Smashwords

Eighth Annual Smashwords End of Year Sale Now Underway - 200,000+ books free and on sale

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 00:11:00 +0000

The eighth annual Smashwords End of Year Sale is now underway and running through end of day January 1, 2025!

Browse from among over 228,000 participating ebooks using our multi-dimensional search filters. Our filters make it easy to drill down to the best indie books in your favorite categories.

Books in this sale come from nearly 60,000 authors.

The sale features over 30,000 free series starters, including more than 8,000 series starters that are only free during this sale.

Smashwords is famous for these annual super sales which have become much-loved traditions within the indie reading community. Our other two super sales are the original Smashwords Read an Ebook Week in March that's been running for 17 years, and the Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale in July that will hit its 17th year in 2025.

During these massive super sales, tens of thousands of indie authors and publishers join together through their participation to show their appreciation to indie ebook lovers. The authors offer exclusive deep discounts of 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% (free). These discounts come on top of everyday low prices.

Many Smashwords customers also appreciate that Smashwords pays a higher royalty rate to authors - up to 80%. This is higher than other major ebook retailers, making Smashwords a great choice for indie readers who want to show maximum support to the amazing indie authors and publishers that distribute with Draft2Digital.

Here are direct deep links into many of the sale's most popular categories.

15th Annual Smashwords Read an Ebook Week Sale Begins March 3rd

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 18:24:00 +0000

Clear your calendar and save the dates!

The 15th annual Smashwords Read an Ebook Week sale kicks off Sunday, March 3rd and runs through Saturday, March 9th.

Read an Ebook Week is the world's longest-running global celebration of ebooks and the readers who love them.

For one week only, thousands of the world's most popular indie authors will show their appreciation to readers by offering exclusive deep discounts on over 100,000 participating titles. Discount levels are 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% (free!)

Read an Ebook Week was the original super sale at Smashwords. It inspired our other major super sale traditions, the Smashwords July Summer/Winter Sale and the Smashwords End of Year Sale.

The creator of Read an Ebook Week, Rita Toews, is a long time Smashwords author. You can find an interview I did back in 2012 with Rita at the Huffington Post here.

Back in 2022, Rita transferred leadership of Read an Ebook Week over to Smashwords so she could focus on a serious health issue. We're pleased to share, with Rita's permission, that she has confounded her doctors and is doing much better than expected. But she's not out of the woods. Rita says she would appreciate positive healing thoughts and prayers from her Smashwords community of authors and readers.

Authors and Publishers: Enroll Now

Smashwords authors and publishers can visit the sale enrollment page to add their books to the sale. Authors and publishers who distribute to the Smashwords store via Draft2Digital can enroll from their Draft2Digital dashboard before February 29.

Visit our official Read an Ebook Week event page for official branded graphics you can download to celebrate your participation with your friends on social media.

Celebrate the Love

When you discover great deals your friends would enjoy, please do the author a favor and share a hyperlink to their book on social media so your friends can get in on the same great deal while it lasts.

Enjoy, and please tell a friend!

Seventh Annual Smashwords End of Year Sale Begins December 15

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 23:51:00 +0000

Mark your calendars! The annual Smashwords End of Year Sale kicks off December 15 and runs through January 1, 2024.

Enrollment is now open for Smashwords authors at https://www.smashwords.com/dashboard/sitewidePromos For authors who distribute to Smashwords via Draft2Digital, the enrollment period opens on or before December 1, and closes December 13.

Now in its seventh year, this Smashwords End of Year Sale promises to be one of our largest sales ever.

If you're new to Smashwords supersales, either as an author or reader, you're in for a treat. Tens of thousands of incredible indie authors and publishers from around the globe will join together in this collaborative marketing event to celebrate indie ebooks the readers who read them.

For last year’s Smashwords End of Year Sale, the first to be open to all Draft2Digital authors following our merger with Draft2Digital in March 2022, a whopping 161,000 books participated. This was an all-time record, up from 104,000 the year before.

At a time when other retailers are trying to find ways to pay authors less, or charge for advertising tools, or require exclusivity to gain access to best selling opportunities, Smashwords has always worked differently. We look for opportunities to help authors sell more and earn more, and all without exclusivity. This sale is open to all authors and publishers that distribute wide with Draft2Digital.

We pay authors and publishers up to 80% of list price or more when the customer's cart total is over $9.00. Not only do we believe that authors and publishers deserve the largest possible cut of their sales, we also believe that higher royalties benefit readers. High royalties enable authors and publishers to earn more while selling their books at affordable prices, a win/win for authors and readers alike.

Celebrate Your Participation!

All readers and authors are invited to celebrate their participation in the Smashwords End of Year Sale with these shareable images, perfectly sized for your favorite social media platforms. Or use them on your website, blog, or private author newsletter. Click the image to expand it to its full size. We added more images on 11/21/23!

New Additions 11/21/23!

Enjoy, and please invite your author and reader friends to join the sale too!

Draft2Digital to Distribute 500,000 Indie eBooks to Palace Marketplace, a Digital Content Marketplace for Libraries

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 15:37:00 +0000

Smashwords and Draft2Digital today announced a library distribution agreement with The Palace Project, operators of the Palace Marketplace. Palace Marketplace is used by librarians to acquire ebooks and audiobooks.

The Palace Project is a not-for-profit joint venture between Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and Lyrasis. Major funding for The Palace Project has been provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Starting on February 14, the first of an anticipated 500,000 ebook titles from Smashwords and Draft2Digital will begin appearing in Palace Marketplace, available for purchase by libraries. More than 50,000 of these ebooks, including many popular series starters, are priced at free.

Public library interest in independently published content has grown significantly in recent years. This growth has been fueled by patron demand as indie authors scale international bestseller lists and capture an ever-greater share of the book market.

The Palace Project views independently published books as strategically important to its mission of boosting equitable access to a greater diversity of digital content for library patrons.

To make it easier for libraries to quickly build their collections of high-quality indie ebooks, DPLA is developing curated, recommended buy-lists within Palace Marketplace. These thematic collections, created by librarians for librarians, are assembled by professional librarian members of the “DPLA Curation Corps.”

One of the big challenges The Palace Project seeks to solve is simplifying patron access to a library’s disparate ebook collections. Libraries often acquire their digital content from multiple suppliers. These suppliers include many of the same library platforms – such as OverDrive, Baker & Taylor Axis 360 and Bibliotheca cloudLibrary – that Draft2Digital also supplies.

The content purchased from these different platforms invariably becomes locked in silos that require patrons to use different apps and interfaces to access the collections. There’s no unified patron access. That is, until now.

To solve this problem, The Palace Project developed the Palace App. The Palace App, available for free download by library patrons for both iOS and Android devices (find it in your app store under the name, "The Palace Project"), aggregates patron access to their local library system’s formerly disparate digital collections. From this one Palace App, patrons can search for, check out, and read titles.

The Palace App was introduced in June 2022 and is experiencing rapid adoption by public libraries across the country. More than 400 library systems, including several state-wide systems from California to Connecticut, have already signed on to integrate the Palace App into their collections management systems.

Already, news of the deal is generating industry excitement. Earlier this morning Publishers Weekly covered the news - Palace Project, Draft2Digital Strike Deal to Offer Indie E-books to Libraries - with additional details about Palace Marketplace and DPLA's excitement to bring more indie ebooks to public libraries.

How Indies Can Distribute to Palace Marketplace

Authors who publish with either Smashwords or Draft2Digital can now take immediate advantage of this new library distribution opportunity.

Like other library platforms, Palace Marketplace accepts most categories of books except erotica. Books sold through Palace Marketplace are licensed as one checkout at a time, and will be distributed to US public libraries only.

Draft2Digital authors will earn 60% of their library ebook list price, a significant improvement over other library checkout platforms.

For Smashwords Authors: As defined in the Smashwords Terms of Service, all eligible Smashwords authors and publishers will receive automatic distribution to The Palace Project unless they’ve previously disabled automatic opt-ins from their Dashboard’s Channel Manager tool. Smashwords authors who choose not to distribute to The Palace Project can opt out any time in the next seven days before titles go live, or any time thereafter.

For Draft2Digital Authors: As is standard practice at Draft2Digital, authors and publishers must affirmatively opt in to Palace Marketplace to achieve distribution. The opt in is available starting today from the Draft2Digital dashboard.

Author Marketing Tips

All books distributed to Palace Marketplace will be discoverable for individual purchase by libraries.

To help drive library sales of your books, encourage your American readers to seek out your books at their local public library.

To help support the widespread adoption of Palace App, which makes your books more accessible to patrons whether they libraries purchase from Palace Marketplace or another library platform supplied by Smashwords and Draft2Digital, encourage readers to ask their local library this simple question: “Do you support the Palace App yet?”

For additional ideas on how indie authors can market their ebooks to public libraries, check out episode 6 of the Smart Author Podcast (21 minutes).

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Smashwords 2022 Year in Review and 2023 Preview

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 22:46:00 +0000

Welcome to my annual Smashwords 2022 year in review and 2023 preview.

2022 was a pivotal year for Smashwords, our authors, our publishers, and our readers.

For those who haven’t heard, Smashwords was acquired in March by our former competitor, Draft2Digital.

When I founded Smashwords 15 years ago, I set out on a crazy mission to change the way books were published, marketed, and sold. I wanted to publish authors that traditional publishers refused to publish, in a format (ebooks) that few readers were reading, and I wanted to offer this service at no cost to every writer in the world. And I wanted to do this without venture capital backing.

Traditional publishers were unable and disinterested to say yes to every author. We said yes.

We developed professional publishing tools any writer could use at no cost, and we opened distribution to major retailers and library platforms that were previously inaccessible to self-published authors. In partnership with our authors and readers, together we pioneered many of the essential best practices for digital bookselling.

Most importantly, in everything we did, we always fought to give authors higher royalties, more independence, and greater opportunities to reach readers. We've always believed that indie authors deserve complete control over their rights, publishing, distribution, pricing, and promotion. And we believe an author's chosen publisher deserves those freedoms as well.

From day one, as embodied in our original tag line, “your book, your way,” we believed that writers should have the freedom to publish what they want, and readers should have the freedom to read what they want.

This core philosophy of ours marked a radical departure from the old thinking that believed only traditional publishers and their gatekeepers had the wisdom to decide which books were worthy of being read by readers.

This authors-first, readers-first philosophy remains remarkably rare among publishers and publishing service providers today. Sure, many players pay lip service to this philosophy, but few deliver. One company that embraced our model and improved upon it better than anyone was Draft2Digital.

At the risk of sounding gushy, I think our first nine months as a combined company have gone extremely well. We share the same relentless commitment to put authors and readers first.

I think this is why our two companies and teams have meshed so well together. We each strengthened the other with new approaches and new perspectives to achieve our shared mission.

Our union is already bearing synergistic fruit for the collective benefit of our authors, publishers, readers, retailers, and library partners. And we’ve barely scratched the surface of what we’ll deliver for our constituents in 2023 and beyond.

As part of our business combination, I happily traded in my old CEO hat for a new role as Draft2Digital’s Chief Strategy Officer and board member. FWIW, I think Kris Austin, Draft2Digital’s co-founder and CEO, is a much better CEO. I think the entire team at Draft2Digital is awesome. They respect and admire authors as we always have.

Much of my time over the last nine months has focused on developing plans for how we can create ever-brighter futures for indie authors, publishers, and readers. I’m attacking this challenge with the same enthusiasm that inspired me to begin drafting the original Smashwords business plan back in 2005. If you thought Smashwords 1.0 set the stage for the indie author revolution, then wait for what’s in store with Draft2Digital 2.0. The best is yet to come as we work to place authors and readers at the center of publishing universe.

My other role here at Draft2Digital is overseeing the Smashwords store. As we previously announced at the merger, the first phase of our merger was to make it possible for Draft2Digital authors to distribute their books into the Smashwords Store. We successfully completed that first phase on December 6.

Considering this is the Smashwords blog, my future blogging here and my annual end-of-year reviews and look-aheads will become more store-centric. To follow what’s happening at our parent company, please subscribe to the Draft2Digital blog.

This is the first year in almost forever that I won’t be doing my annual predictions post and its “state of the indie nation” preamble. I’m redirecting that crystal ball energy into my other aforementioned responsibilities.

For the authors who looked forward to those posts each year and feel saddened by their end, I encourage you to revisit the prior posts, starting with last year's 2022 publishing predictions. You'll also find links there to all my prior predictions posts and preambles. There's still much evergreen gold to be mined by authors seeking to navigate the confusing and turbulent cross currents of this industry.

So now to the summary of Smashwords milestones for 2022 and our plans for 2023.

2022 Milestones

Smashwords Store – The Smashwords store achieved all-time record sales, turning in its sixth consecutive year of increased sales. During this same stretch to time, many other retailers have seen their ebook sales flat line or decline. Thank you authors and readers!
Books listed in the Smashwords Store – We now list 731,100 ebooks, up 24% from 590,200 at the end of 2021.
Words represented – We now carry 27.2 billion words, up 31% from 20.8 billion words a year ago.
Authors represented – We now carry the books of 192,100 authors, up 20% from 160,568 a year ago.
Merger completion - We announced Draft2Digital’s acquisition of Smashwords in February, and completed it on March 1.
Completed Phase 1 of our merger integration - The first priority we set was to open the Smashwords store to the books of D2D authors. This was completed December 6 thanks to amazing teamwork and effort at all levels of the company. More than 120,000 Draft2Digital books have already arrived at the Smashwords store, with more flowing in each week
Opened the Smashwords End of Year Sale to Draft2Digital authors - This was the first time we allowed books from another distributor to participate in one of our annual site-wide super sales. This allowed us to grow sale enrollment to 125,000 books, nearly twice our previous all-time record enrollment set during our July Summer/Winter sale earlier this year. More books means more readers and happier readers for benefit of all our authors.
Achieved record December sales volume - As I write this on New Year's Eve, the Smashwords store achieved the highest monthly sales volume in its 15-year history. If you're not yet distributing your ebooks to Smashwords, please join us by opening a Draft2Digital account today!

What’s coming to the Smashwords store in 2023

Phase 2 merger completion – In phase 2 of our merger integration, which we expect to complete in the first half of 2023, Draft2Digital will migrate Smashwords’ industry-leading book marketing tools – including Smashwords Coupons, Smashwords Presales, and Smashwords Interviews – over to the Draft2Digital dashboard. Once these features become available at Draft2Digital, we’ll initiate phase 3.
Phase 3 merger completion – In phase 3 of our merger integration, anticipated for completion in the second half of 2023, we’ll migrate all Smashwords publishing and distribution operations over to Draft2Digital. Ahead of this, likely in January or February 2023, we will stop accepting new author/publisher accounts at Smashwords. Instead, we will direct new authors and publishers who want to sell in the Smashwords store to publish directly at Draft2Digital. Current Smashwords authors and publishers can continue managing their publishing and distribution through their Smashwords Dashboard until Phase 3, at which point your publishing-related tools and interfaces will begin moving to Draft2Digital.
A better store-like shopping experience – After we migrate Smashwords publishing tools and operations over to Draft2Digital, we’ll remove those tools and their associated interfaces and documentation from the Smashwords website. This will give customers of the Smashwords store a cleaner, more intuitive book discovery experience.
Preorders – Smashwords has been distributing preorders to other retailers since 2013, but we’ve never allowed customers to place preorders in our own store. Last year I said we’d bring preorders to the Smashwords store in 2022. I was wrong. As we were nearing completion of this exciting project in early ‘22, the merger happened. Now we’re aiming to complete this in late 2023.
Broader ebook selection – Now that we’ve opened the store to Draft2Digital, look for an ever-expanding selection of great books in 2023.
Opening the store to other distributors - By late 2023, we’ll take steps to begin opening the store to other ebook distributors and to larger DRM-free ONIX-capable publishers too. This is all with an eye toward offering our store’s customers an even greater selection and diversity of titles in 2024 and beyond.
New blockbuster sales events – Smashwords is famous for our collaborative sales events, where tens of thousands of authors join together to show their appreciation to readers by offering exclusive deep-discounts, and to promote their fellow authors. Look for us to introduce one or two new annual sales events in 2023. Whereas our current site-wide sales include all genres and categories, these new super sales will be thematic. To start, I’d like to do one focused exclusively on erotica, and another focused on romance. If the new thematic sales gain the traction I expect, look for additional thematic site-wide sales in 2024. These new events are sure to become popular traditions right alongside our 14th annual Read an Ebook Week Sale coming March '23, our 15th annual Smashwords July Summer/Winter Sale coming in July '23, and of course our 7th annual Smashwords End of Year Sale next December '23.
More library distribution – With the completion of Phase 3 above, Smashwords will no longer serve as a distributor to retailers and library platforms. But ahead of Phase 3, Smashwords authors and publishers can look forward to a new, exciting library distribution opportunity we plan to announce sometime in the first quarter of 2023. It’s a new partner we’ve been working with behind the scenes since before the merger. We look forward to introducing you to them! Authors that publish at Draft2Digital will have access to this new partner as well.

In closing, I want to give my heartfelt thanks to everyone who has supported our crazy startup over the last 15 years. This includes current and former Smashwords team members; authors; publishers; readers; retailers; library partners; business partners; media; conference organizers; competitors; and industry supporters, mentors, critics, doubters, haters, and naysayers. You made us stronger and more successful, and set the stage for the positive innovations yet to come. My love and appreciation to you all!

With your continued support and partnership, there’s no limit to what we can achieve for authors, publishers, readers, and the culture of books.

On behalf of all of us at Draft2Digital, we wish you a joyous New Year’s celebration and fabulous 2023.

Draft2Digital Authors Can Now Distribute to the Smashwords Store

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 18:38:00 +0000

After nine months of intense development effort, over 100,000 authors and publishers at Draft2Digital can now distribute their 300,000 ebooks into the Smashwords store.

The news comes in time for these authors to participate in the 6th annual Smashwords End of Year sale, which promises to be our biggest ever. The sale kicks off December 15 and runs through January 1.

This important milestone marks the successful completion of the first phase of a three-phase roadmap following Draft2Digital's acquisition of Smashwords which completed in March of this year.

It's the first step in a dramatic transformation to come.

In phase 2, during the first half of 2023, we'll port Smashwords' industry-leading book marketing tools over to Draft2Digital, and in phase 3, scheduled for the second half of the year, we'll migrate all Smashwords authors and publishers over to Draft2Digital.

The completion of phase 3 will transform Smashwords from a primarily author-facing site into an a reader-facing store front. It will allow us to create a cleaner, simpler, and more enjoyable bookstore experience for readers.

This is also the first time that Smashwords has allowed the books from other distributors into our store. It won't be the last. Later in 2023 we hope to open the store to other other ONIX-capable distributors and publishers of DRM-free ebooks.

As new books and authors flow into the store, they bring with them more readers who can then discover our already-amazing selection of 600,000 and growing independently published ebooks.

The Smashwords store is on track to close out 2022 with our sixth consecutive year of sales growth. It's an impressive testament to the quality, diversity, and desirability of independently published ebooks.

You can read the full announcement over at the Draft2Digital blog.

Sixth Annual Smashwords End of Year Sale Begins December 15

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 22:41:00 +0000

The sixth annual Smashwords End of Year Sale kicks off December 15 and will run through January 1.

Enrollment is now open for Smashwords authors at https://www.smashwords.com/dashboard/sitewidePromos

Over the last 15 years at Smashwords, our site-wide sales have become popular annual traditions for readers and authors alike.

These sales are collaborative author marketing events. Thousands of indie authors and publishers join to promote these massive sales that routinely include 50,000 or more exclusive deals on deep-discounted titles, and that's not including the over 80,000 ebooks priced everyday at free.

This sixth year of the Smashwords End of Year Sale promises to be our largest EOY sale ever. It will be the first time indie ebooks from Draft2Digital authors and publishers will join the sale.

Draft2Digital authors will be able to enroll in the sale starting around December 6. This means thousands of new authors will have the opportunity to contribute tens of thousands of additional titles to the delight of Smashwords customers.

It's quite common for Smashwords customers to stuff their shopping carts with hundreds of dollars worth of deep-discounted titles during these sales. Since Smashwords authors earn 80% or more of the list price as their royalty for customer cart sizes over $9, it means even 99-cent ebooks often earn 80% list during these sales, as do higher-priced books.

Enjoy, and please invite your author and reader friends to join the sale too!

Shareable Images

Authors and readers can use these shareable images across social media to celebrate their participation in the Smashwords End of Year Sale.

Draft2Digital to Acquire Smashwords

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 15:41:00 +0000

Dear Friends of Smashwords,

This letter isn't a goodbye; it's a new hello.

Today we announced that Draft2Digital is acquiring Smashwords. We're joining together to do more for authors, publishers, and readers.

Fourteen years ago when I created Smashwords, I set out on a crazy mission to change the way books were published, marketed, and sold.

I wanted to empower every writer in the world with free tools to self-publish ebooks with pride, professionalism, and success. I wanted to give readers the freedom to enjoy the wonderful diversity of indie-published titles that I knew our publishing platform could help unleash.

Thanks to your trust and partnership, today 150,000 authors and publishers around the world use Smashwords to publish almost 600,000 ebooks. Nearly $200 million worth of Smashwords ebooks have been purchased at retail, and over $110 million paid out to authors and publishers. Many of our authors - authors who once couldn't get the time of day from agents and traditional publishers - became international bestsellers topping all the bestseller lists. The books published by Smashwords authors enriched the lives of authors and readers and inspired a new generation of tomorrow's writers.

The impact of our little startup reached far beyond the numbers. As a friend of Smashwords, you've been part of something really important.

Yet fourteen years later, I still feel like our mission is just getting started.

I'm super-excited about this combination with Draft2Digital, and I’m looking forward to broadening our mission in the service of authors, publishers, booksellers, readers, and books.

No, this acquisition doesn’t mean I’m running off to buy an island in the Caribbean. This will be an all-stock combination, meaning no money is changing hands. I’m investing our entire company into the new Draft2Digital, and together we’ll lead the next chapter of the indie publishing revolution.

Below you'll find our official press release and a detailed FAQ about the acquisition, which is expected to close on or about March 1.

If you have any questions about the acquisition, I invite you to attend a live online Q&A that I'm doing Wednesday with Kris Austin, Draft2Digital CEO. The live event will be recorded in case you miss it. You'll find details on how to attend in the press release below.

Thank you for your trust and partnership these last fourteen years. On behalf of the entire Smashwords team, we look forward to working with you in 2022 and beyond!

Best wishes,

Mark Coker
Founder
Smashwords

P.S. The press release and FAQ follow.

The Official Press Release

Draft2Digital to Acquire Smashwords, Creating
Self-Publishing Juggernaut

Combined Company will Publish and Distribute 800,000+ Titles from 250,000 Authors and Publishers

February 8, 2022—OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. and PACIFIC GROVE, Calif.—Draft2Digital, LLC and Smashwords, Inc., two pioneers in ebook self-publishing, today announced that Draft2Digital will acquire Smashwords. The acquisition unites the industry’s two most innovative and author-friendly publishing platforms into one, enabling the new Draft2Digital to drive even greater success for authors, publishers, and sales partners.

Draft2Digital and Smashwords are key catalysts behind the dramatic rise of self-publishing over the last fourteen years. Their publishing platforms enable 250,000 authors and publishers around the world to publish, distribute, market, and manage over 800,000 ebooks and 11,000 print on demand paperback books.

The combined company will operate under the Draft2Digital name and will be headquartered in Oklahoma City. All Smashwords and Draft2Digital employees are expected to join the combination.

Kris Austin, co-founder and CEO of Draft2Digital, will lead the combined company as CEO. Mark Coker, founder and former CEO of Smashwords, will join the Draft2Digital management team as Chief Strategy Officer and board member.

