Smashwords and Diesel Partner to Expand Ebook Distribution Opportunities for Indie Authors and Publishers

Smashwords today announced a two-part ebook distribution partnership with the Diesel eBook Store, a leading independent ebook retailer.

The agreement expands ebook distribution opportunities for thousands of current and future Smashwords authors and publishers.

Under the first part of the agreement, Diesel has become the latest ebook retailer to join the Smashwords distribution network. In addition to Diesel, we now distribute our books to the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Sony, as well as to mobile app platforms such as Aldiko for Android devices, and Stanza for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

All Smashwords Premium Catalog titles will go live at Diesel by August 19. If you're a Smashwords author and your books have been accepted into the Premium Catalog, your books will automatically go to Diesel unless you opt out from your Dashboard's Channel Manager in the next two days (the only reason to opt out is if your book is already distributed to Diesel via a different distributor).

Smashwords authors and publishers will set the retail price and earn 60% of every sale. If you're not in the Premium Catalog, or you're not familiar with the process, please click here for the Smashwords Distribution Information page.

For the second part of the agreement, Diesel has selected Smashwords to power its new Diesel Publishing Portal. Like most smart ebook retailers, Diesel is committed to offering its customers the broadest possible selection of ebook titles. By partnering with Smashwords to power its publishing portal, Diesel makes it faster and easier for indie authors and small publishers to sell their titles on Diesel. Diesel is the second major ebook retailer to choose Smashwords to power their co-branded publishing portal. Sony was the first.

I expect more retailers in the future will select Smashwords as their publishing portal partner. Why? It's very expensive for a retailer to enter into contractual distribution relationships with each individual indie author and small publisher. For most retailers, large and small, they pay essentially the same amount for every book sold, whether they source the book directly from the author or publisher, or from a distributor such as Smashwords. By utilizing Smashwords, a retailer can quickly and efficiently ingest thousands of new books at no cost, whereas the alternative is to spend millions of dollars to staff and duplicate what Smashwords has already created.

In Diesel's case, they will encourage all authors and publishers with fewer than 100 titles to utilize Smashwords as the recommended onramp into the Diesel store.

As a Smashwords author or publisher, it's important you maximize the digital shelf presence for your books. Smashwords is committed to helping you do this, as demonstrated by our agreement with Diesel today.

Smashwords has multiple other signed distribution agreements in our pipeline that we haven't yet announced.

As I mentioned in my July 24 post, How Indie Ebooks will Transform the Future of Book Publishing, ebook retailers are an essential component of every indie author's book marketing strategy. If you're only selling your book at the largest ebook retailers, you're selling yourself short. Each ebook retailer helps you reach new and unique readers that don't shop at other retail outlets.

Click here to read the full press release, issued this morning.