Smashwords Year in Review 2011

Welcome to my annual Smashwords year in review.

2011 was another strong year for Smashwords and our authors.

We're ending the year with over 92,000 titles published, up from 28,800 at the end of last year.

In my 2010 year in review post, 75,000 was my stretch goal for this year, so we beat it by a good margin.

Smashwords today supports over 34,000 authors and small publishers around the world, up from 12,000 a year ago.

I launched Smashwords four years ago with a crazy idea to change the way books were published, marketed and sold. I believed authors should have the freedom to publish directly to their readers without the interference of publishing gatekeepers. My ideas were not unique. The great Dan Poynter has been evangelizing the virtues of self-publishing for over 30 years.

I’d like to think we’ve helped bring Dan’s vision to life. Smashwords married self-publishing with ebooks, and we did it with a free platform that enabled any writer, anywhere in the world, to easily publish an ebook using nothing more than a word processor. We took the printing press – once under the sole dominion of the publisher – and put it in the cloud for all to use.

Unlike publishing services that earn their income by selling paid services to authors, Smashwords doesn’t sell services. Smashwords earns income only if we help sell books. We earn a small commission on sales equal to 10% of the list price for distributed books, and 15% of the net for books sold at our Smashwords.com retail operation. We think our approach aligns our interests with the interests of authors. The more we help you sell your book, the better we all do.

What started as crazy dream has become a reality. We've created a business that empowers authors to reach readers with their words. Smashwords authors collectively earned millions of dollars in 2011. More importantly, we've helped tens of thousands of authors enjoy the freedom to publish and get read.

When we launched in early 2008, many writers viewed self-publishing as the option of last resort. Self-pubbed authors were often ridiculed as "vanity" authors, and much of the most vitriolic criticism came from fellow writers. We don’t hear much of that anymore. Self-publishing is finally earning the respect it deserves.

Today, self publishing is the option of first choice for many first-time authors. Previously published authors - the backbone of Big Publishing, are also wading into the indie waters. Most start with their reverted-rights works. Then they catch the indie bug and release unsold works, and then they move on to original first releases. You might think of it as a graduated progression toward enlightenment that starts with baby steps before the big leap. More will take those first steps in 2012, inspired by other successful indies, possibly inspired by you.

I think few people in the traditional publishing industry comprehend how this indie author revolution will transform their business in the next few years. Their world is about to be turned upside down.

Unfortunately, when faced with simultaneous convergence of multiple big trends (the rise of ebooks, the rise of the indie authors, the shift of bookselling from brick and mortar to online), most big publishers have taken actions counterproductive to their own self-preservation. They're trying to grab author rights they don't deserve. They're trying to the hold the line at 25% net royalties for ebooks, which works out to a paltry 12-17.5% of list. That line can't hold when authors can earn 60-80% list by self-publishing, and enjoy better distribution.

The power of publishing is shifting from large publishers to authors. It's what I’ve predicted for four years, and now the trend is plain as day for anyone who chooses to see it. What happens when authors lose faith in Big Publishing? This was the subject of my blog post earlier this year, Nietzsche and the Downfall of Big Publishing, inspired by what I thought were interesting parallels with the Arab Spring.

2011 was the year indies proved they can out-publish, out-compete, out-distribute and out-sell the large publishers. Look no further than the bestseller lists at major retailers to see how the indie insurgents are scaling the lists. A few have even landed in the NY Times ebook bestseller list. We’ll see more of this in 2012.

The Indie Movement Reaches Adolescence

Indie authors, free of the legacy business practices and expense structures of the large publishers, are beginning to feel their oats.

If the indie author movement was a person, it would just now be entering puberty. It's in that gawky awkward pimply stage of life. The participants are filled with unbridled optimism for the future, confident they're writing the new rules for the future (and they are!).

Visit any writers message board and you’ll find writers plotting the future of publishing. Sure, the skeptical observer will find petty internecine squabbles reminiscent of high school, and copious uniformed opinions dripping with unfounded speculation, fear, greed, envy and aspiration. But dig deeper and you'll see something profound is happening. These newly fledged indie ebook authors (old timers are the ones with two or three years of experience) are piecing together the secrets of successful modern day publishing.

They’re sharing information, debating, arguing and leading the revolution that is upon us. We're witnessing the rise of the indie author collective, and the collective - warts and all – is giving rise to an intelligence and sophistication that will redefine publishing for the better.

The practice and professionalism of self-publishing grew by leaps and bounds in 2011 as indie authors collaborated. The best indie authors and small presses are publishing books of equal or higher quality than traditional publishers, and they're doing it faster, smarter and less expensively. Because the indies are earning 60-80% of the list price as their royalty, they're earning higher profits while producing a product that is more affordable and more accessible to more readers around the globe than ever before.

As some lucky indies strike gold (and let’s be realistic, most indies do not sell well, just as most traditionally published books don't sell well), they share their secrets in real time and inspire all authors to raise their game.

We're witnessing a publishing renaissance that will lead to more readers, more reading, greater literacy, and greater and more amazing published works than could ever have been realized under the old gatekeeping system.

As I've often stated here and elsewhere, traditional publishers are in the business of selling books, not publishing books. They acquire books they think they can sell. Nothing wrong with that, unless you’re an author whose work is not perceived as commercial, or you lack the fame of an established platform, or you’re a reader who appreciates more choice at less cost.

Writers write for reasons different than publishers publish, and it's at the nexus of these opposing motivations that the indie author revolution took root.

Today’s indie ebook author is at the right place at the right time. Print is in decline as reading moves to screens, brick and mortar fades, and book buying moves online.

The Free Printing Press Helps Shift Publishing Power to Authors

In the old world of two or three years ago, publishers controlled the printing press and access to distribution. Today, thanks to free ebook publishing and distribution tools like Smashwords, the printing press is free and available to any author, and distribution is open to all.

Retailers such as Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel and Amazon deserve a lot of credit for welcoming indies to their virtual shelves. These ebook retailers are hungry to carry the books of indie authors because these books satisfy their customers (they sell). Retailers also understand that readers could care less about the name of the publisher on the book’s virtual spine.

The implications of this revolution are profound. Writers are now in charge. The writer decides when their manuscript graduates to published book. Readers decide which books are read.

Along with this power shift also comes the responsibility for authors to honor the best-practices of the best traditional publishers. Readers have little tolerance for anything less, and this is how it should be.

In this age of abundance where consumers have unlimited access to myriad high-quality sources of entertainment and knowledge - much of it accessible for free - writers need to up their game. Those who honor the reader by publishing great books will reach the most readers.

Book marketing has always been a word of mouth business. If you write a book that touches your reader’s soul, or inspires them with passion or knowledge, your readers will market your book for you.

There's never been a better time to be a writer. The opportunity to reach readers with words has never been greater.

Against this backdrop, you might understand why I’m so excited about the future I see for Smashwords authors and publishers. Our business is dedicated to helping authors stake their rightful claim to this bright future.

So let's turn the page to Smashwords...

If I were to sum up our focus in 2011 in one word, that word would be infrastructure.

Smashwords has been profitable for 15 months. We're reinvesting these profits to build a solid foundation upon which we’ll deliver continuous service enhances to our authors, publishers and retailers for many years to come.

Our development roadmap calls for over 500 minor and major service enhancements. Some are so minor you might not notice them. Others we think will knock your socks off. The Smashwords you see today barely scratches the surface of what we think is possible.

The bulk of our development effort this year focused on building a scalable technology infrastructure that can support one million or more published and distributed books (or, about 10X our current size). To enable this future, we invested heavily in infrastructure. Much of this infrastructure build-out is invisible to users, and if we do our job right it remains invisible. You don’t care how we build it, you just want what we build to work for you, whether you're an author, publisher, retailer or reader.

