please do not breach their trust in you.

However, most authors offer generous samples of their books, so if you want to share a legal sample of the book, simply email your friends the hyperlink to the book page of the book, or use one of the social networking links to share a link of the book with friends on Facebook, Twitter and other sites.

How do I review a book? Anyone who has purchased a Smashwords book is able to review it by clicking back to the book page. Below the different file format options is a link where you can review the book. Remember to select a star rating as well. Once you review a book, a link to your profile page appears in your review, and your review also appears on your personal profile page.

If a book is free, anyone can review it. If you do not see the review link, it means you haven't purchased the book yet. Authors are not able to review their own books. Can I publish book excerpts on my blog? Bloggers can excerpt a small portion of an author's book for review purposes. For further information on excerpts and re-distribution, see the Smashwords Terms of Service.

Is it safe to enter my credit card online? When you purchase through Smashwords, we create a secure communications connection between your web browser and our payment processing provider, PayPal. For your security, Smashwords does not store your credit card information after your purchase. Separate from Smashwords, it is recommended as a general safe computing practice that you maintain current security software on your computer.

Good free anti-virus applications include Avast! I'm the author, and although I set a sampling rate, the entire book appears downloadable As the author of book, you're able to access the book as if you purchased it.

If you log out of your account, then visit your book page, you'll see the sampling rates are enforced for your customers. Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, has created a series of comprehensive online video workshops.

These five videos comprising over 8 hours of instructional material will help you learn to publish like a pro. It's like attending an all-day digital publishing seminar for free! Click below to access each video individually at YouTube:.

How do I publish on Smashwords? First, register for a Smashwords account it's free and then carefully study and implement the Smashwords Style Guide for formatting requirements.

Once you're confident the book is formatted to the Style Guide, click "Publish" and follow the simple instructions. You will upload your manuscript or finished work in Microsoft Word's.

If you're using Microsoft Word, save your finished manuscript as a. If you're using a different word processor such as Open Office , be sure when you save the document, you select "save as: file type: Microsoft Word.

Is your publishing agreement exclusive? It's non-exclusive, so you maintain all rights to your work and have the freedom to publish anywhere else you like. Why can't I find any information about what Smashwords costs? Because we're free! We work on commission. We don't charge for our ebook publishing, conversion and distribution services, and we don't sell publishing packages. Who can publish on Smashwords? If you're the original author and you control the digital rights to the book, or if you're the exclusive digital publisher, you can publish and distribute the work with Smashwords.

Your work must be original, written by you or an author to which you have exclusive rights to publish. See our Terms of Service for more information. What can I publish? Smashwords is for finished, complete and original written works only no drafts, works-in-progress or partial works. It's great for short and long form fiction, personal memoirs, essays, poetry, screenplays or anything else you can write in a word processor. See our Terms of Service for additional content guidelines.

In Step 3 on the Publish page, it's asking me if my book contains adult content. What's the definition? If your book contains language, situations or images that are inappropriate for children under 18 years of age, you can tag your book as having adult content. This voluntary label helps us protect minors from viewing inappropriate material. Books labeled as adult will not appear in Smashwords site search results if the customer or web site visitor has activated the Adult Filter.

In the future, this label will also help our retail partners keep your book out of any kid-centric areas of their stores while maintaining full listings elsewhere in their store. If you tagged your book as adult at the time of your upload, but later decided it's not truly adult by the definition here, you can click to Dashboard: Settings and remove the label.

I uploaded my book direct on Amazon or some other retailer. Can I still work with Smashwords? After you publish, click to your Dashboard's Channel Manager and opt out of any Smashwords retail partners you're already reaching direct or through another distributor. This will prevent us from double-distributing your work. How do I choose between Amazon and Smashwords? This is a common question, and the answer is, "You should work with both of us at the same time!

The more stores that carry your book, the greater your opportunity to reach readers. Amazon only reaches ebook readers in about 14 countries, whereas Apple Books reaches 51 countries and dominates the Australian ebook market , Kobo reaches about countries and the Smashwords store reaches almost countries. I heard Amazon requires exclusivity. Is this true? No, it's not true but this is a common misperception, and it's a misperception Amazon does little to clarify.

Amazon offers two ebook self-publishing options. Exclusivity is dangerous and risky. It's like putting all your retirement savings in a single Internet stock.

Although there's a chance it works for you, there's also a good chance you cause long term harm to your career. It's much safer and sensible for you to diversify your portfolio of retail distribution. Some authors are drawn to KDP Select because they see it as their fast track to success.

The truth of the matter is that for most authors, there's no shortcut. To make it as a successful author, it can take years. Each of the major retailers reaches millions of readers that can't be reached anywhere else. Authors who make their books exclusive to Amazon will have a much more difficult time breaking out at other retailers. Much of the confusion about whether Amazon requires exclusivity or not arises from the fact that Amazon has designed their KDP platform to make it look like your account setup is incomplete unless you enroll in KDP Select.