Both companies are entering the acquisition profitable and debt-free.

“I’m pleased to welcome Smashwords authors, publishers, employees and partners to the D2D family,” said Kris Austin. “Early in our discussions with Smashwords, we each immediately realized we can accomplish so much more for the indie author community by working together than working as competitors. The resources we once expended creating duplicative systems can now be redeployed to ramp up our R&D investments in next generation tools to empower authors and publishers.”

“I’m thrilled to join forces with Draft2Digital,” said Mark Coker. “Over the last decade, I’ve come to deeply admire Draft2Digital’s team, technology, and commitment to authors. Our shared business model is a key to our two companies’ success. We put authors first. By design, we only make money when our authors make money. This aligns our interests with the interests of our authors. Together we will lead the next chapter of the indie author revolution.”

The combination is expected to yield significant benefits for authors, publishers, retail and library partners, and readers.

· Draft2Digital authors will gain access to the Smashwords Store and its myriad exclusive book marketing tools, including Smashwords Coupons, self-serve merchandising, Author Interviews, and the patent pending Smashwords Presales tool for book launches. Sales at the Smashwords Store have grown consecutively each of the last five years, with December 2021 sales up 20% over December 2020. Draft2Digital’s erotica authors can look forward to expanded distribution enabled by Smashwords’ proprietary erotica certification system, which allows retailers to carry erotic romance and mainstream erotica with greater confidence.

· Smashwords authors will gain access to new tools that simplify print and digital publishing and drive greater success. Among these tools are D2D Print, the company’s Print on Demand service for paperbacks (currently in beta, which authors can join at https://draft2digital.com/printbeta/); improved metadata management tools for better book discoverability at retailers; automated end-matter for series books; payment splitting for co-authors and collaborations; and more payment options, including direct bank deposits.

· Retailers and libraries served by the companies can expect greater title selection and unmatched merchandising recommendations. The new, merged company will offer retailers, subscription services, and libraries unprecedented data-driven insights into the world’s largest dedicated catalog of independently published books. This represents a unique and first-of-its-kind offering that Draft2Digital believes will improve the publishing industry.

· Customers of the Smashwords Store can look forward to an improved store experience and an increased selection of books from the many great authors and publishers distributed by Draft2Digital.

“This acquisition is great news for indie authors,” said Joanna Penn, host of the Creative Penn podcast and bestselling author who has followed each company since its founding. “Two of the industry’s strongest advocates for indie authors are combining their unique toolsets, technologies, and energy to do more for the indie community. There are exciting years ahead!”

What’s Coming Next

The acquisition is expected to close on March 1, 2022.

To minimize workflow disruption for authors, publishers, and sales partners, the two platforms will combine their systems in gradual and incremental steps.

Authors and publishers of both companies can continue utilizing their current platform of choice with the understanding that over time the authors and publishers of both companies will gain access to a common dashboard, common distribution outlets (including distribution to the Smashwords Store for current D2D authors), and an expanded suite of new and improved tools for book publishing, distribution, and marketing.

Draft2Digital will broadcast a live Q&A session (view the recording here on YouTube) for authors and publishers on Wednesday, February 9^th, at Noon Central, with Kris Austin and Mark Coker, moderated by Kevin Tumlinson, Draft2Digital’s VP of Marketing & PR. Kris and Mark will share additional insight about their plans to support the indie publishing community and welcome questions from the audience.

Visit https://D2DLive.com for links and launch time, and to attend live on either Facebook or YouTube. The live broadcast will be recorded for future inclusion in the Draft2Digital podcast, Self Publishing Insiders, and will be available as a blog post at Draft2Digital.com/blog.

Additional FAQs about the acquisition can be found at:

https://smashwords.com/united

https://draft2digital.com/united

About Draft2Digital

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Oklahoma City, Draft2Digital is the world’s leading publishing platform for self-published authors and independent presses. The company offers a broad suite of free and powerful automated and self-serve tools that authors and publishers can use to build and grow their publishing businesses. This includes tools to simplify ebook and print publishing, distribution, metadata management, and marketing. Following its acquisition of Smashwords, Draft2Digital will serve more than 250,000 authors and publishers that collectively publish over 800,000 books worldwide. Visit Draft2Digital at https://draft2digital.com or follow on Twitter @Draft2Digital.

About Smashwords, Inc.

Founded in 2008 by Mark Coker, Smashwords was an early pioneer in ebook self-publishing. The company’s platform made it possible for writers to professionally produce, publish, and distribute ebooks at no cost. As a distributor, Smashwords was the first to open multiple major retailers and library ebook services to self-published authors, and worked in partnership with sales partners and payment processors to establish systems, standards, and professional best practices to foster a thriving ecosystem of indie-friendly booksellers and libraries. As of December 31, 2021, Smashwords was publishing 590,000 ebooks supplied by 150,000 authors, publishers and literary agents. The company was originally headquartered in Los Gatos, Calif, and most recently based in Pacific Grove, Calif. Visit Smashwords at https://smashwords.com, or follow the store at @Smashwords.

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FAQ Regarding Draft2Digital Acquisition of Smashwords

Draft2Digital and Smashwords are Uniting!

General questions:

Q: Who is Draft2Digital?

Draft2Digital is known for being “self-publishing with support,” and since 2012, the company has established a positive, glowing reputation in the author community. D2D is known for building tools and resources that answer indie author and publisher needs, with beautiful and functional design and responsive customer service.

Draft2Digital and Smashwords are so similar, it’s almost as if we sprouted from the same seed. And in many ways, we did.

Both companies, from the start, have been dedicated to building tools and services that make publishing fast, easy, and best of all, free. We only make money when our authors make money—a business model that puts authors first. The best business model we know.

Like Smashwords, Draft2Digital is one of the world’s largest distributors serving self-published authors and independent presses, with a global reach for ebook distribution. But D2D is about more than just ebooks.

Draft2Digital has an exciting Print on Demand solution for indie authors that Smashwords founder Mark Coker thinks will prove to be just as disruptive to print publishing over the next few years as Smashwords was to ebook publishing 14 years ago.

By combining the two companies into one, the new Draft2Digital can invest more into research and development (R&D), aimed at innovating and inventing more next-generation tools services and offerings, and to meet more author needs.

The combination of Smashwords and Draft2Digital is a historic step toward our shared mission to drive greater success for self-published authors, independent publishers, and our distribution partners.

Q: What’s the name of the merged company?

A: The two companies will operate under the name of Draft2Digital. In the near term, Smashwords will continue to operate under its current name. Over time, Draft2Digital will become the name of the publishing platform, and Smashwords will remain as the brand for the Smashwords Store.

Q: When will the acquisition complete?

The close of the acquisition is expected to happen on March 1, 2022, after which the work of integrating the two companies begins.

Q: What will the combined company look like?

Following the acquisition, Draft2Digital will represent a combined 250,000 authors and publishers that use the company’s tools to publish, distribute, and manage over 880,000 ebooks and 11,000 print books (and growing). The combined company will employ over thirty people across the United States and Canada, and will maintain its corporate headquarters in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Q: Why are the companies merging?

A: The decision to merge came down to a simple question: Can we drive greater success for our authors, publishers and sales channels by working together, or by working apart as competitors?

To answer this question, we considered:

Both companies share common roots, missions, and values
Both companies were founded by writers to empower writers to become professional publishers
Both companies are expert at building free and powerful self-serve tools for authors
We’ve both built sophisticated distribution systems that help booksellers and libraries efficiently stock, merchandise and sell indie books
Both companies have built profitable businesses
We each built our successful businesses not by selling services to authors, but by helping authors and publishers publish, distribute, and market with greater efficiency and success

All of this led to our decision to merge both companies. The resources we once invested in building duplicative systems can now be redeployed to do more for all authors.

Q: What happens next for the authors and publishers of both companies?

A: As of March 1, 2022, if you’re an author or publisher with either Draft2Digital or Smashwords, there’s nothing you need to do; it will be business as usual. Over time, publishing and distribution systems for both Smashwords and Draft2Digital will be integrated onto the Draft2Digital website.

As a result, authors with both services will gain big benefits:

New sales partners will become available to authors
D2D authors and publishers will be able to list and sell their books in the Smashwords Store.
D2D authors will also gain access to exclusive book marketing tools from Smashwords, including Smashwords Coupons, the patent-pending Smashwords Presales tool, Smashwords Interviews, and self-serve merchandising in the Smashwords Store.
The Smashwords publishing platform operations and publisher Dashboard will be merged into Draft2Digital’s, with the goal of preserving the best capabilities of each.

At each stage of the integration, we’ll aim to make the transition as smooth and effortless as possible for our combined authors, publishers, store and library partners, and readers.

Q: What happens to the staff at both companies?

A: This is an acquisition of opportunity, not necessity. Because we are two successful companies coming together, all Smashwords employees, including founder Mark Coker, are joining the D2D team, and the D2D team will remain intact.

Kris Austin, co-founder of Draft2Digital, will serve as CEO of the combined company, and Mark Coker will join the senior management team as Chief Strategy Officer and board member.

Q: Is the new Draft2Digital Hiring?

A. Yes! New growth means new opportunities!

Know any great software developers or customer support professionals who want to join our growing company? Visit https://draft2digital.com/careersto learn more.

Authors & Publishers

Q: How will the acquisition affect my books in distribution?

A: We will work with our sales partners to minimize any impact on book listings, listing web addresses, and reviews.

Q: Each company distributes to sales outlets not reached by the other. Will I have access to all sales channels?

A: Yes! Once our distribution systems are merged, authors will be able to opt-in to any and all sales and library partners currently offered by either Draft2Digital or Smashwords.

Q: Each company’s ebook publishing process is slightly different. How will the process change for me if I prefer one or the other?

A: We’re combining approaches to give you more options and flexibility!

Both companies allow authors and publishers to upload a professionally designed .epub file. However, the way each company handles conversion from Word or RTF files is a bit different.

We will be preserving both the granular flexibility of custom manuscript styling from Smashwords and the streamlined, automated professional layout and templates from Draft2Digital. This means that authors and publishers get the best of both worlds, with options to use either method.

Q: Can you summarize the unique tool sets of each company that you anticipate making available to all authors?

A: Yes! Both companies offer robust tools for:

Distribution
Marketing
Sales reporting
Tax reporting
Metadata management

When these tools are integrated, Draft2Digital will seek to combine the best elements of each.

Both companies also offer unique tools not offered by the other:

Simpler publishing tools; tools for automated end-matter
Books2Read Universal Book Links (UBLs), Author Pages, Book Tabs, and Reading Lists
D2D Print for POD paperbacks (Visit https://draft2digital.com/printbeta/ to be included in the beta)
D2D Payment Splitting for co-authors and collaborations
New payment options, including direct bank deposits

D2D authors and publishers can expect to gain access to:

The Smashwords Store
Smashwords Coupons
Smashwords Presales
Self-serve merchandising
Author Interviews

D2D erotic romance and erotica authors will also gain access to the Smashwords erotica certification system (see next item).

Q: What are the erotic fiction policies of the new company?

A: Each retailer, subscription service, or library platform has its own content policies. Draft2Digital will adopt the existing Smashwords erotic fiction policies for these platforms.

A few years ago, Smashwords introduced a certification system that allows erotic fiction publishers to self-certify the presence (or lack thereof) of various facets of erotica that are generally recognized as “taboo.” This accurate, more granular categorization provides retailers and libraries with the confidence they need to know that the erotic literature they’re selling doesn’t violate their policies.

The Smashwords Erotic Fiction Certification System will be made available to all Draft2Digital authors.

Q: Will the erotica policies change in the Smashwords Store?

A: Smashwords has a long history of supporting the erotic fiction community. No changes are anticipated to the policies documented at https://www.smashwords.com/about/tos, nor have there been any changes in the last four years.

The policies on permitted, discouraged, and forbidden erotica categories remain in effect. The Smashwords Store has a more permissive approach to taboo erotica than most ebook stores. The store gives customers unprecedented control over the types of erotica, if any, that appear in their search results.

Q: What does the acquisition mean for existing store and library partners?

As the leading distributors of independently published ebooks, both companies have always worked in close partnership with major ebook retailers and library platforms to help them list, promote, and profit from the amazing diversity of indie ebooks.. We help our authors succeed by helping our sales partners succeed!

Q: Is the new Draft2Digital looking to expand its distribution network to new sales partners?

Absolutely! As a distributor, we’re always looking to support promising new booksellers and bookselling models. Given the size of our catalog, we can give new sales channels the critical mass they need to build businesses around our authors’ books. Draft2Digital and Smashwords have rigorous qualification procedures to ensure that new sales partners meet our high standards and requirements.

Potential sales channels can ask to be connected to the Draft2Digital Operations team at support@draft2digital.com.

###

2022 Publishing Predictions – Indies Take Center Stage

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 02:13:00 +0000

Welcome to my annual publishing predictions where I reflect upon the state of the indie nation and make predictions for the year ahead.

Also, don't miss today's companion post, my annual Smashwords Year in Review and Preview for 2022.

How has the pandemic changed the publishing landscape? What does a post pandemic world look like for indie authors and publishers? How has the pandemic changed readers’ relationship with books? I’ll explore these and other questions as we look ahead to 2022.

As I prepare to press publish on the last day of 2021, Covid infections are hitting record levels. A New York Times headline from yesterday screams, “Meltdown!” as Omicron infections surge to record levels, causing temporary staffing shortages across multiple sectors of the economy.

Equally concerning, deep rifts have formed during the pandemic over the nature of reality. These disagreements have strained relationships with friends and family, and amplified social and political divides. It seems everyone is feeling some measure of anger, fear, hurt and resentment.

Yet amid this chaos and conflict, I see reasons for optimism. Evidence is mounting that the Omicron variant causes less severe infection. And early research out of South Africa this week found that the antibodies created by the body’s immune response to Omicron may confer partial protection against prior, more deadly variants. If further data confirms these findings, it means we’re much closer to the end of this pandemic than the beginning.

The State of the Indie Nation

It’s impossible to separate the state of the indie nation from the state of humanity.

Unless you’re a maker of vaccines, respirators, or caskets, it’s difficult to find a silver lining in the biologic, psychologic and economic trauma that has been Covid.

You’re an author and publisher, but you’re a human first. This experience has affected you, too.

Those of us who survived this pandemic will live out the rest of our lives in the shadow of its memory. All of us will carry some level of anger, anxiety, resentment, and sorrow we’ll need to overcome before we can feel normal again. Any one of these distinct emotions can be debilitating all by itself. In combination, the path to emotional recovery is even steeper.

Herein lies the opportunity for indie authors.

One common quality I observe in fellow authors is the ability to feel deeply. Authors and publishers are an extension of humanity’s nervous system. We help humanity see, feel, and understand. Many of you are empaths. Empathic sensitivity is a superpower for writers. It can also be your kryptonite when you take on others’ pain as your own. Now you will tap into both.

Millions of readers turned to books to help them cope with this pandemic. Your books provided readers comfort when they needed comfort, companionship when they were lonely, distraction when they needed distraction, and a smile when they needed a smile.

Your work has always been important. In the year ahead, your work becomes even more important.

Between now and the time this pandemic finally sputters to a close, humanity will re-emerge from its collective bunkers, eager to reconnect with the world but feeling wounded and disoriented from their experience.

Humanity is in need of healing. People will look to books to assist their spiritual and emotional recovery. They will need books that give them hope and inspiration. They will need books that help make sense of the world. Books that help them feel normal again.

You are the creator of books. You have a critically important role to play in the healing to come.

Now on to the predictions.

Mark Coker's 2022 Publishing Predictions

Book consumption remains robust – As we enter the third year of the pandemic, millions of readers have become re-habituated to the joys of reading. Habits are difficult to break. After two years of spending more time reading and less time outside the home engaged in other activities, the habit of reading will stick as life returns to a new normal. Both print and digital (ebooks and audiobooks) formats will see solid sales in 2022.

Books become more important than ever – During the pandemic, readers found much-needed comfort, distraction, recreation, and value in books. Books are a healthy salve to numb the feelings of isolation and anxiety during pandemic life. Your readers after the pandemic might be the same readers as before the pandemic, but what they need from your books may change in subtle but important ways.

Books that heal will sell well in 2022 - Healing will be a major underlying theme of 2022. After two-plus years of pandemic living, every human with a pulse will be working through some form of post-traumatic stress. Books that bolster emotional well-being will be in higher demand. I’m not just talking about non-fiction self-help about overcoming grief, or books on spirituality. Fiction is a powerful vehicle for healing too, and it doesn’t matter if you write sci-fi, thrillers, romance, or erotica. Put yourself in the shoes of the emotionally wounded. Imagine the stories that will inspire or give hope and understanding to those who’ve suffered through the emotional trauma of the pandemic. Give your characters these same challenges, and light the path for them to overcome these challenges (or not!). Make it real. For ideas to incorporate into your stories, you can burrow into your readers’ psyches by studying the science behind grieving and PTSD, and the recovery options for each.

Indies will publish tomorrow’s post-pandemic classics – With over 150,000 writers in the Smashwords stable, I’m confident many of you have the talent to pull this off. You’re a first person witness to a once-in-a-century calamity. You have a unique perspective. When tragedies strike, writers rise to the occasion to help us make sense of it all, or at the minimum, to record for posterity what life was like during this time. From this trove of writing fodder will emerge new classics that future historians will label as the definitive accounts of this period of the Great Covid Pandemic. You’re living history, now take the challenge to write it. Write that classic in your genre and you’ll be the writer readers read long after we’re all gone. How’s that for immortality?

More book buying shifts online – During the pandemic, the shift to ecommerce accelerated. More consumers shifted more of their consumption from physical retail to online across multiple categories of products, ranging from groceries to automobiles to books. Many of those customers will continue transitioning more purchasing to online. This bodes well for indie authors, since your books have democratized access to the virtual shelves of online retailers and library ebook platforms. This then will further level the playing field between indie publishers and traditional publishers by negating the brick and mortar retail advantage that is now the primary domain of large publishers.

More authors embrace print on demand – With print on demand (POD), your book is printed after the customer orders it. POD offers myriad advantages to authors, publishers and readers. For authors and publishers, single-copy prints and small print runs are economical. POD eliminates the need to pay for and carry unsold inventory, and your book never goes out of print. By offering your book in print as well as digital, you increase the accessibility and desirability of your book to readers who prefer print, or who want to purchase both. Indie authors have historically made print publishing a secondary priority to ebooks. POD’s setup expenses, which for most indies involves additional investment in graphic design and interior book design, do make the current state of the art in POD more costly than the low-cost and simplicity of ebook publishing, but this is changing as the technology improves. With more book buying shifting online, POD makes more sense for indies than ever, especially considering that 75% of book sales by dollar volume go to print.

Auto-narrated audiobooks – At Smashwords, we’re big fans of audiobooks, which is why we formed our partnership with Findaway three years ago to handle audiobook production and distribution for our authors. Yet the cost of professional audiobook production is still out of reach for most indies. Even bestselling indies find it cost-prohibitive to invest the thousands of dollars it takes to produce a professional audiobook. Wouldn’t it be great if you could click a button to convert your ebook into an audiobook? That day is not far away. Auto-narrated books have been around for a while. The Daisy Consortium, which oversees the epub standard, has done a lot of great work over the years on what they call “talking books,” drawing upon Daisy’s roots as an organization committed to making books more accessible for the vision impaired. Yet their synthetic voices are still first-generation, not much better than Stephen Hawking’s synthetic voice. Now the second generation is coming. Thanks to artificial intelligence advancements in text-to-speech technology, it’s now possible to create more natural sounding audiobook experiences for customers at a fraction of the cost – for free, actually. In December 2020, Google previewed what they call, “Auto-narrated audiobooks,” a free solution that allows ebook authors to convert their ebook into an audiobook. Authors can select from a range of different narration voices and styles. It’ll be interesting to see if other major ebook retailers follow Google’s lead. While Google’s technology isn’t perfect, it’s still quite impressive (listen to samples here). And because it’s all based on rapidly-improving technology, we can expect the quality you hear now will improve dramatically in the next few years.

By the end of 2022, most writers conferences resume – Writers conferences provide an essential service to authors. Conferences are where writers learn essential best practices, make industry connections, and find community with fellow members of their author tribe. With most conferences canceled or on hiatus the last two years, it’s created a knowledge void, especially among newer indies who are still learning the ropes. It created a void of community as well. Writers need other writers. By the latter half of 2022, more writers will feel safe enough to mix and mingle in large crowds, thereby allowing more conferences to resume normal operation.

Scribd goes public in 2022 – In July 2021, Bloomberg News broke a story claiming Scribd was planning a billion-dollar initial public offering for as early as late 2021. That didn’t happen, and I have no inside knowledge as to the timing of a potential IPO. However, I do have insight into Scribd’s historical sales volume for Smashwords’ books. For years here on the blog and elsewhere I have celebrated their impressive growth. I’m excited about this potential IPO, not just for what it means for our well-deserving friends at Scribd, but also for what it means for our authors. By going public, Scribd will amass a war chest of cash to invest in their business to the benefit of indie authors. Readers who’ve read my prior analysis on Scribd’s subscription model vs. others know that Scribd’s model is more author-friendly. Good luck, Scribd!

Spotify enters ebook market – File this under long-shots. In November, Spotify entered the audiobook market in a big way by acquiring Smashwords partner Findaway, citing, among other things, the work they do with indie authors. One of Findaway’s missions is to offer a more author-friendly alternative to Amazon’s Audible, which has come under fire in recent years for their treatment of indie authors. With Spotify making a commitment to bring audiobooks to their nearly 200 million paid subscribers, they’re one simple step away from entering ebooks too, if they choose. Spotify’s current focus is audio. If they do enter the ebook market (they’d be smart to acquire Scribd, which would make them an overnight force in ebooks), it will reconfigure the power balance in the market. Such an entry would make the book content of indie authors more valuable than ever, since lower cost indie ebooks are what make the subscription model viable. As an indie author, you want your work to be recognized as valuable, because your value gives you leverage to grow and protect your publishing business.

Subscription takes more market share from single-copy sales – File this one under things that are already happening, but will pick up steam in 2022. Just as print, audio, and ebook are three great consumption formats for books, subscription is a great consumption method alongside single-copy purchases. In the long run, I think subscription will become the most popular consumption method among power-readers, much in the same way streaming media services such as Netflix have supplanted DVD purchases and rentals.

Indie content is king in 2022 – Any retailer or subscription service that wants to be competitive in the ebook market faces the same challenge: how to lower the cost they pay for ebooks so they can offer more reading pleasure to their customers at less cost. Since indie ebooks are priced much lower than traditionally published ebooks, it means indie ebooks will continue to be of high strategic value to every retailer, especially to the subscription services. Every major retailer or subscription service has strong incentive to forge closer relationships with indie authors.

That’s it for my 2022 predictions. I hope these predictions stir your imagination and give you productive ideas for your publishing business in 2022. What are your predictions? Please share in the comments below.

On behalf of the entire team at Smashwords, we wish you, your family, and everyone in our indie community the best of health, happiness, and prosperity in the year ahead.

Summary of Prior Publishing Prediction Posts by Mark Coker

2021 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2020)
2020 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2019)
2019 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2018)
2018 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2017)
2017 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2016)
2016 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2015)
2015 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2014)
2014 Publishing Predictions (Published December 30, 2013)
and Huffington Post (Published January 7, 2014)
2013 Publishing Predictions (Published Dec 21, 2012)
2011 Predictions at GalleyCat (Published Dec 28, 2010)
10-Year Predictions at GalleyCat (Published Jan 4, 2010)

Smashwords 2021 End of Year Review and 2022 Preview

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 02:12:00 +0000

Welcome to my 2021 Smashwords year in review and 2022 preview.

Wow. Our 14th year of business operation. Thank you Smashwords authors, publishers, readers, and channel partners!

