Smashwords Publishes 15,000th Indie Ebook

Smashwords announced an important milestone today. Late Sunday evening, an indie author published the 15,000th title at Smashwords.

We've experienced tremendous growth in the last two years, thanks to the trust and confidence placed in us by nearly 7,000 indie authors and publishers around the world.

A lot has changed in the last two years. Indie authors are starting to earn the respect they deserve. We still have a long way to go, however.

It helps that more and more indie authors are stepping forward to share their success, and in the process they catch the attention of the industry and spark the imagination of fellow indie authors who can now build upon the success of these early breakout hits. Many of you have been inspired by the success of J.A. Konrath, who diligently shares his indie publishing experiences at his blog, The Newbie's Guide to Publishing.

Today, I have another indie author star to present to you: Smashwords author Brian S. Pratt. In the single month of June, Mr. Pratt earned over $4,000 for himself at just one Smashwords retailer, Barnes & Noble. His books have occupied the top 100 Sci-Fi & Fantasy titles at B&N for several months.

Now before your eyes blur with visions of dancing cherry plums, remember Pratt's experience is atypical for most authors, whether indie-published or traditionally published. However, as I view the sales reports coming in from our retail partners, it's encouraging to see that some of you are starting to earn some decent income. We'll report a new batch of retail sales reports to Smashwords authors the last couple days of this month, concurrent with our Q2 royalty payments. Some of you will be pleased, and others disappointed.

These financial successes aside, it's important to realize that the promise of monetary gain is the wrong reason to write a book. Many of our indie authors don't sell more than a couple copies. Luckily for book lovers everywhere, most writers write for reasons different than publisher's publish.

The other week, I was speaking with someone who has a retired friend who self-published the family's most cherished kitchen recipes, and their intended audience was not the world at large - it was their children, grandchildren, and their family's future generations. Is this book, which may only ever be read by immediate family members, any less valuable to the world because it lacks a business plan? I think not.

What excites me most about this indie author revolution is the unlimited, unexpected possibility it creates as we work at Smashwords to unleash the creative talents of indie authors.

Traditional publishers have always been challenged to predict which books will become commercial successes. They acquire books they think they can sell. In my view, the Achilles heel of traditional publishers is their myopic fixation on commercial potential. Sure, they have businesses to run, and Manhattan sky rise rents to pay. And yes, they employ brilliant and generous people who are passionate about books. Yet because they're running businesses limited by decades-old business models and cost structures, they're not able to take risks on every author. Nor do they want to.

I created Smashwords so I could take a risk on every author, including the author who writes for an audience of one. Because our platform is self-serve and extremely automated, we enjoy a low cost structure that enables this risk-taking, and also allows us to return up to 85% of all net sales back to the author or publisher.

Critics of self-publishing point to the incredible amount of drek that gets published when you let authors decide what to publish. My response: So what? I blogged about this last year when I addressed the Smashwords Community Filter.

Last month on a publishing mailing list I follow, a participant captured the prevalent concern about the volume of self-published material, and what it means to the future of publishing:

"...And we will be inundated in very cheap bad books. By bad I mean, unedited or poorly edited, badly positioned and largely unmarketed titles. By inundated I mean that it will be very difficult to find the good books in all of the content made available (a problem that we already suffer from but looks to be multiplying). And a very real difficulty in finding and creating an audience for the few good books that will be made available."

Hugh McGuire of BookOven and Bite Size Edits responded with a brilliant observation, one that fits perfectly with my vision of Smashwords and the future of indie authorship:

All this defines pretty well the challenges, well-met, in the world of the web - where anyone can publish what they want in a blog, the vast majority of it is uninteresting to the vast majoriiy of readers (which is why most blogs have readerships of 1-2 people) ... Blogs are, by the numbers, a vast sea of junk.

And yet.

