Smashwords reached another milestone yesterday. One of our authors published the three billionth word.We reached two billion words four months ago, and one billion 11 months ago.
To put this in further context, in the last four months we averaged 8.3 million words a day. This works out to about 350,000 words per hour, 5,700 words per minute or almost 100 words per second. Can you hear the keyboards clicking?
Smashwords is an ebook publishing and distribution platform. We're simply a tool that enables the efficient publication, distribution and management of ebooks. Our mission is to unleash the literary talent of writers from every corner of the globe.
We're now publishing over 70,000 books from 28,000 authors. In our first year, 2008, we published 140 titles. That grew to 6,000 in 2009, 28,800 in 2010, and will likely surpass 90,000 this year.
We take none of this for granted. This growth is entirely thanks to Smashwords authors, agents, publishers, retailers and customers who have granted us the privilege to distribute and sell these books.
Every day, the 11 of us at Smashwords are working to better serve you. My thanks to you for your continued trust, confidence and partnership. With your help, the best is yet to come.
Congratulations Smashwords and all the authors who helped the site reach this milestone! It's incredible to think of all the books out there making up those billions of words. Watching those numbers grow is rather exciting, and the sky is the limit! Hopefully we can all find success and grow together.
ReplyDeleteThanks and congratulations to Mark and the Smashwords team for providing this avenue for authors and readers. Congratulations also to all the Smashwords authors. To quote Shania Twain, "it can only go up from here"
ReplyDeleteA well done to all the SMASHWORDS team. It definately is a team effort to get to that point. I dislike taking room here to ask a ? but I see no other avenue on the site to ask; Does SW REQUIRE a TOC on all manuscripts? I keep getting ;
ReplyDelete****This book required modification when it was reviewed on 09/02/11.
I see your NCX isn't formed correctly in the .epub file. The updated Smashwords Style Guide's Step 20 has troubleshooting tips and screen shots. Common causes: Hidden bookmarks, improperly formed bookmarks, or bad or missing ToC hyperlinks. To view your NCX, download and install Adobe Digital Editions (the link is below) then download and open your .epub file. NCX files enable useful navigation for your reader. When you're finished correcting your book, go to Dashboard: 'upload new version' to upload the new version. Thanks.
The following types of changes have been made: •contents — 2011-09-10 13:16:45
It was then resubmitted for review on 09/10/11.
***** I read this in digital Reader and it looks fine only thing missing is the TOC but then, ^^^I do not want^^^ a TOC.
Addison
Well done to everyone at Smashwords and to all of the indie authors taking advantage of a great place to publish. I'm relatively new to the Smashwords family and I've been really happy that I chose this place. Thanks for everything!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations Smashwords. I uploaded my first book to the site on Saturday the 11th and am just formatting another to upload today or tomorrow. So far, so good - keep up the good word...er, work.
ReplyDeleteHi Addison, yeah, this isn't the right place for this. Step 20 in the Style Guide addresses this at great length. Most of the Style Guide updates over the last three months have all been on Step 20. If that doesn't help, then click the "comments/questions" link at the top of any Smashwords page to reach our support team.
ReplyDeleteafter rereading my earlier comment, it is apparent that there are three kinds of people in the world - those that can count and those that can't.
ReplyDeleteI began adding to the total in 2010 and I'm proud to have contributed about 200,000 words so far. Get set for a quick additional billion, because in the future I plan to contribute another million or so. Keep it up Smashwords, you're making publishing history.
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