About Smashwords

Welcome to Smashwords! Smashwords is an online publishing platform where independent authors and their audiences come together to interact in ways never before possible.

At Smashwords, authors have complete control over the sampling, pricing, marketing and licensing of their written works. Smashwords is ideal for full length novels, short fiction, non-fiction, essays, screenplays, newsletters, poetry, or other written forms that haven’t even been invented yet. There is no cost to publish on Smashwords.

For readers, Smashwords provides an opportunity to discover new voices in all categories and genres of the written word. The site offers useful tools for search, discovery and personal library-building, and in the months ahead we’ll add more depth and breadth to these features based on the feedback from Smashwords members.

Q&A With Smashwords Founder, Mark Coker

What is Smashwords?

Smashwords is a free community publishing platform where independent writers can digitally publish their written works. Authors retain full control over how their works are published, sampled, priced and sold. If an author wants to give away their book for free, or charge one dollar or ten thousand dollars, they have that freedom.

What marketing tools does Smashwords offer authors and publishers?
Smashwords offers multiple marketing tools to help authors and publishers connect with readers. We offer the industry’s broadest range of sampling options; author pages with bios, headshots and lists of works; embedded YouTube videos for video book trailers and virtual author events; reviews from readers; ebook downloads in multiple ebook formats; and dozens of additional tools in the works.

What does Smashwords offer readers?
Smashwords is a virtual playground for those who love the written word. Readers can sample most works for free (and in many cases, read over 50% of the book before they have to commit to a purchase decision); create digital libraries of purchased and sampled works; publish reviews (including YouTube video book reviews); and find fellow book enthusiasts who share common interests. Readers can also “favorite” their favorite authors and works.

How do readers read these books?
These books and other written works on Smashwords can be read online using our online readers, or they can be downloaded to other reading devices such as the Sony Reader, the Iliad, the Amazon Kindle, or smart phones such as the iPhone or Treo. Depending on the rights granted by the author, most Smashwords books can be downloaded and printed on your PC or viewed offline. Smashwords offers levels of sampling that are unprecedented in the industry so readers can try before they buy. For many books that are for sale on the site, you can read over 50% of it online, for free.

Why would authors give most of their book away for free?
More and more authors realize they’re competing against free already, and they’re competing against the millions of alternative entertainment or learning options out there. The most valuable thing they’re competing for is the reader’s time and attention. Smart authors realize if a reader invests the time necessary to read 100 or 150 pages of a 300 page book, they’re much more inclined to purchase the book to know how it ends. Some authors choose to give their entire book away for free because it’s more important to them they reach an audience than they monetize the work. The primary motivator for most writers, after all, is not to get rich - they write because they have something important to communicate to the rest of us.

How does Smashwords compensate authors?

A primary mission at Smashwords is to help make publishing more profitable for the world's authors. Here's how we calculate "net" royalties: Net royalty to author = (sales price minus PayPal payment processing fees)*.85. This means if an author has a book they might otherwise publish as a $7.95 mass market paperback, they can price their ebook on Smashwords for two dollars and make triple the royalty of selling a print book through a traditional publisher. Is Smashwords the get rich quick solution for all authors? Certainly not. Authors will always face many of the same marketing challenges they've always faced - we're just commited to leverage our technology to bring as many barriers as we can.

How does Smashwords change the economics of authorship?
Smashwords turns traditional authorship, publishing and pricing models upside down. With 85% of the net purchase price going to the authors, authors can charge readers significantly less for their works than would otherwise be possible through traditional print publishing channels. When costs to the reader drop, there is a fundamental change to the demand side of the equation. This will create a virtuous cycle of more profit for the author, lower prices for consumers, and greater demand and consumption for written works. It’s a win-win for authors and readers.

Does Smashwords require exclusive publishing contracts?
No. All author contracts with Smashwords are non-exclusive. The author retains all ownership rights to their works, and is still free to publish their work elsewhere if they choose. Authors can remove their works from Smashwords at any time (although they cannot take back works that have been purchased or sampled by readers).

Can Authors Publish Partially Written Books to Gather Feedback?

We'd rather they didn't. Smashwords is a place for finished books that are ready to be published. Numerous other writers web sites offer communities where authors can critique each other's partially written works.

What does Smashwords mean for traditional book publishers?
Smashwords welcomes large and independent presses alike to publish DRM-free ebooks of all their titles with us. According to a report published by the American Booksellers Association in early 2007, ebooks sales experienced a compound annual growth rate of over 50% each year over the previous five years, while traditional print book sales experienced stagnant sales. At Smashwords, we believe digital books are the future. We also believe readers don’t want to pay full price for digital books, and they don’t want ebooks saddled with archaic DRM that restricts their freedom to enjoy their book.

How does Smashwords present an opportunity for book publishers?
When a publisher sells an ebook through Smashwords, they receive 85% of the net sales price. Publishers receive only about 40-50% of the price of a print book sold through a bookstore or through Amazon.com. That small number from traditional book selling channels can drop to 20% or less once unsold inventory returns are factored in. With Smashwords, publishers have no inventory, no shipping expenses and no returns. Like authors, publishers can increase sales volume and profits by selling their books for lower prices.

