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Smashwords Tips and Articles

You Too Can Be a Local Author: Ebooks in Libraries

For self-published authors, public meet and greet options may be slim, depending on how many bookstores are left in your neighborhood. Now, there are new opportunities on the horizon. From Library Journal:

The San Mateo-based Califa Group, which is the largest library network in California, has made major strides in its project to create an ebook ownership model along the same lines as the Douglas County Libraries in Colorado.

If you publish with Smashwords, your eBook could one day be in a library in one of two ways:

Under the deal with Smashwords, a four-year-old rapidly rising self-publishing platform

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2012-07-03T13:53:05+02:00June 28th, 2012|Categories: News|Tags: |
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Real eBooks: Are We Still in the Stone Age?

So when will we start to see REAL ebooks appear on the market? You know the ebooks that take advantage of their digital environment. Ebooks that have been rendered to improve the reader’s ebook experience. As the number of ebook devices explodes into the book reader’s world, the readers are going to expect more. This statement is especially true with the younger generation whose world seems to center around instant access.

I just completed a study of twenty newly released ebooks just to see how far the art of ebook publishing has advanced in the last year. I choose ebooks […]

2020-02-21T03:29:13+02:00February 1st, 2012|Categories: Features|Tags: , , |
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Library eBooks: Is the eBook Ecosystem Affected by the Amazon Library Lending Process?


My usual blogging direction is toward the ebook author and the self-publishing world. With this blog I take a left turn and explore the Amazon Library Lending Process and how it affects the ebook ecosystem.

The Jungle

The Inhabitants
In the ebook jungle, the traditional publishers are indeed the king of beasts. They control the prices and the access to the ebooks. Even the authors who create the content have little say. If publishers don’t want you to borrow one of their titles, you can’t. If they want you to wait for a title, you wait.

The next level of […]

2019-02-18T12:17:54+02:00October 28th, 2011|Categories: Features, Member Blog|Tags: , |
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Ebook Authors: Do you really want to be an old time author?

Do you really want to be an old time author and publish your book traditionally or do you want to be an eBook author and self-publish your content on-line? That’s the question.

An old time author! Are you one of them? You know the traditional author that has beat his head against publisher’s front doors for a long time and hasn’t gotten in. Or the writer that creates good content but has to do all his own marketing and his book is just not flying off the shelves. Or the one who has heard about ebooks but is not tech-savvy […]

2019-02-18T12:20:51+02:00May 18th, 2011|Categories: Resources|Tags: , , |
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Author Interview: Will Granger

Hi! I’m the author of Anabar’s Run, book #1 in my Anabar Trilogy.

Sixteen-year-old Anabar has less than twelve hours to get to the capital city. This is the final test in his training to become a member of the Scouts, a band of ruthless swordsmen sworn to defend their nation. If he doesn’t make it, he will have to return to his farm, but that’s not the worst thing. His mentor, Omalof, wants the test to be as realistic as possible, so he reports Anabar as a dangerous criminal, and every soldier between him and the capital has orders […]

2011-04-15T19:56:44+02:00April 15th, 2011|Categories: Interviews, Member Blog|Tags: , |
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Mark Coker on the Downfall of Big Publishing

This week, Mark Coker posted a new entry to the Smashwords blog detailing the rise of self-publishing and discussing the broken model upon which big publishing is built. From the article:

If authors – the beating heart powering Big Publishing – lose faith in Big Publishing, then big publishing as we know it will die. By “Big Publishing,” I’m referring to the old, pre-self-publishing system embodied by the Big 6 New York publishers, in which the publisher serves as the author’s judge, jury, gatekeeper and executioner.

If Big Publishing approves of your book, they acquire it. Post-acquisition, an author can

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2011-03-05T11:12:08+02:00March 5th, 2011|Categories: Features, Lead Story, News|Tags: |
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Help Shaina quit her day job. Please. Please?

So, why do free eBooks exist? Why would any person go to the trouble of typing so many words on a page, then spend money to create a cover for that electronic book, only to give it away to people with no expectation of a monetary reward?

It’s because we need reviews.

Reviews of our free books help to perpetuate sales of our books that are not free. In addition, free eBooks generate interest and publicity by getting our work into the e-reading devices of a lot of people. And a LOT of people love free stuff. Hopefully if they […]

2011-03-03T15:26:09+02:00March 3rd, 2011|Categories: Features, Member Blog|Tags: |
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Author Introduction/Interview: Ravis Harnell

ghostwriter_coverHello. I’m Ravis. I write a lot of stuff that could nominally be called horror–because I love horror and other genre fiction–and some stuff that falls under whatever the currently trendy term might be for contemporary lit that’s based in the real world, yet contains elements of the fantastical. I recently self-published  an e-novella called Ghostwriter.

1. How did you come to self-publish? Did you try to get published traditionally?

I did pass around a novel to agents, first-novel competitions, etc., and really came to the conclusion that there’s a certain vicious cycle to traditional mainstream publishing–“we’ll be interested […]

2011-02-07T15:23:29+02:00February 7th, 2011|Categories: Interviews|Tags: |
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