And yet - as a reader, I constantly find wonderful stuff to read on blogs. I read many of your blogs, I read NYTimes blogs, I read BoingBoing - which usually points me to other blogs; I follow Twitter links to more blogs I have not heard of - almost exclusively now I find good blog posts to read through Twitter.

But, still, given the overwhelming preponderance of junk, how is it that I only read wonderful stuff on the web?

The answer is in the link. The link creates a currency for readers and writers to surface wonderful stuff. In the earlier days of blogging, links were an essential part of the ethic: we read each other, we pointed to the stuff we liked; people pointed back. Crucially, you could "see" when someone pointed to you (referrers, technorati, google alerts). And crucially, Google built a kind of reputation exchange, based on the link: the more links you got, the more "important" you were to Google's search; the more important you were to Google's search, the more heavily-weighted your links were in Google's algorithms - conferring your importance to others.

This created an ecosystem of readers and writers, that grew to the point that now blogs are a fact of life - and come in all flavours and shapes, from Samuel Pepys' diary, to the Tools of Change Blog, to Paul Graham, to cat-pictures and everything in between.

Fundamentally, though, the stuff in blogs - and in "books" - is not anything in particular. Blogs - like books - are just a means to transfer words from someone's fingers tips into someone else's eyeballs. Blogs made it easy for anyone to do that. Enter an era of more terrible and irrelevant writing than the world has ever seen. Enter, also, an era of more wonderful and important writing than the world has ever seen.

The good stuff gets found. If there is one thing the web is brilliant at, it's getting millions of people - billions? - to sift through junk to find what is valuable.

What do you think? What's your measure of success?

To read our full press release from this morning, access it here.


Image credit: Worldle

Smashwords Launches Second Annual July Summer/Winter Sale

It's July 1, which means it's summer in the Northern hemisphere and winter in the Southern hemisphere.

It also means it's time for the second annual Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale, where readers can find hundreds (and within days, thousands) of ebooks on sale with great savings of 25%-off, 50%-off, 75%-off, and 100%-off (free).

Smashwords authors and publishers can enroll their books now by clicking here to the enrollment page, where you'll find all your Smashwords books. Simply click the radio button corresponding to the coupon level you want.

All enrolled books will receive inclusion in the special Summer/Winter Sale catalog on the Smashwords homepage, and will also be included in special sale catalogs in Stanza on the iPhone and iPod Touch, and in Aldiko on Android devices.

After you enroll, you can use one of the following global coupon codes to promote your book to fans on Facebook, Twitter, online message forums, social networks, your private mailing lists or your blog.

Smashwords Ebook Coupon Codes for the July Summer/Winter Sale:

SWS25 - 25% off
SWS50 - 50% off
SWS75 - 75% off
SW100 - 100% off

The sale starts now and runs through July 31. If you're a reader, check the sale catalog often, because new titles are being added to the promotion every day. Enjoy!

Smashwords Partners with Wattpad to Create New Publishing Opportunities for Indie Authors

In a joint press release issued today, Smashwords and Wattpad announced a partnership that will open up new publishing opportunities for thousands of indie authors around the world.

If you're not familiar with Wattpad, they operate one of the largest social networks for writers and readers. Writers at Wattpad upload free stories, serialized stories and works-in-progress, and readers comment. It's a great opportunity for authors to share their writing, gain feedback and build fan followings. I first mentioned them in the comments section of my post earlier this month on serialized ebooks.

Consider Wattpad as a smart complement to your overall publishing strategy. Unlike Smashwords, Wattpad doesn't sell books. But whereas Smashwords prohibits works-in-progress, Wattpad and their large community of readers welcome works-in-progress. Like Smashwords, they invite authors to publish free, complete stories as well.

Reach your Beta Readers at Wattpad
If you think about it, book authorship involves a multi-step process. You brainstorm, plan, conceptualize, start writing, stop writing, pull your hair out, start writing again, revise, remove more hair, revise, edit, edit, pray your hair grows back, and so on until you have a finished work.

If you don't involve test readers during the revision process, you're missing out on a golden opportunity to improve your work. I call these early readers your "beta readers."

