Smashwords Year in Review 2012
From the Smashwords Blog:
The revolution is now in full swing. Indie authors know ebook self-publishing is the future of publishing. Ebook retailers know this as well. Traditional publishers, however, have been slow to grasp the transformative impact the self-publishing revolution is having on the industry.
We’re entering a golden age of publishing. The ebook self-publishing revolution will lead to a more great books being published than ever before. More books will touch the souls of more readers, because indie ebooks make books accessible, affordable and discoverable to more people. These books, in all their diverse and controversial glory, are cultural treasures.
. . . .
Retailers earning millions of dollars from the sale of Smashwords books: Our retail partners have made incredible investments to help list, maintain, promote, merchandise, and sell our books to their customers. I’m pleased to say their investments are paying off. We want our retail partners to do well with our books, because the value they provide to our authors and publishers far exceeds the sales commission they earn.
. . . .
Amazon: Our relationship with Amazon has been frustrating. Even though Smashwords authors have the freedom to bypass Smashwords and work directly with many of our retail partners, about 80% of our authors choose to distribute through Smashwords. They appreciate the time-saving convenience and simplicity of centrally managing their books and metadata from the Smashwords Dashboard. Unlike every other major retailer, Amazon has not yet provided us the ability to do large, automated distributions and metadata updates. As a result, our authors who would prefer to reach Amazon through Smashwords are forced to upload direct to Amazon. Although I remain hopeful Amazon will one day see fit to treat us as a partner rather than a competitor to be crushed, killed and destroyed, I’m not holding my breath. We’ve built a healthy, profitable and fast-growing business without their help, and we’ve done this despite their attempts to harm us and our retail partners. Unlike traditional publishers which would probably go bankrupt if they stopped distributing to Amazon, we face no such noose. In the meantime, we focus our energy on helping our true retail partners succeed in the marketplace.
Link to the rest at Smashwords Blog
, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases.
“I remain hopeful Amazon will one day see fit to treat us as a partner rather than a competitor to be crushed, killed and destroyed, I’m not holding my breath. We’ve built a healthy, profitable and fast-growing business without their help, and we’ve done this despite their attempts to harm us and our retail partners.”
This is utterely ridiculous, and it’s why I’ve never believed Mark when he’s repeatedly denied that he has an ax to grind against Amazon.
Grrr … “utterly.” Bring back the edit function!
At least you didn’t say “udderly.”
I believe him. I think he could have a point. Amazon is a great company, but I think plenty of indie authors are afraid to criticize it. Amazon, like any corporation, is going to do what’s in its best interest and it seems to have decided that forcing authors to stay with Amazon through their KDP program to get to larger markets is in their best interest. However, the best thing for authors might be to explore their options since KDP can be very limiting and unprofitable for some authors. It’s a matter of conflicting interests, really. We need to keep in mind that it’s very possible that Amazon is trying to force its own relevancy as they gain more competition. It could be their way of saying “I brought you to this dance and you’d better dance with me the rest of the night or else.”
I don’t think we should dismiss Mark Coker OR Amazon. But we should always keep in mind what each partner’s angle might be.
Liz, I’m not an author and I haven’t read the Amazon KDP contract, so I’m not sure of the facts. Isn’t KDP a standard distribution agreement, allowing authors to distribute to other stores? I believe it is only the Amazon Select program that requires exclusive distribution. So KDP may be unprofitable for some authors (in terms of time involved) but it is not limiting, is it? You can use other distributors as well, can’t you?
Amazon doesn’t force you to be exclusive, they just encourage it…
But I don’t have a Kindle, and I already have a lot of books to read, so I don’t need to add format conversion to my book reading chores.
I don’t see why Mark is surprised that Amazon regards him as a competitor. Undoubtedly Amazon regards Nook/Pubit and Kobo as competitors.
