Imagine building a company slowly, one that is intended to give authors a place to sell and distribute their own ebooks. You grow that company into a household name in the publishing industry and enjoy a measure of success that goes with it. You even publish a few very helpful ebooks on your site--Smashwords, incidentally--so authors can benefit from years of industry insight … [Read more...] about Predators Ripping Off Authors Are Worse than Ever
smashwords
Tate Publishing Crooks Receive 20 Years, Nearly $1M in Restitution
In a victory for indie authors, the founder and CEO of vanity press Tate Publishing and his son who worked with him have been sentenced to a total of about twenty years in prison for taking money from authors for services they never provided. The jail sentences for a variety of charges have been suspended, meaning Richard and Ryan Tate will not have to serve that time as long … [Read more...] about Tate Publishing Crooks Receive 20 Years, Nearly $1M in Restitution
Where Would We Be Without Amazon? Buying Books on Smashwords
There's little doubt that Amazon has changed everything about publishing. It's not just a matter of opening the doors for indie authors, producing a viable e-reader device and then creating a platform for content to fill it, or leveraging the power of enhanced searchability to give authors potential visibility. Amazon has even sparked change in traditional publishing, such as … [Read more...] about Where Would We Be Without Amazon? Buying Books on Smashwords
The New Smashwords Audiobook Platform is a Joke
Smashwords has garnered at tremendous amount of media attention with the announcement that self-published authors can have audiobooks generated for them via Findaway Voices. This is not really newsworthy because all Smashwords does is redirect authors to the Findaway platform and Smashwords merely earns a commission for every author who pays Findaway to have an audiobook … [Read more...] about The New Smashwords Audiobook Platform is a Joke
Smashwords Was NOT Hacked…But Change Your Password
Self-publishing platform recently sent out an announcement to its authors containing the CEO's year-ahead predictions, but if you didn't pause to open that and read it, you might have missed the second item...and it's pretty important. First, if you're one of the authors who pulled their books out of other retailers' platforms to enroll in KDP Select, you might have … [Read more...] about Smashwords Was NOT Hacked…But Change Your Password
Smashwords Unveils Publishing Predictions for 2018
Smashwords' CEO and founder Mark Coker has once again unveiled his annual predictions for the publishing industry, and to say this year's edition is dark would be an understatement. Coker continues his longtime tradition of decrying all things Amazon, but this year...things are different. For too long, it was easy to dismiss Coker's predictions as a sour-grapes approach to … [Read more...] about Smashwords Unveils Publishing Predictions for 2018
Smashwords Unveils End of Year Sale
Smashwords is one of the largest independant self-publishing solutions and they have just announced their first ever end of year sale. There are currently 30,000 indie ebooks and from 6,000 and they are discounted anywhere from 25% to 75%. The deals are active from December 25th to January 1st. Smashwords is well known to harbor hundreds of thousands of ebooks that have no … [Read more...] about Smashwords Unveils End of Year Sale
Smashwords Pays Out Royalties and It’s NOT the End of the World
A number of authors opened their email inboxes yesterday to a pleasant surprise: the payment of old royalties from ebook publishing and retail site Smashwords. These royalties, typically within the one dollar to nine dollar range, had not been paid (in some cases, for years) because they didn't meet the minimum threshold for payment; it's important to note that a lot of other … [Read more...] about Smashwords Pays Out Royalties and It’s NOT the End of the World
Does Publishing Have a Future without Amazon?
With the end of a pretty rough year behind us and the first few weeks of 2017 under our belts, it's a good time to take a deep breathe and take stock of the state of publishing. There's perhaps no more comprehensive analysis of the current trends than the annual Smashwords Book Industry Predictions, written each year by founder and CEO Mark Coker. Before looking at Coker's … [Read more...] about Does Publishing Have a Future without Amazon?
The Indie-Library Relationship
As the worlds of publishing, digital publishing, and self-publishing continue to evolve, there are some unfortunate sources of stagnation. The education sector, for example, is still waiting for the long-promised digital textbook revolution that was going to not only dramatically reduce the costs associated with book purchasing, but also increase student engagement and success … [Read more...] about The Indie-Library Relationship