When my wife and I were writing our novel, Boob Tube, we cherished our beta reader feedback. We'd complete a major rewrite, show it to beta readers, then revise again. The best beta readers are people you don't know, because they'll give you the most honest feedback. Our favorite feedback came from our most vocal critics - those who would identify flaws in our writing style, character development or storyline. With each beta reading round and revision, our book grew better and stronger.

If Wattpad was around when we wrote our book, we would have used them.

Use Wattpad to reach your beta readers and gain new fans. Once your story is finished and ready for prime time, bring it to Smashwords for publication and distribution. Then re-engage with the WattPad community as you develop your next book.

So, what's involved in this partnership? Smashwords and Wattpad have added cross-promotional integration between the two services. Wattpad writers can add a direct hyperlink to their Smashwords author page so fans at Wattpad can purchase their finished works as multi-format ebooks. Smashwords authors can post their works-in-progress, free books and serialized books at Wattpad to reach new readers. After you open your Wattpad account (Go to Wattpad.com), you can link your Wattpad page to your Smashwords page. Next, click to Edit Profile in your Smashwords Account tab to link your Smashwords author page to your new page at Wattpad. Got that? The cross links make it easy for your fans at both Smashwords and Wattpad to discover your full spectrum of work.

More coming between Smashwords and Wattpad. Stay tuned...

Are Serialized Ebooks a Bad Idea?

Charles Dickens didn't invent serialized novels, but he's certainly one of the best known authors to use the serial approach.

Whereas the traditional story has a beginning, a middle and an end, the serial novel is often characterized by the never-ending middle. The author starts the story, and then releases new installments over time.

I wonder what Charles Dickens would think of serialized ebooks. The topic is on my mind today because when I woke up this morning and looked at the Smashwords home page, it was dominated by five installments of a single ebook, each about 10,000 words.

The other day, I asked another author to stop posting his series of 2,000 word ebooks.

At Smashwords, we have a strict policy of only publishing complete, finished works. If you want to publish a partial book, or a work-in-process, we don't want it, because it doesn't fit with our mission of connecting a reader's eyeballs and wallet to the finished works of our indie authors and publishers. If a customer purchases an unfinished, incomplete or partial work, they feel ripped off.

Yet we face a quandary with serialized books. They occupy a grey area. They technically don't comply with our terms of service, unless each serialized chunk can stand alone as a complete story. But whose job is it to judge whether a story is complete or not, or long enough to qualify as a standalone work?

I created Smashwords to eliminate gatekeepers, not to become one. I don't want to stand in the way of an author's creative expression, or fail to serve a reader's desire for serialized works.

So I wondered, are readers interested in serials? Am I wrong to discourage serials on Smashwords?

To gauge reader interest, I posted a short query over at Smashwords Site Updates, inviting Smashwords customers to share their opinions. Concurrent with that post, I posted an online poll at MobileRead, where I asked readers to share their opinions on serialized ebooks.

The early results surprised me. With only 36 votes recorded so far, 91% of respondents claim they either avoid reading serialized ebooks, or they never read them. It'll be interesting to watch how the numbers shake out once the vote count approaches a more statistically significant sample size.

The comments at MobileRead are even more interesting. Many readers there are passionately opposed to serialized ebooks.

The initial results indicate I'm probably correct to continue discouraging serialized ebooks at Smashwords. We're unlikely to outright ban them, because we don't want to get into that gatekeeper role of determining what's complete, and what's not.

My hunch is that Darwin's natural selection, powered by reader preferences, will prevent serialized ebooks from catching on. Most writers write to attract readers, not repel them.

Why do most readers hold serialized books in such disdain, as my unscientific poll appears to indicate? If I distill the essence of the initial MobileRead comments, as well as the private emails I've received today, it boils down to these four reasons:

1. Lack of immediate gratification - If you enjoy a book, you want to finish it now, not later.
2. Risk - You fear investing money in the serials, only to have the author abandon the project and leave the story unfinished.
3. Cost - A serialized book can be much more expensive than a complete book.
4. Inconvience - It's easier and more convenient to download a single file than multiple files.

