Smashwords to Supply Ebooks to Amazon Kindle Store

Smashwords today announced a distribution agreement to supply ebooks to the Amazon Kindle Store.

The news follows other important Smashwords distribution agreements we announced in the last three months with Barnes & Noble, Sony and Shortcovers.

I'm so pleased to call each of these retailers a valued Smashwords partner, and I look forward to working with them to showcase our fast-growing catalog of nearly 5,000 independently published ebooks.

Our Amazon agreement marks an important milestone in the evolution of Smashwords. We launched in May 2008 as an ebook publishing platform for indie authors. In May of this year, we expanded the platform to support small publishers. In the last couple months, we've transitioned to a full-fledged distributor of ebooks capable of serving authors and publishers around the world. We're just getting started.

For most of the last few centuries, if you wanted to reach readers for your book, you worked with a publisher. Publishers controlled the means of production (the printing presses) and the means of distribution (access to book stores and readers).

With the rise of ebooks, we're witnessing the democratization of book production and distribution. In the next few years, I think more authors - including big name authors - will ask the question, "What can a publisher do for me that I can't do myself?"

Smashwords makes it possible for any ebook author or small publisher, anywhere in the world, to gain equal and free access to the virtual shelves of the most important online retailers of ebooks.

Authors will compete not on publisher advantage, but on the merits of their works. Readers, not publishers, will decide which books are worth reading.

Read the press release in the Smashwords Press Room.

Thank you for your support.

Do Authors Still Need Publishers?

In my new post today over at Huffington Post, I ask the question, "Does Stephen King still need a publisher?"

I think the answer is no.

Once an author develops the platform and fanbase of a Stephen King, Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling, why not self-publish? They can hire their own team of editors, designers, marketers and sales force, partner with a couple big distributors, and sell their books for less yet still make 2-3X the profit.

If publishers are going to remain relevant, they need to do what Stephen King can do for himself, only better.

The HuffPo post is an updated derivative of one I originally wrote here back in April, in which I speculated the risk of publishing would shift to the author. Given the changes we've seen in the industry since April, I'm more convinced than ever that author will continue to shoulder a larger share of the risk of publishing, and this will lead to a dramatic transformation of the publisher-author power balance in favor of authors.

For most of the last couple centuries, if you wanted your book published, you had to work with a publisher, because they controlled not only the printing press but the means of distribution as well.

Over at the Huffington Post story, a great discussion is already taking place in the comments. MJ Rose, well known as an early ebook advocate, a self publisher, and now a mainstream commercial author, argues that publishers remain relevant because they control access to brick and mortar retailers. I don't disagree. Publishers still control access to physical shelves.

Looking ahead, especially as ebooks rise from a likely 5 percent market share in 2009 to 30 or 50 percent within the next five years, publishers will be hard pressed to maintain the same relevance.

If in five years half or more of the market has gone digital, then that's half the market any author can distribute to without the need of a traditional publisher. Smashwords already has agreements in place to distribute books to several major online retailers as well as the top mobile apps, and within the next couple years we'll have all the major retailers covered.

How do you think the role of publisher will change over the next few years? Do authors still need publishers? Comment here, or join the discussion over at HuffPo.

OCTOBER 18 UPDATE: The column at HuffPo has sparked some interesting debate and discussion, at HuffPo, on Twitter and in the blogosphere. Some Twitterers, apparently concerned I was questioning the value of publishers (I love publishers BTW!), created a special Twitter hashtag of #publishersmatter and a spirited debate ensued (click the link to view the thread). Kate Eltham, a writer out of Brisbane, Australia, and the CEO of the Queensland Writer's Centre, contributed to the discussion with an intelligent response on her blog, Alphabet Soup.

Stephen King photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinguino/ / CC BY 2.0

Knowledge Genie: Package, Publish and Sell your Smarts

For most non-fiction authors, you write a book for the credibility it gives you, and then you monetize your smarts by going on the road 300 days a year doing speaking and consulting gigs.

But what if you could clone yourself and sell your smarts another way? What if you could take the static content of your book, and combine it with various other information, content and links, then make it so your customer can interact with it on the web, almost like a virtual coach?

That's the idea behind Knowledge Genie, a cool new digital publishing startup that launched today (Disclosure: I'm an advisor to the company, and the PR firm I own reps them. So although my enthusiasm for what they're doing is genuine, I encourage you to check them out and form your own opinion).

Ever since I launched Smashwords over a year ago, I've talked about how ebooks would evolve to the point where they serve as both the hub and the spokes of richer online applications. When the founders of Knowledge Genie first contacted me, this is why I was so excited about them.

Let's face it. Most content delivery today is static. Just words on some substrate medium (paper, screens, or even air if you want to want to count skywriters). Knowledge Genie is one of first examples I've seen where we get a hint of how books might contribute to the evolution of more fully formed content experiences.

Like a book, a Knowledge Genie app is what the author makes it, so it'll be fun to what types of creativity will emerge from Knowledge Genie authors and publishers.

Knowledge Genie might also serve as a platform for a new breed of publisher who takes previously published book content and brings it to live as a dynamic online web application.