As far as treating Smashwords as a competitor, from other posts, it appears Mark regards KDP Select as a program Amazon designed specifically to crush Smashwords instead of a program designed to generate product offerings exclusive to Amazon. Undoubtedly that was for competitive purposes, but I expect Amazon was thinking far more about competing with Barnes & Noble than with Smashwords.
If Mark wants authors to stay away from KDP Select, he should focus on making Smashwords a more profitable place for more authors to sell their ebooks. And making the meat-grinder more user-friendly would also be a useful step. I don’t think Mark realizes how many indie authors hate Smashwords’ submission process.
Frustration with Smashwords is a large part of why I’m still Amazon-exclusive. I spent days trying to get my file past the Meatgrinder. I found the chatty, friendly, 72-page manual to be completely annoying: yes, let’s bury the main material between pages of content on exceptional use cases, because that’s good information design, isn’t it? The error messages I was getting offered no illuminating information — literally, they were blank. Customer service didn’t respond for days. And when they did, the response was “oh, that’s a bug,” meaning that I had wasted hours trying to fix a file that actually had no problem.
I consider myself a hobbyist self-publisher at this point–I’m self-publishing for fun, really, the same reason I’m writing, and dealing with Smashwords was too annoying for me. If I ever decide to take the business seriously, maybe I’ll need to rethink but meanwhile, I’m definitely in the “Smashwords submission process is not worth dealing with” camp.
Exactly. Businesses tend to see things that way, and Amazon is a business.
A big part of the reason I don’t use Smashwords is because of the meat-grinder. Presently, I can create both a .Mobi and .ePub file within five minutes using Scrivener. I don’t use Word for a reason, and I don’t want to spend hours trying to figure out how to format in it, and additional hours formatting everything once I do figure it out. Personally, I’d rather use those hours to write.
The other reason I don’t use Smashwords is the constant Big Bad Amazon posts. In my opinion, it doesn’t reflect well on a business that makes a point to constantly run its competitors down rather than focusing on what makes that business worth using.
Should Amazon and its practices be blindly followed and endorsed? No. I think it’s important to have those conversations that critically examine Amazon–and any other business. But I think there are better places to do it.
You could just try using the .doc generated from Scrivener.
…and with the Mac version you can even generate the table of contents too using the Scrivener Link function without having to deal with Word bookmarks.
True, but it’s additional time that could be better spent elsewhere–especially as the .mobi and .ePub files are more exact in regard to formatting compared to the meat-grinder.
(Additional time in making sure everything is formatted correctly in Word according to Smashwords’s standards, not compiling the .doc file itself.)
Just so you know, every time I’ve tried using the .DOC file that Scrivener can produce, the Meatgrinder rejected it. Same when I resaved that file via both Word and LibreOffice.
Supposedly there’s a way to do it without it rejecting the file, but I haven’t tested the method that was suggested. (Mainly because the suggestion was, “do this vague thing” and I haven’t taken the time yet to figure out how to do this vague thing. I just saved it in a text document for the next time I have the patience to beat my head against a wall.)
“I don’t think Mark realizes how many indie authors hate Smashwords’ submission process.”
+10.
Someday, someone might be able to tell me why Smashwords is worth ten percent of my profits. I have not seen a good enough reason to date.
I’m being serious, not nasty.
When I first published my novel literally the first thing that happened the next day is I received a request to put it on Smashwords.
The biggest advantage of Smashwords is that the readers who go there are already predisposed to buying self-published work, and they like that they can buy it in a lot of formats. Not just epub, but mobi, txt, pdf, etc. From a buyer’s perspective, there’s a lot to like about Smashwords. An awful lot.
From a seller’s perspective, there’s also a lot to like about Smashwords. If you do not have Mac, you literally cannot sell in the Apple store, because self-pubbers who sell in the Apple store must use a Mac-only upload tool. Smashwords is one of the best ways to publish on the iTunes store because they’re flexible enough to let you specifically choose which distribution channels you want (i.e., if you already sell direct to B&N you can exclude them) and you can use your own ISBN’s. Smashwords’ closest competitor is Lulu I think, since you can also use them to distribute to Apple, but you cannot selectively opt out of their individual channels (I think) so even if you’re already selling your book at B&N Lulu is going to sell it there as well.