One Smashwords publisher, who asked to remain anonymous, emailed me this interesting idea:

If serialization of ebooks is permitted, it should only be after the author submits the entire book: then, and only then should the online publisher allow the chapters to be sold piecemeal... possibly on some standardized/automated periodical basis, like once a week.

If we were ever to embrace serialized books at Smashwords, I think his approach is equitable to all and makes sense. It would free us from gatekeeping and allow us to enable distribution and merchandising with a fully automated, author-opt-in technology solution. We like automation. However, given the apparent lack of interest in serialized ebooks, for the time being we have bigger fish to fry. And on that count, stay tuned. Cool stuff in the works.

Click here to cast your vote in my MobileRead serialization poll. The poll will close in two months.


Image credit: Wikipedia, photo of a young Dickens. For more on Charles Dickens, see his Wikipedia page. Click here for the Wikipedia page on serialized literature. Learn about Stephen King's well known ebook serialization experiment on the Wikipedia page for his book, The Plant.

Are Copyright Statements Copyrightable?

Ironic. Has the Smashwords License Statement, a unique creation of yours truly, been pirated?

Should a copyright statement have copyright protection? It's an interesting question.

When we launched Smashwords two years ago and created the Smashwords Style Guide, we also created the Smashwords License Statement, the statement we recommend all authors insert into their copyright sections of their ebooks.

It reads as follows:

Smashwords License Statement

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Other than a couple minor word tweaks (suggested by eagle-eyed Smashwords authors), it has remained largely unchanged since we introduced it.

The other day I noticed an upstart competitor appropriated (mis-appropriated?) the Smashwords license statement as their own by replacing Smashwords.com with their own web site. I've seen authors and publishers do the same.

When we created it, it marked a departure from the traditional copyright statement found in most print books and early ebooks. I drew from my background in the software industry and my view that ebooks should be licensed similar to software.

It also abandoned the then-common fire and brimstone warnings of steep monetary penalties for copyright infringement by instead taking a kinder, gentler approach to copyright enforcement.

My view is that piracy is a bad thing, though the biggest threat to authors isn't the cloak and dagger pirate who hides out on underground torrent sites. The bigger threat (if it's truly a threat at all) is accidental piracy. It's your enthusiastic reader who loves your book, and because they love it they want to share it with their friends so they can love it too.

Since book sales are driven by, and dependent upon, word of mouth, we want to encourage customer-driven promotion. The Smashwords license statement acts as a trojan horse. If customers accidentally (illegally) share a Smashwords book with their friends, their friends are gently reminded they have a moral (and implied, legal) obligation to support the author of that work.

I have no intention of discouraging people from using our license statement. Consider it in the public domain.


Image credit: Wikimedia Commons, showing Rembrandt's, "Moses mit den Gesetzestafeln," a.k.a. "Moses with the tablets of law." Interestingly, while we think of one of the ten commandments as "you shall not steal," according to this Wikipedia page it was originally intended to refer to slavery, and the stealing of people.

Weighing Ebook Distribution Options

Math is funny thing. When you look at numbers from one angle, they tell one story, and from another direction they tell a different story.

I bop around the MobileRead, Kindleboards and Amazon message boards whenever I get a chance, and it's always fun to read what people are saying or speculating about Smashwords.

We have a lot of loyal fans out there, and for that I am grateful beyond words. Though sometimes, it can be tough to read the comments.

A few times during the last couple months I've run across authors complaining they don't sell many books on Smashwords compared to Amazon. I've seen authors pull their titles for this reason. Or there will be authors considering publishing on Amazon instead of Smashwords.

There's some fallacious thinking going on here, so I'll address a few points.