Notable Smashwords Milestones 2011

Before I review the plans for 2012, let’s summarize some of the notable business, technology and competitive highlights for 2011:

1. People - There are real people behind Smashwords. 12 months ago, we were barely three employees. Today we're 13. We've got a great team here in California, all of whom are dedicated to serving our authors, publishers, retailers and customers. We value every client.

2. Platform infrastructure - We completely rearchitected the underlying Smashwords platform this year to improve scalability, reliability, performance and security. As one of the Twitter founders once said, developing a fast-growing web service is akin to rebuilding a rocket ship in mid-flight. I grok that. The Smashwords platform has a lot of complex moving parts. Most of our last six months of development work has been focused on this infrastructure under the hood; the nuts, bolts, gears, glue and magic that hold our systems together. Most people never think about infrastructure except for when it fails. The proof in our pudding: Our infrastructure improvements have led to fewer website outages and faster page load times at the same time our catalog of books and traffic have exploded.

3. Distribution - We revamped our technical integrations with our retail partners so our books can flow to them faster and more accurately than ever before. Most of our retail partners also upped their games to accommodate our incredible increase in title volume. This is not to say everything is perfect. It is not. We view distribution as a never-ending work in progress, and we will continue to work in a constructive manner with all our retail partners to explore how we can improve our mutual performance.

4. Meatgrinder - We completed multiple updates to our Meatgrinder conversion engine, both in terms of scalability and also capability. On the scalability front, earlier in the year Meatgrinder was taking up to 30 hours to convert a single ebook. We tripled conversion capacity and now complete most conversions within three minutes. On the capability front, we improved Meatgrinder's ability to produce higher-quality books by adding greater styling control, automatically generated NCXes, and automatic error correction for some common formatting problems.

5. Categorization - We're in the final stages of a complete remapping of our categorization system to provide complete support for the latest BISAC categorization specifications. We're now supporting more categories than ever. Good categorization is a foundational element of what comes next in 2012.

6. Discovery - Multiple items here. Books aren’t purchasable unless they’re findable (or tripped over or stumbled upon or recommended by a friend or promoted), and that's where discovery comes in. We kicked off 2011 by adding support for long book descriptions (4,000 characters). We updated the shopping cart so it recommends up to 12 other books by the same author. In March, we launched the official Smashwords Facebook page which now gets thousands of visitors each week (thanks to the great volunteer efforts of Smashwords author John Low!) including many readers looking to discover new authors. In June, we acquired a block of 50,000 ISBNs from Bowker so we could give them away for free (ISBNs enable distribution to Apple, Sony and Kobo).

7. Reporting – We increased the frequency of our aggregated sales reporting from retail partners. We introduced a new downloadable spreadsheet that maps each quarterly payment to the sales behind that payment, and we made the data easy to query by author, retailer or title. For sales at Smashwords.com, we improved our email notifications so authors can more easily monitor more information about about their sales as they happen. Customers, too, now receive more complete purchase confirmations to help them access their books faster and easier.

8. Literary Agents – We updated our publishing platform so literary agents can now upload and manage the indie ebook efforts of their clients.

9. Globalization – On a percentage basis, most countries outside the US are just now entering the exponential growth phase. Their markets are where the US market was two, three or four years ago. Within a few years, the market for ebooks outside the US will dwarf the US market. We took a number of steps in 2011 to expand the global footprint of Smashwords ebooks. We signed an expanded distribution deal with Apple which increased our international coverage to Apple iBookstores in 32 different countries. Today, nearly half of our Apple sales come from outside the U.S (I’m surprised the media hasn’t picked up more on Apple’s impressive international success in 2011). We updated our payment and reporting systems to track VAT, which is handled differently by different retailers. Thanks to the volunteer efforts of Smashwords authors around the world, we released translated Smashwords Style Guides in German, French, Spanish, Italian (also the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide in Italian) and Dutch. A Bengali version is completed and a Danish version is in the works.

10. Smashwords Gifting - Our final big feature of the year launched on Christmas eve. We now make it easy for customers (and authors too, if they choose) to purchase ebooks as gifts. We think this is a nice complement to our popular Smashwords Coupon tool.

11. Competition - Many new ebook distribution competitors came on the scene in 2011. Back in 2008, we were the only game in town when we became the first ebook distributor to focus exclusively on self-published authors. Now you have choices. We feel honored that so many authors, small publishers and agents continue to choose Smashwords over the competition.

The ebook market remains in an exponential growth phase. 2011 will probably show ebooks at 20% of the US book market, up from 8.3% the year before and 3% the year before that. Based on preliminary post-Christmas sales results I’ve seen for Smashwords books at Apple, B&N and Sony, I think 2012 could see ebook market share in the US rise to between 40 and 50%. I expect many more competitors will come online in 2012 and 2013. I've been in technology for the last 20 years, so I'm intimately familiar with the inevitable boom and bust cycles of things touched by tech (and I have the old scars to prove it). Ebooks are in the boom phase now, but they cannot continue the torrid pace of growth. The new competitors and the noise they create will draw more authors, books and readers into the market, and will act as a growth catalyst for a couple years. When the exponential growth ends and the bust comes (and yes, it will come), some of these new competitors will disappear. Any one of us could disappear if we fail to build profitable businesses that add measurable value to those we serve.

In 2011, the most formidable competition came from Amazon, which has been on a multi-year rampage to disintermediate anyone or anything that stands between Amazon and their target customer. Three weeks ago Amazon launched KDP Select, a new opt-in service that represents their boldest broadside yet aimed at competing ebook retailers. KDP Select requires participating authors to remove their books from all retailers except for Amazon. I blogged why I think KDP Select is bad for authors (here and here). While most Smashwords authors share my view that exclusivity is a dangerously slippery slope to trod, thousands of authors enrolled titles in the Amazon program before Christmas. Of the approximate 65,000 or so books enrolled in KDP Select, nearly 6,000 books came from - and disappeared from - Smashwords as a result.

Despite the punch in the gut from Amazon, we still managed to grow our title count during the month of December (now over 92,000 titles), albeit at a lower rate of growth than we’re accustomed. Preliminary holiday sales results indicate our remaining authors enjoyed an impressive sales bump in the first few days following Christmas at Apple (up over 70%), Barnes & Noble (up over 100%) and Sony (up 30%). I don’t yet have results from Kobo and Diesel. If the record-breaking post-Christmas bump follows the same pattern as last year, sales will moderate a little in the next two weeks and then stabilize and begin growing again at a new normal that’s measurably higher than the pre-Christmas sales levels. These strong holiday sales, and the tremendous growth we’ve seen this year both in the US and internationally only solidify my conviction of the importance of authors maintaining broad and diversified distribution. Every retailer – even the smallest – works to introduce authors to new readers they wouldn’t reach otherwise. Yes, distribution is our business so my view is biased. I believe in the value of retailers and the distributors who serve them.

Someday, if the Amazon powers see fit, we’ll distribute more of our titles to them as well (we’re currently distributing about 200 titles to them). We’d much prefer to engage with Amazon as a partner rather than as adversary. We think we and our authors can help make their business more successful, just as we’ve helped our existing retailer partners grow their businesses. A good distributor helps retailers ingest and list more titles more efficiently and at less cost than operating their own self-pub platforms.

What's Coming to Smashwords in 2012?

Smashwords is an ebook distributor, so our priorities will be guided by this focus. Service enhancements will concentrate on making our books more available and more discoverable by readers.

