1. The FIRST COMPONENT of this initiative is our new Pricing Manager (click here to read the announcement at the SW blog).  This new feature is accessible from your Dashboard, and will allow you to easily set special pricing for libraries.  As I shared earlier in my June 28 update below, when I surveyed Smashwords authors and publishers, 82% said you believe libraries offer the potential to build your sales (we agree!!).  About 2/3 of you said you'd want to encourage library adoption of your books by pricing your books at or below the regular retail price.  The new Pricing Manager will make it easy to control your prices.  The new feature will also make it incredibly easy to control your retail pricing as well.  You'll no longer need to click to Dashboard: Settings: Change Pricing... simply to change a price (though you're welcome to continue doing that as well).  The Pricing Manager feature will allow you to view up to 50 books on a single screen, where you can manage both retail and library pricing.  We're excited about this new feature, and we hope you like it too.  
   
   
2. THE SECOND COMPONENT is our new Library Direct channel (click here to read the full announcement at the SW blog), accessible from your Channel Manager.  Library Direct will allow libraries and library consortiums to place large "opening collection" orders with Smashwords.  Smashwords has received purchase commitments from three large library systems, each of which expect to order approximately $30,000 each of Smashwords ebooks for their opening collections.  The Library Direct channel is only available to libraries that are able to place large opening orders, and that operate their own hosting and DRM systems (typically Adobe Content Server) to control checkouts.  This new channel will complement our existing relationships with library aggregators such as Baker & Taylor Axis 360 and 3M's Cloud Library.  Our goal is to make our books as available and accessible to libraries as possible, and for the small subset of libraries who want to host and manage their own ebooks, Library Direct is yet another option to acquire your books.  Library Direct sales will earn authors and publishers 70% of the library price, which is significantly higher than the 45% earned through our aggregator partners.  If you don't want to participate in Library Direct, you can opt out from your Channel Manager, just as you do from any other distribution channel.

June 28, 2012 - Items:  1.  Yesterday we announced a new distribution relationship with Page Foundry, a developer of ebookstore apps for Android devices.  The author/publisher alert I sent out last night has full details.  See screen shots of the e-reading app in action over at the Smashwords blog.  2.  Library patrons and book-buying.  Based on my flash survey last week, 82% of Smashwords authors and publishers believe that by exposing their books at libraries, they'll sell more books overall.  12% of you responded that you had no opinion, or were on the fence.  4.7% of you answered you thought libraries would cannibalize your overall sales.  My personal opinion is that libraries represent a tremendous untapped opportunty for all authors and publishers.  If you disagree or are unsure, I completely respect your opinion, because the truth is, none of us know for sure.  We will all place our bets as business people (indies are business people!) and then the winners will become known in the the months and years ahead.  It helps to have data, and some of it is starting to trickle out.  The Pew Research Center released a fascinating study last week that examined book buying habits of library patrons.  Some of the key findings:  A. Library patrons read more books than bookbuyers who don't use libraries.  B.  Library patrons are just as likely to have purchased their most recently read book as readers who don't use libraries.  C.  Among those who read ebooks, 41% of those who borrow ebooks from libraries purchased their most recently read ebook.  D.  Library card holders are more than twice as likely to have bought their most recent book than to have borrowed it from a library.  E.  Library as a discovery nexus: 47% of those who borrow ebooks from libraries say for book discovery, they first look at online bookstores and websites and 41% say they start at their public library. F.  42% of ebook borrowers say they get recommendations from librarians.  What to make of the data?  The data can be viewed from multiple perspectives, glass half full or half empty.  My simplified take:  Since library ebook borrowers are voracious readers and active book-buyers, and since I believe obscurity is the biggest hurdle all of us authors face, I think an indie's distribution strategy is incomplete without broad library exposure.  Your take may differ.  If there are some statistics junkies out there who can make spatially accurate venn diagrams of the Pew data, post the charts on your blog and drop me an email and I'll link to it here.  This data really calls for graphic visualization.  There's much more data than I can relay here.  Read the Pew study here.   For more data, check out Patron Profiles, maintained by Library Journal magazine.

June 26, 2012 - Smashwords plans to sign a deal with Califa, a consortium of California libraries, to purchase the top 10,000 best-selling Smashwords ebooks. Califa is establishing their own ebook aggregation service to provide ebooks to participating member libraries.  Library Journal caught wind of the planned deal (it was a surprise to see it leaked so soon), and reported it tonight.  In preparation for this and other library initiatives, sometime in the next few weeks we'll add a new pricing option to Dashboard: Settings that will allow Smashwords authors and publishers set special pricing for libraries.  In my flash survey last week completed by 150 of you (thanks!!), 24% of you said you'd offer your books for free to any library that wanted them, 32% of you said you'd offer libraries lower pricing than retailers, 29% of you said you'd price higher than retail, and 10% said you'd price the same. To support your wishes, sometime in the next few weeks we'll create a new pricing option for you that will allow you to control the price at which libraries purchase your books.  Once the Califa deal gets further along, I'll share more specifics.