1. If you're publishing a print book, would you refuse to sell your book at Borders or your local indie bookstore because B&N is so much larger? Of course not. Then why would anyone think Amazon/Smashwords is an either/or situation? It's not. As an author, you should maximize your distribution points, not minimize them.

2. AMZN vs. SW sales: It shouldn't really be a surprise that most authors who publish in both places sell more on Amazon. After all, according to Alexa, the traffic ranking service (owned by Amazon), Amazon's traffic is 720 times greater than Smashwords, and of course Kindle customers can purchase books wirelessly there so it's more convenient. Therefore, if you're selling 720 books at Amazon for every book you sell at Smashwords, I'd conclude we're keeping pace. Or maybe a better number is 300 to 1, since Amazon sells toaster ovens, refrigerator water filters and underwear too (I get mine at Amazon, don't you?) If these or similar ratios always held true, it would mean many Smashwords authors who publish in both places should be selling millions of dollars worth of books on Amazon. But they're not. Why? Because some authors on Smashwords are getting a better yield (sales per X number of visitors) on Smashwords than on Amazon. My point isn't to knock Amazon. They're awesome, and every author should be there, either directly or through us (our books aren't there yet). My point is math. The next time someone pontificates their great epiphany that they're selling more at Amazon than anywhere else, offer them a math lesson.

3. As one smart poster pointed out, when you put your book on Smashwords, you're also distributing it to many other retailers. We're currently distributing to B&N, the Apple iBookstore, Aldiko, Stanza and Kobo, and our Sony feed is (hopefully) mere days from going live (yes, we're behind schedule!). In the next 12 months, you'll see many more retailers added to our roster of distribution points.

So bottom line, if you're not working with Smashwords, I hope you at least find another route to get your books to additional points. If not, you're selling yourself short.

Oh, and for loyal readers who read this far, a teaser treat: I analyzed our Apple sales yesterday and was pleased how the sales are trending for each of the first seven weeks. Chart at left. Not included are the free book downloads. A handful of Smashwords authors are getting thousands of downloads a week. We'll start adding this data into the sales dashboards in the next couple months.

Speaking of trending, Smashwords titles are starting to climb the charts elsewhere in the ebookosphere. Congratulations to Smashwords author Ruth Ann Nordin, whose novel, An Inconvenient Marriage, is the #4 best-selling book at Kobo today. She's beating out titles from Harlequin, St. Martin's Press, Penguin, Little, Brown and HarperCollins. Sure, her list price is only $.99, but at that price her 47 cent royalty is probably equal or higher than what the #5 Harlequin author is getting for their $7.99 list price book. Also congratulations to Smashwords author Bill Clem, whose $1.99 book, Microbe, is at #12 on the list (was #10 minutes ago).

Folks, a quiet revolution is taking place here.


Image source for scale: Wikipedia Commons

Smashwords Sixth Largest Supplier of eBooks to Apple iBookstore, says O'Reilly

The folks over at O'Reilly Media published a survey which examines publisher stats for titles in the Apple iBookstore as of April 26.

They concluded Smashwords titles represent 5.2% of all titles in the bookstore, putting us in the #6 position in terms of title count.

It'll be interesting to see how the numbers trend over time. We now publish and distribute over 11,000 original ebooks, and to date we've only supplied the iBookstore a fraction of these.

We'll supply thousands more in the next 30 days.

This is great news for those of you who distribute with Smashwords. You're part of a quiet revolution that will democratize book distribution to the benefit of all indie authors and small publishers.

Read the O'Reilly story over at O'Reilly Radar.

Smashwords Ebooks Support Live ToCs

Smashwords authors can now add enhanced navigation to their ebooks with linked, clickable ToCs.

This is good news for our 4,992 authors (we should reach 5,000+ by tonight or tomorrow!) and their 10,943 books.

The lack of live ToC support has been one of the biggest, most glaring holes at Smashwords ever since we launched two years ago.