In 2012 we’ll shift more of our attention from backend infrastructure to customer-facing user experience. The new features and service offerings will leverage the new infrastructure foundation we built in 2011.

Here’s a brief sampling of what you can expect from Smashwords in 2012:

Discovery – We’ll complete the BISAC recategorization mentioned above very soon, and from there we’ll turn our attention to our Smashwords.com retail operation and give it some much overdue love and attention on the discovery front. We’ll add more search options to the Smashwords home page, more alternative discovery paths to help readers find books they'd enjoy reading, and we’ll revamp the algorithms driving our best-seller lists so they more accurately reflect the collective intelligence and reading preferences of our customers. Once that initial stage is completed, we’ll leverage some of these new features on a couple secret projects that might surprise some folks, one of which will help our retail partners identify Smashwords books that deserve extra promotion.

More Distribution - We'll add more distribution outlets in 2012, the first of which we'll probably announce in the next two months (working on the technical integration now).

Faster Distribution – We currently ship to retailers once a week. In 2012, we’ll phase in more frequent shipments to those retailers that can support it so books appear faster and metadata changes reflect faster. This will give authors greater control over their distribution.

Faster Reporting - Some Smashwords authors have already noticed that we've increased the speed and frequency of retailer sales reporting over the last two months. We will continue to make incremental progress here for the retailers that can support it.

Faster Premium Catalog Approvals - There are two variables influencing Premium Catalog approval times. The first variable rests with the author or publisher, and that's the responsibility to upload a book that's formatted to the Smashwords Style Guide. A well-formatted book gets approved on the first review. We'll continue to improve the Smashwords Style Guide and other resources to help make it faster and easier for authors to format their books. The second variable is on our side, and that's the vetting process where we manually review each title for adherence to the Style Guide and the Smashwords Terms of Service. We've added two new recent hires to the vetting team and will add additional staff in the new year as required. The goal is to get approvals down to under three days. The faster the approval, the faster we can distribute you to retailers. In addition to throwing people at the challenge, we'll also continue to develop new automated tools to accelerate the process.

More Control - There are several planned features related to providing authors greater control over more aspects of their publishing, distribution and metadata. One such feature planned for the second half of 2012 is Smashwords Direct, which will give authors the option to upload their own pre-formatted .epub files (and other formats) if they choose. Also look for greater control over foreign currency pricing.

My thanks to you

As another fabulous year draws to a close, I want to express my sincere appreciation to every Smashwords author, publisher, reader, retailer and service provider partner (shout out to the awesome pros on my “Mark’s List” who help their fellow indies with low-cost formatting and cover design services). We created this for you.

With your trust, confidence and support, we will continue to serve you. When you utilize our distribution services, you’re directly supporting our mission to reshape book publishing for the benefit of authors and readers everywhere.

Happy New Year, and safe holidays. Peace all.

The Literary Agent's Indie Ebook Roadmap

I mentioned previously I think the next chapter of the indie ebook revolution will be written by literary agents.

It's starting to happen. In the last few months several literary agencies began working with Smashwords. I look forward to welcoming others in the months ahead.

Today I posted a presentation at Slideshare titled, The Literary Agent's Indie Ebook Roadmap to review the opportunity I see for literary agents and their clients.


As I mentioned in my prior post on agents, literary agents can add a lot of value to the publishing process. They're the trusted author advocates charged with helping authors maximize the commercial potential of their works. A great agent brings passion, smarts and relationships that can multiply an author's success several-fold.

Literary agents represent some of the most commercially successful authors and author estates.

In the presentation below, I share my ideas for how literary agents can better serve their clients by adding e-publishing services to their clients services mix.

The Literary Agent's Indie Ebook Roadmap

Access the complete collection of Smashwords presentations here: Smashwords Slideshare Library

I view the publishing services ecosystem as a spectrum.

At one polar extreme you have traditional publishers who provide a wide range of service capabilities to authors, including editing, production, sales, distribution, marketing to accounts payables/receivables, and more.

Publishers take risks on books by investing their resources to bring them to market.

With the rise of ebooks and self-publishing, authors now have the opportunity to perform many of these publishing functions on their own, should they choose.

On the extreme left side of my spectrum I have what I call the "DIY Anarchists." These are the rare minority of hermits who do everything themselves and only sell on their personal website for fear of sharing a cut with a retailer or other intermediary that sits between them and their reader.

The vast majority of indie authors are somewhere in the middle. Many might use Smashwords for ebook conversion, publishing and distribution, then use POD printers for their print book. They might perform some responsibilities themselves, or they might farm out roles to specialist freelancers or service providers.

Some indie authors, basking in the new-found freedom to publish on their own terms, have an inclination to take on more than they should. Just because you have the power to assume all the responsibilities of a publisher doesn't mean you should bear the burden alone. This is where the publishing services specialists come in.

In the end, the decision to outsource some or all of your publishing services to an intermediary comes down to time. How can you best utilize your time?

For many authors, as I noted in my post, The Seven Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success, their time is usually best spent writing great books. Focus your energy on writing a book that sells itself. If your book sparks intense passion with readers, they'll market your book for you. I tell folks if they have $2,000 to invest in marketing they're probably better off investing that money with a professional editor who can help drive the next revision (I also advise authors to pinch their pennies; never spend money you don't have; and never go in debt to publish your book).

Literary agents have a unique opportunity to do for their clients what many of them do not want to do - or cannot do - for themselves.

What does the entry of agents into the publishing services field mean for you, the author? I think it's great news. Over time, it should allow agents to take more risks on more authors.

I've spoken with numerous agents who've shared how they loved an author's work but were unable to sell it, or unable to rep it because publishers wouldn't buy it. For agents who got into the business for their love of books and helping authors, it's a soul sucking experience.

Now agents have another reason to say yes. They can help release books think readers would want to read, rather than being forced to focus on books they think they can sell to a publisher. What publishers want to buy and what readers want to buy are usually VERY different things.

It's in every indie author's best interest, as well as the best interest of readers, that more agency-repped authors release their books as indie ebooks. Books usually get better when touched by an agent. Speaking from personal experience, I know the novel my wife and I wrote got better thanks to the feedback of our former agent at Dystel & Goderich.

Every indie ebook released by an agent creates a rising tide that lifts all authors and brings new credibility to this humble practice otherwise known as self-publishing.

E-Reading Device Ownership Surging, Says Pew Research

The percentage of U.S. adults who own a dedicated e-reading device is surging, according to new data released today by Pew Research.

According to Pew, for the month of May 2011, e-reader ownership grew to 12 percent, up from six percent six months ago.

Tablet ownership grew from five percent to eight percent in the same period.

Pew found interesting overlap among those who own both a dedicated e-reading device and a multi-function tablet. Three percent of US adults own both.

While at first glance that may seem insignificant, that three percent means 25 percent of dedicated e-reading device owners also own a tablet.

Five percent of consumers own a tablet but not a dedicated e-reader. This means 37.5 percent of tablet owners also own an e-reader.

Bottom line, reading is quickly moving to screens. I wouldn't be surprised if come January Pew shows e-reading device ownership reaches or surpasses 20 percent. We'll probably also see the lines of distinction between tablets and e-readers blur over the next six months as e-reading devices adopt more multi-function features.

To access their full report, click here.

Conversations on the Future of Publishing

Michael Wolf, the Vice President of Research at GigaOm, today released a podcast interview with me. You can access it here at his podcast site, Elitzr.

It was a wide-ranging conversation. We talked about our progress at Smashwords; best practices of the most successful indie authors; why a great book is an author's single most important marketing tool; ebooks as apps; how the power of publishing is shifting to indie authors and small publishers; the future of Big Publishers; the changing attitudes toward self-publishing; and what's next for Smashwords.

