Smashwords is the world’s largest E-book distributor for indie authors and small independent presses. They distribute to online stores, including Apple, IngramSpark Publishing, Barnes & Noble, OverDrive, Scribd, Oyster, Kobo, and libraries.
If you are a Smashwords author, your book will appear in their Premium Catalog. This is an excellent way to promote your book, and you’ll earn up to 80% of your list price each month!
1. It’s free
Smashwords Publishing is a free platform that allows authors to publish their books for sale and distribution to major retailers, including Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Tolino, and more. It also provides marketing tools, book ghostwriting services, and other services to help you sell your work.
First, you need to register for a free account. Once you’ve done that, you can begin uploading your book. Depending on your computer’s speed, this process will take a few minutes to an hour or more. Once you’ve finished, you’ll see a page where Smashwords will convert your E-book into multiple formats for distribution to all the major retail platforms.
Then, you’ll need to set the price of your ebook. You can set it to “free” or “regular,” and you’ll get a royalty percentage based on your list price.
You can set your prices anytime and change them as often as possible. You’ll also be able to edit your books before they go live and change them as you see fit.
2. It’s easy
Smashwords Publishing is a great option if you’re looking for an easy way to self-publish your book. Signing up, uploading your manuscript, and creating a professional cover image is easy. It’s also easy to distribute your book in about nine file formats (epub, mobi, PDF).
The first step is registering for an account and following the simple steps to get started. Before you publish, carefully study the Smashwords Style Guide for formatting requirements. Once your manuscript is formatted correctly, click “Publish”, and your book is ready for distribution. if you are facing any trouble in publishing your book then you can also take e-book publishing services.
You can send copies of your ebook in any of the nine formats to book bloggers, beta readers, and reviewers for free. This is a convenient feature for promoting your book and getting feedback from your readers.
Another benefit of using Smashwords is that it allows you to distribute your ebook to many different bookstores and library suppliers, all from one place. This is a great way to maximize your distribution and reduce your risk of piracy.
3. It’s fast
Smashwords is one of the largest aggregators for self-published books. It offers free services like Smashwords publishing, training, and marketing tools. It distributes your books to vendors such as Apple and Goodreads. You might be interested in the guide to Goodreads publishing.
Unlike other self-publishing sites, you don’t have to format your book for each of these retailers and upload them to their websites. With Smashwords, you submit your ebook to their system, which will be converted into multiple formats for all major e-reading devices.
Another great thing about this website is that you get a good landing page for your book that boosts its SEO rank. Your publisher’s dashboard will show links for every ebook you publish and a list of SEO entries for each title.
4. It’s powerful
The company has a massive following of customers and offers a variety of marketing tools to help authors reach their target audience. They are a major aggregator distributing content to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Apple Books. This makes it easier for indie authors to sell their books.
It is also a good option for self-published authors who don’t have much time to spend on their book publishing process. They have a free account, and once you have registered, you can start the publishing process. or you can rapidly publish your book by hiring a reputable book publisher.
When you publish your book, it will go through a conversion process called “Meatgrinder”. This takes anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes and generates multiple ebook formats. Then, you will receive your epub file and the information about your book.
Moreover, you can choose whether to publish your book for free or for a fee. You can also convert your epub to PDF and sell it on other platforms.
5. It’s fun
The Smashwords publishing process can be daunting, especially for beginners. You must format your work according to their style guide, which can be overwhelming and time-consuming if you don’t know what you are doing.
However, uploading your book to Smashwords is easy once the formatting is figured out. They have an online Publish form where you fill out the information about your book and upload it to their servers. Once they have received this data, they will convert your ebook into several formats and upload it for sale.
You can watch in real time as your ebook is converted. Once complete, your ebook will appear for sale on the Smashwords website.
There are many benefits to self-publishing with Smashwords, and you will likely find yourself using the platform for years to come. For example, Smashwords has a storefront where readers can buy your books in epub and other file formats compatible with their reading devices.
Conclusion
Distributing your books to libraries through Library Direct is also possible. This program requires the library to have a network and the ability to host books, and it uses industry-standard digital rights management (DRM) to control one-checkout-at-a-time borrows. The other advantage to self-publishing with Smashwords publishing is that you can sell your books through various retail outlets, including Barnes & Noble and Apple. You can use this to reach a worldwide audience and earn higher royalties.