And I hate the meatgrinder, I really do, but I can see the logic in SW wanting something in a single format that they can use to spin out multiple formats. And from that perspective MS Word makes sense, because it’s the industry standard whether I like it or not.
If that’s all there was to it, I’d consider SW more of an advantage than not. But trying to deal with them for ANYTHING winds up being an exercise in frustration. Support takes WEEKS to respond for me, and their responses are essentially variations on “we can’t do anything about that. Oh well.” Their policies are specifically slanted to convince you to use Smashwords for everything, AND THEY ONLY PAY QUARTERLY. They insist that you insert THEIR COMPANY NAME into YOUR PRODUCT — you must adopt their branding, on your COPYRIGHT PAGE no less, in order to use them to sell your work.
And on top of that they won’t let you sell serials.
I know some authors who have a lot of success with Smashwords and I can’t in good conscience tell people not use them, because the services they provide are legitimately useful if you’re willing to exploit them, but they’ve been nothing but teeth-grinding frustration for me. I don’t know how else to describe it.
Their company name on my copyright page? I am the publisher. Smashwords would be the retailer. I don’t have to put Amazon or B&N on my copyright page.
Pass.
You don’t put them as the publisher. You put them as… well, for want of a better word, the market source. You must include a line on the order of:
“Published by $PUBLISHER at Smashwords.”
In my opinion the purpose of this is utterly simple: to stop you using their conversion engine to make books you can sell elsewhere. There’s more to this than just the fact that their name appears in your book: it also makes it a distinct “edition,” which means that it’s against the both the Smashwords TOS and the rules of assigning ISBN for you to use the free ISBN they give you on a different “edition” which is published on another publisher and/or offered directly by you. I think that’s quite reasonable. If you don’t like the price, don’t partake of the service.
And looking at my CreateSpace trade paperback, there is a barcode and a “Made in the USA” line on the back page, along with the date and place it was printed. No CreateSpace anywhere.
Smashwords could do something like that without getting on my copyright page and still achieve the same purpose.
True, but that would require them to actively change your book to a small degree. This way they get both standardization and the reduction of the likelihood that some additional error would creep in when they made the change.
I’m not saying it’s the only way to address the matter. I’m just saying it’s a simple one.
The easiest thing in the world to do is append another page to a document. But it’s a moot point, Marc, because I’m still not seeing any benefit to me from putting my work on Smashwords. No, that’s not true. I’m not seeing the value of 10% of my profits as the price of putting my work on Smashwords.
Fair enough.
Exactly, Meryl, and now if you want to get into the Apple Store you have to either buy an ISBN at highway robbery price from Bowker or an ISBN with SMASHWORDS as the publisher since they discontinued the buying of the $10 ISBN with your name on it from them. No freaking way, Mark.
Apple dropped the ISBN requirement.
That’s still not inducement enough for me to use Smashwords.
But thanks for letting us know I’m sure others will be pleased.
But is it inducement enough to upload direct to iTunes?
It is for me.
Question on this, though, as I’ve seen conflicting reports. Does a paid account still require ISBNs? I’ve heard people say both yes and no, and the FAQ page on Apple’s publishing on iBooks says that you do need one if you’re using a paid accounts. Free accounts (where the book is free and the author makes no profit) don’t require ISBNs.
You do not need ISBNs anymore for paid accounts. I uploaded my books during the long Thanksgiving weekend. It took a week, but all of them were approved for sale — sans ISBNs.
The only glitch I had with one book was the image size requirements for covers in the iTunes store are larger than the maximium size for internal images in the book itself. I was using 1600 x 2400 covers, which is fine for the cover displayed in the store, but exceeded the maximum pixel density Apple wanted for images within the book itself. I downsized the embedded images to 800×1200.