Don't miss my annual companion post, 2022 Publishing Predictions – Indies Take Center Stage.

As I mentioned in my predictions post today, 2021 was another good year to be an indie publisher, due in part to pandemic-inspired changes to reading habits. The higher sales levels many authors experienced in 2020 continued into 2021, and will likely continue into 2022 for the reasons I outline in the other post.

What have we been up to at Smashwords in 2021? Here are some highlights, as well as some broad stroke hints of where we’re focused for 2022.

Smashwords 2021 Milestones

Books published – We now publish 590,200 books; up 6.0% from 556,800 books at the end of 2020.

Words published – We now publish 20.8 billion words, up 1.1 billion from 19.7 billion a year ago; representing a 5.5% increase.

Authors served – We’re now serving 160,568 authors and publishers; up 4.2% from 154,100 a year ago.

Smashwords Presales - Our patent-pending Smashwords Presales feature, which we launched in December 2019, continues to gain traction with early adopters. The number of presale events we hosted increased 25% in 2021 compared to the full year of 2020, and dollar sales volume increased 49%. This growth is off of a relatively small base, but I like the direction things are headed and look forward to growing this further in 2022. Thank you Smashwords authors for your feedback on those automated surveys we send you each time you set up and complete your presale event. Your feedback will guide future development.

Smashwords Store – Even though it’s a small portion of our business, our store recorded its fifth consecutive year of increased sales. Thank you authors and customers!

Smashwords Highlights for 2021

Series promotion – In February, we added a new email alert that allows customers of the Smashwords Store to be notified when a new book is published into a series they’ve previously expressed interest in (purchasing an earlier book of the series, or by adding one or more books in that series to their Wishlist in their Smashwords Library).

Sales reporting – In March, we introduced weekly email alerts to inform authors and publishers about new sales reports from the retailers. In October, based on author feedback, we updated the emails to link to a pre-sorted version of our Sales & Payments Report page, making it easy to identify the recent sales. Also in October, we updated the sales reports to display the country location (anonymized to protect customer privacy, of course!) of Smashwords Store customers, when known.

More book categories – Throughout the year, we added many more book subcategory options for romance and erotica authors. The new subcategories increase discoverability.

Faster deliveries to OverDrive – At Smashwords, we often deliver you book updates to retailers and library partners within minutes of you making an update, assuming the channel partner is able to accept updates at such frequency. In March, following OverDrive’s green light, we moved from a once-weekly delivery schedule to one per day.

New tutorial videos – In the last quarter of this year, we began rolling out new tutorial videos to make the tools and capabilities of the Smashwords Store and publishing platform more accessible to authors and customers. For an example, check out the tutorial you'll find within your Dashboard's Series Manager tool (labeled “tutorial” over to the right). More tutorials are planned for 2022.

More control over series pages – One of the neat things about publishing a series at Smashwords is that we create a dedicated sales page for your series in the Smashwords Store. In October, we updated the series pages so authors and publishers can control the default sort order of how their titles are displayed to customers. For example, if the series books can be read in any order, some authors may choose to list their newest book first. This feature was suggested by a Smashwords author. Keep those suggestions coming!

New upload interface – After almost 14 years with the same single-page upload form for publishing ebooks, in October we began beta testing an all-new upload interface. It adopts a more modern, multi-step approach. It’s more intuitive, and it integrates ISBN assignment into the publishing process so you don’t need to do that as a second step after you publish. Most exciting to us is what’s beneath the surface. The new publishing interface’s back end is completely redesigned, and sets the foundation for us to add additional cool features in the future. The new interface is now live and available to everyone. We will maintain access to the original classic interface for a period of time so Smashwords authors and publishers have time to transition their customary workflow to the new interface.

What’s Coming in 2022

Preorders coming to the Smashwords Store – This is big news for us, and this here is my first public disclosure of it. As most Smashwords authors and publishers know, we’ve been huge advocates of preorders as an essential best practice ever since we introduced the option back in 2013. Books that are listed first as preorders sell significantly more copies! Yet we never had the ability to accept preorder orders from customers at the Smashwords Store. That will change in 2022. We’re aiming for a Q2 launch. If we complete the project earlier we’ll certainly try to get it to you sooner.

eBook Publishing - On the ebook publishing side of things, we’ll continue to direct our energy toward initiatives we believe will yield our authors and publishers the greatest gains in terms of sales opportunity, time-savings, and ease of use.

Distribution - On the distribution side of our business, we’re always looking for opportunities to help our retail and library partners sell more of your books. We’re also always looking for opportunities to expand your distribution.

Smashwords Store - We're planning to make the store more store-like. Right now the Smashwords website serves as the front end to both a publishing platform and a store. We know this is confusing to customers of the store – the people who buy books – so we’re planning to streamline the experience in 2022.

Surprises - Surprises are fun, so we'll have a big surprise or two planned for 2022.

Thank you Smashwords authors, publishers, readers, retailers, libraries, and industry friends for your continued trust, support, and partnership. It’s our sincere honor to work with you.

Happy New Year!

Smashwords End of Year Sale Kicks off December 17

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 08:52:00 +0000

The fifth annual Smashwords End of Year Sale starts this Friday, December 17, running through January 1. For these last two weeks of the year, tens of thousands of indie ebooks will be priced at exclusive discounts of 25%, 50%, 75%, and even free.

Smashwords authors and publishers can enroll their tiles from the home page or go directly to https://www.smashwords.com/dashboard/sitewidePromos

Entire catalogs can be opted in at once.

Starting December 17, readers will find the sale prominently promoted at the top of the Smashwords home page, from which they can enter an entire section of our store dedicated to participating titles.

These sales are always a lot of fun. It's the time of year we see customers' virtual shopping carts filled to the brim with dozens, sometimes even hundreds of new books as they try new authors and stock up on their favorites.

Thank you Smashwords customers for supporting the hard work of Smashwords authors and publishers. Happy holidays everyone.

2021 Publishing Predictions – Pandemic Reshapes Publishing, Accelerates Consolidation

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 21:41:00 +0000

Welcome to my annual publishing predictions post, where I recap the state of the indie nation and share publishing predictions for the year ahead.

Also check out my annual Smashwords Year in Review and Preview of 2021.

The purpose of these predictions is to focus our attention on the future.

Some of my predictions will inspire you, and others might surprise or anger you. That’s the point. By imagining potential futures, you can work to shape the future you desire.

Although it’s easy for an individual author to feel powerless against the broader forces of this industry, the opposite is true. Authors hold great power. The collective actions of authors determine the direction of this industry and the exciting opportunities you’ll find within it.

Your future success can be distilled down to four high level factors:

The foundations you laid for yourself in the past (skills, training, experience, past actions).
The actions you take today.
The future actions taken by others in the publishing industry.
Black Swan events that come out of nowhere to cause abrupt and massive shifts in direction.

My friend Jennifer Leggio sports a
prophetic dumpster fire costume in 2019.

You control the first two factors. For the third factor, through your mentorship and conversations with fellow authors, publishers, retailers and service providers, you influence the direction of the industry. You have minimal influence over the fourth category of Black Swan events, though with proper planning and diversification you can make your publishing business more resilient to unexpected shocks.

When I look back at the raging dumpster fire that was 2020, I find it impossible to separate a discussion of publishing futures from a discussion of the unfolding Black Swan event that is COVID-19.

If COVID-19 teaches us anything, it’s that our fates are intertwined. Whether we’re talking viruses or indie authorship, we are all neighbors. We share the same air. Take care of your indie author neighbors and all who support them.

The State of the Indie Nation

COVID-19 was a Black Swan event that continues to have enormous impact on authors, readers and retailers. It created new winners and losers, and it accelerated the progression of several entrenched trends in publishing, while pausing or redirecting other trends.

For most indie authors, 2020 was an up year for ebook sales after several years of decline. I find it difficult to celebrate this achievement when we consider the cost.

2020 started weak for indie authors, with most ebook retailers experiencing year over year sales declines for the first two months of the year. This marked a continuation of a multi-year trend of lackluster ebook sales exacerbated by rampant devaluation pressures in a slow-growth industry. I'll explore some of these pressures later in the post.

COVID-19 reversed that lackluster sales trend in March.

As I discussed back in June for my special edition mid-year predictions post, Post-pandemic publishing for indie authors, indie ebook authors found themselves well-positioned to meet surging ebook demand from readers who were home-bound by choice, unemployment or government mandate. Sales moderated somewhat as the year progressed and people returned to work.

Democratization vs. Authoritarianism

In a democracy, power lies with the people. With authoritarianism, power is consolidated under the control of a single supreme leader. Authoritarians come to power when the people surrender their power.

I founded Smashwords 13 years ago to enable freedom of expression and author self-determination. I wanted to democratize publishing by breaking down the barriers to publication and retail distribution. I wanted to empower any writer anywhere to self-publish at no cost and control their own rights, production, pricing and promotion. And I wanted to give the readers – not gatekeeping publishers – the freedom to choose what was worth reading.

The old world of publishing was somewhat authoritarian by nature. A small group of powerful publishers dictated which writers would become published authors, which books were distributed to retailers, and how much authors would earn for their labor.

Authoritarianism is the opposite of democratization.

In recent years, we’ve witnessed a troubling rise in authoritarian tendencies here in the US. The US isn’t the only country facing this challenge.

When people are hurting and losing hope, they become susceptible to nihilistic thinking. This makes people ripe for exploitation by the siren call of authoritarian leaders. Authoritarians promise overly simplistic solutions to complex problems. Never mind that more often than not, their tainted remedies exacerbate the very reality their supporters seek to escape.

There’s always been a dramatic income inequality gap in publishing, even though few think of it in these explicit terms. It’s time we acknowledge this as an industry. A few authors do really well, and the vast majority live hand to mouth as they struggle to find their next reader.

No, I’m not advocating socialism for my fellow Americans haunted by the ghosts of Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez. There’s nothing wrong with some books selling better than others. Excellence should be rewarded.

As I share in this post and many that preceded it, I’m concerned about greater forces at play working to steal power from indie authors. These forces have been persistent, increasing, and well-documented for many years.

As I discussed in my podcast episode, The Indie Author Manifesto, ever since Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, there have been forces that seek to control the power of the printed word.

Although indie authors benefited this year from COVID-19 in the form of stronger ebook sales, the pandemic also altered the power structure of the publishing industry in ways that will amplify future inequalities and jeopardize author independence.

Physical bookstores were big losers in the pandemic, while enormous power consolidated around a small number of major online platforms such as Facebook, Amazon and Google. These dominant platforms wield their supreme power to stand between you and your audience.

We've traded one group of authoritarian overlords for another. These platforms are the new gatekeepers for indie authors.

But rather than gatekeeping an author’s books based on editorial quality, author reputation, sales potential, or relevance to the reader, they gatekeep based on the author’s willingness and ability to pay for access to those readers. The payment comes in the form of paid advertising, and in the particular case of Amazon, pressure to accept additional concessions such as reduced royalties, control, and distribution.

I’m concerned that far too many authors have been hurting for far too long, and this hurt is forcing short term thinking that undermines the long term opportunity for all authors.

Here in the US, it’s becoming all too common to turn on the television and witness the modern day equivalent of Depression-era bread lines, with thousands of people lined up in their cars, waiting for food assistance. My mom, who volunteers at a homeless shelter to distribute food here in the San Francisco Bay Area, tells me donations are way down while the need for assistance has skyrocketed.

Although COVID-19 is the immediate trigger for the sudden unemployment and destitution of millions of families, income inequality is more to blame. Too many people here are living too close to the financial edge. This holds true for authors as well.

When someone’s living hand to mouth, uncertain if they'll make their next meal or mortgage payment, they don’t have the luxury to think long term. This further perpetuates the cycle of short term decision-making which leads to greater exploitation and lost independence. Your decisions are your votes for the future.

So ask yourself: Are you okay that a multi-billion dollar publishing industry continues to profit on the backs of starving artists?

Are you okay that Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon – the company whose business model is predicated upon nickel and diming its suppliers, devaluing your books and forcing you to trample your fellow authors when you advertise – saw his net worth rise by nearly $100 billion during the pandemic?

If you’re okay with that, carry on with business as usual. If not okay, act accordingly if you are able.

Now on with the predictions.

Mark Coker’s Publishing Predictions for 2021

Nesting will favor digital reading - With eight billion people around the world in need of COVID-19 vaccinations and not enough vaccine supply to go around, many consumers of books will spend more time at home than they did pre-pandemic. The indie author community, which earns the bulk of its income via ebooks, will be a beneficiary.
Trump effect will lead to more book reading - Regardless of how you feel about Donald Trump, most people would agree that he held a sizable portion of our daily media consumption attention. With each day, his presidency served a tantalizing new episode of must-see reality TV. The episodes got more and more riveting as he broke every imaginable norm and then some. Last month voters cancelled his show due to poor ratings and replaced it with what promises to be a less dramatic presidential show. This means we can now spend less time shouting into our echo chambers on social media about why he’s the worst or greatest president of all time. What are we going to do with our extra hours of free time each week? A portion of that time will shift to reading. Yay for books!
Consolidation in traditional publishing drives more authors to self-publishing AND vanity presses - The big four publishers are about to become the big three with Penguin Random House’s pending acquisition of Simon & Schuster. In slow growth or overcrowded markets, consolidation yields greater efficiencies, profits and competitive advantages for the surviving entities. The combination will give Penguin Random House about 30% of the US book market. With fewer publishers bidding for the best books, it means fewer opportunities and lower advances for authors interested in a traditional publishing deal. This will drive more authors to self-publishing. For authors that don’t have the desire or the ability to put in the hard work to become a professional self-publisher, many will turn to vanity presses and subsidized presses. These companies earn their income not by selling books to customers, but by selling services to authors.
Consolidation coming to indie publishing as well - The self-publishing market is overcrowded with too many companies fighting for too few dollars. You want to get your book to Apple Books? Apple lists Smashwords and 20 approved aggregators and conversion houses to help you, or you can upload direct. And there are thousands of other service providers who can help you do the same. This is unsustainable. For the same reasons the big New York publishers are consolidating, consolidation is inevitable for self-publishing as well. Does the world really need hundreds of ebook distributors? The answer is no. In fact, the plethora of all of these companies doing the same thing is confusing and counterproductive for most authors.
Book discovery continues to shift from organic to inorganic - There was a time when most online book discovery was organic. If a quality read attracted enough readers, their purchases and reviews would cause the online store’s algorithms to elevate the book’s visibility to other readers. Today the ebook market is dominated by a single toll-taking retailer that grants preferential discoverability to authors and publishers that pay tributes in the form of paid advertising and exclusivity. Other retailers will face pressure to do the same. I’ve lost track of the number of times authors have asked Smashwords to create a paid advertising “opportunity” in the Smashwords Store. Sure, we could make a lot of money doing that, but I’d have difficulty sleeping at night. Nor would I want to disadvantage our authors who can't afford to advertise. I’d be the guy to say, “Oh, your ad spend didn’t earn back? Here’s a refund.”
Subscription consumption grows, single copy sales fall - The two dominant ebook consumption models are single-copy sales and subscription. The three major ebook subscription services for indie authors are Kindle Unlimited, our partner Scribd, and the newer entry, Kobo Plus. Apple doesn’t have such an offering yet, nor do I know if they plan for one, though I expect they’ll feel pressure to introduce a similar service one of these years. Apple has a lot of experience in subscription businesses. Over the long term, subscription will probably win, driven by the extreme value to consumers, the greater profitability to the retailer, and the proven willingness of many indie authors to accept ever-lower royalties in exchange for greater book visibility.
Subscription services to drive devaluation - For indie authors, two of the three major subscription services (KU, KP) pay via a pool model in which the provider pays less than a 70% royalty from the pool to authors and publishers. This means devaluation – readers can enjoy your book risk-free for less cost than a single copy purchase, and you earn a lower effective royalty rate for the read. This contributes to a double devaluation of your books. Readers become accustomed to consuming books for what feels like free, and the author is paid less per read. Not all authors can make up the difference with higher unit consumption because there are only so many readers to go around. And since when is a $4.99 ebook from a professional indie author too expensive?
Royalty compression accelerates - Say goodbye to 70% ebook royalties. Yes, every major retailer will continue to offer 70% list (60-80% if you work through Smashwords), yet effective royalty rates will drop. The drop will come in the form of hidden tolls, taxes and so-called “opportunities,” such as the opportunity to raise the visibility of your book by paying the retailer for visibility; or by discounting the book to appear in a feature or special catalog; or discounting the book so that it can appear in a subscription service that can only list lower priced books that don’t break their business model. The net effect on your income is that you’ll be paid less for each sale. Many forms of royalty compression have existed since the start of the indie ebook revolution in the form of delivery fees, generous no-questions-asked product returns on the backs of authors (#Audiblegate anyone?), or royalty rules that drop royalties in half if you price under $2.99 or over $9.99. Every major retailer will face pressure by their customers to enact more royalty compression so customers can read more books for fewer dollars. If stores resist this move, they’ll lose more customers to Amazon. Of course, if authors refused to sell their books anywhere their effective royalty rate dropped below the highest single copy rate of 60-80%, then retailers would be forced to maintain the high royalties. But the cat is already out of the bag. Too many indie authors followed the siren call of KDP-Select, and too many authors have shown themselves too willing to accept more compression if it helps them skip to the front of the line in the short term. Once you surrender your power, it’s difficult to take it back.
Advertising ROI drops further - Advertising is already ineffective for many authors, yet authors still throw good money after bad hoping to be among the lucky few who can crack the formula. Because ads on Facebook, Amazon and Google utilize an auction model where the highest paid spot earns the best visibility, economic theory would dictate that authors will continue to bid on such ads until the effective ROI of the ad reaches zero, the point at which book sales can’t cover the ad expense. But economic theory doesn’t know indie authors. This mad scramble to the bottom of ad ROI is exacerbated by authors’ willingness to over-invest on loss leaders (such as series starters or a debut book) in the hope that they can make up the difference later with follow-on sales.
The mad dash to the bottom of advertising ROI undermines non-advertisers - Not all indie authors spend money on advertising, yet those who don’t advertise will continue to see their visibility marginalized by those willing to pay for visibility. As I discussed last year, at Amazon their ad program is constructed to help advertisers leech off the brands of other authors. You can test this for yourself. Type your pen name into the search bar at Amazon and marvel at all the paid ad spots for other authors that appear at the top of your search results and mixed within.
Self-publishing to receive increased scrutiny - As society comes to grips with the collision between free speech and its ugly cousins misinformation, disinformation and fake news (I’m talking truly fake, not quality journalism erroneously labeled as fake), public pressure will build to demand more curation and accountability for the platforms that enable its publication. Facebook and YouTube, which are two of the largest self-publishing platforms are facing such scrutiny (when you post a video to YouTube or comment on Facebook, you’re self-publishing!). If a self-publishing platform like Smashwords – or a retailer like Amazon – allows the publication and distribution of a harmful conspiracy theory or bad medical advice, should the platform or retailer be held liable when a reader believes it as true and drinks the proverbial bleach? It’s a challenging question we’ve had to grapple with. Our ethos at Smashwords is free expression, but per policy we will ban authors for publishing information we deem harmful to the public. But who are we to decide, and where should the lines be drawn? We don’t employ medical doctors or trained epidemiologists. I didn’t start this business to squelch voices, but I didn’t start it to help authors publish bomb-making manuals either (which we’ve never allowed). If you want to place a long shot bet on the next Black Swan event affecting indie authors, it could very well be that a retailer is found financially liable for what it allowed in its store from a self-published author, and as a result of the costly ordeal, decides it’s not worth the risk to allow such unfettered, freewheeling access to their sales platform.
Mailing list development again a top priority for indies - The most important platform-building tool is your private author newsletter. When readers subscribe to your newsletter, you own that relationship. You can contact the reader directly on your terms without having to rely on a toll-taking intermediary that may inhibit or even prevent your ability to notify your current and prospective fans about your new release. When we surveyed authors this year who took advantage of our new patent-pending Smashwords Presales feature, one of the top reasons cited for using the feature was mail list development (the most common reason cited was sales channel diversification). Many of these authors are offering their subscribers the opportunity to purchase their new upcoming releases early, before the general public. It gives your most loyal readers a strong incentive to sign up and stay subscribed.
Books become more important in 2021 - In 2020, millions of readers rediscovered the joys of reading. This trend will continue through 2021 and beyond. The pandemic is not over. It's difficult to emotionally process trauma when we're living it. Even after every last soul is vaccinated and this plague is eradicated from the earth, it will take years to heal from this collective trauma. Books have always provided readers great comfort, pleasure, escapism and understanding. I can't think of any time in the 55 years of my lifetime when books have been more essential to the healing, recovery and progress of humanity. As an indie author, you are the creator of this magic we call books. Your work is important now, and will become more important in the years ahead. It doesn't matter if you write fiction or non-fiction, romance or self-help, you will help heal the world.

That’s it for my 2021 predictions. Feel free to contribute your own predictions in the comments below.

I wish you, your family and our indie community the best of health, happiness and prosperity in the year ahead.

Here are links to my prediction from prior years:

Summary of Prior Publishing Prediction Posts by Mark Coker

2020 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2019)
2019 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2018)
2018 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2017)
2017 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2016)
2016 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2015)
2015 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2014)
2014 Publishing Predictions (Published December 30, 2013)
and Huffington Post (Published January 7, 2014)
2013 Publishing Predictions (Published Dec 21, 2012)
2011 Predictions at GalleyCat (Published Dec 28, 2010)
10-Year Predictions at GalleyCat (Published Jan 4, 2010)

Smashwords 2020 Year in Review and 2021 Preview

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 21:40:00 +0000

Welcome to my 2020 Smashwords year in review and 2021 preview. Can you believe we’ve been in business for 13 years? We couldn’t have done this without your partnership and support. Thank you!

Don't miss my annual companion post, 2021 Publishing Predictions – Pandemic Reshapes Publishing, Accelerates Consolidation

I feel a little uncomfortable talking about our accomplishments at a time when a pandemic is raging and so many are hurting. So, I’ll keep things briefer than normal.

As I mentioned in my predictions post today, 2020 was a good year to be an indie ebook author. Most Smashwords authors experienced a strong uptick in sales starting in March of 2020 due to millions of people spending more time at home because of government-mandated lockdowns, unemployment and personal choice.

The growth moderated somewhat as people returned to work, but for most authors it will still be an up year despite a weak start in January and February.

What have we been up to at Smashwords in 2020? Here are some highlights, as well as some broad stroke hints of where we’re focused for 2021.

Smashwords 2020 Milestones:

Books published – We now publish 556,800 books; up 5.7% from 526,800 books at the end of last year.

Words published – We now publish 19.7 billion words; up exactly one billion words, or 5.3% from 18.7 billion a year ago.

Authors served – We’re now serving 154,100 authors and publishers; up 5.3% from 146,400 a year ago.

Smashwords Highlights for 2020

Smashwords Presales - Our patent-pending Smashwords Presales feature, which we launched in December 2019, is getting good traction from early adopters. I’m pleased by how sales are trending and I’m looking forward to introducing more authors and publishers to this exciting tool in 2021.

A key motivation behind Smashwords Presales is to help indie authors gain greater control over their publishing future. Early adopters are discovering the power of ebook presales to thrill their readers, diversify their sales channels, build greater reader loyalty, and grow their private mailing lists. Unlike preorders, which require readers to wait until a book’s public release date before they can enjoy the book, presales give your most loyal readers exclusive early access to your new releases in the form of public and private presales. Readers love early access!

As I discussed last year, Smashwords filed a patent with the US Patent & Trademark Office in 2019 describing our presales invention. The full scope of the invention is yet to be revealed in the current iteration of our Smashwords Presales offering. We continue to work through the approval process with our patent examiner. It’s been a fun and exciting process, though it’s too soon to know if the patent will be granted. Patent or not, we’ll continue to build out this innovative technology for the benefit of indie authors. In 2020 we also filed what’s known as a PCT, the first step in securing international protection for the invention.