June 22, 2012 - Items.  1.  Back in April, I did a fun presentation at the RT Booklovers convention in Chicago in which I shared a lot of data based on some analysis we did about what price points work best, what word counts, etc.  On April 25, I embedded the Slideshare presentation at the Smashwords blog.  As I recall, one or two people at the time asked if there was an audio recording for the benefit of some of our vision-impaired authors, not to mention it's impossible to place all the spoken words on paper (though I do break PowerPoint rules by placing more words on there than pros would advise).  There isn't that I'm aware of.  However, the good folks at RT Book Review just posted an edited video interview with me from the conference, and in the chat I talk about some of the data. One thing I forgot to mention at the time, but will mention here...  Our data indicated that the sweet spot for pricing was between $2.99 and $5.99, if your goal is to maximize income.  What I forgot to mention is if you find you're earning about the same amount of money at a lower price point than a higher price point (or whatever), then consider pricing at the lower price point because you'll probably gain the additional benefit of more readers (the data in the presentation at the blog link above indicates that lower prices get more sales, in most but not all cases).  Remember that every book is different, your best pricing points may very well differ from the averages, and price is only one of several factors driving purchase decisions (See my Secrets book for more).  2.  Speaking of Slideshare, check out my old update from August 7, 2011 way down below. I'm still convinced there's opportunity for authors to use Slideshare as an additional means to connect with prospective readers and tell your story.  My 20 or so Smashwords Slideshare presentations have received about 130,000 views, which just blows me away.  Who would have thought people would enjoy receiving information via PowerPoint?  People mock PowerPoint all the time, yet there's probably an untapped audience for you out there if you put your information in a form they want to consume.  Slideshare is a cool, free service.  LinkedIn acquired them a few months ago.  3.  Meatgrinder was taking a nap earlier, but appears to be working normally now.

June 20, 2012 - Two items.  1.  Thanks everyone for partipating in my flash survey on libraries.  Excellent feedback that I'll put to immediate use as we build out library distribution. This weekend I'm headed down to Anaheim for the American Library Association conference.  I'm there to learn and meet prospective partners.  Thanks also for the great feedback on what we're doing right, and what we need to improve.  I was pleased to see that our current development initiatives are closely aligned with the most-requested areas of improvement (faster sales reporting, faster vetting, faster shipments, more accurate retailer listings).  Many people also requested the Smashwords website receive a user interface facelift.  Agreed!  2.  I updated the Smashwords blog item about the new cover image requirements that go into effect in mid-July.  The updated post includes a few new sample images to help authors understand how the different height/width ratios look.

June 15, 2012 - Fun with ISBNs:  ISBNs are now listed on book pages.  Most people don't search for books via ISBN, but on the rare instance they do, your book might come up in Google search results.  Based on our cursory testing, it seems if you quickly attach your ISBN after your book goes live on the home page, the Google search engine will index the ISBN within a couple hours.  Yet the ISBNs of some older books(well, only a couple months old), such as the my ebook, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success, aren't yet indexed by Google (go to Google and search on 9781476000411).  Other fun tricks:  1.  If you enter your ISBN into the search box and click search, it'll jump you to your book page.  2.  Your book page URL (web address) can also be constructed using your ISBN. Enter www.smashwords.com/isbn/[enter ISBN here without brackets]  For example, my SECRETS ebook's web address is http://www.smashwords.com/isbn/9781476000411. I'm sure some smart software developers out there might find the above interesting or useful.  I can see how it'll be useful for a new distribution partner we're negotiating with.  For example, all we have to do is supply them ISBNs and they can create buy links to these pages (or the pages of our retail partners who make ISBNs searchable).