Also, Apple has a $100 payout threshold.
Awesome! Thanks.
I don’t have a Mac. Apparently Apple doesn’t have any use for me.
I think they dropped that requirement also, but not sure.
I’ve heard of folks using Macinthecloud for that.
The insistence on branding your book with their name is what will likely keep me off Smashwords even after (or if) they make it possible to create a consistently good-looking product via their conversion system. It’s unnecessary and a bit insulting. There may be a percentage of people who only buy books from Smashwords, but I can’t imagine that’s a growing percentage, or that someone who wants a book I’ve written will refuse to purchase it from sales channels where it’s available.
Some months ago I asked authors here what they thought of the quality of Smashwords’ conversion of their e-books. The kindest of them said that they were “getting better.” Sorry, Smashwords–Not good enough. I can create my own .mobi or .epub file with Calibre and sell exactly the book I created without any formatting surprises in in the finished product, and without your name on my book. That is good enough.
I think the conversion is fine, personally. I only need bold, italic, underline, and the occasional blockquote-equivalent. The Meatgrinder does that fine, and the only time that I’ve ever had a complaint, it was entirely my fault: I’d somehow pulled in the document-size by an inch on the right and the ‘grinder vetting didn’t catch it, so it looked awful on phones. (The alert reader reported it, and I eventually managed to fix it (it was a bit subtle on the page), and yay!)
(As opposed to the time I’ve had an Amazon formatting issue, where it was entirely Amazon’s fault.)
On http://blog.smashwords.com/2012/12/smashwords-supports-epub-uploads-with.html , there’s even someone who finds that the Meatgrinder-generated file looks better than the one they had done by someone else.
I just call it the “Smashwords Edition”, and that way, if there’s a problem with the file—or some pirated version pops up somewhere—it can help me track down where the file came from.
The quarterly payments are my biggest complaint, as I much prefer monthly payments (as I’ve been receiving from Amazon for almost five years now).
I do like having one account to log into, yet having my ebooks distributed to several sites (even though those other sites haven’t proven fantastic avenues for sales).
I seldom have file conversion errors, so Meatgrinder’s not a pain in the butt to me.
My second biggest complaint is Smashwords’ site design. It’s awful.
My third is that Premium ISBNs are no longer offered. I can’t afford to pop out &250-over $500 every time I need new ISBNs right now, and since I have my own publishing company, I don’t want Smashwords listed as both publisher and distributor. I really don’t understand why Mark would want to discontinue making money off those Premium ISBNs. They’re buying them in such bulk that they cost $1 a piece!
Dang it. “$250″. I have a new under the desk keyboard drawer, and can’t see the top buttons well now.
They don’t do it because they don’t view the revenue as worth the opportunity cost. You may disagree with their relative assessment, and if so, you are welcome to start your own e-publishing company.
In all honesty I had thought about setting up an entity JUST to sell ISBN. The arbitrage opportunity is enormous. There must be some reason somebody doesn’t do it.
Because it’s illegal AFAIK. Only Bowker can sell them.
I don’t know how Mark got around that.
Only Bowker can *originate* them. Upon further research, it wouldn’t be illegal to resell them, but it would be a breach of the Terms of Sale. Pedantic, I know, but it makes lawyers itch when someone says something is “illegal” when it is merely a breach of contract. I’ve advised clients to breach contracts, but I’d never advise a client to do anything illegal.
Smashwords gets around it, at first guess, by virtue of the fact that they are a publisher and publishers can (re)assign them after buying them in bulk. With the Premium ones, you still had to publish through Smashwords before they would give it to you. (According to their FAQ the book had to be accepted for Premium Distribution before a Premium ISBN would be assigned.)
And it would be no trick at all, IMO, to set up sort of a Smashwords-Lite which was a “publisher” but whose main purpose was to allow arbitrage of ISBN purchase rates, assuming Bowker didn’t catch on and/or care enough to stop you. I suspect they would, though, now I read their rules more carefully. Oh, well. Another beautiful hypothesis slain by an ugly fact.