My thanks to Michael Wolf for helping to shine a bright light on indie ebook revolution.

What Can Big Publishers Learn from Self-Publishers?

This Thursday at 10am Pacific, I'm participating in a free O'Reilly webcast titled, What Traditional Publishers Can Learn from Self-Publishers.

Fellow panelists include Chad Jennings of Blurb, Pete Nikolai of Thomas Nelson Publishers, and Bob Young of Lulu. Click here to register and learn more.

The panel is led by the amazing Joe Wikert, General Manager and Publisher at O'Reilly Media. Joe also writes the Publishing 2020 blog. A bit of trivia: Back in early 2008, Joe was among the first three people to receive an advance sneak peak of the Smashwords platform pre-launch. The other two were David Rothman, the founding editor of Teleread, and Eoin Purcell in Ireland.

REPLAY AVAILABLE: Click here to listen to the archived replay until September 22, 2011.

Three Year Retrospective, and a Look Ahead

Last month we celebrated our three year anniversary.

I thought it would be fun to share some traffic data in the form of a picture that tells 2.2 billion words.

At left is a chart showing weekly traffic to the Smashwords.com web site since May 2008.

If you look carefully (click to expand the image), you'll see it's tough to discern the blips for most of 2008. Those were the early days when we were little more than a curiosity.

Back in 2008, self-publishing didn't command much respect. It was seen as the publishing option of last resort for failed authors. It wasn't uncommon back then for me to receive emails from previously print-published authors who'd write, "Do you think I'm nuts? There's no way I'm going to allow my work to appear alongside these amateurs." I don't receive those emails anymore.

I founded Smashwords with the firm conviction there's a vast human potential trapped inside the minds and fingertips of unpublished writers. I thought if we could provide the enabling tools to help writers unleash their potential upon the world - to be judged by readers - that great things could happen.

Today, great things are happening. Indie authors are inching up the best-seller lists, and their success inspires the next wave to go indie. Yet commercial success and the promise or potential thereof is not the primary driver for the indie revolution. Writers write for reasons different than publishers publish.

More writers will write, more will publish, and more will bypass publishers to connect directly to readers. Big Publishers will become an afterthought in the minds of tomorrow's indie author.

The publishing industry has no clue what's about to happen. Talk to any Smashwords author or publisher, especially those who were once worked with New York, and they'll tell you where things are headed.

A forest fire is about to consume the dead wood, and out of the ashes will spring forth a new and vibrant publishing ecosystem offering unprecedented diversity of literary riches more magnificent than anything ever imagined. This is inevitable. In fact, it's already happening at Smashwords and our retail distribution partners Apple, Sony, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Diesel.

It's what happens when writers are given the freedom to publish on their own terms, and readers are given the freedom to read what they like. It represents the inevitable progression of human intention enabled by the Internet revolution.

The genie of human potential has escaped the bottle. You, my dear indie author or publisher, will write the next chapter.

Smashwords Publishes 50,000th Ebook and 20,000th Author

Smashwords achieved two special milestones in the the last few days.

We reached 50,000 original ebooks published by over 20,000 authors.

We're on track to surpass 75,000 titles by the end of year, up from 28,800 at the end of 2010, 6,000 in 2009 and 140 in 2008.

My thanks to the thousands of indie authors and small publishers around the globe who have placed their precious babies in the appreciative hands of Smashwords and our retail distribution network partners.

The most exciting thing about these dual milestones is that we've only scratched the surface of the possible.

If you're not yet working with Smashwords, join with us as our authors and publishers change the world one ebook at a time. Learn more at How to Publish and Distribute with Smashwords.

Upon the Gears of Big Publishing

I gave a presentation in Berkeley yesterday before the Northern California chapter of ASJA (American Association of Journalists and Authors) where I argued that book publishing is a matter of free speech.

Berkeley is where the Free Speech Movement started in 1964. The talk had special meaning to me because my parents (who met at a UC Berkeley dorm dance) were students there at the time, I was born there, and my mom has shared stories of how I attended many of the demonstrations, first in utero and later in a stroller.

One of the most famous speeches at that time, now referred to as "Bodies Upon the Gears," was given by Mario Savio, an early leader of the Free Speech Movement. I embedded it below. Start at the 58 second mark.

I listened to this speech for the first time yesterday morning as I prepared my presentation. I was immediately struck by how Savio's feelings of injustice (he was upset at the University administration for limiting free speech on campus) map so closely to how authors feel. I always thought authors should have the right to publish, but until I watched the video and read up on the origins of the Free Speech Movement, I never fully grokked the connection between book publishing and free speech.

A Tweet or a blog post is free speech, but a book - especially the long form variety - is about the weightiest form of deep-thinking, deep-expressing communication possible.

Big Publishers are in the business of selling books, not publishing authors. They acquire books they think they can sell, as is their right as a business. They say no to most authors, thereby preventing those authors from expressing themselves through the communications vehicle that is their book.

Until recently, if a publisher refused to publish your book, it severely limited your ability to reach readers. Sure, you could self-publish in print, as the great Dan Poynter has been advocating for over 30 years. However, without distribution access to brick and mortar bookstores - something the big publishers controlled - it was difficult for self published authors to reach readers.

The indie ebook revolution has changed all this. Now, the printing press is free and available to all. Indies enjoy the same (or better) distribution opportunities as traditional publishers. Indies can out-compete the big boys.

The Big Publisher gatekeeper-as-curator is being replaced by readers, as it should be.

My challenge to you, the author, is to throw yourself upon the gears of big publishing. Take a stand and say no to others telling you no. If your book is finished, you have the freedom to get it out there now on your own terms as an ebook. Express yourself.

Embedded below are the PowerPoint slides from my presentation. As you'll see, the presentation is an updated derivative of my Indie Author Uprising presentation from a couple months back, minus the Egyptian revolution and plus a Barbie doll surprise.

Upon the Gears of Big Publishing - ASJA May 15, Berkeley, CA

View more presentations from Smashwords, Inc.



May 18 update: A new, updated version of this post is available at The Huffington Post.

Smashwords Year in Review, Plans for 2011

Welcome to my annual Smashwords year in review where I report our progress and plans for the new year.

2010 was a breakout year for us. It was also a breakout year for our indie ebook authors and publishers.

Exactly two years ago we were publishing 140 books from 90 authors. We thought that was fantastic for our first year in business.

Last year at this time we hit 6,000 books from 2,600 authors and publishers. We were thrilled.

Today we're listing 28,800 books from over 12,000 authors and publishers. We released 3,200 new ebooks in the last 30 days alone. We're pinching ourselves now, not just because of how far we and our authors have come, but because we know we've barely scratched the surface of the possible.

Six years ago Smashwords was a jumble of simple ideas scribbled on a sketchpad. Today it's a reality.

My original idea was simple: Create a free ebook publishing platform that would allow any author, anywhere in the world, to instantly publish an ebook at no cost. Authors, I believed, should have the right to publish whatever they want, and readers should have the freedom to decide what's worth reading.

From the beginning, just about every conceivable odd was stacked against us. When we launched, ebooks accounted for about 1/2 of 1% of the overall book market; self-publishing was considered the option of last resort for failed authors who couldn't find an agent or publisher; and self-published books weren't selling. All the ingredients for a successful business, right? I thought so. I had a hunch all of this would change because it needed to change.

I believed traditional publishers were squandering the future of books. After decades of consolidation, big publishers began sucking the soul out of publishing. They began judging the merits of a book through the myopic prism of perceived commercial potential - a recipe for dumbing down publishing with more milquetoast celebrity books. Wanna buy a book from Justin Bieber, Snooki or the Kardashians?