Smashwords Store achieves fourth consecutive year of sales growth - Although our primary business is ebook distribution to major retailers and library platforms, we also operate our own ebook store. Our store pays up to 80% list on ebooks, among the highest of any retailer. With the exception of this pandemic year, most major ebook retailers have seen flat to declining ebook sales the last few years, but our little store has managed to buck the trend, turning in its fourth consecutive year of sales growth. Some of our authors now sell more in the Smashwords Store than they sell at Barnes & Noble or Kobo. Your mileage may vary month to month, but a key factor in your performance is to make sure your readers know that your book is available at Smashwords in addition to our other great retail partners. Many Smashwords authors utilize our store as their personal sales platform. They leverage our exclusive sales, marketing, and platform-building tools such as Smashwords Coupons, the new Smashwords Presales feature, Smashwords Interviews, and our popular Smashwords Alerts feature that notifies fans of new releases. Thank you Smashwords authors and customers!

New curated merchandising at Smashwords Store - Everyone’s familiar with our annual sales such as Read an Ebook Week, the Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale and the Smashwords End of Year Sale (now running until January 1st). These promotions are open to all Smashwords authors and publishers. For a long time, we’ve wanted to add additional themed merchandising features to showcase and promote a broader diversity of authors, book categories and themes at the top of our store. We have an ambitious promotions calendar planned for 2021. Almost every week in 2021 you’ll see new curated features. There’s a good chance we’ll publish an editorial calendar down the line so that authors can nominate books for consideration. We’ll also look to showcase highly anticipated exclusive presale releases. Our selection criteria focuses on an author’s track record of pleasing readers, as measured by their sales and downloads across the Smashwords distribution network. By showcasing more categories and themes, we’ll create new opportunities for more authors and a lot of excitement for readers.

Smashwords introduces two factor authentication - To help authors and publishers protect access to their Smashwords accounts and payment settings, Smashwords introduced a two factor authentication (aka 2FA) solution. 2FA increases the security of your Smashwords account by preventing other persons from accessing your account, even if they've stolen your password. You'll find the feature under the new "Account Security" section on your Account page. Here's a direct link you can use to activate 2FA in your account - 2FA setup for Smashwords authors.

Author Education Day - With writers conferences cancelled around the globe, Smashwords produced our first ever online education conference called Smashwords Author Day. Hundreds of authors attended, the feedback was excellent, and we’re encouraged to do another one in 2021. Click here to view the full recorded sessions presented by Smashwords Marketing Director, Jim Azevedo.

Smashwords launches special Authors Give Back sale - For the period of March 20th through May 31st, we launched the one-time Authors Give Back sale, designed to help readers affected by pandemic lockdowns and subsequent job losses to access discounted ebooks. The sale was well-received by customers and authors alike.

Smashwords goes virtual - For the first 12 years of our business, Smashwords maintained a physical office in Los Gatos, California. Over the years most of our employees, including yours truly, transitioned to working from home offices. When we decided to eliminate our underutilized office in February, we had no idea how propitious our timing would be. The physical lockdowns that were disruptive to other office-bound businesses didn’t affect our operations. It’s encouraging to see many large corporations, initially forced to allow employees to work from home during the pandemic, now plan to make greater use of teleworking in the future. It offers team members more hours in the day for work-life balance.

Plans for 2021

One of the worst planning investments anyone could have made in 2020 was the purchase of a 2020 day planner or calendar. COVID-19 and its spawn will continue to disrupt the global order in 2021, but we’re prepared to carry on with the business of helping authors publish, distribute and market ebooks.

Among new features, keep an eye out for a new book uploading experience in 2021. We had hoped to complete this project in 2020 but alas did not.

We’ll continue to evolve our tools, processes and technology to make your publishing and distribution faster, easier and more rewarding.

Thank you, Smashwords authors, publishers, customers, retailers, and libraries for your continued trust, support and partnership. It’s our sincere honor to work with you.

We hope you and your family enjoy a safe and prosperous New Year!

Smashwords Author Day, Spring 2020 Now Online

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 18:59:00 +0000

The pandemic may have shuttered in-person writers conferences in 2020, but it didn't negate the need for ongoing author education.

Back in April, Smashwords marketing director Jim Azevedo presented a live, power-packed webinar featuring four workshop presentations covering the most important indie publishing topics for indie ebook publishing.

Jim shared actionable advice on how authors can make their books more visible, desirable and enjoyable readers. Learn state-of-the-art strategies for building a marketing platform you control.

These presentations are now available for viewing at the Author Day event page and on the Smashwords YouTube channel.

Or, watch any of the individual segments below:

0. Introduction and start

Watch the full 5+ hours here:

1. Ten Trends Driving the Future of Publishing (beginner to expert)

2. Introduction to eBook Publishing (beginner to intermediate)

3. The Sixteen Secrets of Ebook Publishing Success (beginner to expert)

4. Book Launch Strategy: Preorders and Presales (beginner to expert)

Please share with a friend!

We're considering doing another live Author Day in the September-October timeframe, so stay tuned for that.

Post-Pandemic Publishing for Indie Authors

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 22:15:00 +0000

The COVID-19 pandemic will have far-reaching consequences for the business of publishing.

In this post, I’ll brush off my imaginary crystal ball – usually reserved for my annual end-of-year predictions – and speculate on the impact COVID-19 will have on the post-pandemic publishing prospects for indie authors in the months and years ahead.

As of this writing (June 17, 2020), the immediate health and economic devastation wrought by COVID-19 has been nothing short of cataclysmic.

As we'll learn, indie authors are well-positioned for the unfortunate circumstances we all face.

Let’s review where the globe is at now, and then I’ll jump into predictions and advice on how indie authors can overcome the challenges ahead.

Health Impacts

According to data tracked by Johns Hopkins, 8.2 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been reported as of today. We’re approaching 500,000 global fatalities, though other reputable analysis – such as measures of average annual death rates in different countries – indicate the toll is likely much much higher than currently reported.

The US has led the way in total number of infections and deaths, followed by Brazil, Russia and the U.K. With most countries reopening for business, and mandatory lockdowns ending, infection rates are surging again in many areas. Globally, new infection case counts are rising, with Brazil, India, Mexico and several US states currently leading the way, and with the virus gaining new footholds in countries and rural communities that missed the early waves.

Economic Impacts

To prevent the spread of the virus, many countries instituted various forms of strict lockdowns. They issued stay-at-home orders to limit the movement of people, and temporarily shuttered or limited business operations. These lockdowns thrust most of the global economy into instant recession in March. There’s now growing concern for regional if not global depressions. Whereas recessions are typically characterized as short term economic slowdowns, depressions are marked by protracted economic downturns spanning three or more years, and characterized by high sustained unemployment and severe declines in GDP.

Not all countries will face the same economic dislocation. Much will be determined by the competency of a country’s government, and by the trust the people have in following their government’s recommendations. People who believe the advice of incompetent government officials or disbelieve the advice of competent officials will suffer the most. Not all governments are issuing wise advice to their citizens.

All countries are struggling to strike the appropriate balance between the health of their citizens and the health of their economies. The two are closely interrelated and interdependent.

Here in the US, the world’s largest English-language book market, the lack of a competent and coordinated nationwide response to COVID-19 shows in the numbers. Whereas many other countries have managed to crush their new infection rates dramatically, the US continues to flounder and suffer persistently high infection rates.

Given the global nature of the world economy, and the rapid cross-border human-to-human transmission enabled by air, train and automobile travel, a single hotspot in any country – no matter how remote – poses a threat to the entire global community days or weeks later.

In my 2020 publishing predictions post, I predicted a recession was increasingly likely for 2020 in light of an unprecedented continuous global economic expansion following the last global recession in 2008. As I mentioned in prior posts, recessions are beneficial to the long term health of an economy, much as a small forest fire helps clears away dead brush Yet I give myself no credit for predicting this recession. No one could have predicted the sudden and severe global recession we find ourselves in thanks to COVID-19, and no one with half a brain would ever suggest that COVID-19 is good for the long term health or economic vitality of the global economy. The hell wrought by COVID-19 is likely to leave a sting for years to come.

COVID-19 is a black swan event. Let’s hope we or future generations are better prepared the next time a global plague makes its entrance.

Economies of the largest English-Language Book Markets

An individual consumer’s economic realities impact how, where and on what they spend their money.

Let's look at unemployment levels in some of the largest English-language book markets, ranked roughly by the size of the market. Note that all of these numbers will be out of date within days of me publishing this post, but they serve as an approximate snapshot of where we stand today.

US - Unemployment in the US, the world’s largest single market for English-language indie authors, is approximately 13%. These levels have not been seen since the Great Depression in the 1920s.

UK - Unemployment in the UK, the second largest market for indie authors, has increased dramatically since the pre-pandemic lows of 3.9%, though the true rate is somewhat obscured by a government-subsided furlough program (which I won’t claim to understand) scheduled to end in October.

Canada - In Canada, unemployment is approximately 13% .

Australia - In Australia, where the government handled COVID-19 more competently than most, unemployment is expected to reach 10% later this month.

New Zealand - In New Zealand, where the government has been widely praised for their competent handling of the pandemic, the government expects unemployment to peak at just under 10%.

The Hit on Consumers

If a reader loses their job, they'll need to prioritize purchasing food and paying their rent or mortgage before they buy a book.

If your friend or neighbor loses their job and is struggling to pay their rent or mortgage, you too may wonder if it’s time to tighten your financial belt even if your job is secure. Frugality is contagious.

Books are purchased with disposable income. In economics, disposable income is your spendable money after you’ve paid necessary taxes. With high unemployment levels, and reduced employment for many of those who kept their jobs, and increased economic uncertainty, consumers don’t have as much disposable income to spend on discretionary purchases such as books.

In these first few months of the pandemic, many governments extended social safety nets. Here in the US, for example, our government did this with unemployment insurance (not enough to live on), relief checks (free money mailed to taxpayers), the Paycheck Protection Program (forgivable loans to small businesses that maintain employment) and other forms of entitlements to people and corporations. Other countries instituted various other programs. Some of these programs will be short-lived, which means once the money runs out, additional economic pain may ensue unless economies bounce back quickly.

New unemployment data released in the US on June 5 surprised many analysts when it showed a drop in unemployment thanks to partial reopenings. Is the worst behind us, or is this a dead cat bounce as the economy absorbs the initial government stimulus? It’s too early to tell.

Now that economies are reopening, it remains to be seen if consumers will show up as they did before. So much of the economy is dependent upon close, human-to-human interaction.

If economies don’t bounce back quickly, consumers will face additional economic hardships that will have ripple effects throughout the global economy. For example, if homeowners are unable to pay their monthly mortgages, they’ll default on their loans with all the ensuing unpleasant economic ripple effects to their local economy and global banking systems. Many small businesses that were forced to close will not reopen, and those that do reopen may fail to achieve sustainable business levels if customers are unable or unwilling to return in sufficient numbers. Restaurant operators, for example, which employ millions of lower-income workers, will find it difficult to stay in business here in the US if they’re required to limit the number of patrons they can serve at any one time. And what if patrons don't immediately return? The restaurant business – similar to the publishing business – was already notoriously difficult to run sustained profits in, and that was before the pandemic.

How Quickly will Things Recover?

Most people want to see things to return to “normal” as soon as possible.

It’s too early to tell if this will be merely a severe recession with a quick snap back to normalcy, or a prolonged recession or depression. Global stock markets, at for moment at least (this could all change tomorrow), are anticipating a quick recovery.

A full return to normal isn't possible until after there’s a safe and reliable vaccine, or an efficacious treatment for the disease that can lower the mortality rate to that of the common flu, or, improbably, if suddenly all consumers wake up tomorrow and decide they're rather go on living their normal lives than maintaining lockdowns.

Until such a vaccine or treatment is available, a significant percentage of the population will remain fearful of flying on airplanes, or congregating with fellow humans in shopping malls, retail stores, live events (writers conferences and book signings) and other places where a large numbers of people come in close contact with one another to share the same air.

Here in the US, our country faces other unique challenges, such as a well-entrenched “anti-vaxxer” movement of individuals across the political spectrum who refuse to accept vaccines for themselves and their families. According to a recent poll conducted by the Washington Post, nearly 30% of Americans say they will “probably not” or “definitely not” take a COVID-19 vaccine if it was made available to them for free. If these numbers hold true, it means COVID-19 will continue to spread on ripe hosts for many years to come.

There are over 100 vaccine candidates under development. Under the most optimistic scenario, limited quantities of vaccines might be available as early as late Fall 2020, or early 2021, though realistically it probably won’t be until later in 2021 that a safe and effective vaccine is globally available to all who want it.

So against the above backdrop, what impacts can indie authors expect in the months and years ahead?

On with the predictions...

Post-Pandemic Publishing Predictions for Indie Authors

Economies are unlikely to bounce back as quickly as hoped – Despite the large amount of fiscal stimulus pumped directly into consumer pocketbooks by government stimulus programs, the global economy is unlikely to return to a pre-pandemic normal until vaccines or effective treatments are widely available. And even once vaccines or treatments are available, it will take time to rebuild broken economies. State, local and federal governments will have borne enormous damage to their balance sheets thanks to the pandemic, which could mean lower expenditures or higher taxes down the road, both of which could hamper economic recoveries.

People will stay home more – COVID-19 has led many people to develop a general mistrust of fellow humans. We must trust that our fellow humans aren’t going to murder us if we step outside. Yet now that there’s this silent and deadly virus, and many of those infected might think the slight sniffle they’re battling is just allergies or the common cold (which never stopped them from going out in public before), or worse, they might be asymptomatic and not realize they’re infected and infectious, or even worse they might believe COVID-19 is a hoax perpetuated by Bill Gates or a tyrannical government (yes, here in the US, such conspiracy theories are quite common; they’ve become stranger than fiction). This means that every other human you walk near, converse with, or share air with is potentially carrying a deadly weapon that can kill you or your family. And if they’re not wearing a mask, you might feel even more ill at ease. In the absence of a vaccine, other people will seem scarier than usual, and this will have significant implications for how we live our lives, and how and where we choose to spend our time and money.

The US economy will likely have a longer, slower recovery than the rest of the world - The world’s largest market for English language books will probably fare worse than other economies. This means a slower recovery, and slower resumption to prior consumer spending levels. But a slow and painful recovery ahead in the US will actually be positive for indie ebook sales (read on for reasons why).

Consumers in hard-hit economies will change spending habits – Typically as a result of severe recessions, consumers are forced to change their spending habits. They become more frugal, tighten their financial belts regarding non-essential discretionary spending, and try to pay down debts while rebuilding their savings. In this environment, indie ebook purchases, ebook subscriptions and library check-outs will begin to look more appealing than print purchases because of the significant cost differential between affordable indie ebooks and higher-priced print books, and higher priced ebooks from traditional publishers. But the positive impact of frugality won't be felt by ebooks alone. Even print books will become more appealing to some consumers given the many hours of home-based entertainment they provide at great value.

More books will be written - With forced unemployment comes more time for authors to write books. There will also be more workers deciding to retire earlier than planned, which also leads to more time to write more books. This means the publishing market will see an uptick in self-published titles over the next couple years.

Physical books at bookstores will seem “scary” to touch – One of the joys of physical bookstore browsing is the ability to pick up any book, flip it to the back cover, or rifle through sample pages. Yet now in the age of COVID, physical objects touched by others are viewed as potentially dangerous. Bookstores will attempt to address this concern by asking customers to place touched books onto carts that are then quarantined before making their way back on the shelves, yet even this step won’t completely alleviate consumer fear. If a sick person sneezes in front of a shelf, dozens of books would be instantly contaminated. Or what if the virus-denying idiot before you was too lazy or feverish to remember to place the book they just touched onto the cart?

Print sales through physical stores will decline – Until there’s a vaccine or a treatment, many consumers will be reluctant to return to physical bookstores. This means more of these print sales will move online. But without the bookstore magic of serendipitous physical book discovery – a key joy in browsing a physical bookstore – I’d expect overall print sales to decline as well.

More print sales will go online, and the benefits will not be equally distributed - The move to online print sales will benefit traditionally published authors more than indie authors. Traditionally published authors typically have stronger brand awareness than indies, and since consumers aren't browsing at a bookstore more of their print purchases will be without having browsed the book in person. Also, indie print books are often more expensive than traditionally published print books, owing to the fact that traditional publishers are doing big print runs and most indies are doing print-on-demand which carries higher per-unit production costs.

The move to online print sales will benefit large retailers while harming smaller indie bookshops – Although some indie bookshops operate online stores, those stores are typically not the consumer’s first choice – Amazon is. Since most indie authors don’t benefit from physical bookstore distribution, the hit to bookshops will impact traditionally published authors more than indie authors.

Many indie bookshops will not reopen – It’ll be really tough for indie bookshops – already operating on razor-thin margins and struggling to survive – to continue to operate their businesses once economies reopen. For the reasons mentioned above, they’re unlikely to see business-sustaining traffic return until after a vaccine is widely available. This means many indie bookshops are likely to experience a year or more of below-average sales before things start returning to normal, and that’s assuming the world returns to the previous historically-low pre-pandemic unemployment rates. Just as with restaurants, it’ll be difficult for these stores to remain in business unless their local customers and communities truly rally to keep them afloat. Already, several bookstores across the US have launched GoFundMe campaigns to keep their stores in business. Not all of them will make it. If consumers truly cared about keeping their local bookstores in business, they wouldn’t be purchasing so many books from Amazon.

Overall ebook sales will increase – With millions of newly budget-conscious readers stuck at home either by choice or by government-mandated stay-at-home orders, or by the reality of unemployment, and with lingering reluctance to visit physical bookstores to touch books pawed by other customers, many readers will gravitate toward digital reading. We’ve already seen this play out at Smashwords over the last couple months of the pandemic. The pandemic has caused a surge in sales at the Smashwords Store and some of our retailers, but it remains to be seen how long the surge will last. As stay-at-home orders lift, and as people’s jobs come back and family finances are rebuilt, I’d expect sales levels to revert back to the prior trend, which was not terribly strong. Prior to the pandemic, most ebook retailers were experiencing their fifth or sixth year of weak or declining ebook sales levels (for reasons why, see my last two year’s of publishing prediction posts, each of which open with a “State of the Indie Nation” update where I examine sales trends). Although the initial ebook bump will dissipate, I do expect ebooks to be incrementally more appealing to consumers for the next several years than they would have been were it not for this horrible pandemic.

Ebook Subscription services will gain in popularity – Newly budget-conscious avid readers will gravitate more quickly now to subscription services such as Scribd and Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited. The impact on indie authors will be mixed. Whereas Scribd compensates authors based on their list price, thereby preserving value for the author and giving the author a measure of pricing control, Kindle Unlimited devalues books by paying a fraction of a penny per page read. Kobo is also jumping further into the subscription ebook fray with their Kobo Plus service, which, similar to Kindle Unlimited, will devalue books and ultimately lower author earnings (this is why Smashwords is not supplying Kobo’s Kobo Plus subscription service). So while authors can expect to see subscription earnings account for a greater proportion of their income, they can also expect to see their incomes drop on a relative basis as their single-copy sales take a hit (the obvious partial exception to this rule, as noted above, is Scribd).

Writers conferences move online in 2020 – For obvious reasons, most writers conferences for 2020 have been, or will be, cancelled, with some of them moving online. Here at Smashwords, we don’t plan to attend any conferences until a vaccine or treatment is widely available. It’s simply not safe to fly in airplanes or gather in congregate. Social distancing at writers conferences is impossible. I’m saddened by this because I do miss the face to face conversations with authors and fellow industry friends.

Indie Publishing Strategies for a Post-COVID world

Aside from the health and economic devastation of COVID-19, indie ebook authors will likely see increased readership and earnings for the next couple years, reversing a trend of the last few years where most indies experienced declining ebook sales.

Since most indies earn the bulk of their income from digital sales (ebook, audiobook) as opposed to print sales, the intermediate-term outlook is brighter for indies than it is for print-dependent authors.

The latent fear of social gatherings, and the likely multi-year economic recession, will make ebooks and audiobooks appear incrementally more desirable than print books compared to attitudes just a few months ago.

Yet it remains to be seen how long the COVID bump will last. There are other larger, more entrenched macro trends that paint a challenging picture for all authors, and I’ve addressed these issues in great detail in my end-of-year prediction posts (Here are links to the last three years: 2020, 2019, 2018), chief among them the glut of high-quality, low-cost-ebooks that never go out of print; strong devaluation pressures coming from Amazon and its Kindle Unlimited subscription service; and the knee-capping of the major Amazon ebook retailing competitors - Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo - due to Amazon’s success of denying these retailers critical inventory of millions of indie books that have been locked up in KDP Select exclusivity since the launch of the service in late 2011.

When the pandemic ends and economies recover, I’d expect the environment for ebook sales to revert back to their pre-pandemic normal, barring any governmental interventions here in the US or in Europe seeking to reign in Amazon’s anti-competitive behavior. Such potential intervention has been simmering on backburners for a few years now. On June 11, the New York Times reported that the European Union is preparing an anti-trust case against Amazon, alleging that Amazon gives its own products preferential treatment in their store.

Certainly, if the EU were to take action that caused Amazon to cease KDP Select exclusivity, it would dramatically boost the prospects of all indie authors as well as Amazon’s bookselling competitors, and we’d likely see a long term indie author earnings boom as Amazon’s competitors could finally compete more effectively on a level playing field. I’m not holding my breath. As the New York Time’s article points out, the EU’s actions to date have been largely slaps on the wrists and therefore ineffectual at curbing the bad habits of monopolistic megaplatforms.

Indie Author Action Plan

The road forward remains the same as it has always been. Focus on building a long term career. Focus on essential evergreen best practices, and steer clear of ephemeral flash-in-the-pan tricks and “systems” that make promises that can’t be kept. This means:

1. Commit to digital - If your entire book list isn't yet on ebooks, do that now. A global ebook distributor such as Smashwords can help make your books more accessible and more available to a global audience of millions of readers. With ebooks, indie authors have significant advantages over print authors, and thanks to COVID-19, those advantages just became greater.

2. Distribution - Maintain diversified distribution so your next meal isn’t dependent on the algorithmic whims of a single retailer.

3. Marketing Platform - Build a marketing platform you control, which means migrating your readership to your private author newsletter so that your relationship with YOUR readers is not mediated by third party retailers and social media platforms whose business objectives are rarely aligned with your own (Smashwords Presales can help you build your mailing list!).

4. Craft - Focus more on the craft of great writing rather than the business of publishing. Far too many authors spend more waking hours trying to learn how to game retailer algorithms and ad platforms rather than honing their craft to write better books. If your book takes readers to unimaginable heights of ecstatic joy, your book will sell on the wings of reader word-of-mouth, algorithms be damned.

5. Advertising - Advertise with caution. Recognize that paying retailers for advertising – especially when tacitly required by a certain retailer to maintain normal visibility – is a tax on your income. Think of it as a backhanded way for them to pay lower royalties. It can also cause you to trample on your fellow indies, as I wrote for Publishers Weekly in my article titled, Avoiding Platform Theft.

6. Author-friendly retailers - Direct your readers to author-friendly retailers. If a retailer is going out its way to erect tolls, taxes and restrictions that limit your ability to market your book on a level playing field, or that continually institute new policies and programs that serve the purpose of lowering your effective royalty rate, they’re not an author-friendly retailer. An author-friendly retailer pays 70% list (60% after your distributor takes a commission) gives indie authors the freedom to set their own prices, publish independently, and distribute where they want.