CreateSpace still offers a “custom” ISBN option, but why bother? No reader cares what an ISBN number is let alone who owns it.
Actually, they tell you that many publishers have simply requested exemption on that point and received it. You don’t have to put Smashwords edition, but I don’t mind doing it, so I do.
I have a Mac, have partaken of the Pie (come to the Apple side; we’ve got pie!), and I still prefer to use Smashwords to get into the iBookstore rather than futz around with whatever their requirements are.
I also have the Very Fast Version of Coker’s rather bloated styleguide: http://elizabethmccoy.dreamwidth.org/5952.html
(I don’t actually care about sticking “Smashwords edition” on the frontmatter. I stick “Amazon edition” on the Amazon one, “DriveThruFiction edition” on the ones slated for DriveThruFiction.com, etc.)
They give me literally 50% of my income. Totally worth it for me.
My experience is that if you write *erotica* it is worth publishing on smashwords. You not only sell copies on SW, it is also a discoverability platform.
Other genres, not worth it unless you don’t live in the USA (like me).
And meat grinder really does produce horible books.
One of the problems I found using a “middle man” like Smashwords is the issue of finger pointing. I cannot find my book on some of their claimed retailers’ websites. I contact the retailer they say: talk to SW. I contact SW and they say (after a while) that my book is in their premium catalog, and it should be sold and available by that retailer. For example, my book is not available on iTunes; so my next project is to convert my book to ePub and load it myself directly on iTunes, bypassing SW. If they don’t improve their service I may do the same with the other retailers, which is too bad considering the convenience of loading my book once and be available at many retailers.
I use Smashwords and I like Smashwords but I am techno-savvy enough not to NEED Smashwords. Where possible, I do exactly what you suggest, because it is easy enough *for me* that it is not a misallocation of opportunity/resources. As you point out, it’s very convenient to use them for a redistributor. For less technically savvy people, or people whose time is better spent writing
the revenue cost of SW’s share and the delay incurred by them is lower than the opportunity cost of expending the time to upload to multiple distributors.
Right on
I think that what Mark Coker is doing with Smashwords is terrific! It’s not perfect, but it’s a new world out there, and he’s a pioneer. Indies need more options than just Amazon. Some people want more guidance, or want to feel a sense of community. I think Smashwords can work much better for some indies than going it alone with Amazon.
That said, I agree with PG’s commentary above that Amazon is in competition with Smashwords, and Mark’s wish for them to support Smashwords is just not going to happen. But, on the other hand, Amazon is probably going to leave Smashwords alone, for the most part, and continue along its way doing what it wants to do.
So, I wish that Mark Coker would stop the battle with Amazon. Much smarter for Mark to figure out ways to utilize Amazon’s systems to make Smashwords stronger. Besides, he sets up a dynamic where he pushes some authors away – those that like Amazon. He’s smart enough to figure out a way to encompass Amazon’s lists, etc. in his plans. That would be the best revenge anyway.
I think he’s ticked because he was trying to organize automated distribution with Amazon and… I’m going to guess that instead of telling him, “No, you’re a competitor, so shoo,” they interacted in a way that he perceived as “stringing him along.” (Indeed, Amazon will accept Smashwords-files from authors — but it has to be done by-hand, so only the top-sellers on Smashwords get to participate.) He was all, “Yay, we’re talking to Amazon!” and telling people and then it never materialized.
I’d be ticked, too. (That said, the best revenge isn’t griping about them all the time, but would be to out-perform them. But I do sympathize with what seems to’ve been the impetus from going from “yay, we’re gonna partner with Amazon!” to “Amazon is an evil, sucky jerk.”)
A number of points:
If you don’t have a Mac, you can hire someone (for a reasonable fee) to upload your books to iTunes, and you still create and maintain control of your account. Just off the bat, Amy Atwell, Kim Killion, and Marie Force’s ebook Formatting Fairies all offer this service.