Start building your first Genie today for free at Knowledge Genie.

David Weir has an excellent analysis of Knowledge Genie's potential over at BNET.

Tools of Change Conference Notes

I just returned late last night from the O'Reilly Media Tools of Change conference in New York City. This was my third year at the conference. The first year I attended as a reporter for VentureBeat, and then these past two times as a speaker.

For the benefit of those of you who didn't attend, I'll share some of my personal highlights, in no particular order:

Twitter Forever Changes the Conference Experience - Thanks to Twitter, conferences will never be the same. For every session of the three day conference, hundreds of TOC attendees were Twittering real time quotes, analysis and conversation. I found myself monitoring the Twitterstream (check it out here) as I listened to the speakers, and it added another interesting (though distracting!) perspective on the conference. Twitterers held nothing back. If the speaker started giving a sales pitch, or made questionable statements, the Twitterers were merciless. If the speaker said something interesting (or not), Twitterers would tweet it and then that would cause a cascade of retweets. For three days straight, TOC was in the top five most discussed subjects on Twitter. Thousands, if not millions, of people who weren't at the conference were getting a taste of the not only what was happening but what people thought about what was happening. Many of the Twitterstream participants weren't even at the conference. One of the most profuse and entertaining Twitterers on the TOC Twitterstream - and he wasn't at the conference - was Mike Cane (@mikecane for you Twitterers), a self-described "ebook militant" and writer who lives near Staten Island. Twitterers from around the world tweeted their friends at the conference and had them convey questions to the presenters.

At one great panel on social media in publishing, moderated by Ron Hogan (@ronhogan for you Twitterers) of MediaBistro/GalleyCat, Ron actually introduced his panelists by their Twitter handles. Is Twitter going to become a secondary form of identity? I think yes. I think it'll also forever change the dynamic between conference presenters, attendees and wannabee attendees.

At some points, the Twitter echo-chamber reached heretofore unknown limits of, well, echo-chamberness. During the Blogging and Social Media Workshop led by social media guru Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) who told attendees he considers Twitter the new phone, session attendee Chad Capellman (@chadrem) uploaded a YouTube video of Chris speaking. When Chad told Chris about it, Chris logged on to YouTube and the audience watched Chris watch a big screen projection of the Chris video taken minutes earlier, and then Chad or some other attendee joked they could take and upload a new video of this special moment as Chris watched a video of himself that we could all then watch.

Several times during his three hour workshop, Chris checked the Twitterstream to gauge audience impressions of his live performance. At one point after he walked on stage drinking from what looked like a beer bottle, Susan Danzinger (@susandanziger) of DailyLit tweeted she thought Chris was drinking a beer onstage, then yours truly (@markcoker) retweeted it because I was wondering the same, then Kat Meyer (@katmeyer) set the record straight, as did Chris when he saw the tweetstream on the big stage monitor.

Twittering while watching Twitter while listening to and participating in a conference while the presenter talks about Twitter and is the subject of a Twitterstream while he himself Twitters makes for a very surreal experience.

Peter Brantley on Literature as a Driver for Services - Peter Brantley directs the Digital Library Federation, and he's one of my favorite thinkers about the future of the books, and about the sacred place books occupy in culture. In a keynote address, Peter challenged the audience of publishers to consider how moving books from print to digital can change the nature of reading, and how the move to digital can open up new business opportunities for publishers. "What's published will be less about the book and more about the people who read them," he said. He talked about how books will become networked and empower more participatory methods of reading.

Cory Doctorow Eviscerates DRM - In a keynote, author Cory Doctorow (@coreydoctorow) had the audience in rapt attention as he proceeded to disembowel Amazon and all those who would seek to perpetuate the short-sighted practice of DRM. He challenged publishers to step up to the plate and demand Amazon accept their ebook files DRM-free. If anyone knows where I can find a transcript of his talk, let me know so I can link to it here.

Chris Baty of Nanowrimo Says Authorship has Bright Future - One of my favorite presentations came from Chris Baty, founder of National Novel Writing Month, which just completed its tenth year of operation. Although Steve Jobs says people don't read books anymore, Chris made clear that you can't stop writers from writing, and for this reason alone books face a bright future because the process of writing helps writers appreciate books. "Novels are not written by novelists," he said, "novels are written by everyday people who give themselves permission to write novels." At least one Nanowrimo participant has landed on the New York Times Bestseller lists, and several have earned book deals. The international Nanowrimo challenge has grown from only 21 participants in its first year, 1998, to 119,000 participants in 2008. Chris spoke at length about how the success of Nanowrimo has been driven by the powerful community that develops between writers as they share the deeply emotional experience of "meeting the book inside them."

