Exclusive: Dan Poynter on the Future of Books

It takes courage to write a book. It takes even more courage to blaze your path as an indie author.

Dan Poynter, the subject of this exclusive interview, has singlehandedly inspired thousands of authors to self-publish. Along the way, he has sold tens of millions of dollars of his books on subjects ranging from skydiving to self-publishing. Dan is perhaps best known as the author of the Self- Publishing Manual, the best-selling guide to indie authorship, published continuously for the last 30 years.

This week, Dan published on Smashwords the new sequel to the book, the Self-Publishing Manual Volume 2, which covers the latest technologies and techniques for book publishing and promotion. The book is so brand spanking new it won't be available in print anywhere for another two weeks. Smashwords is also the first digital publisher and online bookstore to carry the ebook.

Dan was advocating self-publishing long before it was fashionable, so no doubt he's pleased to see the world finally catch up with him. But where to next? In our exclusive interview, conducted today via email, Dan speaks about the past, present and future of indie publishing.


[Mark Coker] - Last year, Writer's Digest Magazine referred to you as the godfather of self publishing. Your books have sold millions of copies. For the benefit of indie authors everywhere, what's the secret to building a successful career in self-publishing?

[Dan Poynter] - Write what you love and sell to your colleagues. This could be the definition of social networking for books. Go where your heart is. Write about your favorite subject: The one that gets you so excited, you wake at four in the morning to find your eyes are wide open and your head is spinning with ideas. You are so jazzed, you can't sleep. So, you get up and head for the keyboard. I started with books on parachutes and skydiving. Sell your book to people who have an interest in your subject. They are easy to find with online searches and social media. I've been self-publishing since 1969. Because many publishers approached me for my secret for selling so many books, I wrote and published The Self-Publishing Manual in 1979. It has been through 16 revisions and 20 printings since. I just published a volume 2 which describes using social networking to gather information and to promote the finished book. My books, speaking and coaching have launched thousands of books. That sort of makes me a godfather - many times over.


[Mark Coker] - What do you make of the turmoil we're seeing in publishing today? What will the industry look like in two, three or five years, and what are the implications for authors?

[Dan Poynter] - Changes. And the changes are long overdue. The large six publishers in New York have not altered their business plans since 1947. The downturn in the economy did not cause their problems but economics are making them reexamine the ways they do business. Brick-and-mortar store sales are decreasing. Online sales are increasing. We will see smaller advances, the elimination of returns, the abolishment of the three annual selling seasons and the proliferation of eBooks. pBook (paper) sales are decreasing. eBook sales are increasing. With change comes opportunity. The 86,000 self-publishers in the U.S. are prepared because they are closer to their subject than a large publisher and, being more nimble, are quicker to adapt to trends, conditions and changes. It takes a large publisher 18 months from manuscript to shelf. Smashwords can get your book out at the speed of light.

[Mark Coker] - What role will eBooks play in helping to launch and sustain the careers of authors?

[Dan Poynter] - We still hear people say they like the look and feel of a paper book. They will get over it. (: I do not know of one of these detractors who has actually read an eBook. They may have glanced at a page but they have not tested the concept. I have been publishing eReports and eBooks since 1996. Because I fly more than 6,000 miles/week, I read a lot of eBooks (mostly historical fiction). So we can argue about what the customer wants but the deciding factor will be economics. pBooks cost too much. Their list prices are higher and their actual costs are much higher when you consider printing, trucking, inventorying, processing the order, picking, packing, licking, sticking, wrapping and shipping. eBooks require little or none of these and Smashwords takes care of the delivery, billing, paying and customer service.

[Mark Coker] - You write about the importance of authors taking personal responsibility for their own marketing, yet you note that most writers are introverts. How can indie authors reconcile the two?