Smashwords allows ANYONE in the world with a PayPal account to buy your books. Pretty frictionless when it comes to international sales. I wouldn’t give that up, especially as I’m convinced the international market is going to see some huge growth.
Direct sales from the Smashwords retail site pay very very well. Highest royalties in the business.
Distributing lower-priced work through Smashwords to B&N gives you a higher royalty than going direct through PubIt.
If you want to make a title free on B&N, the only way to do it is to distribute it to them via Smashwords.
How’s that for a few reasons?
Works for me.
I have no trouble with the meatgrinder. I like to use beautiful design and formatting in my trade paperbacks.
I like to keep my ebook formatting simple and sleek. Just text. Indented paragraphs. Bold titles and chapter headings. Italics sometimes. Three centered asterisks for scene breaks. Page breaks between front matter and story, between chapters. That’s it.
Still not seeing how it adds up to ten percent of my profits. And I’m not interested in putting my books out for free. But thanks for the information, Anthea.
Just out of curiosity, where are you getting “10 percent of your profits” from, re: Smashwords?
Smashwords pays the best percentage in the business. They take 15% of net. I.e., someone buys my 99c book, and PayPal takes their cut, then Smashwords takes their 15% out of what’s left, and I get about 54c from that. Or someone gets several things, spreading out the PayPal fee, and I wind up with 81c from that sale!
Yes, if I go through them for B&N, Apple, and Kobo, they take a percentage off from that — I’m getting 61c from that 99c story, from Apple. (On the other hand, I’m getting 60c from B&N for that 99c story, and if I went through B&N, I’d be getting something like 30c…) So if you are thinking of switching, then there’s not much reason to if you’ve already got your books into those venues. (Unless you want to put a freebie on B&N, of course.)
But if you can’t get your book to a location otherwise, such as Sony, Diesel, and Blio, then it’s zero without Smashwords or gravy with — and if people are having a hard time getting the books from outside a Blessed Amazon Zone, then it’s Kobo, Smashwords, or… Xinxii, maybe?
I have my book on B&N, Kobo, and Amazon. I’m probably going to borrow a friend’s Mac to put them on iTunes. The only thing I’d need Smashwords for are the sites that I can’t upload my own epubs to.
I’m getting the 10% from the Smashwords FAQ.
Smashwords usually pays the author, or the author’s designated publisher, 85% or more of the net sales proceeds from the work.
But it looks like I was off by a few percentage points.
” Even though Smashwords authors have the freedom to bypass Smashwords and work directly with many of our retail partners, about 80% of our authors choose to distribute through Smashwords.”
I’m not sure what this means. What do the other 20% of SW authors do with SW if they don’t use it for distribution?
20% also use PubIt, Kobo-whatever-they-call-it, and direct-to-iBookstore, I wager, rather than just using Smashwords and distributing to B&N, Kobo, and Apple.
What she said. To elaborate, that’s probably the percentage of authors who have one or more distribution channels turned off in the Channel Manager. They still sell direct through Smashwords. You can’t turn that off.
I use Smashwords to distribute to Sony, iTunes, Diesel, and Page Foundry.
I have my own accounts at Amazon, B&N, and Kobo, and upload ebooks directly to them, bypassing Smashwords’ distribution for those channels.
I am thinking about going direct to Apple (iTunes) with future releases.
Similar situation for me. I have my own accounts at Amazon, Kobo, and iTunes (since I’m a Mac guy from way back), but not with B&N (since I’m not American, and B&N still believes that Only America Is Real).
By the way, when I hear U.S. writers grousing about Bowker and their extortionate rates for ISBNs, it makes me glad I’m Canadian. Library and Archives Canada (our equivalent of the Library of Congress, sort of) runs its own ISBN allocation service which is free to all Canadian publishers, including self-publishers. I’ve had to jump through hoops and pay extra for other things because I’m Canadian; it’s nice to get a break on something for a change.