The shift to this commercial filter meant that authors who otherwise deserved publication were denied the opportunity, therefore depriving readers of their ability to enjoy these books. If you value books, and if you believe as I believe that books are essential to the very future of mankind, then it's time to rise up and do something about it. I've always had this higher purpose in mind with Smashwords. If you look at our logo, the fist symbolizes the indie author revolution.

We're also building a business as we try to change things for the better. In my 20+ years of technology entrepreneurship, I've always been drawn to startups that have the power to effect positive social change. This was certainly the case with my last startup, Bestcalls.com, where I helped level the playing field for small stock market investors.

Smashwords, to me, is the startup of a lifetime. Every day I'm excited to be part of it. Smashwords will only ever be as great as the authors and publishers we enable. Considering the vast reservoir of creative talent we have yet to help unleash upon the world, I'm confident our best days are ahead of us.

Back to the business. What a difference a couple of years make. Today, ebooks account for nearly 10% of trade book sales. This number will probably double in 2011, and as I predicted over at GalleyCat earlier this week, I think on a unit volume basis, ebooks will account for one third or more of all book consumption come December 2011. I never imagined this would happen so fast, and it's possible I'm underestimating the growth this market will experience in the coming year.

After 31 months of advocating the indie ebook gospel, I still wake up every morning invigorated by our possibilities and potential. We attack every day with the tenacity of a newborn startup. Like I said last year, and I'll say it again, we're just getting started.

Some of the highlights of the year in addition to the numbers I shared above:

Distribution highlights:

• Smashwords is now one of the largest distributors by title count of indie ebooks to retailers such as Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, and Kobo
• I'm very pleased with the support these retailers have shown our indie authors and publishers. Retailers are starting to earn real profits from our indie ebooks. This is cause for celebration for all indie authors and publishers, because it means access to more distribution in the future.
  
• In April Smashwords became one of a small handful of global aggregators serving the Apple iBookstore. On launch day of the iPad, we had over 2,000 books in the Apple iBookstore. When Apple launched the iBookstore in Australia, we had nearly 10,000 books in the store.
• In December we successfully transitioned all of our retailers to agency pricing. This means authors and publishers set the price at retail, and earn 60% of the list price.
• Preliminary sales reports from Apple and B&N indicate that sales tripled in the couple of days following Christmas. It will be interesting to see how these numbers moderate over the coming weeks.
  

Traffic to Smashwords.com:

• In the past year, people visited Smashwords from 227 countries
• 59.6% of visits came from the U.S.; 40.4% came from outside the U.S.
  
• Top 5 countries (U.S., U.K., Canada, India, Australia) accounted for 80% of visits
  
• Top 20 countries accounted for 90%
• Top 40 countries accounted for 95%
• Millions of people visited Smashwords.com this year for the first time
  
• Smashwords.com receives millions of page views each month, and our traffic continues to grow each and every month.
• Yesterday, December 30, was an all-time record for number of visits to Smashwords.com
  

Business Highlights

• Way back on October 7, 2009, when we reached 150 million words published, I set a crazy goal to reach one billion words by December 31, 2010.
• On October 20, 2010, we reached one billion words nine weeks early.
• Today, December 31, 2010, we've beat the goal by over a quarter billion words.
• We redesigned our web site infrastructure this year to support faster performance and greater reliability. The site's uptime and performance is excellent now, and has been scaling very well as we achieve record traffic each month.
  
• We made multiple enhancements to our Meatgrinder conversion system this year, and as a result the quality of our ebook outputs is better than ever.
  
• A few months ago we reached profitability. Nothing spectacular, and not enough to pay me a salary yet because I'm reinvesting any excess cash back into the business. What this means is the business is now fully self-sustaining and we're adding staff. We're here for good. We accomplished this while also paying some of the highest royalty rates anywhere. Unlike other services that make much of their income by charging authors upfront fees for publishing packages, set-up, conversion, and other services of nebulous value, our services are free and accessible to any author. We believe our interests are aligned with our authors and publishers. The platform we created allows us to take a risk on every author. If we don't sell anything, we don't earn our commission.

What's coming in 2011:

Competitive front: Fight to survive and thrive. Despite our initial traction in the marketplace, our future is by no means guaranteed. We will continue to pursue our business plan with vigor because there's no room for complacency. We've already seen multiple upstart competitors try to launch Smashwords knockoffs. Good luck to them. They'll soon learn how tough it is to make a buck in this business. Have I mentioned I'm competitive?

Distribution: We love ebook retailers because they're expert at putting our ebooks in the hands of readers. Over the next 12 months we'll continue to add more retailers to the Smashwords distribution network, while working to build broader and deeper relationships with our existing retail partners. We understand that authors and publishers often have the option to go direct to retailer. Our mission is to make it more profitable for authors and retailers to work through us. We think we add a lot of value to the ebook supply chain for authors, publishers and retailers alike. If we don't add value, we don't deserve to be here.

Meatgrinder: As I mentioned above, we made a lot of enhancements to Meatgrinder. We'll continue to iterate and improve it in the months ahead, especially in the area of automated TOC detection. We'll also add more error-correction.

Premium Catalog reviews: For most of the year, we managed to maintain one week or less turnaround times on Premium Catalog reviews, though a few times we got backlogged up to two weeks. We're working on plans that should help accelerate Premium Catalog approval cycle times, so we can help you get your book in the catalog and distributed to retailers faster with less back and forth.

Surprises: We have several surprises planned for 2011. I can't tell you what they are otherwise they wouldn't be surprises.

Stretch Goal: Our goal is to hit 75,000 indie ebooks published at Smashwords by December 31, 2011. This means we need to add 47,000 books in 12 months. That works out to 130 new releases each day or one new book every 11 minutes.

Ongoing Education: While I sometimes criticize some of the practices of big publishers, I continue to have enormous respect for professional publishing and the people in publishing. Although we make it easy to self-publish an ebook (some have said "too easy"), we don't make it easy to produce a book worth reading. That responsibility lies in the hands of the author who must now step up to the plate and become a professional publisher. They must adopt proven best-practices of publishing, such as professional editing, revision and proofing prior to publication, and professional cover design. We'll do our best in the coming year to continue to help authors and publishers improve the practice of publishing so they honor their readers with books worth reading.

Smashwords Direct: Right before Christmas, we began working with a large publisher of public domain books to convert and distribute 10,000+ titles across the Smashwords distribution network (the numbers above don't reflect these direct titles). Since we don't accept PD titles at our Smashwords.com retail site, these titles will only go to retailers. In the year ahead, we'll look for additional opportunities to help other large publishers take advantage of our expanding distribution reach.

Smashwords.com Refresh: We're noodling on multiple ideas to give the site a refresh so we can do a better job of showcasing the higher quality titles, as determined by real customer downloads, purchases and reviews. Ever since we launched in May 2008, it was important to me that every new Smashwords book receive its 15 minutes of fame on the home page as a new release. This gives every book a fair and equal chance to find its first readers, and if the book is truly wonderful, the readers can take it viral from there. The downside of this democratized feature process is that everything new hits the home page, and often the work isn't ready for prime time. It might be missing a cover image, or the author didn't properly format it to the Style Guide. Our current policy of showcasing all the latest releases - even the obviously poor ones - ultimately gives first time visitors a warped perspective of the true talent captured within the Smashwords catalog. Another issue I want to tackle is adult content. We're big supporters of free speech, but we often receive complaints from visitors and authors shocked by some of the erotica images they see on the home page - images they'd never see on the home page of another bookstore. We also have kids who hit the home page for their first visit, and such content isn't appropriate for them either. We're working on ideas in this regard that can strike a fair balance, while still allowing our professional erotica authors and publishers to get their books exposed to more customers who are searching for that content. Stay tuned as we work to strike a good compromise that benefits all parties involved.

