Smashwords Quadruples Meatgrinder Ebook Conversion Capacity

On Friday we quadrupled the ebook conversion capacity of the Smashwords Meatgrinder.

Lately, the queue time has been running 30 hours from upload to conversion completion. That's unacceptable. Two years ago, it was 5-10 minutes.

Today, we're back to near-instant conversions. Upload a book formatted to the Smashwords Style Guide and watch Meatgrinder convert your book in real-time to multiple ebook formats. No other ebook publishing platform offers such rapid publishing and updating.

We now have the architecture in place to scale our capacity further as volume warrants.

The long queues were caused by an influx of new books, as well as an increase in regrinds from authors and publishers upgrading their books with improved formatting and navigation.

In addition to the increased throughput, we've made multiple improvements over the last few weeks to Meatgrinder's NCX generation for EPUB. EPUB is the format used by our retail distribution partners Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel eBook Store.

NCX stands for Navigation Control file for XML. Think of the NCX as a meta-Table-of-Contents, since the file and the navigation actually reside outside the book, but point back into it (What you know as an EPUB file is really a zipped combination of multiple files of which the .NCX is only one). A well-formed NCX adds useful navigation for your reader. See Step 20 in the Smashwords Style Guide for more on how to construct an NCX and linked Table of Contents at Smashwords.

Amazon Acquires Lexcycle, Makers of Stanza

Big news out today for Smashwords partner Lexcycle, makers of the super-awesome Stanza e-reading app. Lexcycle announced today on their blog they've been acquired by Amazon. Congrats to Marc and Neelan at Lexcycle.

Probably of most interest to Smashwords authors and customers is the third paragraph of the statement from Marc Prud'hommeaux, founder of Lexcycle:

We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition. Customers will still be able to browse, buy, and read ebooks from our many content partners. We look forward to offering future products and services that we hope will resonate with our passionate readers.

It'll be interesting to watch how Amazon's ownership shapes the evolution of the Stanza app.

With its support of epub, Lexcycle, via the huge popularity of Stanza, singlehandedly breathed life into the open industry format. Amazon, on the other hand, has been criticized for its refusal (to date) to embrace epub in favor of its proprietary Mobipocket format. Also at issue is DRM. Back at the Tools of Change conference in February, the scene was abuzz with criticism aimed Amazon's way for Amazon's insistence that publishers supply their ebooks in DRM-'d formats.

Is Amazon's acquisition of Lexcycle a sign of more openness to come from Amazon, or a sign of changes to come with Stanza?

The Twittersphere is all atwitterpated over the announcement.