[Dan Poynter] - The challenge is not that most writers are introverts (like me), it is that most writers believe that the only way to promote books is with public appearances: radio, TV and autographings. As a result, they do nothing at all. Whether you sell out to a large (NY) publisher or publish yourself, the author must do the promotion. Publishers do not promote books. Ask anyone who has landed a book contract. People purchase nonfiction to learn something or to solve a problem. Book promotion is simply letting people interested in the subject know that you have a book. Social networking is the ideal way for authors to promote their books. You can get the word out while discussing your favorite subject with colleagues all over the world. BTW, social networking has been around since the campfire. It is simply discussing your favorite subject with your friends. Today we have social media. We can reach our colleagues via the Internet and mobile phone systems. People anywhere in the world can join the campfire.

[Mark Coker] - Chris Anderson, author of the Long Tail, gives authors hope they can achieve success in niche markets. Yet his forthcoming book, Free, advocates pricing some digital goods at zero. How do authors compete against free, or should they even try? And how should authors approach pricing in this environment where there are free alternatives to nearly everything that is paid?

[Dan Poynter] - Chris Anderson is selling magazines and probably gets paid for speeches and consulting. Free eBooks can bring attention to the author and the author's other services. That said, there are many case studies of authors giving away their eBook only to find that this promotion increases the sales of their pBook. It seems that downloading an eBook is similar to a brick-and-mortar bookstore shopping experience. The shopper sees the title, "reaches" for the book, looks at the front cover, reads the description of the contents on the back cover, opens the book to review the contents and then makes a buying decision. Chris Anderson is right and "The Long Tail" confirms what I have been doing for 40 years. I started with a line of books on parachutes & skydiving. I sell these into the parachute industry. Reaching my colleagues is easy with social networking. I am currently at the International Parachute Symposium in Reno. We expect nearly 1,000 industry people from 32 countries. It will be easy to sell individual books and to make new dealers.

[Mark Coker] - Thanks Dan!

Be the first to own the first edition of Dan Poynter's new Self Publishing Manual Volume 2 by purchasing it now on Smashwords.

To learn more about Dan Poynter, visit his Smashwords Author Page or visit his publishing company, Para Publishing.

Publetariat: New Community for Indie Authors

Author April Hamilton, a long time friend of Smashwords and advocate for indie authors, has launched Publetariat, a new online community for self-published authors. Check it out and get involved.

April thinks it's time the word "indie" carry the same street cred for authors as it does for indie musicians and filmmakers. It's a goal I share as well.

While other online communities such as AbsoluteWrite serve authors who aspire to go the mainstream publishing route, Publetariat will serve authors who aspire to remain indie.

From the Publetariat site:

Why Publetariat?

The indie author tide is rising. Every day there are new stories of authors taking their careers into their own hands and choosing, not resorting to, self-publication and forming their own imprints.

Even the struggling titans of the mainstream publishing industry can't ignore it anymore. There's an increasing level of genuine interest in, and respect for, self-publishing and small, independent imprints on websites and in publications that would've sneered at the very idea a decade ago. For far too long, indie authors and small imprints have fought an uphill battle against an industry and a community of writers determined to marginalize us and our efforts. Now, as indie authorship stands poised to become the 'next big thing' in publishing, our time has come at last.

Several indie authors and indie author advocates, myself included, are supporting the project:

Bill Aicher - author

Alan Baxter - Blade Red Press

Mark Coker - Smashwords

Nick Daws - freelance writer/consultant

April L. Hamilton - author

Jude Johnson - Scorched Hawk Press

Kallysten - Alinar Publishing

Hugh McGuire - Bookoven, Librivox, earideas & datalibre.ca

Joanna Penn - The Creative Penn

Dana Lynn Smith - The Book Marketing Maven

Joshua Tallent - Kindleformatting.com

Zoe Winters - author

Visit Publetariat today at http://www.publetariat.com/index.php

If you're attending the Tools of Change Conference next week in New York, I invite you to attend the panel I'm moderating Tuesday titled "The Rise of ebooks." April is one of our distinguished panelists.

Smashwords an Official Sponsor of Read an E-Book Week March 8-14

Smashwords today announced its official sponsorship of Read an E-Book Week, to be held March 8-14. I encourage readers of this blog to get involved at a local level by hosting ebook read-ins and ebook device demonstrations at schools, libraries, bookstores and coffee shops.

At Smashwords, we're going to work with our authors to create special ebook promotions during the week, including free books and discounted books. Stay tuned.

