August seven, 2012 - Updated.  Massive news on the library front. Smashwords currently released two new characteristics that could make new chances to get your textbooks before library patrons. There are 2 parts to what we are rolling out:
February six, 2014 - Goodbye to our good friends at Sony. Sony these days announced the imminent closure of its Sony Reader Shop within the US and copyright. The store will stay in Procedure until March 20, after which it is going to cease e-book income. Helpful quickly, Smashwords will stop supply of recent titles.  We will continue on to provide metadata updates and takedowns. What This suggests for authors: Any time any retailer closes - Specifically just one such as Sony who pioneered the e book market place - it is a unfortunate working day. In addition to Barnes & Noble, Sony was among the list of to start with key merchants to embrace self-posted ebooks by partnering with Smashwords in 2009. Sony's devices and e book retail outlet predated Amazon's, so when the historical past books on the indie creator revolution are published I hope historians give Sony the credit history they should have as a real pioneer.
2. The best way to hyperlink to (or find) your publications at Kobo. At Kobo, all ebook pages get an routinely generated Internet tackle (the Url). The web deal with at Kobo incorporates the title with the ebook. If you alter your guide title at Smashwords, of if your reserve title is similar to A different title currently at Kobo, It's going to alter the Website handle to your listing webpage at Kobo by incorporating a -one, -2 or - up coming amount at the conclusion of the tackle.
Oct five, 2013 - Charles Dickens is smiling. We current our Conditions of Company yesterday to permit short serials. We had previously relaxed the prior prohibition quite a bit throughout the last 12 months, for the reason that we by no means felt relaxed creating subjective judgements in between what was a serial and what was a sequence. The first coverage was set set up determined by reader suggestions, and out of a want to circumvent specific varieties of abuses, like a author having an entire duration novel and releasing it as 50 serialized ebooks just one 2,000-term chapter at any given time. Or writers releasing unedited operates-in-progress which were hardly ever concluded. Even though scarce, We have now found writers do equally of these items, and It really is Obviously not a fantastic shopper practical experience. Nevertheless, I do Assume serializations have their put within the arms of responsible writers, and I believe ninety nine.9% of writers are responsible and do would like to provide their readers by using a substantial-price expertise. So right after much contemplation, it grew to become clear that we were being unfairly restricting the flexibilility of the various to guard audience in the several. In in stop, the choice was effortless. Our motto is, "Your ebook your way." I produced Smashwords to open doors, not close doorways. I designed Smashwords to give writers the freedom to publish what they need, and provides viewers the freedom to read what they want. The Smashwords author is definitely the publisher. The author is responsible for reader practical experience, and can be held accountable by their audience.
January 6, 2011 - Our buddies at Diesel have run into a number of glitches as Component of a whole revamp of their e-book retailer plus a migration to a completely new and improved System. Things at the moment are improving as I form. They did their migration ahead of the vacation, And through the migration many Smashwords guides disappeared from their catalog. They're Functioning to reload the lacking textbooks. With a associated note, many authors have questioned why their Diesel revenue are decreased than other retailers, and the greater creatively minded types have questioned the veracity of Diesel's income studies. I will response these issues separately. 1. Diesel is a little indie retailer, and because they're a fraction of the dimensions of our other stores, you need to expect reduce revenue.
June 22, 2012 - Goods. one. Back again in April, I did an exciting presentation for the RT Booklovers Conference in Chicago through which I shared plenty of data determined by some Investigation we did about what selling price factors work finest, what word counts, and many others. On April 25, I embedded the Slideshare presentation my blog for the Smashwords weblog. As I recall, one or two people at enough time requested if there was an audio recording for the advantage of many of our vision-impaired authors, let alone It truly is difficult to position each of the spoken words on paper (while I do split PowerPoint procedures by inserting a lot more words and phrases on there than execs would advise). There is not that I'm straight from the source mindful of. Nevertheless, The great individuals at RT E-book Overview just posted an edited movie job interview with me with the convention, and within the chat I take a look at many of the info. Another thing I forgot to say at time, but will mention here... Our facts indicated the sweet place for pricing was between $2.99 and $5.ninety nine, Should your goal is to maximize income. What I forgot to mention is that if you discover you might be earning concerning the identical sum of money at a lower price issue than the next value stage (or regardless of what), then consider pricing in the lower price position simply because you'll probably achieve the extra good thing about more viewers (the information while in the presentation on the web site backlink above indicates that lessen charges get more income, in many but not all situations).