7. Financial management - Here in the US, we have a saying called "pinch your pennies." It means, "be frugal." As an indie author, you're running a publishing business. While you can't control your sales or the timing of an economic recovery, you can control your publishing expenses. Given the economic uncertainty, it's more important than ever that you be frugal with your publishing expenses. Now is not the time to invest large sums of money in speculative marketing campaigns. And as I caution in the Smart Author Podcast, never finance your publishing with debt, and never invest money in publishing that otherwise needs to go to putting food on the table or paying rent. Do as much as you can on your own, barter for services where possible, and don't invest money you don't have.

Be safe everyone!

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Considering publishing with Smashwords? Learn about our free and amazing services here.

Smashwords Launches Initiatives to Help Readers and Authors Cope with Covid-19 Pandemic

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Fri, 20 Mar 2020 20:59:00 +0000

Books matter now more than ever.

The world has been thrust into a state of crisis not seen since World War II.

Humanity will overcome this challenge, led by the imagination, innovation, creativity and intellect of thinking people. These are the same thinking people who turn to fiction and non-fiction for entertainment and inspiration.

Books will help humanity navigate this crisis and emerge stronger than ever.

For the concerned parent who must hold it together for their children in the face of news that gets darker by the day, a book offers a welcome respite, a magical elixir delivering happiness, safe harbor and emotional recharge on demand. For their children, books offer healthy distraction and diversion at a time when social distancing is necessary to save lives.

Insert your situation, or the situation of your friends, family and community, and you begin to realize how books have an important role to play in helping people cope with this global calamity that is Covid-19.

Authors are the magicians who create books, and it just so happens that Smashwords is honored to work with over 140,000 authors spread across the globe. It shouldn't come as a surprise that many authors are now asking how they can use their books to help others.

Authors Helping Readers

Several of our authors contacted me in recent days, asking if I'd consider running a special sale where they could make their books more accessible and affordable to readers suffering in self-imposed or government-mandated isolation. These authors wanted to help fellow readers gain strength, comfort or entertainment from the power of their books.

In this context, any book that brings the reader precious moments of joy - whether a romance, a thriller or a non-fiction treatise about boosting your immune system - is critically important to the global recovery effort.

With this heartfelt intention in mind, today we launched our Authors Give Back sale, running now through April 20. For the next 30 days, thousands of Smashwords authors are going the extra mile to share their books with the readers who need them.

If you're an author or publisher, you can enroll your books now at this enrollment link which you'll also find on the Smashwords home page and in your Dashboard.

If you're a reader, you can access 30,000 deep-discounted books and over 80,000 free books with the compliments of indie authors and publishers around the globe. These authors are your friends and neighbors.

You'll find the sale at the top of the Smashwords home page. Here's a direct link that will take you into the sale catalog.

Please tell a friend!

Smashwords Helping Authors

The desire of our authors to support readers got me thinking about how Smashwords can support our authors during this crisis.

Writers conferences, like most large public gatherings, are getting cancelled left and right. These conferences provide important educational venues for writers to gain the knowledge and connections they need to build their writing careers.

The need for continuing education doesn't disappear simply because most of us find ourselves trapped at home. With this in mind, Smashwords this week announced our first-ever Author Education Day, a one-day online educational event where we'll teach veteran authors how to take their ebook publishing to the next level, and we'll teach aspiring authors how to publish ebooks with ease, professionalism and success.

The Smashwords Author Education Day event will be held next month on April 18, and is open to all writers and publishers. Even if you don't (yet) publish with Smashwords, we invite you to attend at no cost.

Jim Azevedo, our marketing director, will present four live workshops, each followed by an interactive Q&A.

The sessions will be presented in sequential order, with each session building on the knowledge covered in the prior session. Whether you're a first-time author or an experienced veteran, you'll leave this one day e-publishing intensive inspired with fresh ideas that will help you take your publishing to the next level.

These are the same (but updated) Smashwords workshops we've presented in person at writers conferences around the globe. You'll learn evergreen best practices to improve the discoverability and desirability of your books, and you'll learn strategies for building a sustainable long term career as a writer and publisher.

The sessions include:

1. Ten trends driving the future of publishing (novice to expert)
2. An introduction to ebook publishing (novice to intermediate)
3. 16 secrets to ebook publishing success (novice to expert)
4. Book launch strategy: Preorders and presales (novice to expert)

Advance registration is required for this free event. To view the full event description and to register, visit our Smashwords Author Education Da y event page.

Hang in there my friends and fellow book lovers. The sun will rise again.

The Bakers and the Pot of Gold

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Thu, 05 Mar 2020 16:37:00 +0000

Who doesn't love cookies and the bakers who bake them?

And if you're the baker, you probably appreciate your own fresh-baked cookies all the more.

Why am I talking about cookies on a blog for indie authors?

The other day, I received an email from Canadian author Nicky Charles. She had just read my 2020 Publishing Predictions: House of Indie on Fire post and felt inspired to write an allegory featuring cookie bakers and pots of gold.

I was floored by her story. It struck me as a must-read for anyone who loves books and the writers who write them.

There's depth, insight and subtle nuance. It cuts deep for the perceptive reader, as one would expect from a writer of Nicky's caliber. I'm humbled that my annual predictions post could inspire this work of genius.

I asked Nicky if I could share her allegory with readers of the Smashwords Blog, and she kindly agreed.

I encourage you to read it and feel it. If it touches a nerve, as I expect it might, share it with fellow authors, publishers and readers you think should read it too.

To learn more about Nicky Charles, check out her Nicky Charles profile page at Smashwords, visit the official Nicky Charles website, or read this interview we did with her all the way back in 2012.

Nicky asked me to make clear that for this allegory, she employed hyperbole. She in no way wants to infer that any of the bakers featured in this story make bad cookies.

Without further adieu, I bring you Nicky's story...

The Bakers and the Pot of Gold

By Nicky Charles

Once upon a time there was a land dotted with quaint little cafés. The cafés were renowned for serving wonderful fresh-baked cookies to the customers who lined up outside in anticipation of the treat.

Photo credit: Evan Amos

The cookies were produced by the bakers of the land who used only the finest and freshest ingredients. Each batch was tenderly measured and mixed, then sampled with care before being baked to perfection. It was a long process, but the bakers didn’t mind. Their goal was to ensure each cookie was a worthy treat for their customers.

Because the bakers worked so hard to produce delicious products, they couldn’t deliver to the cafés every day. Good cookies took time, after all, and so they rotated who baked each day. This gave the customers a nice variety of cookies as well as giving the bakers time to clean their kitchens, care for their ovens and shop for ingredients.

The customers at the cafés understood this and saved their money, while waiting excitedly for when their favourite baker would make a new batch of cookies. On delivery days, the people would rush to the cafés to buy the fresh batch and enjoy the special treat, savouring each mouthful and murmuring about the skill of the baker.

Everyone in the land was happy with the arrangement. The bakers delivered amazing cookies for the customers. The customers had delicious treats to eat and the cafés made a nice profit, which they shared with the bakers.

One spring day, however, a new café opened. It was big and shiny and sold a vast array of products. Everyone who visited it stared in wonder.

“Do you sell cookies?” The people asked hopefully.

“Not yet,” the new café owner said. “But soon we will.”

And sure enough, the very next day the new café owner went in search of bakers.

“I would like to sell your cookies,” the new café owner said to the bakers. “Lots of people visit my café every day, even people from Far-Away-Places. I promise you will make lots of gold if you let me sell your cookies.”

The bakers thought about it and began to take some of their cookies to the new café. Just as promised, many cookies were sold, especially to the people from Far-Away-Places who had never tasted such wonderful baked goods before. With their pockets filled with gold, the bakers rejoiced that the new café had come to town.

When the people of the land saw this, some began to think they’d like to be bakers as well.

“Baking looks like such fun,” one person said.

“We can sell our cookies to people from Far-Away-Places if we bake for the new café,” another declared.

“We will make lots of money just like the other bakers!” A third cried in delight.

And so new bakers began to emerge. Some baked wonderful cookies right away while others learned over time how to mix the ingredients perfectly. A few decided baking was too hard and quit, but others loved their new occupation and sold so many cookies they even gave up their old jobs to become full time bakers.

The people of the land greatly enjoyed having so many new bakers to choose from and there were now cookies every day at the cafés.

“This is wonderful,” everyone said.

But then, the new café owner made an announcement. “I have a large pot of gold and I will share it with any baker who sells cookies at my café.”

“A large pot of gold?” The bakers began to get excited.

“Oh yes,” said the new café owner. “It is a very large pot of gold. But you can only have the gold if you deliver all your cookies to me.”

“But what about the other cafés?” Some of the bakers frowned in concern. “And what about the people who eat our cookies there?”

“The people who like your cookies can buy them here,” the new café owner explained. “I will even serve them on a special plate.”

“That sounds great,” said some of the bakers.

A few bakers, however, thought the pot of gold seemed too good to be true, and some wanted to keep selling their cookies at all the cafés.

Seeing them hesitate, the new café owner agreed they could sell their cookies in the other establishments, but they wouldn’t get actual pieces of gold, just the gold dust from the bottom of the pot.

“All right,” these other bakers agreed, not sure it was completely fair but still wanting people from Far-Away-Places to sample their cookies. They knew if it didn’t work out, they’d still earn money by selling cookies at the old cafés.

So many of the bakers began to deliver their cookies only to the new café and, just as predicted, the people who favoured their cookies followed. The bakers liked all the gold they were earning and the customers liked their new shiny plates. More and more of the bakers began to agree to the new café’s terms, lured by the promise of lots of gold. Everyone was very happy…almost.

The other café owners watched what was happening. There were still bakers bringing them cookies to sell and customers lining up to buy them but not as many as before.

“It’s just healthy competition,” one said with a slight frown.

“The new café won’t take away all our customers,” another reassured.

“Maybe we should give out our own special cookie plates,” suggested a third.

And so the other cafes gave out special plates and even ran sales but the new café kept luring more and more bakers away with the promise of gold.

“Sell me all your cookies and I will share my pot of gold with you.” The new café owner made the announcement in a loud, booming voice. “Every month the pot of gold will get bigger and bigger!”

“Is it true?” The bakers asked of those who only sold cookies to the new café.

“Oh yes,” they said. “The new café is wonderful. You must come and join us.”

Lured by the pot of gold, more bakers stopped bringing cookies to the old cafés and exclusively gave them to the new one.

At the same time, the new café owner began to tell the customers they could have all the cookies they wanted.

“Why are you paying for just one cookie at the old cafés? If you come here, you only pay one piece of gold at the door and then you can fill your plate with as many cookies as you want,” the new café owner boasted.

With fewer cookies to choose from at the old cafés and the promise of unlimited ones at the new café, the customers stopped visiting their former haunts.

“We’re sorry,” they told the café owners, “but we want lots of cookies and we don’t want to have to pay for each one.”

“But we need to pay the bakers,” the old café owners said.

“Not our problem.” one customer said.

“We want cookies, lots of cookies!” another one added.

“And we want them for a lower price, too.” A third declared leading a march towards the door.

As the customers walked away, the old café owners shook their heads. “Soon we won’t have any cookies or customers left.”

And sure enough, ‘out of business’ signs began to appear in the café windows forcing the remaining bakers and customers to switch to the new café.

Meanwhile, more and more customers filled the new café, awed by the trays of cookies they saw. From floor to ceiling and wall to wall, every surface was covered in baked goods.

“Can we really have as many as we want?” They asked in wonder.

“Oh yes,” said the new café owner, smiling benevolently. “For one piece of gold you may help yourself to whatever you want. There is no limit.”

And that is what the people did. They stacked their plates high with cookies, they stuffed their mouths with cookies, and some even filled their pockets.

“I can’t believe we used to pay for just a single cookie,” one said.

“This is truly an amazing café,” another added.

“I just can’t stop eating,” declared a third, wiping crumbs from his fingers before reaching for more.

However, in the corner, one customer was frowning. “This sounds too good to be true. How can the new café afford to pay the bakers if we only pay one piece of gold?”

The owner of the new café overheard this and said, “Don’t worry, I have an enormous pot of gold from all the other items I sell. Besides, the bakers love to make cookies; they don’t care what they get paid.”

“And what about the old cafés?” The customer persisted.

“This is how business works,” the new café owner brushed the customer’s concerns aside. “Competition is healthy.” And with that, the café owner began to lead the others in a chant. “Cookies, cookies, cookies! We want more cookies!”

“Yes, yes!” The other customers agreed. “Cookies, cookies, cookies! We want more cookies!” The chanting was so loud it drowned out the customer who had been asking questions.

From the rear of the building, the bakers huddled together grinning.

“This is so exciting,” one said.

“The people love our cookies,” another exclaimed.

“Did you see how much gold there is?” A third pointed at the pot in wonder.

Yes, the pot of gold was very big but, with so many bakers now delivering cookies to the new café, and the customers only paying one piece of gold, the share each received was less than before.

“I hope I have enough to pay for my ingredients,” one said looking at the small pouch of gold he’d been given at the end of the week.

“We just need to sell more cookies,” a second one stated.

“If we bake faster, it will be okay,” a third declared. “The people will buy as many as we make. There’s no need to worry.”

“I’m not sure this is a good idea.” A quiet baker spoke from the corner. “If we bake faster, will our cookies still be as good? Maybe we should go back to the old cafés.”

The others didn’t listen though. They were determined to earn more gold at the new café.

So the bakers started to produce more cookies. Some still made amazing cookies but others, because they were working faster, began to make mistakes. Sometimes there was too much salt or not enough sugar. Some cookies were undercooked and others were burnt.

“My cookies used to taste better,” one baker said with a frown.

“I used to have time to decorate mine,” another murmured.

“They’re fine,” said a third. “The people are eating the cookies so fast they don’t even notice.”

And indeed, the café was very crowded with people voraciously eating cookies and then clamouring for more.

“Faster,” the café owner prompted the bakers. “We need more cookies!”

So the bakers ran back home to make cookies all day and late into the night.

But when they brought their cookies in the next day, the new café owner had something to tell them.

“I’ve decided you will still get paid from the pot of gold, but now it will be based on each bite of cookie. People are putting cookies on their plate but only nibbling on them. If people eat only one bite of your cookie, you will get less than if they eat the whole cookie.”

“Oh,” said the bakers. At the old cafes, they’d been paid for each cookie. Being paid for each bite was a very new idea.

“Lots of bites add up,” the café owner assured them. “Just keep making cookies.”

The bakers went back to their kitchens to continue baking, however a few weren’t happy and began to plot ways to work around the new rule. Some began buying cookies from the store as it was faster than making fresh cookies. Others made their cookies smaller so it appeared more were eaten. A few hired their neighbours to bake for them or even stole cookies from their fellow bakers’ ovens!

The honest bakers watched in dismay as these others began to earn more and more gold while doing less and less work. But, when they told the owner of the new café what was happening, nothing was done about it. Instead, the owner posted a new sign on the door.

“Dear Bakers, I’ve made a new rule. From now on, you will get less gold for the cookies the people eat.”

“That’s not fair,” one baker said in dismay.

“There are lots of customers buying cookies,” another pointed out.

“What about the big pot of gold?” a third asked.

But the owner of the new café wouldn’t talk to them.

Not knowing what else to do, the bakers went back to their kitchens. All day and all night they baked and baked and baked but, when they went to the café the next day, there was yet another message awaiting them.

“Dear Bakers, I know you are worried about selling your cookies so I will let you place advertisements in the store. If you advertise enough, people will eat more of your cookies and you will earn more gold.”

“This is a good idea,” the bakers agreed…until they read the rest of the note.

“You must pay lots of gold to advertise in the store and, those that pay the most, can place their cookies at the front. The rest will be at the back on the hard to reach shelves.”

The bakers checked their pockets to see how much money they had. It wasn’t a lot as the dishonest bakers had been earning most of the gold.

“If I spend my money on advertising, I won’t be able to buy ingredients,” one said.

“If you don’t advertise, you won’t sell your cookies,” another pointed out.

“I’m going to buy a giant advertisement,” a third declared, “and hope people notice my cookies. Surely that will work.”

From the back of the room, the quiet baker piped up. “Shouldn’t people choose their cookies based on how good they taste and the recommendations of other customers, rather than how much advertising the baker can afford? That’s how it worked at the old cafés.”

Unfortunately, no one listened. They were too busy trying to please the owner of the new café.

The bakers began to design and buy advertisements so their cookies would be on the best shelves. This, however, used up what little gold they earned and, when they had no money left to advertise, their cookies were pushed to the back of the store.

“We’re losing money,” most of the bakers moaned. “When there were lots of little cafés, we earned more.”

“That’s what I was telling you,” the quiet baker reminded them.

A few bakers took off their aprons and threw them on the ground. “We quit. We aren’t even making enough to pay for our ingredients.”

Others sighed sadly and walked slowly back to their kitchens to continue baking all day and all night. They loved their job but didn’t know how much longer they could continue.

Meanwhile, inside the store, the customers were starting to comment.

“This cookie tastes just like all the others,” one said.

“There’s a hair in mine,” another declared.

“This one is good,” said a third. “But it was buried way at the back. I’m surprised I even found it.”

“What’s wrong with these bakers and this café owner?” Many grumbled. “We should go back to buying our cookies at the old cafes!”

“You can if you want to,” said the new café owner. “I’m not forcing you to buy your cookies here.”

But when the customers went outside, they discovered all the other cafés were closed. If they wanted cookies, they had to get them from the new café. Turning to go back inside, they saw a sign had been taped to the door.

“Dear customers, you now have to pay ten pieces of gold for each cookie.”

“Ten? We used to get as many as we wanted for only one!”

“That’s outrageous. I won’t do it!”

“But where else can we go? The bakers only sell cookies here.”

The customers looked at each other in shock, realizing they were now trapped. How could this have happened? Surely it was someone’s fault, but whose?

As winter fell upon the land, questions continued to abound. What were the customers going to do?

And what would the bakers do?

Would the dishonest bakers ever be stopped?

And, most importantly, did the owner of the new café even care?

(Not really. He owned the only café in the land and earned lots of gold every day from people who wanted cookies. The real question was, what industry would he conquer next?)

###

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The Book Launch: eBook Preorder and Presale Strategies to Grow Readership

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 18:05:00 +0000

I'm a huge fan of ebook preorders and ebook presales.

They both play different but essential roles in helping you build a successful publishing business.

Two weeks ago at the San Francisco Writers Conference, I presented a workshop about ebook preorders and presales.

You can download the full PDF of the presentation here. Feel free to share it with your author friends!

What you'll learn:

How book launch timelines have evolved for indie authors over the last decade
Why ebook preorders and presales are essential best practices for book launches
How to improve reader targeting by turning a single book launch into multiple book launches
How ebook presales increase the perceived desirability of your upcoming book
Why its dangerous to allow social media platforms and retailers to fully mediate (control) your relationships with - and access to - your readers
How to use the promise of presales to grow your mailing list 365 days a year
How to run an ebook presale
Presale marketing tips

This was my first public presentation discussing the new patent-pending Smashwords Presales feature we announced in December.

You can check out the full presentation here:

The Book Launch: eBook Preorder and Presale Strategies to Grow Your Readership from Smashwords, Inc.

Enjoy, and please share with your author friends!

Smashwords 2019 Year in Review and 2020 Preview

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 02:11:00 +0000

Welcome to my 2019 Smashwords year in review and 2020 preview.

Also don't miss my annual publishing predictions companion post, 2020 Publishing Predictions: House of Indie on Fire.

2019 was a pivotal year for Smashwords as prepared for our second decade in business. From the outside looking in, especially judging by the paucity of my blog posts this year, one might think things were quiet at Smashwords. The truth is anything but.

Our engineering team continued to innovate and improve our publishing and distribution systems and the Smashwords Store, releasing new updates to the Smashwords platform each week. Our vetting and service teams worked closely with our authors and publishers to provide quality support and rapid response times.

Thrill your readers. Grow your platform.

While the Smashwords team spent the year kicking butt serving our authors, publishers, retailers, library partners and book-buying customers, I spent much of the year in my writing cave. But I wasn’t writing a book. I was busy updating our product roadmaps and developing two super-secret projects related to presales. We revealed the initial fruits of our presales initiative on December 3 when we launched Smashwords Presales, and disclosed we had filed our first-ever patent application to protect the technology, systems and methods behind Smashwords Presales.

Underpinning our presales initiatives are some admittedly audacious goals. We’re working to:

Change how authors and publishers bring new books to market.
Help authors and publishers break free of an increasingly oppressive book marketing and bookselling regime that by design strips authors and publishers of their independence.
Restore a competitive ebook retailing ecosystem where more booksellers are working more effectively to serve the interests of authors, publishers and readers.

And if that’s not enough, I want to change all of ecommerce so that product creators like you – across all physical and digital product categories – have greater opportunities to capitalize on the excitement of new product launches.

Like all ambitious innovations, I’m confident our presales initiative will take unexpected twists and turns as early adopters experiment with Smashwords Presales and provide feedback.

I have no doubt that presales will eventually come to be recognized as an essential best practice for book launches, or any product launch for that matter.

As long time Smashwords authors and watchers can attest, we’ve been at the tip of the spear when it comes to identifying and evangelizing the best practices of today and tomorrow. When we began evangelizing free ebooks and free series starters a decade ago as a profitable marketing strategy for authors, and promoting preorders seven years ago, we promised that such strategies would give indies a significant competitive advantage in the marketplace. This proved true. As with all emerging best practices destined to grow strong legs and stand the test of time, the early adopters reap the greatest long term benefits due to how incremental advantages compound over time. The same will be true for presales. Presales are a new best practice every author and publisher would be wise to implement now to reap the greatest benefits in the future.

As is customary in my end of year review, I’ll summarize some Smashwords metrics and milestones and then I'll share broad stroke hints of what’s coming in 2020.

Smashwords 2019 Milestones:

Books published – We now publish 526,800 books, up about 4% from 507,500 books at the end of last year.

Words published – We now publish 18.7 billion words; up 690 million words, or 3.8% from a year ago.

Authors served – We’re now serving 146,400 authors and publishers, up 3% from 142,200 a year ago.

Smashwords files presales patent – On October 22, 2019, Smashwords filed our first ever patent application titled, “A PRODUCT RELEASE SYSTEM, METHOD AND DEVICE HAVING A CUSTOMIZABLE PREPURCHASE FUNCTION.” The full application, which won’t be publicly disclosed by the US Patent & Trademark Office until April 2021, describes the methods, systems and devices necessary for product creators, product distributors and online retailers to collaborate on the creation, management and execution of presale events attached to new product introductions.

The launch of Smashwords Presales – Smashwords Presales, and the patent-pending technology behind it, represent our most ambitious undertaking since the launch of Smashwords 11 years ago. Not only have we created an elegant tool for running public and private ebook presale events that will thrill your readers and help you build a marketing platform you control, we’ve also created a new foundation upon which we will build and reveal additional first-of-their-kind book marketing capabilities described in the patent application. Underpinning everything about Smashwords Presales and its underlying technology is our desire to help authors and publishers harness more of the energy and excitement of each book launch for their personal benefit. With the launch of Smashwords Presales, we showcased how one of the many exciting presale opportunities for authors and publishers is to use the promise of presale access to build their mailing list. Smart authors and publishers recognize that if your access to your readers is mediated by another party whose goals aren’t aligned with your own, it means you’re at the mercy of that intermediary’s benevolence, assuming it is benevolent. It means you’re vulnerable to having that intermediary erect tolls and taxes – such as requiring exclusivity or paid advertising to improve your discoverability – that stand between you and your customers. These tolls and taxes sap your profitability and independence, and undermine your long-term opportunities as a writer and publisher. At Smashwords, we’re here to help authors and publishers take back their independence! View the complete Smashwords Presales announcement here, or check it out in your Smashwords Dashboard.