Responsible Adult Content Publishing: There have been reports that Amazon has clamped down on incest-related titles, and some authors and publishers worry this is the start of a trend toward increased retailer censorship. At Smashwords, we've always articulated a very clear policy in our Terms of Service regarding acceptable content, and we were probably one of the first to define a clear policy against publishing erotica that includes underage characters, even if those characters are bystanders in the story. If the story is intended to titillate, kids don't belong in it. Simple. We've started encouraging our erotica authors and publishers to clearly state inside their books, if not in the book description, that all characters are 18 years of age or older. I think it's important that responsible erotica authors and publishers self-enforce these reasonable guidelines, otherwise retailers will be forced to think twice about carrying such content. Smashwords was founded with a fierce belief in free speech and no censorship, and our conviction on this issue remains true, but that doesn't mean anything goes.

For those concerned about censorship in the retail channel, I can happily report that I'm aware of fewer than a dozen titles that have been outright rejected by our retailers, and in some of those cases the content violated our Terms of Service anyway. In other cases, the authors were able to make minor modifications to cover images to satisfy retailer requirements. This works out to less than one thousandth of one percent of our titles. I think the small number reflects not only the responsibility shown by erotica authors and publishers to comply with our Terms of Service, but also the benefit of our manual vetting process at Smashwords for Premium Catalog distribution. I know our retailers appreciate we self-police. We're also thankful to Smashwords readers and customers who report potential violations to us, so we can work with the author/publisher to proactively remove or fix the content.

My New Year's Thanks to All

To the 12,000+ authors and publishers who entrusted your precious books to Smashwords over the last 2.5 years, and to those of you who stood by us despite our many inevitable growing pains, and who always believed in our commitment to do right by you, thank you for believing in us. We will continue to run our business with the highest ethical standards and transparency as we always have, and will work to earn and deserve your continued trust every day. Happy New Year!

2011 Predictions for Book Publishing

It's annual prognostication time when folks like me stick out their necks and try to predict the future. I invite you to join in the fun. Brush up your crystal ball and share your publishing predictions for 2011 in the comments field below.

Earlier today, Jeff Rivera over at MediaBistro interviewed me for my ten book publishing predictions for 2011.

I'll list five below, and then I encourage you to click over to Mediabistro for the full ten in his interview, Publishing Predictions for 2011 from Smashwords.

If 2010 was the year ebooks went mainstream in the U.S., 2011 will be the year indie ebook authors go mainstream. We've already seen this start to happen with some tremendous indie ebook author breakouts in 2010. I wrote about Smashwords author Brian S. Pratt a few weeks ago.

So here are five predictions for 2011:

1. Ebook sales rise, unit consumption surprises – Ebooks sales will approach 20% of trade book revenues on a monthly basis by the end of 2011 in the US, yet the bigger surprise is that ebooks will account for one third or more of unit consumption. Why? Ebooks cost less and early ebook adopters read more.

2. Agents write the next chapter of the ebook revolution – Agents, serving the economic best interests of the best-selling authors, will bring new credibility to self publishing by encouraging authors to proactively bypass publishers and work directly with ebook distribution platforms. Agents will use these publishing platforms for negotiating leverage against large publishers. The conversation will go something like this: “You’re offering my author only 15-20% list on ebooks when I can get them 60-70% list working direct with an ebook distributor like Smashwords or a retailer like Amazon?”

3. More big authors reluctant to part with digital rights – Indie ebook publishing offers compelling advantages to the author. The economics are better (see #2) and the publishing cycle times are faster (an ebook manuscript can be uploaded today and achieve worldwide distribution in minutes or days, not years). Ebooks also offer greater publishing flexibility (shorts, full length, bundles, free books), and the opportunity to reach more readers with lower cost (yet still higher-profit) books. The advantages will entice more professional authors to self-publish some or all of their future catalog, and all of their reverted-rights catalog.

4. Self Publishing goes from option of last resort to option of first resort among unpublished authors – Most unpublished authors today still aspire to achieve the perceived credibility and blessing that comes with a professional book deal. Yet the cachet of traditional publishing is fading fast. Authors with finished manuscripts will grow impatient and resentful as they wait to be discovered by big publishers otherwise preoccupied with publishing celebrity drivel from Snooki, Justin Bieber and the Kardashians. Meanwhile, the break-out success of multiple indie author stars will grab headlines in 2011, forcing many unpublished authors off the sidelines. As unpublished authors bypass the slush pile, publishers lose first dibs on tomorrow’s future stars.

5. Ebook prices to fall – It’s all about supply and demand. Demand is surging, but supply will overwhelm demand. Average ebook prices will decline, despite attempts by Agency 5 publishers to hold the line. The drop will be fueled by the oversupply of books, abundance of low-cost or free non-book content, influx of ultra-price-sensitive readers who read free first, fierce competition for readership, and digitization of reverted-rights and out-of-print books. Indie authors, since they earn 60-70% retail price, can compete at price points big publishers can’t touch.

Read all ten of my predictions in the full interview over at Mediabistro, and please share your own predictions in the comments below.


Image credit: Wikipedia

Smashwords Author Brian S. Pratt to Earn over $100,000 in 2011

At first glance, Brian S. Pratt of Boswell, Oklahoma doesn't fit the stereotypical profile of a best-selling author. Yet he, and others Smashwords authors like him, represent the future of publishing.

Pratt began publishing with Smashwords in early 2009. His first quarterly royalty payment was $7.82. While most authors would find that number discouraging, Pratt was encouraged. It was a start.

In the quarters since, Pratt's earnings have grown, and in recent quarters he's become a veritable breakout success. Last quarter, he earned over $18,000 from sales across the Smashwords retail distribution network. This quarter, with three weeks to go, he's on track to break $25,000. He's on track to earn over $100,000 in 2011 at Smashwords, and up to $200,000 total when he includes his projected Amazon sales. Not one to count his eggs before they're hatched, though, he's fast at work on a next series.

The road to here was anything but easy. At age 43, he's held a number of eclectic jobs, ranging from an U.S. Air Force avionics technician to a taxi driver. Until recently, as he shares in the interview below, he was living below poverty level.

He writes fast-paced, can't-put-it-down fantasy. Pratt started writing because the series authors he enjoyed reading weren't completing their series fast enough. So he started writing books he'd like to read. Unlike some ebook series writers who carve up books into short serialized chunks, Pratt's books are full-length, with most clocking in around 150,000 words.

His writing style is completely his own, and any New York editor would surely bristle at the rules Brian breaks. His most popular series, The Morcyth Saga, is written in the present tense (though he changed to past tense for subsequent series). It's no wonder that after years trying to land an agent and a publisher, he faced unanimous rejection from publishing experts.

Yet readers had other plans for Pratt, as we learn today in this interview.

Lacking a traditional outlet for his work, Pratt self published in 2005, first in print and later ebooks. Today, his ebook sales far outpace his print sales by a factor of more than 100:1.

Today, Pratt has 17 books at Smashwords, and we distribute the books to Barnes & Noble, Apple, Sony and Kobo, as well as to online mobile app catalogs of Stanza and Aldiko.

His Morcyth Saga, a seven-book fantasy adventure series, is by far his most popular collection.

Below in this exclusive interview, Brian S. Pratt recounts the long road to his overnight breakout success.


