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What is Smashwords?
Basically, its an e-publishing site founded by Mark Coker, with the intent of creating an author-centric distribution mechanism that streamlines the process of creating an e-book and automates downloads and payment processing. They're the #6 supplier of ebooks to the Apple iBookstore http://http://blog.smashwords.com/.
Who uses Smashwords?
Indie authors (and some not so indie).
Obviously, some writers go there because they haven't had any luck submitting their work to mainstream agents and publishers. Others, (like me: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/4612) are too impatient or repulsed by the traditional publishing process and want to get their work out to readers quickly. Some published writers go there to resurrect their out-of-print back lists.
Pricing:
Writers can set any price they want (or ask buyers to name their own price). I'm more interested in building a base of readers right now than profit, but I initially put a price of $1.99 on my book, because I heard that readers often perceive free works as value-less, but I've been giving copies away anyway via coupon codes (almost 1,000 so far).
Smashwords gives authors 85% of the asking price as royalty (less for affiliate sales). Pricing is said to greatly affect the volume of sales. $0.99 books are very popular, but there's a growing consensus that $2.99 will become the standard minimum price for writers interested in selling (partly because this is the minimum that Amazon has set for full royalties).
How do you submit to Smashwords?
Well, first you have to format your manuscript completely differently than you would for a paper submission. Empty space in an ebook is as much an anathema as dead air over the radio. Single space. Remove all unnecessary carriage returns. Do not use the space bar or tabs to create indents. Set indents using the ruler in MS Word (or equivalent word processor).
Page numbers are also a no-no because ereaders will reformat page lengths according to which ever font and spacing the reader chooses. I've even removed double-spacing because I had some readers (particularly those who use PDFs) complain that it doesn't show enough text per screen on their ereaders. Once you have a stripped down manuscript (with a copyright page with terms if use statement) you can upload it to Smashwords as a .doc or .docx and it will be queued for automatic conversion. Sometimes it will fail for some formats and you have to try again; sometimes by diving back into your document and removing more unnecessary formatting or in some cases, just saving it as a .doc instead of a .docx.
Another good thing to add, particularly important for non-fiction, is a linkable table of contents. This is generally done by linking to Chapter headings by using MS Word's bookmarks feature. This helps readers navigate through your book with a click.
A style guide is available from the Smashwords site to help you get your ebook formatted to look it's best in an ereader: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52
Smashwords still won't do a perfect job of conversion for every format, but for an automated process, it does pretty well. The ugliest conversion in my experience was with an .RTF file as input, which for some reason had anything in quotes (dialogue) converted to a completely different font from all of the unquoted text.
Once you have Smashwords uploaded, you can also upload a blurb and cover image and designate what percent of your text you will allow as a free sample. I use a much larger free sample than almost any other book on Smashwords with a price tag, as an experiment to make my book stand out a little from the rest and encourage downloads.
If the conversion goes well and you satisfy requirements for a copyright and adequate cover image, you may be selected for "Premium Distribution" which is a subset of the Smashwords catalog that is distributed to the Apple iBookstore, Kobo.com, Barnes and Noble and soon Amazon and Sony.
Smashwords also give you the option to use one of their own free ISBN #'s to help make your book findable by commercial databases (or you can purchase your own exclusive #).
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