Improved book discovery – Back in late 2018, we introduced a completely revamped book discovery experience on the Smashwords home page with multi-dimensional search. In 2019, we continued improving our multi-dimensional search capabilities. In January, we added the ability for readers to toggle between horizontal shelf views, a grid view, and a vertical list view. We added the ability to expand a single shelf into a full page of 25 listings. For example, the “Featured New Releases” shelf normally recommends four to five featured titles at a time, but when the reader expands it, they can view up to 25 Featured New Releases on a single page, as shown in this live example.

Improvements to the Smashwords Library – The Smashwords Library is where customers of the Smashwords Store track and manage books on their wishlists, and access purchased books. In February we revamped the Library to give purchased books, wishlist books, and gifted books their own tabs. Readers can display their books either as a list with full details or a grid display of book covers.

Introduced Global Coupons – Also in February, we introduced Global Coupons, which give authors and publishers the ability to create a single coupon code that works with multiple books. For example, you can assign your coupon code to all the books in a series, to a specific few titles you want to place on sale, or to all the titles you publish. Global Coupons can also be customized with the myriad other exclusive coupon capabilities offered by Smashwords, such as cents-off, dollars-off, percentage-off, metered (limited redemption) coupons, public coupons, private coupons, and time-limited coupons. You’ll find Global Coupons within the Coupon Manager tool of your Smashwords Dashboard.

Improved Smashwords Dashboard – We made numerous updates to the Dashboard to improve title management and bring more relevant information forward. It’s not uncommon for some publishers to manage dozens or even hundreds of titles and authors from their Smashwords Dashboard. Previously, all those books appeared in one giant listing, and that could get unwieldy when managing large catalogs. To solve this challenge, we added pagination and filtering to the Dashboard so you can filter by words in the title, by author (great for publishers managing many authors), and by series. In addition, each of the column headings are clickable to enable instant A-Z alphanumeric and reverse-order sorts and sort by title, series, author, publishing status, retail price, library price, books sold, date published, premium catalog status and more. We also brought forward more summarized data, such as the number of times your books have been wishlisted in Smashwords customer libraries, the number of copies sold across all retailer and library sales channels, and a running update of current payable earnings you can look forward to in the next monthly payment round.

Smashwords home page displays the number of titles currently running sales – In the upper left corner of the Smashwords home page, we now display the number of titles that are enrolled either in one of our site-wide sales, such as Read and Ebook Week, plus the number of titles participating in Special Deals promotions. Special Deals is our popular self-serve ebook merchandising tool, first introduced two years ago (read the Special Deals announcement here) that allows authors and publishers to launch temporary sales promotions. These promotions are a great way to raise the visibility of your books in customer home page searches. As I began drafting this post before Christmas, over 7,200 titles were on sale as a Special Deal, and then once we launched our annual Smashwords End of Year Sale on Christmas day, that number ballooned to over 60,000. With a click of the link, customers can jump directly into the sale catalog. To launch a Special Deal promotion, simply create a public coupon from your Dashboard’s Coupon Manager tool.

Improved tracking of coupon campaigns – In the Dashboard’s Coupon Manager tool, where all coupon campaigns are configured, we updated the “Manage Active Coupons" and "View Disabled/Expired Coupons" tabs to display a complete summary of ongoing and expired coupon events, including information on the number of coupon redemptions, and gross and net earnings for each campaign. Expired coupon campaigns can be reactivated with a click of the button.

Onscreen alerts tell you if we’re having trouble sending you email – Email is our primary communications link with our authors and publishers, and also for our most popular payment method, PayPal. Your email address comprises one half of your login credentials to the Smashwords site, with the other half being your password. If our emails to your account’s email address or PayPal address bounce back to us as undeliverable, it can jeopardize our ability to pay you, cause you to miss important sales or merchandising opportunities, and even cause us to close your account. We’ll provide you on-screen alerts at the top of your Dashboard, author/publisher profile page, profile editing page, account editor and your payment settings.

Improved tracking of customer favoriting and Smashwords Alert subscribers – When a Smashwords Store customer “favorites” an author, or subscribes to an author’s Smashwords Alerts (automatic email notifications to readers whenever you release a new title at Smashwords), those counts are reflected in your Dashboard. For publishers that manage multiple authors, in June we enhanced this summary to break out these “favorites” and Smashwords Alert subscribers by author name.

Improved geographic sales reporting – The Sales & Payments Report and Per-Payment Report generator now display more human readable, country-specific sales locations, when such location is known. For example, previously we reported sales from Germany as “country_de” rather than “Germany." Now it’s plain English so you don’t need to guess or remember arcane country codes.

Sales Map – In September, we introduced Sales Map, a visual color-coded map that displays and ranks the countries from which your sales originated in the last 90 days. If our retailer, library partner or Smashwords Store customer shares their country location, we’ll report it in the Sales Map. The Sales Map makes it really easy to drill down and view author-specific and title specific maps. You’ll find your own Sales Map under the Sales Reporting section in your Smashwords Dashboard.

Sales reports now show a book’s publisher / agent, when applicable – For authors who indie publish with Smashwords for some of their titles and work with a publisher who publishes and distributes their publisher-represented titles via Smashwords, the author’s Sales and Payments report now shows which sales will be paid by Smashwords, and which will be paid by the author’s publisher. You’ll find this itemized in your Dashboard’s Sales & Payments Report and your Per-Payment Sales Report Generator.

Improved gifting delivery – In October, we made it easier for Smashwords Store customers to ensure that ebooks they purchase as gifts are actually delivered to the intended recipient. When a customer purchases an ebook as a gift for another reader, Smashwords automatically generates an email to the intended recipient that allows them to access the gifted book. Previously, if the intended gift recipient lost or misplaced their redemption email, there was no way for the gifter to re-send the special gifting link. Now, it’s easy. The gifter can re-send the gift link by clicking to their Account page’s purchase record. The purchase record shows if the giftee picked up their gift. If not, you can click “re-send gift email.”

Smashwords Store grows – As any indie publisher can tell you, it’s a tough market out there. Most long-time indie authors have experienced precipitous sales declines at most major retailers over the last few years as Amazon works to devalue indie ebooks, and as other retailers lose customers to Amazon. The Smashwords Store has been bucking the trend the last few years, eking out its third consecutive year of sales growth at a time when most retailers are shrinking. This accomplishment is all the more remarkable given that our primary business focus for the last decade has been distribution to major retailers and library platforms, not the operation of our store. Thank you to Smashwords authors, publishers and customers for making 2019 another year of growth for our store. We’re looking forward to building on this growth in 2020!

What to expect in 2020

I’m excited about our plans for 2020. You’ll see us continue to introduce continuous enhancements to our publishing and distribution systems, add new sales outlets as appropriate, introduce new enhancements to the Smashwords Store, and you’ll see us introduce new tools and never-before-seen capabilities covered by our presales patent application.

With your continued support, 2020 will be a year of pleasant surprises as we work to make Smashwords the best partner for indie authors, publishers and retailers.

How can you support our mission at Smashwords? Publish and distribute with us. Take advantage of all our free and exclusive tools that will help you create a more sustainable publishing future for yourself and your fellow indies. And lastly, please encourage your author friends to check out all our new tools and capabilities so we can help them too!

Here’s wishing you and your readers an amazing 2020!

2020 Publishing Predictions: House of Indie on Fire

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 02:10:00 +0000

Welcome to my annual publishing predictions, and hello 2020!

Also be sure to check out my annual companion post, Smashwords 2019 Year in Review and 2020 Preview.

2020 makes me think of 20/20 vision. Can you see what’s coming in your publishing future?

Each year at this time I polish off my imaginary crystal ball, read the proverbial tea leaves, and generally attempt to divine a future that is anything but divinable.

The value in speculating about the future is that it gives us all an opportunity to imagine our place in that future. We can identify opportunities and threats, and a take steps now to alter the course of future history.

I recall watching an interview earlier this year with Margaret Atwood discussing the prophetic insights of The Handmaid’s Tale, first published 35 years ago. She said (and I’m paraphrasing) that although some would label her writing as speculative fiction, she really writes about things that are already happening. I get that. She calls attention to stuff hiding in plain sight that others should see too.

My predictions are based on what I’m seeing. I’m the first to admit I’m not without my blind spots. Your vantage point might be different. I welcome your perspective in the comments. Working together, we can paint a truer picture.

I try to spot emerging and entrenched trends, analyze the economic and psychological drivers of those trends, and speculate how those trends will play out over time.

I’ll start by sharing my thoughts on the state of the indie nation and then I’ll jump into the predictions.

Also be sure to check out my other annual companion post for today, Smashwords Year in Review and 2020 Preview. Odds are, if you read anything upsetting below, and you will, Smashwords has already built tools to help you overcome it.

The State of the Indie Nation

If you’ve followed my publishing predictions over the last decade, you may have observed that in the early years my predictions were rife with gushy optimism about the increasingly important role that indie authors and indie ebooks would play in the future of publishing. Those posts proved prescient, because indies did indeed become a force of nature in this industry.

Indies pioneered the best practices of ebook publishing and ebook marketing; proved that self-published authors can achieve awe-inspiring commercial success; and captured significant ebook market share from traditional publishers. Indies introduced readers to an amazing diversity of new voices that would have been lost to humanity were it not for the amazing opportunities presented by ebook self-publishing and democratized retail distribution.

In recent years my publishing predictions have taken on an increasingly ominous tone. Although I’m a naturally optimistic person and more inclined to see cups as half full than half empty, I’m a realist as well.

I care about truth. Truth is my anchor, and I’m always searching for it to keep me moored in the choppy seas of an ever-changing reality. In business as in life, I try to keep my opinions flexible and open to modification when facts change.

It’s time to recognize that if the indie publishing movement were a house, the house is on fire and not enough people have noticed yet.

I celebrated the virtues of the indie author movement back in 2014 when I published the Indie Author Manifesto. I celebrate the movement and its world-changing potential to this day.

Yet it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that the indie author movement and everything it represents is in jeopardy. Authors liberated themselves from one gatekeeper only to find themselves in the clutches of another.

Can authors honestly call themselves indie authors when they’re getting 80-100% of their sales from a single retailer?

What is independence anyway? If I wrap myself in chains and submit myself to the mercy of a single sales outlet, am I still an indie author if such bondage is by choice?

If each of Amazon’s ebook retailing competitors left the ebook market tomorrow, would it make a difference to your future?

Indies appear to have made their choice. Get a group of indies together for any period of time, whether it’s in an online forum or in person at a writers conference, and the conversation invariably devolves into questions of how to please Amazon and its algorithms. Shouldn’t the conversation be about how to please readers?

The indie community is beginning to grapple with these difficult but important questions of what it means to be indie. Although I remain optimistic about the potential of the indie author movement, I’m losing confidence that the community at large has the necessary situational awareness to dig itself out of the hole it now finds itself in.

I’m communicating with authors every day. I love to hear what authors are seeing, thinking and experiencing.

To my eyes and ears, indies are experiencing increased pain, anxiety, desperation and depression.

Many bestselling authors from four or five years ago have seen their sales plummet. Some have cut back production or quit writing altogether to take on a “real” job that pays. Jobs that don’t involve writing. This saddens me, because when you strip a person of their ability to pursue their creative passion, a part of them dies, and humanity as a whole suffers.

None of these talented writers suddenly became crappy writers. These writers have readers who want them to write more books but the authors are refusing to write them. When you depend on your author income to pay the bills and feed your family, you can’t write for charity.

The same factors hurting bestsellers are hurting every other author who’s trying to reach readers with their books.

When I meet an author who’s suffering, they’re often quick to blame themselves for any misfortune. This year I heard each of the following repeatedly:

I need to learn how to do better on Amazon ads.
I need to learn how to do better on Facebook ads.
I need to find more paid marketing opportunities.

The above answers are like a moth saying, “I need to fly faster toward the flame.”

You can’t fix a problem if you’re unable to identify the cause. In my 2019 publishing predictions post last year, I identified the primary cause, and expressed my bewilderment that so many authors and even large traditional publishers were continuing to make decisions that ran against their best long term interest. As I wrote in that post, when I posed this conundrum to literary agent Michael Larson, co-founder of the San Francisco Writers Conference, he responded, “Pain seeks simple solutions.”

Myriad factors contribute to the declining fortunes of the indies who are feeling the pain. Even if you think you're doing well, know that you'd be doing much better were it not for these factors that are dragging you down. But to recognize and fully grok these factors, one must delve into the complexity. The solutions are not simple or easy, and they’re not quick fixes.

Some industry watchers have attempted to divide the indie universe into two camps: The serious professionals and the amateur hobbyists. As this thinking goes, the professionals are serious and implement best practices, and the amateurs are amateurs and therefore flail and fail. I find this view unsatisfying and even dangerous.

Yes, there are lazy amateurs out there who still think their illegible homemade ebook cover is wonderful because if you click to expand the cover image and squint, you can read all the important words in the image (!!!!). Darwin will sort out the delusional, pig-headed and willfully ignorant.

Yet there are talented professional authors who implement best practices, write super-awesome reader-pleasing books, invest in expensive professional editors and cover designers and marketing teams, and they too flail and fail. Something else is going on here.

Over the last eleven years, in my books, workshops, Smart Author podcast and here on the blog, I attempted to help authors navigate the confusing darkness to realize a brighter, more prosperous future. Sometimes it felt like I was herding cats. I helped some people find their way, but I couldn’t reach everyone.

It pains me when I see an author fail. I believe every writer is blessed with untapped potential. It doesn’t matter if that author works with Smashwords or not. If you truly love books, you can’t help but care for the magicians who write them.

Mass Confusion for Newbies

Publishing is not an easy business to learn. It takes time, an inquisitive mind, and a lot of hard work. A newbie author might have a master’s degree in biochemistry, neuroscience, or sociology, but that doesn’t mean they’re equipped to make intelligent publishing decisions.

Thousands of new indie authors enter the market each year. The path forward for them is more confusing than it was a mere 10 years ago. New authors are confronted by a cacophony of advice and unlimited options from so-called experts.

Often the advice from experts is conflicting or just plain wrong which causes further confusion. Confusion leads authors to make poor choices. Often the simplest solution to the pain is the wrong solution. Confusion makes aspiring authors more likely to fall prey to predators, and more likely to make decisions that undermine the long term opportunities for all writers.

It's not just the newbie authors who are making poor choices.

The Wisdom and Stupidity of the Masses

I had a revelatory epiphany earlier this year that helped me view the challenges faced by indie authors in a new light. The epiphany was triggered after stumbling across a brilliant essay from the 1980s titled, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by Italian economist, Carlo M. Cipolla. Check it out. It’s a fun, thought-provoking read that will cause you to view humanity in a completely new light.

His essay attempts to explain how the behavior of each individual affects a society at large. He posits that people occupy one of four quadrants, defined as follows:

Intelligent people contribute value to society.
Stupid people cause losses to themselves
and others. Image by Vincedevries

Intelligent – Cipolla argues that Intelligent people make decisions that reap mutual benefit for both the individual and society. These people naturally gravitate toward win-win decisions and relationships. Their actions elevate a society for everyone's benefit.

Bandits – Bandits act selfishly with callous disregard for society. Think of thieves, cheaters, scammers, and others who are only out for themselves. Although no one likes thieves, Cipolla posits they’re a net neutral to society because they're just transfering value from one pocket to another.

Stupid – Cipolla definines stupid people as those who make

Image source:
http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/

self-destructive decisions that also harm society. Stupid people are a net negative to society. Their actions sap society of its wealth and potential.

Helpless – Helpless people are adept at making decisions that never benefit themselves, but always benefit someone else. Similar to bandits, helpless people are a net neutral to society because their loss is someone else’s gain. Although bandits and the helpless don't drag a society down per se, they also don't contribute to the society's prosperity.

The essay makes clear that intelligence, banditry, stupidity and helplessness have nothing to do with education level, race, religion, political orientation or socioeconomic class. Instead, these labels are more a reflection of one’s personal priorities, world view, curiosity or willful ignorance, and the desire and capability – or lack thereof – to not act stupid.

Every society, country or large family will have a mix of each of the four types of people, as well as those who straddle the gray areas of each quadrant’s border. The same holds true for any business entity, retailers included. The really interesting stuff happens in the gray areas, because that’s where an otherwise stable or vibrant society can slip into stagnation or decline when things tilt out of balance.

The lessons in Cipolla’s essay are rich in their applicability to any situation, especially if rather than viewing it as an explanation for why a society might rise or fall, you view it through the lens of how a movement might rise or fall. The outcome for any movement – whether it’s the indie author movement or a political movement – is determined by the interplay between the four groups.

Put another way, a society or movement performs best when the majority of participants are making decisions that produce enough positive benefits to society to counter the decisions by those that sap a society of its strength. The more participants who occupy the Intelligent group, the more prosperous the society. While it would be wonderful if all members of society landed in the Intelligent group, such a utopian dream is unattainable.

The essay’s wisdom provides some degree of insight into the generally troubled fortunes of authors, publishers and retailers.

Back in 2011, Amazon introduced a predatory scheme with KDP Select which later spawned Kindle Unlimited (2014). These interconnected publishing options devalued indie ebooks, stripped indies of their independence, and starved Amazon's ebook retailing competitors of books and customers. Traditional publishers acted like KDPS/KU was only a problem for self-published authors who were already selling their cheap books too cheaply anyway. But when indie ebooks are artificially devalued to the point that readers are reluctant to purchase single-copy ebooks, all books are devalued.

In other words, the entire industry had a hand to play in the banditry, stupidity and helplessness that authors observe today.

If you question why an individual author, publisher or retailer should care about the success or failure of the indie author movement, the answer is that we’re all in this together.

If we allow a single retailer to grind all the profit out of publishing, we can look forward to a dim future Amazon's competitors exit the market, royalty rates drop further, and where the only books that get published are from deep-pocketed hobbyists who are willing to pay more to be read than they earn in income.

It's not too late for indie authors to chart a more prosperous course for their careers. It starts with fiercely defending the independence upon which the indie author movement was born. Your independence is your power. Don't let others take it away.

Now to the predictions.

Mark Coker’s 2020 Publishing Predictions

Sanctions coming against Amazon and Facebook – In my predictions for the last two years, I predicted that the pressure would grow for the political establishment to bring some of these too-powerful platforms to heel. When a company tangles its tentacles too far, too wide and too deep, it suffocates innovation. Here’s a cooking metaphor for those of us who’ve mastered the art of boiling water. If 2018 was pre-boil, then 2019 became a full-on simmer, with politicians on both sides of the aisle agreeing that something needs to be done. In 2020, the calls to break up these companies will reach a full boil.

Backlash coming against Amazon Ads for stealing author platform – Last year I predicted that Amazon would become recognized as pay-to-play in 2019, and certainly that view became more accepted in 2019. Amazon's transition into pay-to-play marks a sad realization of the satirical April Fools post I wrote in back in 2017 titled, Kindle Power Bucks, which solved the age-old book marketing problem by allowing authors to pay to be read. In 2020, we’ll see the author backlash. It’s not that the idea of advertising is a bad one. What’s bad is how Amazon implements advertising. Amazon replaced their also bought shelves with sponsored ad shelves. This means they removed the organic book recommendation wisdom of fellow readers and replaced it with paid advertisements. It's a disservice to readers because now a book's visibility is measured by the author's ability to pay for that visibility. As I wrote in Publishers Weekly last month in my column titled, Platform Theft, Amazon Ads enable Amazon to sell your author platform to the highest bidder. Try this exercise learn how this affects you: Click to the Amazon home page, select Books, and enter your pen name. It’s not uncommon for the first three search rows to be occupied by sponsored ads for four books by other authors. It's also common to find that up to one third of all your results on that search results page are promoting other authors that Amazon knows are not you. Each is a detour designed to take your reader away from your books. It also means that Amazon is forcing indies to trample upon the platforms of fellow authors simply to remain visible in the store, in the same way that KDP-Select causes authors to trample upon the visibility of their fellow authors who refuse to go exclusive. You work hard to build your readership and your author brand. Now Amazon’s working hard to take it away, cloaked in the vapid veneer of a paid marketing opportunity.

Audiobooks disappoint – For indie authors, peak audio may already have come and gone. The audiobook market will grow in 2020, but the average participating author will see slower growth or even declines. The first indie authors to do audiobooks reaped the most benefits. Now the market’s getting crowded. Amazon’s Audible division continues to maintain a stranglehold on audio, and similar to Amazon’s strategy to commoditize and devalue everything they sell, they’re successfully devaluing audiobooks (by restricting the author's ability to set their own prices, and demanding long term exclusivity for the best visibility) which means your profit opportunity will continue to decline in audiobooks for the same reasons it has declined in ebooks. This leads to my next audiobook prediction.

Most indies to forgo audiobook opportunity – I love audiobooks, and want them to be successful (Smashwords has been partnered with audiobook distributor Findaway since 2018), but professional production costs are beyond the reach of most indie authors. As audiobook growth slows and devaluation pressures persist, and as more immortal audiobooks forever occupy the virtual shelves of online retailers, more indies will be shut out of the audiobook opportunity. It’s extremely difficult to lower production costs without sacrificing quality. Your choice of narrator can make or break your audiobook. The best narrators are reluctant to work on spec. Although there are interesting efforts afoot to leverage machine-learning and artificial intelligence to bring production costs lower, I remain skeptical that these efforts will produce anything but subpar audiobooks. It’s extremely difficult for a machine to match the intricate and dynamic cadence, emotion and tonality of a professional voice actor. It’s equally difficult to replace a talented audio editor for post-production.

Single-copy ebook sales face continued pressure from Kindle Unlimited – I’ve made similar predictions in prior years, and we’ll see this trend continue into 2020. When readers have unlimited access to over one million ebooks with their Kindle Unlimited subscription they can read for free, and when the subscription service decouples author compensation from the author-set single-copy price of the book, it’s a recipe for significant devaluation, and it gives readers over a million reasons to never purchase another single copy ebook again. Even 99-cent ebooks start to look too expensive to readers when they read other books for what feels like free.

Platform ownership to become a top indie imperative – Most authors already know the importance of building their marketing platform. Your platform is your ability to reach your prior and prospective readers. To date, most authors have focused the majority of their platform-building on growing their social media following, and building readership at the various retailers. But when your relationship with your readers is mediated by a third party, it means that third party is the gatekeeper to your readers. That third party can erect tolls or implement other policy changes that make it difficult, expensive or impossible to reach the readers who want to purchase your book. In the examples of Facebook and Amazon we see blatant toll-taking. In 2020, more authors will wake up to the danger and realize the imperative of building an author-controlled marketing platform. This doesn’t mean authors will need to open their own ebook stores (most who try gain a new appreciation for the valuable services offered by a retailer). Not all retailers are the problem. I can’t think of a single instance in the 10-year indie ebook retailing history of Apple Books or Barnes & Noble, for example, where either implemented a single policy change designed to tax authors, reduce royalty rates, or strip them of their publishing freedom. Despite Apple and Barnes & Noble being the second and third largest sellers of English language ebooks, both are small potatoes compared to the worst offender Amazon that has implemented new policies each year for the last 10 years that strip authors and publishers of their profit margin and independence. This brings me to my next prediction.

Indies will redouble efforts to build their mailing lists – When a reader subscribes to your author newsletter, you own that relationship. You can reach that reader on your terms whenever you choose. You can direct the reader to retailers whose missions are aligned with your own, and who are not trying to sell your reader someone else’s book when they're looking for your book. It means no third party can control your access to your reader. If you don’t yet operate your own opt-in newsletter, or you’re looking for tips on how to grow your subscriber list, check out another of my Publishers Weekly columns from this year, titled, Taking Control, for help. Also of help is my next prediction related to presales.

