Smashwords Tips and Articles

Smashwords is expanding its global marketing reach in a partnership with the UK’s Gardners Books. From the Smashwords blog:

On October 22 Smashwords will begin delivering 230,000 ebooks sourced from the over 100,000 indie authors and small independent presses to 400 ebook stores powered by Gardners operating in 32 countries and serving customers in 138 countries; 2,000 public libraries in the U.K.; and 400 academic libraries in the UK, Europe and Middle East.  The agreement excludes Smashwords erotica titles…

Notable retailers with ebook stores powered by Gardners include www.hive.co.uk, www.books.telegraph.co.uk , www.indieebook.co.uk in the UK, www.bokus.com in

Via the Smashwords blog comes the 2014 Indie Author Survey. Some key findings:

Readers prefer longer ebooks – We observed this in the prior surveys.  Longer books sell better, and when you view the data through the prism of the power curve, it becomes clear why longer books give authors such a huge sales advantage.

Pricing – The highest earning indie authors are utilizing lower average prices than the authors who earn less, but this doesn’t mean that ultra-low prices such as $.99 are the path to riches.  $2.99 and $3.99 are the sweet spots for most of the

One of the more cumbersome interfaces on Smashwords is its reporting of book sales. Unlike KDP, which has a very obvious interface, it’s possible to miss Smashwords reporting page entirely. Given that it has been updated intermittently, it wasn’t always necessary to access the page even if you know it was there. Smashwords has now solved that. Via the Smashwords blog:

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 preorders.

The reports provide authors

Via Smashwords, which calls this a “Game Changer for eBook Retailing,” Apple’s new mobile operating system is going to come pre-loaded with the iBooks store app. What this means is that people who maybe weren’t so ebook friendly are going to have ebooks as part of the billion iPhones and iPads currently floating around.

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 retailing bombshell:  iBooks will come pre-installed on iOS 8.

The iBooks app is Apple’s ebook store.  Inside that app is

Mark Coker, founder and CEO of Smashwords, is courting libraries. In a March 23 post on the Smashwords blog, Coker describes his campaign to convince libraries to offer self-publishing programs to their patrons, with, of course, the help of Smashwords. According to the blog post:

Libraries are uniquely qualified to orchestrate community resources and talent to help local writers become professional self-publishers. By holding seminars and classes, and by bringing local authors together face to face with readers and aspiring authors, libraries can help unleash the talent locked inside the minds and fingertips of their local community’s writers.  They