For fiction, it was a tolerable omission for most readers because people read fiction serially, from word one forward. For our non-fiction authors, it was more problematic because readers interact differently with non-fiction. For some non fiction, navigation is essential to the reading experience.

The newly updated Smashwords Style Guide, which now sports a sporty ToC of its own, went live this afternoon with step by step instructions.

Special thanks to Smashwords author Cheryl Anne Gardner for volunteering the fancy finger work to test different approaches for creating ToCs. Cheryl Anne sent me some some great step-by-step notes which I incorporated directly into the Style Guide along with some additional tips from own my testing.

Turns out our Meatgrinder has supported ToCs for at least a couple months. We didn't make any deliberate changes to Meatgrinder to support this. It's possible the support arrived serendipitously in the last few months when we started doing a series of Meatgrinder conversion blade upgrades.

The secret to good intra-ebook hyperlinking with Smashwords lies in using Word's bookmark feature. As Captain Kirk might say, we're boldly taking Microsoft Word where it has never gone before.

I tested the new Style Guide with Stanza on my iPhone (screen shot at left) and the ToC works well. You just tap your finger down for about a second until the link turns yellow, then you lift your finger and it jumps to your page.

I also see we're supporting forced page breaks in front of Headers. This is another feature I didn't know we supported until a Smashwords author blogged about it or told me about it, I forget which. I'm always learning from you guys.

Although I haven't tested this yet, the bookmarks can also be used to create fully linkable footnotes, endnotes and indexes.

The links appear to work well in our EPUB, MOBI, PDF and RTF formats, though they don't work for our two online-readable formats - our HTML Reader and Javascript Reader. We're not going to worry about that for now.

The addition of navigation gets us one step closer to completing our integration with Amazon so Smashwords books can be distributed directly into the Kindle store. We've incorporated other recent changes too, such as new guidance in the Style Guide to help authors do better first line paragraph indents and construct better block paragraphs. These changes not only accommodate Amazon but will also improve the overall formatting quality of our books.

Smashwords Surpasses 500 Million Words Published

Oh, wow. After I finished the previous post about how the number of self-published books is exceeding the number traditionally published books, I clicked over to the Smashwords home page to discover our word counter ticked past 500 million when I wasn't looking.

Six months ago, I set a crazy goal for Smashwords to publish one billion words by the end of 2010. I called the challenge our Billion Word March. At the time, we had just published our 150 millionth word.

Can we make it? It's too soon to tell. It'll be tough. We have 8 1/2 months to double the number of books now published, which, as of this exact second, stands at 10,426.

After I wrote the Billion Word March post, I recall a few folks snickered, and questioned whether this was a good measure of success. After all, shouldn't quality matter more? Or book sales? Or the name of the publisher? You be the judge.

I see the number as a measure of liberation. These are words that deserve to be published because all authors should have the freedom to publish and reach readers. Readers will decide the value. Some of these books will go on to achieve great obscurity. Others will find, and are finding, thousands of readers thanks to the simple, free and instant publishing enabled by Smashwords.

For the doubters out there who believe the only legitimate measures of a book's worth are units sold or big names on the spine, you're missing the point of publishing. More importantly, you're underestimating the growing power of the indie author collective.

Self-published Books Swamp Traditionally Published Books

Jim Milliot over at Publisher's Weekly reported today on new data out of R.R. Bowker that shows a huge spike in the number of self-published titles in 2009.

Milliot reports:

A staggering 764,448 titles were produced in 2009 by self-publishers and micro-niche publishers, according to statistics released this morning by R.R. Bowker. The number of "nontraditional" titles dwarfed that of traditional books whose output slipped to 288,355 last year from 289,729 in 2008. Taken together, total book output rose 87% last year, to over 1 million books.

- snip -

The Amazon subsidiary CreateSpace produced 21,819 books in 2009, while Lulu.com released 10,386. Xlibris and AuthorHouse, two imprints of AuthorSolutions, produced 10,161 and 9,445, title respectively. In something of an understatement, Kelly Gallagher, v-p of publishing services for Bowker, said that given the exceptional gains in the nontraditional segment the last three years, growth in that area "show[s] no signs of abating."