From the press release:

"The mission of Read an E-Book Week is to raise international awareness about the benefits of ebooks to authors, readers, educators and the media," said Rita Toews, founder of the non-profit event. "As a sponsor of the event, Smashwords will help promote the initiative, and will work with its authors to develop special Smashwords book promotions during the week."

Digital reading is on the upswing. According the IDPF, ebook sales in the United States grew 108 percent year over year for the month of November alone. The dramatic sales increase came despite weak overall book industry sales (for in-depth analysis, see our previous post on the rise of ebook sales).

"We're pleased to sponsor and endorse Read an E-Book Week," said Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords. "We hope to introduce thousands of new readers and authors to the joys of ebooks. Thanks to advances in e-reading devices such as the iPhone+Stanza, the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader, electronic reading is often more enjoyable than paper reading. Once book lovers try ebooks, they're hooked."

Click here to read the rest of the press release.

Click here to visit the web site for Read an E-Book Week, and to learn how you can get involved.

Interview with Moriah Jovan, author of The Proviso

This is the first in a series of occasional interviews in which I'll profile interesting figures involved in the indie author movement. First up is author and blogger, Moriah Jovan, best known as "MoJo" in the online community. Her new novel, The Proviso, is now out in ebook and paper.

In the interview, Jovan speaks candidly about her journey as a writer and her decision to take control of her writing career as an indie author.

The interview was conducted over email. The parenthetical comments are her own.


[Mark Coker] - MoJo, your name keeps popping up as an active player in the emerging indie author movement. What drove you to become an indie author, and what does the movement mean to you as an author?

[Moriah Jovan] - I never intended to set up shop as an independent publisher.

I have three good books on my hard drive that I wrote in the mid 90s. Two of them got an agent (two different ones, mind). One of them prompted a phone call from an editor on a Saturday morning asking me to overnight the complete manuscript to her; I did. Tuesday morning, she called to tell me she just didn't like the ending. I offered to rewrite the end (at once prove to her I was easy to work with and that I was versatile), which she declined, saying, "No, it would destroy the book." Another of them prompted a similar scenario, except the call was to tell me that she'd bought something somewhat similar to mine the month before and, while mine was superior, she couldn't justify it to her editorial board. I had other, similar, close calls like that. The third didn't make it past my agent; that was in 1998.

There's something far more heartbreaking about being thisclose than not close at all. I gave up. I stopped writing altogether. I left RWA (Romance Writers of America) and my critique group. Too, I thought my "well" had dried up. Life intervened. When we moved, I saw all my old manuscripts as dead weight and I burned them so I wouldn't have to cart them across town. I pretty much forgot about writing, publishing. I didn't read much, either, particularly romance.

In the meantime, I'd been subconsciously stewing on a project since 1995 (that I used for my final project before I could graduate from college) and couldn't reconcile the plot or anything else about it that I wanted to do. In August 2007, after a particularly grueling month of work, I did invoices and found myself spiritually and physically exhausted. I wasn't sleepy, though, so I did something I hadn't done since I stopped writing: I read my own work from so long before and it was like reading the work of someone else. Yeah, it needed some polish, but it was good and I was heartbroken that I'd given up on myself.

I woke up the next morning with that plot problem from 1995 nearly solved. It involved cutting a few aspects of it and refining others, but I was willing to do whatever it took to whip it into a reasonable shape. I went back and looked at my early notes and saw what I had originally intended, which I'd forgotten. I wrote a 1,200-page draft in two months, then I started researching the market and I was shocked at the changes, at the level of competition, at these e-publishers (i.e., in 1995-speak "not legitimate" and "self-publishing excuses"), and then at the fact that I certainly wasn't going to be able to shop a 285,000-word manuscript and expect to get anywhere. I tried anyway, with the expected results. I tried splitting the story out into the three separate story lines that comprise the arc and selling it that way, but that didn't work either. It's not a trilogy and none would stand on their own.