[Mark Coker] Brian, tell us about your books

[Brian S. Pratt] I have 17 books completed spread across several series. Most are full length, epic fantasy type novels, each anywhere from 120,000-190,000 words. I have a few I call my mini's that are just plain fun and get the reader into the adventure from the get-go. These range from 60,000-90,000 words.

[MC] How did you get started as a writer?

[BSP] Back in 2005, I found myself waiting for several of the main authors to get around to finishing their next novel. The biggest one that annoyed me was The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved the series up to around book 6; then it lost me. Action grew infrequent and far between. It got bogged down in mundane details. Jordan wasn't the only one I was impatiently waiting for. So, on March 1, 2005, I sat down at my computer and decided to write The Morcyth Saga. Figured I could do a good job and write the kind of book I wanted to read. One that had action in every chapter, you followed the main character throughout, and descriptions were down to a minimum. That is exactly what you get in The Unsuspecting Mage; Book One of The Morcyth Saga.

[MC] What training do you have as a writer?

[BSP] Training??? Not a bit. All I started with was the drive to write a story and everything else followed. I ended up writing a seven book series in Present Tense, rife with errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Most of the errors have been fixed in subsequent editions. My word usage was not what one would find in the traditionally produced books, some said it was too simple. I don't know about that, but at least you don't need a dictionary at hand when you read my books. Some have liked it, others less so. My books feel different than others for that reason.

[MC] Tell us about some of the first customer reviews you received, and how you reacted?

[BSP] Reviews, yes there have been some dillies. Here's the first one-star I ever received. It was at Amazon.com less than a month after I first published The Unsuspecting Mage.

1.0 out of 5 stars - January 15, 2006
Present tense is an amateurish way to write.....,
.....and this book reads like it was written for a high school English class. Worst book I've read in a long time. I like lots of books, especially ones written by Robin Hobb, George Martin, and Stephen Donaldson to name but three. These books were well written. This one was not. Just wondering - how many of you are still in high school yourselves?

The last line was directed at the other reviewers who said they liked my book.

Needless to say, this devastated me and I stopped writing for a few weeks. Of course, I've had much worse ones since. But then, my books kept selling. And I always told myself that as long as my books keep selling, even if it is marginally, then it would be worth it to continue. I've come to realize that there will always be those that do not like my books, and so what? They simply are not in my target audience. And my target audience is me. I write what I would like to read. And it looks like there are many "me's" out there for I've sold lots of books. If you want to see what may be in your future, check out The Unsuspecting Mage at Amazon.

[MC] You joined Smashwords March 27, 2009 10:26pm (I checked!). Can you take us back to that moment in time, and recall what was going through your mind

[BSP] Let's see. I was a single dad living with three kids and boy, was I poor (under the poverty level). Up until then, I hadn't really thought much about eBooks. I tried Mobipocket for a while and had great sales for three months, then it died off. Sales for my paperbacks, which I had published through iUniverse had fallen off dramatically. Where I had been breaking 4 figures a quarter, I was now less than 600 per quarter and bleeding red. I typed in "self publishing" and saw a quirky little site called Smashwords. It said, Your eBook, Your way. Didn't cost a thing so what did I have to lose? First quarter sales at Smashwords were dismal, 2009-04-07 — $7.92 As it happened, April 7th is my birthday. That was cool. But I wasn't deterred. Books were selling. Sometimes, one or two a week, but they sold. I stayed with it and refused to allow all the naysayers (and there were those by the droves) to stifle my dream. Sales gradually improved and, well, here we are. Can't give up on your dream, EVER!

[MC] Your first quarter at Smashwords you earned $7.92. I've seen some new Smashwords authors jump for glee over a number like that, and others have unpublished their books and quit Smashwords in disgust. What was your reaction?

[BSP] My reaction was "I'm ahead, $7.92” By this time I had been published for a little over 3 years and had seen sales go up and down. Can't make any kind of decision based on just one quarter. Plus, I was getting the hang of how to make Smashwords work for me. You can't just publish your book, sit back and think, "Okay, the money is going to roll in now." It ain't gonna happen. The industry is stacked against anyone who is just starting out. You have to get out there and grab readers by the collar and shout, "Here I am!" They won't find you or care about you until you do.

[MC] Your sales started small but then grew steadily, and in more recent months you've broken out into the best-seller lists at some of our retailers. What was the secret?

[BSP] After receiving my second royalty check which was only $183.60, I figured I needed to get busy and get creative. So I first looked around for a good place to advertise and found Project Wonderful. They suited my needs perfectly; ads would run on websites for pennies a day. I then created a coupon code that would discount my first book for free. I then created a series of ads stating that a free copy was available, all they had to do was copy down the code and go to Smashwords for their free copy. Well, that bombed and bombed badly. Came to realize that I was asking way too much of customer. In order to get my book, they had to go to Smashwords, create an account, put in the code, then download.

People are inherently lazy about shopping, especially in this world where everything is a click away. I pondered on the lack of success with my coupon code, then realized that if I just made the book free, they would only have to click the link in the ad, then download a free copy. Simple. (Keep it Simple-Stupid) I made it so easy for people to download my book, that downloads jumped. Subsequently, sales for books 2-7 jumped as well.

If it’s free and downloading is just a click away, people will do it. Very few can walk away from a free deal. Unknown authors are risky to readers and few wish to risk money, or time, to try a book they are not sure they will even like.

When Smashwords signed the deal with Barnes and Noble, my sales jumped 300% that quarter. Barnes and Noble have one of the best “Free eBook” sections and now people could find my book without having to see a small ad. Without Smashwords free copy of book one at Barnes and Noble, I would hardly be doing the sales I am today. That was the one act that set into motion sales the likes I never thought possible for an Indie without agent, editor, or publisher.

[MC] Prior to publishing at Smashwords, multiple agents and publishers rejected you. Tell us about your most memorable rejections.

[BSP] No one wanted me. All the rejection letters were worded very politely, but you can’t help but adding phrases to them like “You suck as a writer” or “Your book would be good to keep my table level but as for making money, it has a better chance to spontaneously combust.” When I published it through iUniverse, I opted for an editorial review ($300 at the time). They basically said the manuscript would need a serious overhaul before it would become commercially viable. And oh by the way, we do have many such services available…for a price. At the time I thought it was a complete waste of time. But now looking back with five years experience under my belt, many of their comments had merit. Although one must keep in mind, had I continued working with my first book to get it right, I’d still be working on it to this day and all subsequent ones never having seen publication. There comes a point when a writer has to say, “It’s ready. Good or bad, let’s see what happens.” What happened in this case was that there were many people out there who enjoy a good adventure and have since traveled with James through 8 books and are patiently (impatiently might be a better word) waiting for the second installment of the follow-up series, Travail of The Dark Mage.

[MC] What does it mean to you to be described as a self-published author, or an Indie author?

[BSP] The biggest worry a writer had back in 2005 was whether or not they wanted to be stigmatized as “self-published.” Once stigmatized, I was told, never again would a traditional publisher take you on. Unless you sold over 50,000 copies. But then, I thought, if I sold 50,000 copies, what would I need a publisher for?

Now, I think of it as a badge of pride. My success is mine, no one else’s. Everything that comes from my books, comes because of the hard work I, and I alone, put into it. Others have helped, but I spearheaded it and got it done. Even if today I was to get a publisher, from what I’ve heard of other author’s experiences, they still do most of their own publicity and get tied into restrictive contracts and unrealistic demands. Case in point, the movie Back to the Future. The head of the studio sent the producers a memo in which he stated that “Frogman from Mars” would be a better title. What a nightmare to have to deal with that. As a self-published author I don’t have to worry about another’s “taste” or “ideas.”