, I like which they recognize that their Thoughts tend to be more useful than income, and by spreading their Strategies It's going to produce extra guidance for his or her induce. Meals for considered!
August twenty, 2012 - B&N verified this early morning they are going to enter the UK marketplace in Oct. Â Wonderful news. Â We count on our publications being there much too. Â Additional in the months to come back.
THE SECOND COMPONENT is our new Library Immediate channel (Simply click here to read the full announcement at the SW blog), accessible from a Channel Supervisor. Library Direct will allow libraries and library consortiums to place substantial "opening collection" orders with Smashwords. Smashwords has been given invest in commitments from three big library techniques, each of which hope to buy somewhere around $thirty,000 Each and every of Smashwords ebooks for their opening collections. The Library Immediate channel is barely accessible to libraries that can easily location substantial opening orders, and that function their particular web hosting and DRM systems (ordinarily Adobe Articles Server) to manage checkouts.
February 10, 2015 - Idea on the working day: After you upload a reserve to Smashwords, you may make use of your Dashboard's ISBN Manager function to attach an ISBN in your e-book. An ISBN is a singular electronic identifier. Smashwords will offer you a no cost ISBN, or you may offer your own personal. It is important that when you supply us an ISBN, the ISBN should be distinctive for the epub edition within your ebook. You should not present us an ISBN that is certainly now employed for a print version. In any other case, you risk harming the distribution of your respective e book. Here's an actual example: A few 7 days ago, Baker & Taylor, operators of your Blio e-book shop and also the Axis 360 library e book provider, provided Smashwords a list of around seven-hundred titles they cannot promote inside their retail outlet or provide to libraries since the ISBN provided by the writer or publisher is the same ISBN used in a print edition.
January 19, 2012 - SOPA and PIPA received a good spanking yesterday as Internet customers spoke out in drive in opposition to these ill-conceived makes an attempt to protect mental house. There are many of good tales out these days on the topic. Click this link for a good Assessment by Clay Shirky on why SOPA/PIPA were so dangerous, and why we'll see additional tries at a similar.
April 8, 2015 - Oyster announced a retail shop possibility nowadays which provides titles for solitary-copy sale showcasing a handful of Big 5 The big apple publishers. Smashwords books are not included in that percentage of the store, not less than not however. They intend to activate extra suppliers beginning all-around mid-Could, at which time we'll operate to incorporate Smashwords titles assuming the terms make sense. My guess is they launched The brand new single-title income option as a method to deliver some of the massive publishers into their application - publishers that up to now have (unwisely IMHO) refused for making Our site their textbooks available underneath the subscription product.
June 21, 2011 - Kobo update: Continuing my notes below, Kobo has requested us to throttle (limit) the shipments to only some thousand new titles a week till They are caught up as they're unable to cope with the volume. Thinking of their multi-month backlog of unloaded titles prior to the complete catalog regrind, this means a small number of books will encounter cargo delays of as many as 8 or 9 months, and 50 % of the publications will ship inside of four-five weeks.
August 17, 2012 - Products. one. Top quality Catalog acceptance times. On May perhaps eleven (see May possibly 11 update beneath), our Quality Catalog review instances were being running an unacceptable 15 days. As promised, we have staffed up to offer a lot quicker approvals. Early yesterday night, we accomplished a 0-queue point out, where all publications ready to be reviewed had been reviewed. This means a number of people yesterday obtained Premium Catalog approval within just minutes of uploading. Very great. Our following focus on for improvement: Our support and assist queue. It's been ranging from four-seven days lately, which we take into account unacceptable. We are now training the subsequent addition for the provider crew, Marcus V. Schooling for this placement can take months. During the short-term, the queue may perhaps lengthen, but within a few weeks it must start off coming down. Target: Identical day responses. Reminder on tips on how to help us serve extra Smashwords associates quicker: In case you if you have the direct electronic mail addresses of our assist staffers or myself, Will not check out to jump the queue by getting in contact with us immediate.