My husband was the one who urged me to self-publish first. I began to play around with cover art. Then I began to play around with interior book design. Then I took my dilemma to my business friends, who echoed my husband, once they'd made me break down the pros and cons of it. To people who are not writers struggling with queries and the submission process, the fact that this isn't an acceptable DIY project (and the active [rabid] social conditioning to discourage it) is a foreign concept. When I further go on to explain the consignment system, what it means to be self-published, they're horrified. Every business person I talk to who doesn't know anything about how book publishing works is flabbergasted.

Anyway, I seriously started to consider it. It wasn't that I didn't want my baby circumcised by an editor. It was that there was noone willing to take a knife to it unless I paid them. I didn't know it at the time, but once I started experimenting with my own designs (and getting relatively decent at it), I had already made the decision. At this point, I don't really see myself as an independent author/publisher. I see myself as a business owner with a really different product to sell and, I think, a good product. NY publishing has taken up residence in my subconscious as simply another way of getting product out to the public. It is neither bad nor good; it just is. An independent author has to acknowledge that reality, yet be willing to operate outside it as if it didn't exist.

The independent publishing movement is to me as This Old House and Home Depot were to the DIY handyman who had skills but needed more than your basic lumberyard and hardware store. Most home DIYers know they either can't or shouldn't mess with plumbing and electricity. Some are willing to learn, experiment, fail or succeed at plumbing and electricity, but those are rare. With the appropriate instructions and tools and materials, provided you don't mind the learning process, you can do pretty much everything else yourself. You figure out pretty fast if you're not cut out for it. Demolition, insulation, sheetrock, moulding, tile . . . if you're careful and follow instructions and know when to farm out which tasks, you can do a decent job on your own for a lot less money.

In the case of books, the technology had to change. While I was living my life and not thinking about writing and not reading my work and with no sudden plots coming into my head I just HAD to write down and develop, it passed me by. I haven't fully caught up yet.

[Mark Coker] - You recently published your debut novel, The Proviso, on Smashwords. Tell us about the book.

[Moriah Jovan] - In the simplest terms, it's a riff off Hamlet. I leave out most of the characters in the play, but I've left the themes and the pathology of Hamlet intact, with some deliberate twists informed by critics like Asimov and Updike. Two of the three main characters together function as the Horatio character; their individual stories are told within and help advance the bigger Hamlet arc. The end does deviate somewhat from the original.

[Mark Coker] - Your Smashwords book page features a cool YouTube book trailer for The Proviso. For the benefit of other indie authors who want to do the same, can you share how you created the video, the process and the tools?

[Moriah Jovan] - Honestly, it wasn't difficult nor expensive, and I credit both RJ Keller (another indie author who had just posted a couple of really good trailers for her book, Waiting for Spring, on her blog, for giving me the basic information and Samantha Quant (who posted the first review of my book), for helping me out with my music editing.

The first thing I had to know was this thing called Windows Movie Maker, which I didn't even know was on my computer. It's idiot-proof. Really.

The second thing I needed was images and music. Now, lemme tell ya. The image part was fairly easy as long as you're willing to spend HOURS combing through stock images for just the right ones (though it took me a long time to find a strawberry blonde with a 9mm in her hand). It's the music part that'll kill you. A lot of the royalty-free music out there is just awful and I didn't really want to wade through all that awfulness, so I went with something in the public domain, which is fairly familiar to everyone (even though almost no one knows what it's called). That piece is a recurring sexual theme in the book, so it fit that way, too.

The third thing I needed was to create the text panels, which I did in Photoshop.

The fourth thing I needed was to edit the music to fit the slides. I downloaded AudioEdit Deluxe and found it intuitive enough for me, a super-noob audio editor, to get a good clip.

Put it all together, and there it was. It was way out of my comfort zone, so I'm very pleased it turned out as well as it did.

[Mark Coker] - How did you discover Smashwords?

[Moriah Jovan] - I heard about it from a few Smashwords authors, actually. First was Eugene Woodbury, who has an excellent, excellent book out, Angel Falling Softly. Next was Zoe Winter, who published a clever paranormal romance on Smashwords, Kept. RJ Keller, whose book was previously available free but in PDF (I won't download PDFs unless I'm desperate to read the story), had decided to put her Waiting for Spring on Smashwords to make other formats available.