Ebook presales join the author’s best practices toolbox - This prediction is blatantly self-serving on the heels of our Smashwords Presales announcement on December 3, but I also know it to be true. When we first introduced preorder distribution at Smashwords back in 2013, I predicted preorders would become an essential best practice for all professional indie authors and that's what happened. The same will happen for presales. In the long run (beyond 2020!), readers will find presales much more exciting than preorders because presales allow the customer to read the book earlier than everyone else. Smashwords Presales is an author-friendly, author-controlled alternative to the more draconian KDP Select. And for authors plan to enroll their new releases in KDP-Select, Smashwords Presales is compatible with publishing strategy that too! Just run the presale BEFORE enrolling in KDP Select. With Smashwords Presales, the time period of early release is entirely controlled by the author. The period can be minutes, hours or months in advance of the book's general release. The author also sets the price and decides who can gain access to the presale. This gives the author a greater ability to harness the value of the presale. At Smashwords, ebook presales are designed to allow the author to trade something of value to the reader (early release and reading) with something of value to the author (using the promise of presale access to grow a private mailing list; earning higher royalties; capturing additional newsletter signups at point of purchase, diversifying their sales channels). The early adopters have already started adopting this in the last few weeks. 2020 will be the year thousands more early adopter authors adopt ebook presales. These early adopters will derive the most long term benefit, and they’ll set the example for the next authors and publishers.

Romance Writers of America faces make or break year in 2020 – I've long been a fan of Romance Writers of America, one of the largest and best organized professional writing organizations here in the US. The organization has been operating continuously since 1980 when editor Vivian Stephens joined with other romance writers to form a national organization to advocate for the interests of romance writers. In the years since, RWA has helped tens of thousands of romance writers. This past July, it was my great honor when the RWA board of directors awarded me their 2019 Vivian Stephens Industry Award for my contribution to the genre. Following the acceptance of my award in New York, I enjoyed meeting several RWA board members during the conference's after-party. Therefore, as you might imagine, I was shocked and saddened to learn that most of the RWA board abrupty resigned over the Christmas holiday in protest to what they viewed as secret backroom dealings related to how they handled allegations of racial insensitivity. The story even caught the attention of the New York Times who covered it yesterday. Many members now feel angry, hurt and disappointed. This turmoil is a critical test for RWA's leadership. How they deal with it will have lasting implications for RWA's future and possibly even its survival. I hope they rise to meet the challenge and emerge from this crisis stronger, better, and more inclusive than ever. Diversity is strength!

Ebook sales will rise if major book-buying countries enter recession – This was a big miss for me last year, so I’m going out on a limb and making the same prediction again. Last year I predicted the US economy would enter recession in 2019, and this would cause consumers to become more frugal and therefore shift more of their book-buying budgets to ebooks. But somehow, the US economy hasn’t fallen off the rails yet. With every passing month, however, a recession becomes more inevitable, and the longer its arrival is postponed, the deeper the next recession is likely to become. Just as a forest fire plays a natural and essential role in maintaining healthy forests, so too are recessions a difficult but necessary event to maintain the long term health of growing economies.

Thanks for taking the time to consider my predictions. Please tell me what you think, and feel free to make your own predictions in the comments below.

Summary of Prior Publishing Prediction Posts by Mark Coker

2019 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2018)

2018 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2017)

2017 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2016)

2016 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2015)

2015 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2014)

2014 Publishing Predictions (Published December 30, 2013) and Huffington Post (Published January 7, 2014)

2013 Publishing Predictions (Published Dec 21, 2012)

2011 Predictions at GalleyCat (published Dec 28, 2010)

10-Year Predictions at GalleyCat (published Jan 4, 2010)

Introducing Smashwords Presales

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 17:36:00 +0000

Smashwords today unveiled Smashwords Presales, a new book launch tool that will thrill your readers.

Smashwords Presales leverages patent-pending technology to enable the creation, management and merchandising of ebook presales. An ebook presale allows readers to purchase and read a new book before the public release date.

Presales are different than preorders. Presales provide readers early and immediate access to an upcoming book release, whereas preorders merely act as product reservations where the customer must wait until the public release date to read a preordered book.

Several New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors have already expressed interest in running Smashwords Presales for future book launches.

“I'm planning to use Smashwords Presales to offer early releases to subscribers of my newsletter,” said R.L. Mathewson, a New York Times bestselling author of romance novels. “When I asked my readers how'd they feel if I were to begin offering presale access as a perk for signing up for my newsletter, the response was overwhelmingly positive. My readers want this.”

How to Run an eBook Presale at Smashwords

The Smashwords Presales tool is available now to all authors and publishers that have upcoming releases on preorder.

When you’re ready to activate your presale, go to your Smashwords Dashboard, click the Presale Dashboard link, then click “Create Presale” to configure and preview the elements of your presale.

You can start and stop presales at any time in advance of your general release date. Your presale doesn’t impact your general release dates at retailers and library platforms supplied by Smashwords.

10 Reasons to Run a Presale

Thrill your readers - Your most enthusiastic readers will go wild over the opportunity to purchase and read your next release early, before its official publication date.
Run private or public presales - Smashwords Presales supports both private and public presales. With a private presale, Smashwords issues the author a private hyperlink to share with select readers or groups. The hyperlink leads to a secret landing page from which the reader can make their purchase. With a public presale, the presale is merchandised in the Smashwords Store and available to any reader.
Turbocharge newsletter signups - Offer presale access as a loyalty reward for readers who subscribe to your private newsletter. Your private newsletter is where most of your presales will come from. Build a marketing platform you control!
Capture customer email addresses – Wouldn’t it be cool if ebook retailers gave customers the option to subscribe to the mailing lists of their favorite authors and publishers? Now it’s possible at the Smashwords Store thanks to Smashwords Presales. To take advantage of this capability, authors and publishers must first digitally sign a Smashwords Customer Email Privacy Pledge. The customer is then presented with the option to subscribe to your private newsletter. Or, if they don’t want to share their email, they can add the author to their Smashwords Alerts subscription, which notifies the reader whenever the author releases a new book at Smashwords. Captured email addresses can be downloaded any time from the Presale Dashboard and then imported into your private mailing list. Email capture is only available during the book’s presale period.
Incentives for email sharing – We’re going the extra mile to help you build your mailing list. Smashwords Presales enables authors and publishers to offer optional discount incentives to entice customers to share their email address. Authors can configure a custom, pre-set discount offer that is presented to the customer at checkout. Once the customer agrees to share their email with a specific author or publisher, they won’t be presented the incentive offer again for future releases from the same author.
Compatible with KDP Select/KU Book Launches – Authors who plan to make their next ebook release exclusive to Amazon via KDP Select can satisfy a wider audience of readers by running a private or public presale at Smashwords BEFORE they enroll their ebook in KDP Select. Here’s how: 1. Upload your book to Smashwords as a preorder with a future release date, then immediately click to your Dashboard’s Channel Manager and opt the book out of all distribution channels (this will prevent your preorder listing from appearing at other retailers if that's your goal). 2. Click to your Dashboard’s “Presale Dashboard” and follow the simple instructions to create and launch your public or private presale. 3. When you’re ready to end your presale and enroll in KDP Select, click back to your main Dashboard, click unpublish and confirm, and voila, your book disappears from the Smashwords Store in seconds. This same technique can be used by authors that distribute wide but prefer to upload direct to the major retailers.
Works with Smashwords Coupons – Smashwords offers the industry’s broadest array of customizable coupon creation options for authors and publishers. Authors can create custom coupon codes for cents-off, dollars-off, percentage-off, metered (limited redemption), public coupons, private coupons, time-limited coupons, and coupons that work across multiple books. These features can be mixed and matched to create myriad customizable promotional options. Using the metered coupons, for example, an author of a highly anticipated new release could create additional launch buzz by creating a coupon code that would entitle the first 1,000 presale customers to receive a dollar off, after which the coupon expires and the next presale customers would pay the regular price. After you create your presale, click to your Dashboard’s Coupon Manager to create the coupon code.
Satisfy readers on all e-reading devices – A popular feature of the Smashwords Store is that one purchase gives the customer access to multiple ebook file types (if authorized by the author/publisher), thereby allowing authors to satisfy readers on any e-reading device. The author can use Smashwords-generated files by uploading their book as a Microsoft Word file or they can upload custom-designed .epub or .mobi files.
Earn higher royalties – The Smashwords Store pays royalty rates of up to 80%, based on the checkout amount of the customer’s shopping cart. Among common pricing sweet spots, a checkout amount of $2.99 earns 74% list; $3.99 earns 75% list, $4.99 earns 76% list and $5.99 earns 78% list. Book or shopping cart totals at or above $7.99 earn 80% list or more.
Option to require customers to sign anti-piracy pledge - One of the most common forms of ebook piracy is accidental piracy, which is when an enthusiastic reader shares a great ebook with a friend. Authors and publishers have the option to require presale customers to digitally sign an anti-piracy pledge in which the customer must affirmatively agree that the book is licensed for their personal enjoyment only and they may not illegally share the ebook with anyone. The pledge acts as a gentle reminder to customers of their legal and ethical obligation to respect the author’s intellectual property.

The Patent-Pending Technology Behind Smashwords Presales

The technology, systems and methods behind Smashwords Presales are patent pending. This is the first time in our 11-year history that Smashwords filed to protect one of our many inventions.

The features revealed today within the Smashwords Presales tool barely scratch the surface of the innovations covered within the 65-page patent filing. Smashwords submitted its patent filing to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on October 22, 2019 under the title, “A PRODUCT RELEASE SYSTEM, METHOD AND DEVICE HAVING A CUSTOMIZABLE PREPURCHASE FUNCTION.” I’m a co-inventor along with Smashwords CTO Bill Kendrick. An amended filing was made November 20 to consolidate claims and request fast-tracked review by the USPTO. The USPTO, per law, publicly discloses and publishes patent filings 18 months after the filing date. This means the general public can read the full patent filing starting around March 20, 2021. International filings are planned.

To be clear, presales, alternately known as pre-purchases or exclusive early releases, are not a Smashwords invention. Since the dawn of time, and before there were labels for such product release events, product creators have enjoyed varying degrees of freedom to launch their product when and where they choose.

When most people think of presales, they think of ticketed events.

What Smashwords has invented, as documented in the patent filing, takes the concept of presales to an entirely new level.

Unlike ticket presales where the customer must wait until the public performance to enjoy that performance, the Smashwords patent application covers products and services that are released early to select customers or affinity groups.

The Smashwords patent application describes a networked system that redefines the conventional temporal timeline for how online retailers and distributors collaborate with product creators to bring new products to market.

The patent application covers the creation, management, distribution, and merchandising of presale product listings across the ecommerce supply chain. It covers physical and digital products and services sold over ecommerce, as well as the early release of products and services fulfilled to customers via subscription, streaming media, in-store customer pickups at brick and mortar retailers, and other methods.

We developed Smashwords Presales to address some of the most critical marketing and platform-building challenges faced by authors and publishers. The same product marketing challenges faced by indie authors and publishers are shared by any individual or company that utilizes ecommerce to bring new products and services to market.

When shelf space moves from the physical to the virtual, it fundamentally changes everything for authors, publishers, any product creator, and customers. Online retailers enable product creators to reach customers that were previously inaccessible to them, but it also creates new challenges. Online shelf space is infinitely scalable, which means there’s no theoretical limit to the number of products that can be listed. Retailers can list and stock an ever-increasing selection of products, and they’re able to keep those products in stock longer if not forever. This creates a glut of millions of product listings crowding the virtual shelves of retailers, making new product launch discoverability more and more challenging with every day that passes.

For the last 30 years that I’ve been involved in helping companies and individuals bring new products to market, the conventional approach to product launches has always revolved a single product release date. This single release date serves as the focal point around which all product development, production, distribution, marketing, merchandising and customer fulfillment revolves. The product’s public release date also typically marks the point of peak customer demand and sales.

Tremendous energy and excitement
builds in advance of a release.
Harness the energy with presales.

There’s a tremendous amount of built-up energy tied to that single product release date. Think of that single product release date as an atom. Our invention splits the atom to unleash that energy for the product creator’s benefit.

In the features of Smashwords Presales launched today, for example, the author has the option to create a private presale they can choose to make available only to subscribers of their private newsletter. This gives readers a strong incentive to subscribe, and when readers subscribe the author gains a double benefit – not only do they gain a high-margin sale, they’re also building an author- or publisher-controlled marketing platform where their relationship with the reader is no longer mediated by a social media platform or retailer. The option to require the customer to digitally sign an anti-piracy pledge illustrates another positive implication - the opportunity for the product creator to exchange one thing of value to the customer (early access to a book) for something that's of value to the author (customer email address, reduced piracy). The patent envisions myriad conditional access requirements that can be applied for the mutual benefit of customers, product creators and retailers.

The Smashwords patent application envisions a future ecommerce where product creators, and the retailers and distributors that support them, can collaborate on the launch of new products where, in addition to the public release date, there can be one or more early release dates, referred to in the patent application as prepurchase events. It fundamentally transforms the conventional temporal timeline for new product introductions, and along with that transformation comes exciting new opportunities for product creators and retailers to generate greater customer excitement, target different customer segments more effectively with custom marketing campaigns, and to raise the visibility of new product launches.

Although the patent application – if granted – would provide Smashwords the exclusive right to exploit the invention as described in the application for a period of 20 years, it is not our intention to keep this to ourselves. Smashwords is but a small fish in the small ocean that is book publishing.

Millions of new products and services are brought to market each year via ecommerce. The invention raises the prospect that each of those new product introductions could sport multiple, customizable public or private product launch events. We’re confident that such orchestrated presale events will eventually be recognized as an essential best practice for all new product launches, just as preorders are today. We think readers will find presales more exciting than preorders.

What’s good for the creators of ebooks is also good for the creators of audiobooks, print books, digital music, games, software applications, art, consumer electronics, apparel, financial services, hospitality services and any other new product or service that can be listed, marketed, launched, and released early via online retail.

The global market for ecommerce, measured by the value of products and services sold online, is over $4 trillion annually. In the U.S. alone, the market is nearly $600 billion. A sizable percentage of these annual sales are derived from new product introductions that can directly benefit from our invention.

Smashwords Patent Licensing

We want to accelerate the adoption and commercialization of the invention across the industry so every product creator, retailer, distributor and customer can benefit from this. This means that in addition to our desire to make this invention available to Smashwords partners, competitors and others in the book publishing industry, we also want to make the invention available to product creators, retailers and distributors outside of publishing.

Therefore, effective immediately, we’ll begin opening up licensing discussions with online retailers inside and outside of book publishing. Since the patent has not been granted yet, it means we’ll be licensing trade secrets, technology and know-how to help retailers build elements of the invention into their platforms so product creators can take advantage of it.

As described in great detail in the patent filing, retailers and distributors have enormous flexibility to build the invention into their existing platforms, and then to use it as a foundation for further innovation and collaboration across the supply chain.

Retailer licensees will be offered the ability to issue limited sublicenses of the invention to their distributors, aggregators and product suppliers. Licensing inquiries can be directed to my attention at presales *at* smashwords dot com.

What Comes Next

The first major retailer or subscription service to adopt this will gain the ability to onboard a lot of exclusive product listings, and to harness the energy and excitement of early access.

In the meantime, we’re not waiting for potential licensees to recognize the potential and build this into their platforms. Smashwords Presales is available today in the Smashwords Store. In the months and years ahead you’ll see Smashwords continue to build out Smashwords Presales with additional first-of-their-kind capabilities covered within the patent application.

Enjoy!

Smashwords Introduces Global Coupons

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 00:29:00 +0000

At Smashwords, we're committed to providing our authors and publishers the greatest possible control over their ebook publishing, distribution and marketing.

Today I'm pleased to announce Global Coupons, a new marketing tool that enables authors and publishers to assign a single coupon code to two or more books in their catalog.

Global Coupons are a boon to authors and publishers that want to initiate, track, and manage custom marketing campaigns encompassing multiple titles.

With the addition of Global Coupons, authors and publishers now have another powerful Smashwords-exclusive marketing tool they can use to attract readers and turn fans into superfans.

Authors and publishers can use Global Coupons to drive subscriber acquisition for private newsletters, reward reader loyalty, distribute review copies to reviewers and media, and make their books eligible for discovery with the Smashwords Store's ever-present “Special Deals” shelves.

How to Create Global Coupons

Here’s a step-by-step checklist for creating Global Coupons:

Click to the Smashwords Dashboard’s Coupon Manager feature
To create a single coupon code spanning multiple titles, either click the “Select all Books for Global Coupon” option, or select books individually
Click “Generate Global Coupon”
Next, select if you want to apply a flat percentage off to all books (i.e. 23%-off), or set a unified price (i.e. if you wanted to price all books at $1.00, or any other price), or you can choose to set unique and individual prices or discount levels for each title
Set an expiration date
Select if you want the Global Coupon public or private (with a public coupon, participating titles will be merchandised as on sale in the Smashwords Store, and available for discovery through the home page’s “Special Deals’ features; with a private coupon, the author or publisher decides where to share their coupon code).
Assign an optional Campaign Label, which allows authors and publishers to more easily track redemptions from their Sales & Payments reports
Click “Create Coupons” and you're done!

The Global Coupons feature is available now as an exclusive tool for all Smashwords authors and publishers. The coupons work only in the Smashwords Store.

We quietly introduced the feature two weeks ago within the Dashboard’s Coupon Manager. Although we didn't tell anyone about it, hundreds of authors and publishers have already discovered the feature and used it to attach Global Coupons to over 13,000 books. Two publishers used the feature to assign a Global Coupon to over 800 books each, all with a few simple clicks. Dozens more have used it to generate Global Coupons spanning over 100 books each.

If you've got two or more books at Smashwords, give it a try and let us know what you think.

Enjoy!

10th Annual Read an Ebook Week Sale Starts March 3

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Fri, 22 Feb 2019 00:25:00 +0000

Mark your calendars!

The 10th annual Smashwords Read an Ebook Week sale kicks off Sunday March 3 and runs through Saturday March 9.

Thousands of Smashwords authors, publishers and readers will participate in this international ebook celebration featuring thousands of exclusive deals on great books.

Authors and Publishers: Enrollment is now open at https://www.smashwords.com/dashboard/sitewidePromos The sale will be promoted to over one million Smashwords customers. Don't miss out!

With a few clicks, you can enroll your books into discount categories of 25% off, 50% off, 75% off or FREE.

To enroll all your books at once, click the Enroll button immediately below the discount level you desire. This is a huge time saver for authors and publishers who manage dozens, hundreds or even thousands of titles.

Readers: When the promotion goes live on Sunday March 3, visit the Smashwords home page where you'll find multiple options to explore the participating titles.

Here are two shortcuts:

To browse participating books using our brand new "shelf" interface, go here:
https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/1/any/any
To browse participating books using our "classic" interface , go here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/category/1/bestsellers/1

Be sure to check back daily because thousands of new books will join the sale throughout the week.

How to Join the Celebration

Here's a quick checklist to help you get the most out of the Read an Ebook Week event:

Authors and publishers: Enroll your books now at https://www.smashwords.com/dashboard/sitewidePromo. You'll also find a link on the Smashwords home page. If you're not yet publishing with Smashwords, now's a great time to join the over 130,000 authors and publishers around the world who publish and distribute ebooks with Smashwords. Visit https://www.smashwords.com/about/how_to_publish_on_smashwords for an overview of our free publishing and distribution services, and then click "Join" to get started.
Authors and publishers: Each day during the week long sale, celebrate your participation across your social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blog, private mailing lists). Include a direct hyperlink to your author or publisher page. Also be sure to complete your Smashwords Interview (also accessible under "Interview Manager" in your Smashwords Dashboard) so prospective readers can learn the story behind your authorship.
Authors and readers: Visit the Smashwords Read an Ebook Week event page at https://www.smashwords.com/ebookweek where you'll find downloadable buttons, banners and images you can share on social media to promote your participation in the event.
Readers: When you discover a great deal, share it with your friends on social media. Be sure to tag the author (find their Twitter and Facebook addresses on their Smashwords author profile page) so they know you downloaded their book! To promote the sale to your friends, share this hyperlink which places the reader into the heart of the Read an Ebook Week Catalog: https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/1/any/any
The official hashtags for the promotion are #Smashwords and #ebookweek19

This promotion is exclusive to the Smashwords store. It will not impact prices at other retailers. Enjoy!

2019 Book Industry Predictions: The Butterflies Will Flap Their Wings

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 02:02:00 +0000

Welcome to my annual publishing predictions.

I’ll start by sharing some thoughts on the state of the indie nation and then I’ll jump into the predictions.

Also be sure to check out today’s companion post, Smashwords Year in Review and 2019 Preview.

The State of the Indie Nation

If you’ve followed my posts here at the Smashwords Blog over the years, you know I don’t sugarcoat. I try to give you the unvarnished truth of what I’m seeing and hearing, and what it all means for the future of indie authors and publishers.

Grab a cup of coffee or your favorite beverage and let’s ponder the past, present and future of indie publishing.

When I met with authors this year, I sensed a growing unease with the direction of the industry. For some, their unease has given way to desperation and despair.

Sure, it’s a tough life as an author – this has always been the case. Yet something different is happening now.

Authors feel like something’s been taken from them, but they can’t quite put their finger on it. Their concerns often reverse and manifest as self-doubt. Are they not as good of a writer as their most ardent fans tell them they are? What are they doing wrong?

A lyric from the band Black Sabbath comes to my mind. It’s the title track from their classic album by the same name, Heaven and Hell:

“The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.”

~ Black Sabbath

Is someone or something stealing authors’ dreams?

The answer is complicated. I think at the root of the challenge, as I’ve discussed here on the blog for several years now, is that the supply of ebooks is growing faster than the supply of readers.

Since ebooks are digital, and because virtual shelf space is unlimited at ebook retailers, it means these books never go out of print. It’s great that your book will always be available, discoverable, and purchasable, but it also means that every day from this day forward you’re competing against more books.

If the glut was the only concern, most of the indies could deal with it through best practices alone. Most indies don’t take full advantage of best practices, which means those that do make the effort usually enjoy superior discoverability and sales.

But even best practices aren't enough now. Something else is going on.

Some smart authors are starting to feel as if the system is somehow rigged against them. I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but these authors are on to something.

The answer is in Seattle. The industry’s dominant retailer is taking advantage of this glut to commoditize books and strip indies of their independence. This strategy was set in motion years ago with the launch of KDP Select in 2011, and the waves it unleashed then are now wreaking havoc on author shorelines.

This was a major theme of my predictions post last year. It’s worth a re-read because the same forces I described last year intensified in 2018 (Read it now).

For this post, in the context of my discussion on the state of the indie nation, I’ll examine Amazon’s strategy from a different angle. I’ll look at how Amazon’s strategy is forcing authors to make short term decisions that undermine their long term careers.

Amazon requires its suppliers – i.e. authors and publishers – to make concessions in exchange for greater visibility in the Amazon store. These concessions come in the form of exclusivity, lower royalty percentages, the loss of pricing control, and other hidden tolls and taxes that eat away at your profits. If you want to maximize visibility in Amazon's store, these are the pounds of flesh you must trade.

Talk to any large traditional publisher and you’ll learn these are the same battles they’ve been fighting and losing with Amazon long before indie authors came on the scene.

All these concessions are presented to indies cloaked in the cheery veneer of “options” you can take advantage of. Those that don’t swallow these options are disadvantaged.

No other ebook retailer demands these concessions. No other retailer is pushing to commoditize books. No other retailer encourages its customers to pay less when the customer would happily pay more.

Amazon does it because they can, and because their business model is all about commoditizing everything they sell.

Jeff Bezos once stated that Amazon’s business philosophy is, “your margin is my opportunity.” That’s all you really need to remember.

Most indie authors I know live hand to mouth if they’re a full-time author. It’s tough to make a living writing books.

Amazon acts like a twisted modern day Robin Hood who steals from the poor and gives to its customers.