At every step of the upload process they prompt you to enroll in KDP Select. If you enroll in KDP Select, you must commit to make your book exclusive to them for at least three months. The enrollment automatically renews unless you opt back out.

Authors who enroll in KDP Select are taking a gamble, and they'll miss out on the broader global distribution enabled by Smashwords and its retail and library partners. KDP Select is also like quicksand.

Once you step into it, it's tough to get out. It destroys your readership at other retailers, and limits your platform-building. It makes your earnings entirely dependent upon Amazon. Who cannot publish on Smashwords? Do not upload content or books that appear elsewhere on the Internet authored by people other than yourself or by other pen names.

If we do a query on Google of a random text strings in your book and yes, we do this to test the originality of your work , and we discover the same content under other author names, or associated with private label article also called " Private Label Rights or PLR" or ebook licensing systems, your account will be closed without warning and all earnings will be forfeited, per the Terms of Service.

We have a zero tolerance policy for plagiarism, copyright infringement, underage erotica erotica featuring children under the age of 18 and PLR. Where will my book be sold? As an ebook publishing and distribution platform, Smashwords will distribute your books via multiple online channels, including but not limited to the Smashwords. See the Distribution section below for more information on how Smashwords distributes books, or visit our Distribution Information page. How does Smashwords work with multi-author publishers?

Hundreds of publishing companies publish and distribute their authors' books through Smashwords. Publishers can list an unlimited number of authors and their authors' books in their own co-branded Smashwords bookstore page. Learn more about whether the free Publisher status upgrade is right for you by reading the Publisher Account documentation. How do I sell my books in the Apple Books Store? Smashwords is one of the few authorized aggregators that distributes ebooks to Apple Books.

On the first day of the launch of the iPad in April , Smashwords had over 2, books in their store, and today we distribute over , books to Apple Books in 51 countries including the US, Canada, U. K, Australia, France, Italy, Germany and more. We've created a handy checklist here of Apple Books store requirements - How to Publish an Ebook on the Apple Books to make it fast, simple and easy to publish your book to the Apple Books Store.

Smashwords offers free ISBNs. How do I sell my ebooks in the Nook store? I live outside the U. Please see the Royalties section below to learn how to qualify for reduced or eliminated tax withholdings. What languages do you publish and distribute? We support most languages. When you upload you book, you'll tag it with the book's language, and this will help us distribute it to retailers that support that language.

We publish many other books in Japanese, Korean and Chinese, and as our retailers expand their language support, we'll distribute these books to them as well.

What languages does Apple Books not support? Apple Books store does not support the following languages: Persian, Old ca. How much money can I expect to make on Smashwords? You should keep your expectations low because most authors - whether self-published or traditionally published - don't sell many books. Some authors don't sell a single book. Others sell thousands of books each week. The ebook market is still in its infancy.

Just like in traditional print publishing, book sales depend to a great degree on word of mouth, driven by the quality of your book and your personal marketing efforts Read our free Smashwords Book Marketing Guid e for tips on how to promote your Smashwords book.

If readers love your book and tell their friends, and their friends tell more people, you could have a best seller. At Smashwords, we structured our business to make our authors and publishers as successful as possible.

Royalty rates may differ based on the country, retailer or VAT taxes. See the Channel Manager page for a fine-tuned breakdown. In some cases, you'll earn a higher earnings-share rate going through Smashwords than if you were to work directly with the retailer. Please see the earnings section below for more information, because your earnings will vary from retailer to retailer.

How is price determined? You can control pricing country by country as well using our Global Pricing Control feature, accessible in your Dashboard. In instances where your book is distributed to other online retailers, the retailers do not discount your work.

If you choose the RSP option at Smashwords and would like to set a separate default price for retailers only, go to Dashboard: Settings. Once you make a price change at Smashwords, we will automatically notify Smashwords retailers of the price change in our once-weekly updates to them some retailers receive more frequent updates. Please allow anywhere from one to three business days for price updates to reflect at retailers it's usually same-day for Apple Books and Kobo, instant for the Smashwords store, and business days at others.

How should I price my book? This is a personal decision for the author or publisher. When you sell a book, you receive two benefits. The first is you get a sale, which means you earn income. The second benefit is that you gain a reader, and a reader is a potential fan, and a fan will search out and purchase your other books and future books. A fan is also a potential evangelist who will recommend your book to their friends.

When examining these two benefits, the second - gaining a reader - is actually more important to your long term success as an author, especially if you plan to continue writing and publishing books. Here are some considerations on price: 1. Your ebook should be priced less than the print equivalent.

Customers expect this, because they know your production cost paper, printing, shipping, middlemen is less. Lower priced books almost always sell more copies than higher priced books. A longer book deserves a higher price than a short book. Consider the value of your book to the customer. As self-publishing guru Dan Poynter notes in his Self Publishing Manual, for a customer to buy your book at any price, they must believe the value of the book is greater than the cost of the book.