The person who finally convinced me to do it was Aaron Ross Powell, whose The Hole I really wanted to read, but it was previously only available via Kindle. He put it on Smashwords and I downloaded it posthaste and then decided to give Smashwords a whirl myself.

[Mark Coker] - How do you see ebooks fitting into the overall publishing strategy of indie authors?

[Moriah Jovan] - I think it's important to exploit every revenue stream available to you and thus, have a working familiarity with your options: print (made easier by print-on-demand technology), e-books (as many formats as possible), podcasting (which I shall be dipping my toe into in the future), audiobooks, serialization (via zines, blogs, internet radio), and others I haven't thought of.

E-books scratch the instant gratification itch most Americans have, and they make your work available to the rest of the world that it wouldn't have otherwise. E-books figure perfectly into the lives of the next generation who is and has been reared with a keyboard under their fingers, reading off of a computer screen. They are the future consumers of e-books, whether independently published or not. They are already used to getting their information/entertainment digitally; they are comfortable with fanfiction and other content that have no ties to the NY publishing model; and they have no concept of the NY publishing model as the accepted practice of dissemination of information. They are the ones we prepare e-books for, as they will be reading e-books almost exclusively and, no doubt, they'll take e-books in another direction entirely.

[Mark Coker] - Thanks MoJo!

To learn more about Moriah Jovan or purchase The Proviso, visit her author page on Smashwords. Moriah Jovan blogs at http://moriahjovan.com/mojo/

The Rise of Ebooks - IDPF Reports Ebook Sales Up 108%

The IDPF today reported ebook sales were up 108% for the month of November, 2008 compared to the same period a year ago. The data is provided in conjunction with surveys conducted by the American Association of Publishers, and represent wholesale sales from only 13 US-based ebook publishers, so total reported sales figures understate actual sales.

For the first eleven months of 2008, ebook sales were up about 64%, according to the IDPF.

Dig beneath the surface, and the numbers are striking. Ebook sales are surging while the entire trade book industry suffers a decline. Are print sales suffering at the hands of ebook sales? Unlikely. Something else is happening.

For the five years between 2002 and 2007 (Click here for data, opens a PDF), overall trade book sales averaged an annual increase of 2.5% (lower than inflation, which means unit sales probably decreased), while ebooks for the same period turned in a 55.7% average annualized increase.

Granted, the robust sales growth for ebooks was off of a tiny base to begin with. But...fast forward to October of 2008, the date for which year-to-date sales are reported on the AAP web site , and you see overall trade book sales for the first 9 months of the year were down 3.4% while ebook sales were up about 58%. So the rate of ebook sales accelerated during the first 9 months of 2008 compared to the previous five years.

More interesting, for the month of October the AAP reported overall trade book sales suffered a 20% drop in the year over year monthly comparison, while ebook sales accelerated to 73% growth.

Numbers for November and December aren't yet published on the AAP site, though today's numbers from the IDPF, which are supplied by the AAP, indicated that ebook sales have accelerated yet again, up 108% for November.

As any numbers guy or gal will tell you, it's easy to show great sales growth when you're growing off of a small base. But when sales show sequential acceleration off of sequentially increasing bases (meaning, you grow faster as you grow larger), then something really interesting is taking place.

If we conservatively estimate that overall trade sales for 2008 declined 3%, and ebooks sales increased 70%, then wholesale ebook sales will rise to $114 million and overall trade book sales will decline to $24.21 billion. In other words, ebooks will still only represent 1/2 of 1% of book industry sales, at least here in the US.

If you extrapolate the 70% growth for five more years (and I would argue 70% is a relatively conservative number), then ebooks rise to $1.6 billion, and assuming a 2% growth rate of the overall trade book sales to $26.7 billion (generous), ebooks would then represent a respectable 6% of sales.

If you're attending the Tools of Change conference February 9-11, I invite you to attend a panel I'm moderating titled, "The Rise of ebooks," where we'll explore the past, present and future of ebooks and try to understand the implications of these numbers for publishers and authors alike.