The Rise of Ebooks - Ebooks were a big theme of the conference. The first year of the conference in 2007, there were maybe one or two ebook-themed sessions. Last year there were maybe three or four. This year, ebooks reigned supreme with at least ten sessions squarely focused on ebooks and with most of the other sessions touching on related themes. I moderated the "Rise of Ebooks" session. I admit, I'm biased, because I think my panelists (Joe Wikert of O'Reilly Media; indie author advocate and Publetariat founder April Hamilton; David Rothman of Teleread; and Russ Wilcox of E-Ink) did a kick *ss job of surfacing and debating some of the most interesting trends facing ebooks today. We covered a lot of ground in just 45 minutes, including:

1. What's driving the rapid sales growth of ebooks? (Answers: better screen display technology; availability of more titles; Oprah; lower prices; e-reading becoming as, or more, pleasurable than print; DRM starting to slip away)
2. How long until ebooks go mainstream? (Russ predicted 2-3 percent of American households will own a dedicated e-reading device in the next 18 months [this is huge, and even if he's off by half, it's still huge], and most of the panelists agreed the ebook market will be dramatically larger in the next couple years.
3. Screen technologies, present and future (screens will get faster, cheaper, better color, different sizes)
4. Print vs. ebook, complementary or competitive? (most concluded they're complementary, though I don't think we'll know if they're a net positive or net negative for a few years - I suspect the latter)
5. Supply chain implications for ebook intermediaries (new supply chain models forming, may not look exactly like print model; publishers and authors likely to get closer to consumers)
6. Rich media ebooks, integrating video, audio, sensory feedback such as vibrations (lots of interesting stuff happening; a worthwhile opportunity to leverage traditional "book" content to offer readers a more engaging experience)

Artist Nina Paley Argues, "Give Away the Content, Sell the Containers." - Artist Nina Paley closed out the conference with a thought provoking talk in which she argued that artists and writers should give their content away for free but sell the packages that add value to their content. For example, she argued, water is free from the tap or filter, yet people will pay for water in a bottle for the benefit of the packaging, the brand, and the perceived benefits of that bottle or brand. Customers will pay for free content that is packaged in such as way that it adds value to the consumption of the content. She showed a trailer for her new animated feature film, "Sita Sings the Blues," which she plans to make available online for free. She plans to make money (and pay off the debts incurred to make the movie) by selling the film to theaters, and by allowing publishers to publish coffee table books of the movie and its art. She also plans to sell value-added packaged versions of the movie, such as the limited edition DVDs she sold at the conference (Corey Doctorow was the first buyer).

Amazon Announces the Kindle 2 - Amazon tried to steal some of the thunder of the conference by choosing to announce the Kindle 2 a few blocks away on the first day of the conference. Amazon, however, was conspicuously absent from the conference. While attendees generally praised the new device for it's faster screen refreshes (enabled by new E-Ink technology) and improved user interface design, as mentioned above in Cory Doctorow's keynote and repeated by other keynoters, presenters and conference-goers, Amazon was ridiculed throughout the conference for its adherence to DRM on the Kindle.

Download O'Reilly's Free "Best of TOC" Ebook - There was a ton more of interesting opinions and news from the conference, and I couldn't possibly capture it all here. O'Reilly put together a good ebook (it's free) that captures the best of the show (its only big omission is it doesn't mention the Rise of Ebooks panel!) you can download it as long as you don't mind jumping through all the convoluted hoops necessary to register for, and "purchase" the free ebook. Check it out here: https://epoch.oreilly.com/shop/cart.orm?prod=9780596802110.EBOOK

Watch TOC Videos - O'Reilly has created an online archieve of some of the videos from TOC 2009 and prior years you can access here.

Barnes & Noble Considers Acquisition of Borders

The Wall Street Journal reports in Friday's paper that Barnes & Noble, the country's largest book store, is considering an acquisition of Borders Group. The combination would create a retail book selling powerhouse accounting for one third of all US book sales.

Such a combination would likely mean fewer stores and higher prices. I wonder if 10 years from now book stores disappear altogether. If digital music killed the record store, will digital books kill the book store?

As brick and mortar book stores enter their twilight, it's time for independent authors to reassess publishing priorities and start building digital presence.

The Hand of Darwin Touches Book Publishing

Sara Lloyd, part of the digital team at publisher Pan MacMillan, has posted a four-part series of interesting pieces here, here, here and here challenging book publishers to rethink not only their role in the new digital ecosystem, but the nature of the book as well. It's a good read, and certainly fits with our thinking here at Smashwords that the book publishing industry will face wrenching change in the next few years.

Lloyd notes how the Internet is disintermediating the distribution of books, potentially challenging one of the primary value propositions for the traditional print publisher. She also notes how consumers are increasingly becoming producers as well, much to the chagrin of the old guard publishers whose 19th century business models still adhere to the traditional author-agent-publisher-distributor-bookstore-consumer approach to book publishing.

At Smashwords, we think we're about to witness a slow and steady disintegration of the traditional book production and distribution supply chain. We will increasingly move to an author-consumer model of book production and marketing, where authors decide what's published and consumers decide what's worth reading. Our definition of "book" will also likely change, where we begin to think of books not as themed content sandwiched between paper but instead as packaged units of emotional and intellectual experience.

Does this mean the traditional print book publishers as we know them today will fall by the wayside? Not necessarily. In all good Darwinian battles, those who create value will survive and thrive.