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Smashwords Author/Publisher Alert – February 28, 2017

By Mark Coker Inside: Ninth Annual Read an Ebook Week Promotion Kicks off Sunday! Planning a BookBub promotion? Tell us! Helpful Resources Your Smashwords page: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/goodlifeguide Smashwords account login ...

BookExpo America Embraces Self Publishing

By Mark Coker, Smashwords BookExpo America, the country's largest publishing industry conference, is stepping up its commitment to self-published authors this May 11-13 at the McCormick West Convention Center in Chicago. For the last five or ...

2016 Smashwords Survey Reveals Insight into the Habits of Bestselling Authors

By Mark Coker, Smashwords Welcome to the fifth annual 2016 Smashwords Survey! This is hot off the presses. Last Thursday I revealed the Survey results at the RT Booklovers Convention in Las Vegas. My goal with the Survey is to ...

Kindle Power Bucks Solves Book Marketing Challenge

By Mark Coker, Smashwords Amazon today announced Kindle Power Bucks, a powerful new ebook marketing program for indie authors.. Kindle Power Bucks solves an age-old problem faced by indie authors – most book marketing doesn't work. If ...

Smashwords Blog: Smashwords Year in Review 2015 and Plans for 2016

Mark Coker, Smashwords Each year I write an annual Smashwords year in review and then preview what's coming for the new year. Welcome to the 2015/2016 edition! The short version of this post is that amid a general ...

Smashwords Blog: 2016 Book Publishing Industry Predictions: Myriad Opportunities amid a Slow Growth Environment

By Mark Coker, Smashwords Welcome to my annual book publishing industry predictions. I went overboard for 2016. In addition to 10 prediction topics that were at the top of mind, I also asked friends on Facebook to suggest additional ...

Smashwords Expands Global Distribution Network with Three New Partners

By Mark Coker Smashwords Each year, Smashwords publishes our annual Smashwords Survey which examines millions of dollars in aggregated sales data to identify potential best practices insights that give indie authors and publishers advantages ...

Smashwords Blog: Smashwords Expands Global Ebook Distribution with Odilo, Tolino and Yuzu

By Mark Coker Smashwords Smashwords today announced three new partners that further expand the reach of the Smashwords ebook distribution network in the US, Europe and South America. The new agreements with Odilo, Tolino and Yuzu span three ...

2015 Smashwords Survey Reveals Insights to Help Authors Reach More Readers

By Mark Coker, Smashwords Welcome to the fourth annual 2015 Smashwords Survey. As long time followers of the Smashwords Survey know, we examine real sales data to extract potential insights about best practices that give indie ...

Amazon Lowers Kindle Unlimited Payouts

By Mark Coker Last Friday in a bit of news that was missed by most indie authors, Amazon quietly announced that because they're pricing their Kindle Unlimited ebook subscription service at $3.00 per month in India, authors will now earn ...

Smashwords Announces Distribution to Gardners Books: Expanded distribution to over 400 retail stores, 2,000 public libraries and 400 academic libraries

By Mark Coker Smashwords today announced a comprehensive distribution agreement with Gardners, the UK's largest book wholesaler. The agreement significantly expands the global footprint of the Smashwords ebook distribution network, ...

How to Price Kindle Books to FREE without Exclusivity

Amazon professes a commitment to offering customers rock-bottom prices, yet Amazon is the only ebook retailer to restrict the ability of authors and publishers to price at FREE. The only officially sanctioned method of pricing an ebook to free ...

Smashwords Year in Review 2014 and Plans for 2015

By Mark Coker Each year I provide Smashwords authors and publishers a review of our progress in the year as well as hints of our plans for the coming year. So here goes. 2014 marked another exciting year for Smashwords as we create new ...

2015 Book Publishing Industry Predictions: Slow Growth Presents Challenges and Opportunities

By Mark Coker, Welcome to my annual publishing industry predictions for the year ahead. This year I share 12 predictions. Before I speculate about what 2015 holds for authors and publishers, let’s reflect for a moment about how self ...

The best thing for books is more power to Amazon

By Aaron Pressman August 8, 2014 2:32 PM Yahoo Finance Amazon (AMZN) used to set the prices people paid for ebooks, but, thanks to an illegal price fixing conspiracy, they lost most of that power to publishers. Almost everyone -- ...