In the meantime, if you're an author, you need to start exposing your books to the digital realm. Clearly, as the numbers above indicate, you should continue to publish in print because ebook sales will account for only a small percentage of your overall sales. In the years ahead, however, ebooks will become an increasingly important format for book consumption.

Ebooks also give authors the opportunity to dramatically increase their available audience in a short period of time. With our Smashwords ebook distribution deal with Lexcyle the other week, for example, the books of Smashwords authors are now available in the native Stanza catalog. Stanza has been downloaded by approximately one million people to read ebooks on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

As physical book shelves disappear due to bookseller consolidation, authors and publishers need to expand their distribution to digital shelves.

Smashwords on the Soybit Publishing Trends Map

Paul Biba over at Teleread has a story about a Spanish blog called Soybit, which has created an interesting looking visualization of publishing industry trends.

On the map (at left), the movers, shakers, technologies and trends appear as stops along a subway map. It's a fun read and I was pleased to see Smashwords noted on one of the feeder lines at the bottom!

Smashwords Ebooks Now in Native Stanza Catalog

We issued a press release today announcing that Smashwords ebooks are now listed in the native Stanza catalog. Stanza is the critically acclaimed electronic book reader app for the iPhone and iPod Touch used by over one million readers. The agreement dramatically increases the readership opportunities for independent authors.

From the press release:

"Our partnership with Smashwords provides an immediate pathway for independent authors to sample and sell their books on the iPhone via Stanza," said Neelan Choksi, Chief Operating Officer at Lexcycle. "As the publishing industry struggles to adapt to a challenging bookselling environment, new digital publishing models such as Smashwords/Stanza create exciting opportunities for independent authors to reach new readers."

"Our mission at Smashwords is to provide independent authors the tools they need to publish, promote and sell their ebooks," said Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, based in Los Gatos, Calif. "This relationship with Lexcycle will put our authors' books in the hands of over one million Stanza users for immediate sampling and purchase."

For independent authors who hold the digital rights to their new or out of print books, there's never been a better time to publish with Smashwords. Authors simply register for a free account at Smashwords and upload their finished manuscript as a Microsoft Word file. Smashwords automatically converts the book into multiple DRM-free ebook formats including the EPUB standard used by Stanza, ready for immediate sampling and sale online via Stanza and the Smashwords online bookstore. Authors set the price of their book, determine the sampling percentage, and receive up to 85% of net sales proceeds.

Click here to read the full press release.

Three websites keep indie authors out of harm's way

In this post, I wanted to recommend a few websites I think do a great job of helping indie authors navigate the shark-infested waters of self-publishing. As anyone who follows Smashwords or this blog knows, I'm a huge advocate for self-publishing both in print via services like Lulu or Createspace, and online via my indie ebook publisher, Smashwords. Although there are many reputable self-publishing companies such as our own who truly care about the authors they represent, the publishing industry is legend for somehow attracting the dregs of the earth to run scammy publishing services that take advantage of authors.

Below are three sites worth checking before you sign on with any publisher:

1. Predators & Editors - The other day, a Smashwords author wrote me and mentioned how he was about to sign a publishing contract with a publisher I heard had a shady history. I pointed the author to this page at Predators & Editors so they could understand the mistake they were about to make. A few days later, I was pleased to receive an email thanking me for the warning, and notifying me he had selected one of my recommended print publishers instead. P&E maintains listings on hundreds of publishers. The site also has listings of agents, both good and bad. The site is run by David L. Kuzminski. I don't know the full story behind the site, but I do see on the home page that he is soliciting donations to help him defend the site against a lawsuit. I just made a small personal donation and I hope you do the same.

2. Piers Anthony's Internet Publishing Survey - Best-selling sci-fi and fantasy author Piers Anthony has been an advocate for online publishing and authors rights for many years, and for quite a long time has maintained this great online survey of Internet publishing services. Given his prolific writing, I'm amazed he has the time to keep his list up to date, but he does an admirable job based on his own experiences and the reports he receives from his readers. I referred the aforementioned Smashwords author to this page for Piers' take on the suspect publisher.

3. Writer Beware - Writer Beware is run by writer Victoria Strauss. She maintains several web pages hosted at the Science Fiction & Fantasy Association's website filled with informative articles, and she also contributes to the Writer Beware Blog along with other fellow writers A.C. Crispin and Richard White.