Read Milliot's full story here.

A few weeks ago, I did a presentation titled, "Bookselling on the Web" at the Booknet Technology Forum conference in Toronto, and in that presentation I discussed four big trends that will impact publishers in the years ahead.

My trend #3 was, "Publishers Compete with Authors." The tools to publish and distribute books are no longer the sole domain of traditional publishers. Nothing new there. What's new is this rapid rise of indie-published books, and the profound implications it will have on traditional publishers.

The chart above is not meant to be numerically accurate (though based on the numbers released today, it's probably not far off). Instead, it serves as a visual representation of what I view as a larger trend where, from a sheer force of numbers perspective, self-published works will continue to swamp traditionally published works.

In the brick and mortar book store world, the numbers above have little impact, because 99.5% of these indie-published books are unlikely to receive widespread distribution in stores. That is still one huge benefit a good publisher can offer an author today that an author can't achieve on their own. If you want your book on the front table at Barnes & Noble, a big publisher has the clout to put it there.

In the online bookselling world, however, the advantage is less pronounced, because a print on demand self-pubbed title can share the same virtual shelf space as a traditionally published title. Same thing with ebooks. As any indie Smashwords author or publisher knows, our ebooks are distributed right alongside those of major publishers in ebook stores such as B&N, Sony, Kobo and Apple's iBookstore.

The fourth trend I presented, related to my Trend #3, I labeled, "Content Explosion."

See the slide at left. Again, it's not meant to be numerically accurate. It's more of a macro conceptual representation of where I think things stand today, and what the future will look like.

In the future I see, there will be an ever-growing explosion of content, and all this content will compete for the limited eyeshare of consumers.

Indie authors, by their sheer numbers, will swamp traditionally published authors. Zombie books (my term for books that refuse to die, such as used print books, re-issues of out-of-copyright and out of print books, both as P.O.D. books and ebooks) will compete against the new titles and backlists of indie authors and traditional publishers. And then swamping all the players, by sheer volume, is the ever-increasing amount of alternative, Web-accessible content.

How can any author or publisher compete against this flood of unlimited content choice?

My message is not doom and gloom. I think authors and publishers have more opportunity to profitably reach readers than ever before.

It all comes down to the same factor that has always governed the success or failure of any book - word of mouth.

To spark word of mouth, it starts with an incredible book presented to your first readers.

Readers will always appreciate a great read. If you write a book that incites passionate joy and appreciation in your reader, then the reader will attach your book to their virtual sleeve and will promote it to everyone they know and love.

There one big problem with my trite answer to life, the universe and everything related to publishing. The reality of the matter is that, to our readers, our books appear somewhere along a broad spectrum of perceived brilliance. On one side of the spectrum you have horrible books that would make any reader's eyes bleed. On the other side of the spectrum you have books of brilliance and resonance that will go viral.

Most of us authors fall somewhere in between. Maybe for a future post I'll explore what authors can do to catalyze their virality.

Smashwords Publishes 10,000th Ebook

The Smashwords catalog of original indie ebooks surpassed 10,000 yesterday. With your help, I think we can hit 25,000 by the end of the year. And hey, if we fall short and hit 20,000, it'll still blow a lot of people away, myself included.

10K is a huge milestone, not only for us as a business but also for the entire indie movement. Indie authors and publishers will inherit the future of publishing. I'm convinced of it.

What was once called the slush pile - the unpublished manuscripts languishing on the desks of literary agents and acquisition editors - is now moving online. Authors are bypassing the slo-mo business practices of the past in favor of instant publishing.

In the next couple years, I think we'll see more traditionally published authors step their toes into the indie waters as well. It's in their economic best interest to do so.

As I've often said in the past, we make ebook publishing fast, free and easy. But it's up to you to create and market a great book.