Measuring the Mood of Indies

When I step back and consider how the mood of indies has evolved over the last ten years, I can almost divide the decade into two chapters.

The first chapter started in 2008 and 2009, and was marked by jubilence and unbridled optimism within the budding indie community as ebook retailers opened their virtual shelves to self-published ebooks. This democratized distribution was a game-changer because it allowed readers to discover and purchase indie ebooks right alongside the books of traditional publishers. It was during these first five years that ebooks grew from less than one percent of the overall trade book market to nearly 20 percent.

But not all parties can last forever.

In the second chapter, the most recent five years, the ebook market matured and its unsustainable meteoric growth stalled.

Indies responded by working harder than ever. But for many authors, it felt as if each time they took one step forward, unseen forces pushed them two steps back.

Since indie authors get most of their income from digital sales, the glut of ebooks stings. It makes authors ripe for exploitation by players who promise to improve the author's discoverability. These player's interests aren’t always aligned with those of the author.

Enter Amazon. Amazon presented authors with quick fixes such as KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited that offered to raise their visibility overnight. Never mind the consequences to the author’s long term future or the damage it causes to rest of the bookselling ecosystem.

I warned authors about these consequences the same day KDP Select was introduced seven years ago (Read Amazon Shows its Predatory Spots with KDP Select).

Authors who put all their eggs in the Amazon basket tell me they now feel trapped. They’re also angry because they feel Amazon’s competitors failed to give them a viable alternative to this fate.

Point taken.

The third chapter of this story will be written by indies. What happens next is up to you, and those who come after you.

Politics and Publishing

The other day I was having an email conversation with my buddy, Michael Larson, who I first met through our mutual friend, the late Dan Poynter. Mike and his wife, Elizabeth, co-founded the amazing San Francisco Writers Conference 16 years ago. To this day it remains one of the best writers conferences in the country. It was one of the first to embrace indie authors as equal members of the publishing community.

We were talking politics and publishing. I lamented to Mike how voters, like the entire publishing industry, can buy into simplistic quick fixes that are inadequate – and even counterproductive – to solving today’s complex challenges.

Wherever you land on the political or publishing spectrum, you probably agree it’s natural for most people to prefer simplicity over complexity. Complexity is scary!

There’s a political component to publishing, but it has nothing to do with conservatism or liberalism.

As an indie publisher, you’re an important member of the publishing community. Every publishing decision you make, like the flap of a butterfly’s wing, is a vote for the winds to blow in one direction or another.

Why is simplistic political pabulum so appealing and so effective? Why are so many traditional publishers and indie authors surrendering their independence and financial futures to temporary quick fixes?

Mike’s six word response floored me:

“Pain cries out for simple solutions.”

Now I get why KDP Select is so successful for Amazon, but not so much for authors. Now I understand why my attempts to warn authors for the last seven years have failed.

If I’ve got a throbbing headache and the only painkiller I have handy is Tylenol, I don’t want someone telling me how Tylenol is going to burn a hole in my liver 20 years from now. I need relief now.

I met with talented authors this year who were near tears when they described how they’re working harder than ever, producing their best work ever, yet their sales were dropping year after year.

Out of desperation, they’re trying everything.

They’re giving readers whiplash in the process. KDP Select is brilliantly designed to act this way. The moment you even try it, you’ve undermined the future you might have had. The thing is, you never know.

I see this anguish in the faces of these talented authors and it makes me angry. It doesn’t have to be this way!

Yes, the market is glutted, but why is the largest retailer working single-handedly to diminish the labor of authors and publishers, especially when readers are willing to pay more?

Are $3.99 and $4.99 price points – the sweet spots for most bestselling indies – too much to pay for a great book? No!

The entire publishing community is now living in fear.

Large traditional publishers are worried about making their next quarter’s numbers, and are terrified Amazon will take away their preorder buttons if they so much as look at Amazon cross eyed. Indies are terrified of Amazon’s next price-matching email or KU nastygram, which reminds them that repeated offenses could lead to cancellation of their publishing privileges. Indies are terrified of seeing their legit reviews disappearing without explanation or recourse. Or, like the NY Times bestseller who contacted me this morning, why should an author fear being kicked out of KU because Amazon might notice that a pirated version of her book was just listed for sale at another major retailer?

What kind of life is this, living in fear that your business partner who’s supposed to have your back is browbeating you, and threatening to drop the axe on you at any moment?

All too often, succumbing to Amazon’s offers of quick fixes like KDP Select can feel safer, but this decision can also lead to long term pain, bondage and servitude.

As I’ve repeated here on the blog, in my books and at my workshops around the world for the last decade, there’s no single magic bullet that will grow an author’s book sales. There are many secrets, and they’re called best practices. Best practices require hard work, consistency, iteration, and a steady hand over the long term.

Yet we’re drawn to the pill that promises to numb the pain now, not tomorrow. By jumping from one magic elixer to the next, we take our eyes off the balls that really matter.

Here’s what really matters: Do your books cause rapturous delight in the hearts and minds of your readers? Are your publishing partners’ interests aligned with your own? Is your partner trying to elevate you or control you?

Exclusivity is a form of censorship. It says you can express yourself here, but not there.

Algorithms that give preference to exclusive books are a form of censorship too. This struggle for free expression predates Amazon, and will continue long after Amazon is gone.

In fact, the seeds of the indie author movement, and this contemporary battle for free expression, can be traced back to the introduction of Gutenberg’s printing press over 500 years ago. Ever since the introduction of the printing press, writers struggled against political, religious and commercial interests that sought to censor or control their free expression (For more on the fascinating historical struggle for free expression, check out episode nine of the Smart Author Podcast titled, The Indie Author Manifesto).

The good news is that Amazon’s practices can’t last. They’re unsustainable for the creators of books. Like all forms of oppression, the people will eventually rise up and take back their independence.

It won’t happen tomorrow, but I can assure you that here at Smashwords, we'll continue fighting to put authors in control (To learn what we accomplished for you in 2018, and for hints of what we have planned for 2019, check out my other post today, Smashwords 2018 Year in Review and 2019 Preview).

Now on to my predictions section of this post.

Mark Coker's Publishing Predictions for 2019

Predictions are a form of speculative fiction. They help us imagine a world that might be if current trends continue, and they give us advance opportunity to encourage or reverse these trends via the collective actions of all participants.

I see silver linings everywhere.

There’s much to be optimistic about.

You are the creator of books.

Books, and readers' desire to consume them, will never go away. Books will always remain valuable and magical vehicles for revelation, joy and rebirth. In these turbulent times, books are more important than ever.

The world is cyclical, just like the seasons. Winter is upon us here in the northern hemisphere, but it too shall pass. Markets rise, fall, then rise again.

I have faith that at the end of the day, when toxic or unjust forces that limit freedom become too overwhelming, people will band together to tackle these complex problems. The alternative is annihilation, so pick your path.

Even during droughts, beautiful flowers grow in the desert. There are still millions of readers out there right now searching for their next great read, and they’re willing to pay for it. You can reach them.

As an indie publisher, you are powerful. Every decision you make is the flap of a butterfly wing. If indies concentrate their flaps in the right direction, we can shift this industry’s winds in a better direction.

Now I present you nine publishing predictions for 2019.

1. Indies Help Fuel Further Rise of Audiobooks in 2019 – Audiobooks create new time in the reader’s day to enjoy books. As a result, audiobooks are now the fastest growing segment of the book market. Some indies are already earning more from audiobooks than they do from ebooks and print books. Just as indies helped propel the ebook market forward, they’ll do the same for audiobooks in 2019, but to a lesser extent, since audiobook production is not an affordable investment for most indies. Although audiobook sales could surpass ebook sales within a few years if current trends continue, there’s no guarantee these trends continue. As we all know, the market for ebooks grew exponentially for first the few years before it matured and flatlined. At the end of the day, print, audio and e- are simply different formats for enjoying books. The audiobook market, like ebooks, is subject to the same over-saturation facing ebooks, though that saturation will play out slower because high production costs act as a gatekeeping force. Amazon is already attempting to commoditize audiobooks too, which will lead to price-cutting and lower earnings. But other forces are working to counter this. Apple Books is now carrying audiobooks from our production partner Findaway. If you can afford the investment, do it sooner rather than later, because it’ll be tougher to earn your investment back in a few years than it is now (be warned, however, there’s no guarantee you’ll earn your investment now). Smashwords authors will find an audiobook production option in their Smashwords Dashboard.

2. Ebook Preorder Adoption Will Continue to Rise – In the 2018 Smashwords Survey that I presented at RT Booklovers this year, we found that 16.7% of new books released at Smashwords during the survey period were released as preorders, up from 12.23% in the 2017 survey. It may not look like much, but it represented a 37% increase from the prior year. In 2019 I think we’ll see the adoption rate increase further. It needs to, because that tiny 16.7% of books accounted for 51% of our top 1,000 bestsellers. Authors who do preorders earn more sales, and those that don't are squandering their potential! This is an essential best practice that 80% of indie authors haven’t yet implemented. If you’re a long time follower of the blog or have read my books, you know I’ve been advocating preorders as a top best practice since 2013. To learn how to make preorders work for you, listen to episode 8 of the Smart Author Podcast on preorder strategy.

3. More Authors Will be Tempted to Quit – For the reasons outlined in my introduction, more veteran indie authors will quit publishing in 2019, to be replaced by new, less-experienced authors who are even more subject to exploitation. If you’re considering quitting, please listen to episode 8 of my podcast episode titled, The Art of Delusion. The path out of the darkness begins by staying true to your inner light, and by finding joy in the journey of publishing. Don’t measure your success by dollar sales. The only way to truly fail in publishing is to quit. Stay in the game if you can.

4. Amazon Algorithm Fatigue Sets In – Indies are obsessed with Amazon’s algorithms, and there’s no shortage of experts who will advise you on how to modify your publishing strategy to please Amazon’s algorithms. What few people realize, however, is that the obsession with Amazon’s algorithms is taking indies in the wrong direction. Imagine if all the attention shown to gaming Amazon’s algorithms was instead focused on writing better books? That would be a true benefit to readers, and a benefit to the author’s long term career.

5. Amazon Becomes Pay-to-play – In my 2016 April Fools post, I wrote a satire announcing a powerful new book marketing program at Amazon. It was called Kindle Power Bucks (read Kindle Power Bucks Solves Marketing Challenge) . Authors would pay Amazon each time a page of their book was read by readers. The larger your marketing budget, the more readers you could buy. This dystopian future came closer to reality in 2018 when Amazon started replacing “also bought” shelves with sponsored ad shelves. Sponsored ads are littered throughout their search results. Let’s be clear. When you have to pay a retailer to be seen, that’s a toll. It’s a tax on your profit margin. It means you’re not really earning 70% list at Amazon (actually, you never did earn 70%, since they charge a download fee based on the size of your book). This is another way for Amazon to pay authors and publishers less for their books. Why would Amazon do this? Is it because this service helps place better reader-pleasing books in front of their customers? Absolutely not. This is another way to extract margin concessions from its suppliers, much like the co-op dollars large publishers must pay to have their print books featured on front tables and shelf talkers at physical stores. Similar to Google Adwords, Amazon Ads pit advertisers against one another as they bid for greater visibility. Over the long term, this erodes your profitability, because the economics of ad bidding holds that you keep investing more dollars until a dollar invested can’t earn back the dollar in royalties.

6. More Authors and Readers Will Abandon Facebook – Facebook is in a world of hurt right now. Users are beginning to realize that Facebook’s business model is all about selling their users’ privacy and attention to the highest bidder. For authors, this means they hold your readers’ attention hostage so they can sell you ads. They’ve shown a callous disregard for the toxic content that spreads like wildfire on their site, possibly because they recognize that fake news spreads faster and is more engaging then real news. Facebook has created an environment that tends to make its users less happy the more time they spend there. Despite my criticism, I’m hopeful Facebook can reform their ways because there’s still much to love about Facebook, and there’s no other viable alternative yet that can match the better aspects of Facebook. If you’re considering quitting Facebook, don’t.

7. Facebook, Amazon and Google Will Face Increased Anti-trust Scrutiny in 2019 – Last year I predicted Amazon would face increased anti-trust scrutiny, and we saw new rumblings in that regard in 2018. In 2019 those rumblings will intensify, but this time it’ll be around all three of these companies. These three companies have grown so large and powerful that they’re now stifling innovation outside their walls, and decimating fair competition. Each of these companies started with fantastic missions, and each has created tremendous value for their users and shareholders thanks to their innovations. But they’re now so large it’s nearly impossible for new startups to gain a foothold. It’s another of those hairy, complex problems with no simple solution. Much of the challenge has to do with how large platforms and marketplaces operate on the internet. When businesses started moving online thanks to the Internet, it removed geography as a natural regulator on the growth of a business. These large companies also benefit by a concept known as “network effects,” which means that the more people who join their service or participate in their marketplace, the more useful that service becomes for all its users, and thus the more difficult it is for users to leave that platform for another competitor. Once you’re locked in, you’re subject to exploitation and dependence.

8. Blockchain Hype Subsides – I like new technology. In my prior career starting in the ‘90s, I ran a Silicon Valley PR firm. My job was to promote new technology. There’s good hype and bad hype. If a product or technology truly solves real world problems, then yay, shout your message from the highest rooftops. But bad hype is another variety. Bad hype exaggerates the true potential of a product or technology. Bad hype is inherently dishonest and disingenuous by over-stating reality.
Blockchain is one of those technologies with enormous potential for society, and it deserves to be talked about and considered. It’s the technology that underpins Bitcoin. There was a lot of hype about Blockchain in 2018, that it would somehow become the panacea to what ails indie authors. I kicked the tires. I wanted to believe. I read lots of articles, asked questions and listened to others I respect so I could understand why they were so excited. But at the end of the day I still didn’t get it. Maybe I’m not smart enough. I do believe Blockchain has potential applications, but those applications are so far out and so nebulous it strikes me as a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
It reminds me of Bitcoin, which seems like a great digital currency for cybercriminals, but of questionable value to the rest of us. The value of Bitcoin plummeted 70% in 2018. I think Blockchain for publishing hype will decline 70% in the year ahead as well. But who knows, I could be wrong. New technologies have a way of disrupting things overnight.

9. Ebook Sales Will Rise in 2019 if Major Countries Enter a Recession – Recessions are horrible affairs. People lose jobs. Businesses close. Livelihoods are lost. But recessions are necessary to the long-term health of any economy, because they help deflate bubbles and rein in excesses.
The US is now teetering on the verge of entering its first economic recession in nearly a decade. Recessions tend to be global affairs, since our economy is so inextricably linked to others. Trouble in one country can tip others over the edge. The effect of a recession, or even the mere fear of a recession, is that consumers become more frugal. Books have always represented a low-cost spend for entertainment and knowledge, and ebooks even more so. A trip to a movie theater might cost you $15 for 1 ½ hours of entertainment. A $15 book can give you 15 hours of entertainment. It’s like ten movies for the price of one. If a recession hits, I expect all book sales to increase, and more readers will turn to ebooks, since ebooks are priced at a fraction of print books. Indie ebook authors will be the beneficiaries, since indies price their ebooks significantly lower than traditional publishers.

Summary of Prior Publishing Prediction Posts by Mark Coker

2018 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2017

2017 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2016)

2016 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2015)

2015 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2014)

2014 Publishing Predictions (Published December 30, 2013) and Huffington Post (Published January 7, 2014)

2013 Publishing Predictions (Published Dec 21, 2012)

2011 Predictions at GalleyCat (published Dec 28, 2010)

10-Year Predictions at GalleyCat (published Jan 4, 2010)

Smashwords 2018 Year in Review and 2019 Preview

noreply@blogger.com (Dovetail Public Relations) — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 01:59:00 +0000

Welcome to my annual Smashwords year in review for 2018 and preview for 2019.

2018 was another productive year for Smashwords.

We achieved several important milestones, delivered on all the development initiatives I outlined in our 2017 year in review, and continued building the foundation for what comes next.

Let’s jump in, starting with milestones:

Smashwords Milestones 2018

Books published – We now publish 507,500 books; up 7.5% from 472,100 at the end of last year.

Words published – We now publish 18 billion words; up 1.2 billion or 7.1% from 16.8 billion a year ago.

Authors/pen names served – We’re now serving 142,200 authors; up 5.1% from 135,175 a year ago.

Smashwords Celebrates 10-year anniversary - Wow, these ten years went fast. Thank you for joining us on this amazing journey. Read our 10-year anniversary post here.

Smashwords Store Facelift + Multi-dimensional Discovery – In November, the Smashwords home page received its most significant refresh in 10 years when we introduced our new multi-dimensional book discovery interface. With a single click on a book category, or on a price or word count filter, readers can surface a great selection of books across multiple themed shelves. In December we added additional shelves to further broaden discoverability. The shelves are powered by new algorithms designed to automatically curate book recommendations based on how other readers are responding to these books in the Smashwords Store and across the Smashwords distribution network. Early results have been positive. In the first 30 days following the launch of the new home page, sales increased 25% over the prior 30 days.

Annual Smashwords Sales Meet Multi-dimensional Book Discovery – On Christmas Day we launched our second annual Smashwords End of Year Sale. This is the first time one of our sales has taken advantage of our new multi-dimensional search. Readers are responding with increased downloads and purchases. The sale ends tomorrow, January 1st, at 11:59pm Pacific time.

Enhancements to our "Classic" Interface – From the start of our development for the new Smashwords home page, we knew we wanted to keep our classic interface as another option for readers. Throughout the year we made a number of enhancements to the classic interface. We introduced new options to search for Special Deals expiring soon, box sets and books in series. We revamped our algorithm for "Highest Rated" to reduce unfair gaming so we could present readers more relevant recommendations.

Improvements to Coupon Manager - We updated the interface of Coupon Manager to make it easier for authors and publishers with a lot of books to manage their coupons.

Bulk enrollment for Smashwords Site-wide sales - We added an option to enable authors and publishers with large catalogs to enroll all their books in our special site-wide sales, including Read an Ebook Week, The Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale, and our Smashwords End of Year Sale. This new feature led to more books in each of these sales, more earnings for authors and more reader happiness.

Updates to Book Pages – We updated book listing pages with larger cover images. We made it easier for readers to view all the books in a series (previously, series books were simply mixed in to the author's catalog of books). We made it easier to jump to the profile pages of co-authors.

New Erotica Filters – We introduced new preference settings that give readers more control over the types of erotica that appear in their book searches. With a click of the "Filtering" button, readers can now choose to omit erotica, show only mainstream erotica, or show all books including both mainstream and taboo erotica.

Improved Point-of-sale Merchandising in the Smashwords Shopping Cart – We made a number of updates to the Smashwords shopping cart to encourage customers to add more books by the same author. For example, if a customer purchases a book in a series, we make it easy for them to add additional titles in the same series.

Smashwords Partners with Findaway for Audiobook Production and Distribution – Audiobooks are the fastest growing segment of the book industry. In March Smashwords entered the audiobook market in partnership with Findaway Voices. Authors can launch audiobook production directly from their Smashwords Dashboard.

Track “Favorites” and Smashwords Alert Subscriptions – Ever since our launch ten years ago, we’ve offered the ability for readers to “favorite” their favorite authors. When a reader does this, the author shows up on the reader’s personal profile page as one of their favorites. In 2016 we introduced Smashwords Alerts, which allows readers to subscribe to daily email notifications when one of their favorite authors releases a new title. In 2018 we added a feature in the Smashwords Dashboard that allows authors and publishers to track the number of favorites AND the number of Smashwords Alert subscribers. Click the “Who’s Favorited You” option and you can view all the people who favorited you, along with a link to their public profile page, their country, and any social media coordinates they choose to share. Encourage your fans to favorite you and subscribe to your Smashwords Alerts.

Smashwords Authors Enter Walmart via Kobo – 2018 was the year that Kobo opened up Walmart to ebook sales, which means Smashwords ebooks are now available at Walmart as well. Despite all the excitement, ebooks at Walmart are a work in progress. It remains to be seen if Walmart will take the necessary steps to fully embrace the opportunity. For example, per Walmart policy, they don’t allow a price of FREE for ebooks, which means their customers don’t have access to many of the most popular series starters. That glaring blind spot will need to be addressed if they want to become a serious player in ebooks.

Smashwords Partners with Romance Daily News – In July, Smashwords unveiled a partnership with Romance Daily News, a new online magazine targeting romance readers. Each day RDN offers its subscribers access to a free "Book of the Day" ebook that normally carries a price. Smashwords also supplies RDN with daily indie bestseller lists across multiple romance and non-romance categories.

New Smashwords Book Marketing Guide – The updated 2018 Smashwords Book Marketing Guide now offers over 65 book marketing ideas, all free to implement. It includes bonus sections on social media strategy, how to write a press release and how to build your brand by earning free mainstream press coverage.

Smart Author Podcast – We released five new episodes of the Smart Author Podcast, all focused on evergreen best practices that help authors make their books more discoverable and desirable. If you’ve listened to all 16 episodes and have suggestions for additional topics you’d like me to tackle, please suggest in the comments below!

Smashwords Plans for 2019

Before I jump into our plans for 2019, I’d like to talk about our values at Smashwords, and how these values shape our development roadmap.

Smashwords has always operated our business with a higher purpose in mind. Our higher purpose is to advance the interests of our indie authors and publishers. We believe indies are the future of publishing, and we appreciate that you’ve chosen Smashwords as your partner to blaze this new future.

We support indies by creating incredible publishing tools that help you publish and distribute with pride, professionalism and success. We advocate for our authors’ and publishers’ interests. We fight to protect your independence at a time when some in the industry work to strip you of your independence.

There’s a selfish motive to our benevolence. If we help you succeed for the long term, we’ll succeed in the long term too. We think this keeps our interests aligned with your interests.

Our priorities for 2019 reflect these values. I'll list below what we're focusing on. For obvious reasons, I'll need to keep this high level and in broad strokes. Lots of surprises planned.

What to Expect from Smashwords in 2019

Revamped Publishing Page – We’ll deliver a revamped publishing process in 2019 that’s simpler, more intuitive and more feature-rich.
More Reasons to Distribute with Smashwords – We know you have hundreds of potential partners for ebook publishing and distribution. We’ve always been huge believers in distribution, because a great distribution partner helps you spend more time writing and less time fussing with the more mundane aspects of publishing, distribution, metadata management, sales reporting, and tax accounting. For 2019 we’ll give you even more reasons to consolidate your distribution with Smashwords.
Retailer Partnerships – We work with an amazing group of ebook retailers that share our respect for indies. We’ll continue to provide our retailers the support they need to ingest, list, update, merchandise, and sell your books. When our retailers ask us to jump, we ask how high because when our retailers succeed with your books, we all succeed. We’ll continue to evaluate new distribution opportunities and partner with those that can make a positive difference for your personal publishing business.
More Surprises in Store for the Smashwords Store – Many Smashwords authors and publishers use the Smashwords Store as their personal bookstore. We offer free author-friendly marketing tools that can’t be found anywhere else, and because we’re not beholden to any corporate overlord or short-sighted venture capitalist, we have the flexibility to innovate with audacity. Readers love our store for its myriad book search options, amazing authors, great selection, DRM-free ebooks, multi-format ebooks that work on any device, Smashwords Coupons, and friendly customer service performed by real humans in California empowered to do what it takes to put a smile on your face. Expect to see more industry-first tools in 2019, more promotional support for underserved genres and categories, and more opportunities for readers to discover and enjoy some of the best indie ebooks in the world.

Thank you for choosing Smashwords as your publishing and distribution partner.

On behalf of the entire team at Smashwords, we look forward to the privilege of serving you in 2019!

Be sure to check out my other annual end of year post, 2019 Book Industry Predictions: The Butterflies Will Flap Their Wings.