Image credit: Wikipedia Commons

Smashwords Book Marketing Guide Now Available

Independent authors, like those we publish at Smashwords, realize they need to take marketing matters into their own hands. With this in mind, last night we published The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, a free ebook that provides authors actionable advice on how to market their Smashwords books. The Guide starts with an overview of the free marketing tools offered by Smashwords, and then provides a series of simple marketing tips authors can put to use today.

This is a living document and will be updated frequently as Smashwords authors suggest additional marketing ideas, and as we develop more do-it-yourself marketing tools for the Smashwords digital publishing platform.

Lightbulb image credit: Kaizen-Muse

Vote on Your Favorite Smashwords Ad

For several months now, we've been running a series of Smashwords print advertisements in some the leading writer's magazines, and it recently dawned on me that we've never shared these ads with our online friends, many of whom found us not in dead tree media, but online.

Below is a partial collection. Comment below and place your vote for your favorite. Also feel free to steal the images and post them on your own blog or website.


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The ads were designed by David Gee out of Toronto, who by day is an advertising copywriter and by night is a freelance book cover designer. He's also the designer behind the cover for my own novel, Boob Tube. See David's fantastic work at his blog, David Gee, Works on Paper.

Smashwords Introduces Coupon Generator for Self-Published eBook Authors

Smashwords today introduced a coupon generator that allows self-published ebook authors to issue promotional coupon codes for their books for sharing on blogs, websites, social networks and fan email lists.

Our mission at Smashwords is to provide independent authors the free tools they need to publish, promote and sell their ebooks. The Smashwords Coupon Generator represents a powerful new marketing tool for self-published ebook authors to create excitement and buying interest among their potential readers.

The Smashwords Coupon Generator give authors flexible options for how they design their coupon promotions, including designating cents-off or dollars-off list price, a flat percentage off retail price, and fixed expiration dates. Authors can also create coupons that entitle the recipient to receive the book for free, which can be useful for promoting the book to book reviewers or for use in limited time promotions.

For independent authors, there's never been a better time to publish ebooks on Smashwords. Authors simply upload their manuscripts as Microsoft Word files, and then Smashwords automatically converts the book into multiple DRM-free ebook formats, such as .epub, .lrf, .pdf, .mobi, .pdb, .rtf and .txt. Authors set the price of their books, determine the sampling percentage, and receive 85% of all net sales proceeds.

To learn more about the Coupon Generator, log in to your Smashwords account and click Dashboard.

Forget what you know about book formatting

One of my many joys of running Smashwords is working directly with authors every day who share my passion about the promise of ebooks. Their feedback, dreams and frustrations are what guide our development.

The biggest challenge these authors face getting their book into ebook form is that they're held hostage by their previous conceptions regarding how a book should be formatted. Traditional print formatting is very forgiving. If you use space marks or tabs instead of indents, for example, as long as the words are arranged where you want them on screen or in your PDF, the book prints reasonably well and all your bad formatting habits are forgiven.

Ebooks aren't so forgiving, because for the most part, formatting is the enemy of good ebook formatting. If my statement sounds circular and nonsensical, allow me to elaborate.

In the ebook realm, authors must abandon the notion of the "page." Pages have no meaning in ebook form, because pages become amorphous shape shifting creatures depending on the ebook reader; the reader's choice of font size, font style or line spacing; or in the case of the iPhone, whether they're holding it vertically or sideways.

When the notion of page disappears, it creates other problems for traditionally formatted books. The page numbers in your table of contents or index become meaningless. Your artificial page breaks, made via the common bad habit of multiple paragraph returns, create blank pages. Your forced page breaks disappear.

The secret to good ebook formatting is to keep it simple: A paragraph return at the end of a paragraph, a proper indent at the beginning of the paragraph, a couple paragraph returns between each chapter, things like that.

For long form narrative books, which is what most people read, readers buy books for the words, not the formatting. Don't let your formatting get in the way of the words.

For helpful formatting tips, read the Smashwords Style Guide.