How to Do Box Sets at Smashwords for Audience Building, Charity and Profit

By Mark Coker If you haven't yet planned a box set, now is the time to start planning for one. This post will show you how. The two most common types of box set are single-author and multi-author. For a single-author box set, an author ...

Smashwords Blog: Is Kindle Unlimited Bad for Authors?

By Mark Coker Amazon today unveiled Kindle Unlimited, following in the footsteps of Smashwords partners Scribd and Oyster. When I first heard of Kindle Unlimited, I was pleased. After learning more, however, I think indies should ...

Smashwords Adds Daily Sales Reporting for iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and OverDrive

By Mark Coker Smashwords today added daily sales reporting and interactive charting for sales at iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, OverDrive and the Smashwords store. The reports include daily and total order accumulation numbers for iBooks ...

Apple’s New iOS 8 is Game-Changer for eBook Retailing

By Mark Coker Yesterday Apple unveiled iOS 8, the new Apple operating system upgrade that will come out this fall. Buried in a slide during the live demo event referenced as "iOS 8 features we didn’t have time to talk about" was an ebook ...

Amazon’s Hachette Dispute Foreshadows What’s Next for Indie Authors

By Mark Coker Amazon and Hachette Book Group are locked in an epic battle over the future of ebook publishing. The outcome of this dispute will have permanent ramifications for publishers and indie authors alike. On one side you have ...

Smashwords Blog: Smashwords and OverDrive to Bring 200,000+ Indie Ebooks to 20,000+ Public Libraries

By Mark Coker Imagine if your indie ebook was purchasable by thousands of public libraries around the globe. Now imagine no more. Smashwords today announced an agreement to supply more than 200,000 titles to OverDrive, the world’s largest ...

Smashwords Introduces Faster Deliveries to iBooks

By Mark Coker In recent weeks, many Smashwords authors have noticed that our deliveries to iBooks have become remarkably faster, and iBooks is listing the books faster. Some authors have seen their books appear for sale at iBooks the same day ...

Scribd Features 18 Smashwords Authors in Exclusive Merchandising Promotion

By Mark Coker Scribd today launched an exclusive front-page merchandising promotion titled “Popular Indie Authors” featuring 18 Smashwords authors. Congrats to featured authors Kristen Ashley, Brian S. Pratt, Quinn Loftis, F.S. ...

Scribd’s Improved Copyright Protection Systems Reaping Results for Smashwords Authors

By Mark Coker Scribd was founded about six years ago as a document upload service. To their credit, they made the upload of multi-format documents and files ridiculously easy. Today, their site hosts 50 million documents and books, receives ...

Indie Author Manifesto

By Mark Coker Over the last six years since founding Smashwords, I've witnessed a dramatic change in attitudes regarding self publishing. I'm pleased that much of this transformation has been led by the professional example of Smashwords ...

Smashwords Introduces Faster Deliveries to iBooks

By Mark Coker In recent weeks, many Smashwords authors have noticed that our deliveries to iBooks have become remarkably faster, and iBooks is listing the books faster. Some authors have seen their books appear for sale at iBooks the same day ...

Female Authors Dominating Smashwords Ebook Bestseller Lists

By Mark Coker Each month, Publishers Weekly publishes the Smashwords Self-Published Ebook Bestseller List. We report our bestsellers based on dollar sales aggregated across the Smashwords distribution network which includes retailers such as ...

Sizing the Self Publishing Market – 10 Reasons Indie Authors Will Capture 50% of the Ebook Market by 2020

By Mark Coker, Smashwords Blog There's a debate raging about the size of the self publishing market. I think indie ebooks will account for 50% of ebook sales by 2020. What do you think? On one side of the debate, you have folks such as ...

Forbes Magazine Names Smashwords to 2014 List of America’s Most Promising Companies

By Mark Coker Forbes Magazine Names Smashwords to 2014 List of America's Most Promising Companies Posted: 23 Jan 2014 10:10 AM PST Forbes Magazine this week came out with their list of America's Top 100 Most Promising Companies for 2014. ...