Just as over-pricing can be bad, so too can under-pricing. Consider the likely market of your book, and the cost of competitive books, and then price accordingly. A higher price is a double-edged sword. It implies potential value and worth, yet it can also price the customer out of purchasing it. Set a fair list price, and then consider using Smashwords coupons to let the customer feel like they're getting a discount on a valuable product.

If you write series, price the first book in the series at FREE. We've found that series with free series starters earn more income for the author than series with a priced series starter.

Give it a try, you might be surprised! You can change your price at Smashwords at any time, so feel free to experiment Apple usually updates same-day, others are generally business days. There are multiple other factors that can influence how your potential readers judge your price. Click here for an interview with Mark Coker where he examines other factors to consider. Click here to learn how ebook buyers discover ebooks they purchase links to the Smashwords Blog.

The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success , our free ebook that examines the best practices of the most successful Smashwords authors, also explores different strategies for pricing. How do I change the price? Simply go to your Dashboard, click Settings, and then change the price on the next page. Once you make a price change at Smashwords, we will automatically notify Smashwords retailers of the price change in our updates to them.

If your book is Premium Catalog approved, and it's not pending review, most price updates occur in business days. Apple Books is usually same day, often within hours of the update at Smashwords. I notice some authors give their books away for free. Do you recommend this? Both men seem dedicated to author empowerment as well as their own success.

Like all participants in modern publishing, Smashwords has evolved. It has become a major educational ecosystem for the do-it-yourself ebook author. My own practices are a variation on do-it-yourself.

I believe in do-it-yourself as much as I can, but I also favor get-an-expert-to-check-it. This is a vetted list of suppliers of ebook-formatting and cover design services. He did a good job. For this new book, Northern California History Travel Adventures: 35 Suggested Trips , the file finally went through okay, partly because, once again, I engaged a file expert Tracy Atkins, [email protected] to massage my best do-it-yourself efforts. I had used a Joel Friedlander 2-Way Word Template to set up the book in a brutal manner before asking Tracy to massage it.

Tracy ultimately gave me an epub format version that went through well. Before I engaged Tracy, my Word template format had challenges on Smashwords. The long and modern Word file got saved with a modern Word docx and was slightly under the 15 megs maximum size allowed for Smashwords.

However, the Smashwords system seemed to need an earlier doc file format rather than docx. When I tried to convert the docx to doc the file emerged as too large. Therefore, I had Tracy change the file to the alternative epub format, and it went through fine. Ebook authors need to show a bit of resilience to be successful. In all the publishing systems, expect a few glitches rather than instant success, and puzzle forward.

Authors need to keep track of exactly the cash returned to them in sales from their participation in each of these publishing ecosystems. No one can explain Amazon better than Amazon itself, so review the nuanced details here. Amazon is not shy about suggesting you go exclusive with them.

I prefer non-exclusive, but the exclusive benefits are presented at here. IngramSpark explains here. The details are granular. Mark Coker recently wrote me about this as follows:. The easiest way for you to get the exact percentage at different price points is to log into your account, click publish, then enter sample prices into the pricing calculator. The humor item, if you missed it, is that the threshold of monthly payment to authors, if you receive your money from Smashwords on Paypal, is one cent.

For an author with extremely modest sales, this is about as good as it gets. Smashwords does not appear to offer phone support, so communicating via email or their forms on their website is best. Two of my travel journalism colleagues, experts in their niches, like this set-your-own-price approach. These talented and successful self-publishers, models to all of us who seek indie success, are Sandy Friend and Candy Harrington. The situation on ebook pricing and financial return to authors does change.

I may even be in error in some of my reporting comments above. There are nuances in all these pricing schemes to be aware of. Do not hesitate to correct my possible errors regarding any of these vendors.

Attentive ebook authors will want to watch, with each passing year, the evolving payment and author-learning ecosystems available through Amazon Kindle, IngramSpark, Smashwords, and others. In our device-driven world, it will also be interesting to watch consumer behavior and how consumer choices affect the mix of print books versus ebooks sold. Some folks will say: I just want to curl up with a printed book in bed or, in my travel world, take that guidebook in my backpack in the field.

Others will say: Why would I ever buy a printed book again, since I can carry around a hundred ebooks on my device? The wise author, in my view, will remain agnostic as these theological debates proceed and will give the consumer whatever form of communion and salvation he or she desires. The forms in which content can be presented to the consumer are slippery.

Photo: BigStockPhoto. I started publishing with Smashwords, and find them very efficient and helpful. I also publish at Amazon, but have not had much luck there. They seem to make it very difficult to get reviews. What I do like about Amazon is the ability to publish your book as a paper back. I noticed that my sales were going down and when I checked each books stats, I noticed that many were viewing but not buying.

My company publishes history books, with photographs. I had a company format our first book for ebook and it was the standard reflowable without page numbers.