It's only a matter of time before some talented Smashwords authors become break-out commercial surprise hits - authors that were previously denied any chance to reach their audience. I think that's exciting.

I'm even more excited, however, by how we provide you, the author or indie publisher, the freedom to publish. The value of your work no longer need be judged by some Manhattan high rise publisher, or even by your commercial success. Instead, the value of your work is affirmed the moment you reach that first satisfied reader.

One author the other day told me how excited he was to receive his first Smashwords review - 5 stars - and he told me he was even more thrilled that the review came from someone he didn't know. Cool beans.

Thank you to each of you who took a chance on this dinky little ebook publishing startup and entrusted a small piece of your book's future to us. We're only getting started.

Smashwords Ebooks - iPad Ebook Publishing Made Easy

2,000+ ebooks from Smashwords authors and publishers appeared on the iPad yesterday. Click here to learn how to publish Apple iPad ebooks in the iBookstore.

Very few people in the publishing industry understand the profound implications of this. It's not just about the iPad - it's about how any author, anywhere in the world, can go from a Microsoft Word document to worldwide ebook store distribution in a matter of seconds or days.

Welcome to the age of fully democratized, instant publishing where the bookstore is moving to a screen near you. Authors can now publish and distribute with unprecedented freedom.

In the old days, like two or three years ago, the best route for any author to reach readers was to find a literary agent who could sell your book to a large print publisher. After the big sale, you'd wait another 12-18 months before your book appeared in bookstores. For many authors, that's when depression set in, because sales rarely matched expectations, and if books don't sell quickly they're yanked from shelves and cast out, condemned to out-of-print oblivion like some unwelcome refuse on its way to the remainder bin.

Imagine spending years or a lifetime to write your book, only to have it disappear for all posterity?

Things are starting to change now. Based on my analysis of the January ebook sales reports from the IDPF, I expect ebooks will account for at least 10 percent of the U.S. book market this year. Unit market share will actually be higher, because ebooks sell for less than print books.

In this new age of ebook publishing, an author's book can be published and distributed in near-real time. A book never need go out of print because it's always stocked on a digital shelf, ready for instant digital printing and delivery to any reader. An indie self-published author can now share virtual shelf space with any other author.

Some folks might find find this idea of democratized book publishing terrifying. I consider it liberating, because now readers - not publisher gatekeepers - determine which books are worth reading. I blogged about the community filter concept last year, here: Inside the Smashwords Community Filter.

Book shelves are moving from the physical realm to the digital realm. Most of the major ebook retailers have opened up their shelves to indie authors. These visionary retailers and mobile phone app developers include such players as Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Amazon, Stanza, Aldiko and now the Apple iPad iBookstore. As an author, you want to be on these digital shelves. Smashwords helps you distribute to these retailers.

Yesterday, after Smashwords author Susan Klopfer (pictured above and below) tweeted a picture of herself holding her book on the iPad, I invited other Smashwords authors to send me their pictures too.

Below is a collection of some of the first Smashwords books on the iPad. In sequential left-to-right order, pictured below are Susan Klopfer and her book, Who Killed Emmett Till?; Patrick Dodson's Psychotic Inertia; Laudizen King's The White Mountain Chronicles; J. Alexander Greenwood's Pilate's Cross; David Derrico and his novel, Right Ascension; and last but not least, an injured Jacob Ray with a big thumbs up for Smashwords and the iPad, showing off his novel, The Undead of the Low Country.

Jacob, who recently broke his hand while playing flag football to research a book on the topic of flag football (that's what you call, "throwing yourself into your book."), tells me publishing on Smashwords was so easy he could do it with one hand.




Do you want to publish your book on the iPad, the Barnes & Noble nook, the Sony Reader and multiple other mobile apps and online bookstores? Learn how by visiting our page, How to Publish Ebooks on the iPad or How to Publish on Smashwords. It's fast, easy and free.

I'll probably blog more about the Apple deal tomorrow, because that's when we issue our official press release.