Smashwords Integrates with Dropbox for Faster eBook Delivery to Tablets and Smart Phones

By Mark Coker Smashwords today added a Send to Dropbox feature that instantly transfers a purchased ebook to a customer’s Dropbox account. Dropbox acts like a virtual hard drive for many tablets and smart phones, making it faster and easier ...

Bowker Ranks Smashwords the #1 Producer of Indie Ebooks in 2012 in New Report

By Mark Coker Bowker has ranked Smashwords the largest US producer of indie ebooks in 2012 according to their new annual Self Publishing Report for 2012. Smashwords was also ranked as the second largest producer of self-published books after ...

Smashwords Signs Distribution Agreement with Oyster

By Mark Coker Smashwords today announced a distribution agreement with Oyster, a new and innovative ebook subscription service. Oyster offers consumers unlimited access to more than 100,000 ebooks for $9.95 per month. I’ve been following ...

Smashwords Publishes 250,000th Book

By Mark Coker An indie author today released the 250,000th book on Smashwords. In the last 30 days, over 9,000 books were released at Smashwords. In 2008, we released 140 books in the first year. The 250,000 books comprise 8.5 billion ...

Apple iBooks Refreshes Breakout Books Feature, Smashwords Authors Hitting Bestseller Lists

By Mark Coker Today is a banner day for Smashwords authors at Apple. Apple's US store today launched a refreshed and updated Breakout Books feature showcasing multiple Smashwords authors. It's their top-of-the-store home page promo. If ...

2013 Global Ebook Award Winners

By Dan Poynter Winners of Global Ebook Awards--2013 Note: In some categories two ebooks tied for the same award due to the sum of their scores from the judges being identical. “Best Of” Categories Best eBook Cover Gold: Shadows ...

Smashwords Authors Top Charts at Apple with Preorders

By Mark Coker A couple weeks ago, we announced preorder distribution to Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. Today, we see a first-hand example of how preorders can help increase the visibility and sales of authors. Three Smashwords preorders ...

Daily Shipping to Barnes and Noble

By Mark Coker Two pieces of exciting news. 1. In the past, we shipped books and metadata updates to Barnes & Noble twice-weekly, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Starting Monday, we initiated daily shipments five days a week to B&N. The ...

From Retailer to Distributor: An interview with Smashwords CEO Mark Coker on the indie book site’s growth

By Susan Lulgjuraj Smashwords rolled out preorders for its e-books this week, giving authors a new tool to work within its distribution network. You can read more about that here from Teleread’s Joanna Cabot. When Smashwords was first created, ...

Smashwords Introduces Preorder Distribution to Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Kobo

Contributed by Mark Coker Smashwords authors and publishers now have an exciting and powerful new merchandising tool: Preorders at Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. Today we launched a public beta of our new preorder feature, ...

E-Book Ruling Cements Amazon’s Virtual Monopoly

A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Apple (AAPL) had conspired with major book publishers in an effort to raise the prices of e-books. On the surface the widely expected ruling is a win for consumers who have yet to benefit from the minimal ...

Smashwords Self-Published Bestseller List, May 2013

Welcome to the first of PW's monthly self-published bestseller lists, powered by Smashwords. Each month we'll be bringing you a list of the 25 top-selling titles published in the Smashwords platform, which are distributed to Amazon, the Apple ...

Smashwords Blog: New Smashwords Survey Helps Authors Sell More eBooks

New Smashwords Survey Helps Authors Sell More eBooks Posted: 08 May 2013 12:00 PM PDT Last year at the 2012 RT Booklovers in Chicago, I released a first-of-its-kind study that analyzed indie ebook sales data. Our goal was to identify potential ...

Dan Poynter’s Global Ebook Awards

Imagine… Your ebook winning an award and: Putting an official “sticker” on your ebook cover, pbook cover, blog, website, Amazon page, and promotion materials. A free listing in Publishing Poynters Marketplace offering review copies for ...

Writer’s Digest 21st Annual Self-Published Book Awards

WRITER'S DIGEST COMPETITIONSDid You Self-Publish a Book?Whether you're a professional writer, a part-time freelancer, or a writing enthusiast who took the leap and published your own book, this competition is for you! The Writer's Digest 21st Annual ...