Does Smashwords publish only self-published authors whose works are not owned by a publisher?
Smashwords publishes everyone’s content, provided the author or publisher is legally entitled to publish with us. We welcome the opportunity to publish self-published authors, unpublished authors, and authors under contract with big-name publishers. We’re especially interested to recruit established authors who retain digital publishing rights for their works. Imagine, for example, how much more money Stephen King or Dan Brown could make if they published through Smashwords?

What is Smashwords’ stand on digital rights management (DRM)?
Consumers value non-DRMed content and there's a growing body of evidence that digital content producers who have abandoned DRM are enjoying greater sales. Most buyers of ebooks despise DRM because it severely limits their ability to fully own and enjoy their digital book. At Smashwords, we only publish DRM-free works. By the same token, we strictly discourage illegal pirating of an author’s works.

Why did you create Smashwords?
Smashwords was inspired by my own unsuccessful multi-year attempt to get my novel published. In 2002, my wife, Lesleyann, and I co-wrote a novel called Boob Tube, a roman a clef set within the daytime television soap opera industry (Lesleyann is a soap opera columnist at Soapdom.com and a former reporter for Soap Opera Weekly Magazine). We were fortunate to have multiple top tier literary agents compete for our representation, and in the end we selected one of the most respected firms in New York City. Our agent contacted all the top publishers of commercial women's fiction, and each rejected us. We took their feedback to heart (the book was too long, too complex, characters needed better development) and completed a major revision. We then shared the manuscript with multiple test readers. Soap fans and those who enjoy celebrity gossip loved it, and even non-soap fans enjoyed it. Confident we had a winner on our hands, our agent again pitched the book to publishers. All of them rejected it. Several publishers told our agent they didn’t believe soap opera fans read books! I found it frustrating that the whims and prejudices of a publisher could stand between our book and those who would want to read it. I ultimately came to the conclusion that the publishing industry was broken.

How is the publishing industry broken?
I call it the 80% problem. Many of the problems in the publishing industry roughly conform to this number (Some are higher, some are lower. These are my own estimates). Eighty percent of written works are never published by a publisher that can get widespread distribution in stores, and therefore these titles have limited opportunity to find their audience. Of the 200,000 or so books that go into print each year, 80% are never promoted by the publishers, 80% are money losers for the publishers, 80% go out of print after the first printing, and 80% of authors never receive royalties beyond their upfront average advance of $5,000 to $10,000. There are several reasons for these failures:

• Publishing is expensive: Books are expensive to produce, distribute and promote. Book publishers are structurally limited in the number of new titles they can publish each year, because each book requires editing, artwork, promotional flaps, production, sales support, inventorying and shipping.
• Books are expensive: If a $25 book is expensive to the average American, imagine how expensive that book is to literate people in developing countries?
  
• Publishers are terrible at predicting demand for a book: Despite hundreds of years of experience, the publishing industry is relatively clueless when it comes to predicting which books will sell, and which won’t. As a result, they can’t predict the proper size of their print runs, and often saddle their warehouses and bookstores with expensive unsold inventory.
• Publishing is a “hit” business: Publishers lose money on most books they publish and try to make up the difference by having a few bestseller hits.
• Shelf space is limited: Bookstores are physically limited in the number of titles they can carry. Most Borders or Barnes & Noble superstores cannot stock more than 100,000 books at any one time. Amazon, by comparison, stocks approximately 2.5 million titles.
• Bookstores have short attention spans: New titles are allowed only a couple weeks to find their audience and sell well before the books are returned to the publisher for full refund.
• New titles must compete against midlist: New titles are not only competing against each other, but also against established midlist books - published titles that continue to sell moderately well, year in and year out (often classics and former bestsellers).
• Tiny royalties: Most authors receive royalties of only 5-10% of the retail price of their written works. The other 90-95% goes to bookstores, distributors, publishers, printers, agents and discounts.
• Publishers don’t promote most books: Most authors (especially first time authors) receive little to no publicity support from their publishers. Authors now recognize they have to do the promotion themselves. They have to do their own PR; call bookstores to arrange signings; and personally hand sell books to local bookstores.
• Limited geographic distribution: Book publishing today is still geographically constrained. Most works are never published outside their own country, or in languages other than the native tongue of their author. In the United States, most published works will never receive distribution outside the US. Authors outside the US have little chance of finding an audience outside their own country.
• There's no "long tail" in book publishing: To enter the midlist, books must be able to meet a certain threshold of sales, often 10,000 copies per year, year in and year out, with little to no promotion from the bookstores or the publishers. What about the millions of previously written and out of print works which could be selling 50, 100, 1,000, or 9,999 copies each year, if only they were available for their audience to discover?
• Readers are left unserved: All of these problems within the publishing industry harm not only authors, but readers as well. Readers are effectively denied the freedom to discover new voices in the written word.

What is the business model for Smashwords?

Although Smashwords was founded to achieve a strong social purpose, we also recognize we must produce a profit so we can continue to carry out our mission. Smashwords will generate income through commissions from the sales of written works and through premium membership options. Guiding all of our business decisions will be an overarching mission to serve the needs of the authors, publishers and readers who participate in our community.

What is Smashwords’ privacy policy?
We will never sell, rent or share our members’ contact information with any third party. We respect the privacy of authors who choose to publish under pen names. Read our complete privacy statement here.

What’s next for Smashwords?
We’re just getting started. We have hundreds of ideas for how we can help improve the digital publishing experience for authors, readers and publishers. Stay tuned!