Of course, if you fail, again you have no one else to blame. But the only failure you will have, is if you quit. Try new ideas, talk to those who have succeeded, most of all don’t give up.

[MC] What's your view of the future of indie authorship, and where do you think traditional publishers fit into your plans, if at all?

[BSP] Indie authorship is here to stay and the traditional publishing houses better get used to it. They also better not discount the effectiveness of its appeal or they’re going to regret it. I think they are going to wake up one morning and wonder where all their profits have gone. The better authors will do it themselves because they are going to make more money at it. Also, as the Indie Revolution continues, more and more authors being sought by publishers will be taking hard looks at their contracts. True, if you only have a single book, traditional publishers may be the best route. I make money because I have a series, a completed series, and give the first one away free. Can’t beat free for advertising.

As of today, I no longer send query letters (what a waste of time that was) to agents. No longer submit to publishers or even enter contests. My books are not award winners. They are merely fun books. I’ve tracked winners in the past and they don’t always do well.

What would happen if I got an email from a publisher asking for publishing rights? I’d listen to what they have to say. I’d carefully scrutinize any contract for how future books would be affected and so forth. I feel the restriction and demands made by them would far outweigh any increased royalties. But I could be wrong. Never say never to anything where money is concerned.

[MC] Where does print fit into your publishing strategy going forward?

[BSP] Print goes hand in hand with eBooks. You have to have a print copy of your book. I sell maybe 2 or 3 books per 1000 eBooks. Not much, right? Keep this in mind. eBook readers tell their book reader friends about your books. If you want them to buy it, it needs to be available. My biggest hurdle with print has always been pricing. Not much you can do about that, self-publishing print books is expensive no matter where you do it. I’d suggest Lightning Source Inc. they’re the best and will put your books before the most customers.

[MC] Imagine you're mentoring a new author today. What three secrets to success would you share, and why?

[BSP] Actually, I’ve already helped over a dozen authors with getting started. I take the time to answer questions and give advice freely.

1. First thing I advise is to be approachable. Have an email address solely for those contacting you as an author and post it everywhere. If someone sees your book, that email address had better be there too. And remove the spam filter. About a year after I published my first book, I happened to check my spam folder and found 3 emails from readers. Made me mad. Also made me wonder how many others couldn’t get hold of me due to my (censored) spam filter. There was this one author, forgot who, but I saw his profile on Amazon. It basically said that he didn’t want to be bothered with questions from readers, nor did he want to hear from other authors. And oh by the way, won’t you buy my book? –Not word for word, but that was the gist of it. Needless to say, I didn’t even look as his book and have since forgotten the guy. I’ve earned many steadfast fans simply because I responded to them in a personal and friendly manner.


2. Get a website. They’re pretty cheap and are absolutely invaluable. Your readers need a place they can go to learn more about the books, and about you.


3. Listen to your heart, not reviewers. If you can’t stand criticism, find something else to do. Also, when you get your book first published, friends and family always like to post reviews. Well, there are certain things you need to explain to these reviewers before they post.
   

   
   A. One line reviews are worthless. Saying, “This is greatest book I’ve ever read!!!” is a waste of time. It means nothing to no one.
   
   B. Tell potential customers about the book. Why is it great? Why did you love it? Why should they spend time and money to read it? Give an example from the book. If you use an example, it gives your review more weight for it lends credence that you actually read the book.
   
   C. Don’t talk about just the good. Pick something negative and write about that too. A balanced review is more helpful, and more believable than one that just gushes praise. No matter the book, there has to be something that bugged them. If the book is self-published, there will be something to criticize. I received an email from one reader that said he read a review in which a previous customer complained that my book read like a D&D game transcript. The reader, a gamer by the way, checked it out on that basis alone and ended up buying the entire series. So never assume that a negative review will be negative to all readers.
   



4. Here’s the biggie. Write. Seems simple doesn’t it? You’d be surprised how often we come up with excuses why we can’t write. If you’re a writer, then you better be writing. Finished a book? When’s the next one going to be published? Don’t stand still and see if the first one sells well before starting the second. Do you believe in what you are doing? Then for heaven’s sake, write. Set a goal. In the beginning, my goal was 20,000 words a week, or an equivalent time editing. I met that and in fact wrote Shepherd’s Quest, a 130,000 word book in 5 weeks. I was on roll.


5. Don’t go to your family with your manuscript and ask, “How is it?” If you want an honest answer, go to Fanstory.com and join. You’ll find out fast just how good/bad your manuscript is. Friends and family are biased and will have a hard time seeing your work for what it truly is. If you ask for an opinion from someone who knows you, the person answering you knows that they’ll have to deal with you afterward so will say “it’s great” or give some other affirmative response. They don’t want to crush your spirit. I watched this one show once where a guy wore this t-shirt that said, “My mom thinks I’m cool.” Enough said.


6. I have posted lots of useful info for self-published authors, or those thinking of going that route on my website. If you’re interested, check out my site, Brian Pratt Books. It’s a year old, but most of the info should still be fairly current. It will definitely give you some things to think about.


7. We’re all in this together. Email me should you have questions or anything.

[MC] Every author must compete against hundreds of thousands of other books. What's the secret to breaking out?

[BSP] Write, keep writing, and when your fingers are sore, write some more. The more books you have out, available through the most channels, the better your exposure. Never cancel a channel unless you know another will fill the void. Best channels right now are Smashwords and Kindle. Neither costs you anything but time. From the first sale, you’re making a profit. If you give up, it’s over. Until then, anything can happen. I’m a prime example of that.

Find ways to get your book in front of people. Don’t expect glowing reviews to sell your book. After all, if readers don’t find your book in the first place, no amount of “good” reviews will help.

[MC] Now that you've achieved success as a writer, how might your writing change, if at all?

[BSP] I now understand why some authors take a long time in getting out the next book. The more books you have, the more time ends up being devoted to previous titles and other things (this Q&A is a prime example). Editing has always been a sore point with [my] readers, or rather, the lack of it. My books have never seen a professional editor and could use a touch of polishing. I’ll be looking into that with the new year.

[MC] Now that you're able to devote full time to your writing, what's your typical day like. What's your process?

[BSP] I spend far too much time on the internet checking sales, answering emails (I love that part) and seeing what’s going on in the world of publishing. Smashwords is usually the first page I visit in the hopes that sales have posted. Most days, I’m disappointed. There have been times when I thought, “What the heck is going on? Where are my sales?” But you know, they all come in before the quarter payout, and I’ve never had a problem with getting my money from Smashwords. [Note from MC: We hear you Brian! Faster reporting is one of our top priorities for 2011]

After that, I try to get some editing done on my newer works, then an hour or so of computer gaming. I write some, check emails again, and so forth. The longer a series goes, the more complex it becomes. You need to take into account all that has gone before, keep your characters consistent, and make it all seem flawless.

[MC] What's coming next?

[BSP] Finish Travail of The Dark Mage. I’m on book 2 and figure the series will be around 5 books. Never know for sure until I’m done. The initial plan for The Morcyth Saga was 10 books. Can you imagine what would have happened if I had contracted for 10 books with a publisher and instead came through with 7? Love being an Indie.

I do have ideas for another 2 series after Travail, as well as off-shoots like The Improbable Adventures of Scar and Potbelly, a series of short adventure books based on the duo from the series. One thing I do know for sure. I will not release another series unless I have it already completed. I hate making readers wait.

[MC] Thanks for sharing, Brian!


To sample or purchase the ebooks of Brian S. Pratt, visit his Smashwords author page