June 14, 2012 - Heads up, eyes open.  New cover image requirements are coming!  Starting in August, Apple will require that your cover image be at least 1400 pixels wide.  Apple previously required a minimum height of 600 pixels. Since Smashwords requires vertical rectangle (height greater than width) images, please start planning accordingly.  A new recommended ebook cover might be about 1600 pixels wide by 2400 pixels tall, which means your height is about 50% more than your width.  Pull out a ruler and measure just about any print book and you'll get a ratio close to that.  A few months ago, I noticed Amazon started recommending larger covers too. They recommend a 1.6 width/height ratio (height 60% more than your width), and their recommended height is 2,500 pixels. Some of this is personal preference.  If you aim for the height to be 30 to 60% greater than your width, it should look good.  Do what you think looks best, but aim for the width to be greater than 1400 pixes.   Why Apple's change?  We can only speculate, but it's probably safe to assume we can expect iPad, iPhone and Mac screens will continue to enjoy higher and higher resolutions in the future.   Since we think the Apple and Amazon guidelines are reasonable (they help readers with next-generation screens enjoy your covers in all their glory), we'll adopt Apple's requirements as our new minimum standards for cover images.  What happens next? Apple's new requirement applies to new books, and new cover updates.  If your book is already in the Apple iBookstore with a smaller cover image, you're grandfathered in, UNLESS you try to update your cover image in the future, in which case they'll reject it.  Smashwords will make the 1400 pixel minimum a Premium Catalog requirement starting on or around July 15.  Like Apple, we'll apply the standard to new titles and cover image updates.  The Smashwords FAQ is now updated to reflect the new recommendations and requirements and I'll update the Smashwords Style Guide in the next day or two so one month from now this won't come as a shock to people. I also blogged it (please share with friends!).  If we previously shipped your smaller cover to retailers, we won't require the new cover image size unless you update your cover image. The minimum dimensions do not apply to the images or cover image inside your .epub file.  How NOT to create a new cover image:  Don't use a photo or image editing program to stretch out the size of your image.  That will cause pixelation (blur).   How to create your cover image:  Hire a professional.  Unless you're a professional graphic artist, it's best to hire a cover image designer. Send an email to list@smashwords.com to obtain my list of low cost cover designers (We don't receive a commission or referral fee). Their rates range from about $40 to $100, a range I consider very reasonable.  Most have online portfolios.  If their style doesn't match what you're looking for, there are many others out there, and most are very affordable.  See my free ebook, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success, for comments on why a professional ebook cover image is so critical to a book's success.

June 8, 2012 - Updates.  1.  I just finished an Amazing week at BEA here in NY.  Over 20 meetings, several of which will lead to exciting new distribution opportunities for our authors and publishers.  2.  We're in Forbes magazine!  Click here to read.  The story is online and should hit print any day now.  For the first time ever, we revealed our revenues (a requirement for Forbes features).  Do the math and you'll see we're on track to pay out over $10 million this year to our authors and publishers.  The growth of Smashwords has been amazing.  I still feel like we're only just getting started.  As I look at our development roadmap for the next couple years, it's exciting to think that what we've done to date represents only the first steps of where we're going.  Our mission, simplified, is to connect readers to your books.  With your continued support, much is possible.  Thanks for your continued trust, support, friendship and partnership.

June 4, 2012 - Cool news.  Smashwords today commenced near-real-time shipments to Apple, and daily shipments to Kobo.  Learn more at the Smashwords blog.   Faster shipments mean faster time-to-market and more control over pricing promotions.  We hope to increase the frequency of shipments to some of our other retailers in the months ahead once they give us the green light.

June 4, 2012 - Two items:  1.  Kindle users:  The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success is now FREE at Amazon.  They previously listed it at $.99.  2.  Each day, our development team is busy creating both major and incremental updates.  We never stop iterating and moving the platform forward to make it more useful to our authors, publishers, agents, retailers and customers.  A quick summary of a few recent improvements you may have noticed:  A.  Faster shipments.  We're now shipping daily to Kobo, rather than the previous once per week.  For Apple, we'll soon unveil near-real-time-shipments of new books and metadata updates (very very cool.  More soon on this).  B.  A few days ago, we reactived the "People who bought this also bought these other titles," both on the book page and in the shopping cart.  C.  Authors/publishers with lot of books published now have their author/publisher pages paginated.  D.  Quick access buttons in the Library enable faster, simpler book downloads, or for books you've bookmarked, faster adds to your shopping cart. 

June 1, 2012 - For authors and publishers outside the US, 1042-S email notifications went out this week with the subject line, "Your 2011 1042-S from Smashwords, Inc. is ready!"

May 29, 2012 - More distribution updates and misc.  1. We're working with Bowker to update how we transmit metadata updates to them.  The ultimate goal:  whenever you make changes at Smashwords, these updates will flow to Bowker.  The integration work is still underway, and it will lead to a one week delay in shipments to Sony, the only Smashwords retailer that polls Bowker for metadata.  Normal shipments to Sony should resume at the end of this week.  2.  Kobo and B&N are up to date per notes below about missing titles.  3.  Amazon is sending out automated emails to authors who have books listed elsewhere for free.  They're trying to root out PLR and plagiarized books, so this is a good development.  Ironically, they emailed me and asked me to prove that I'm the author of the Smashwords Style Guide and The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success.  I emailed them links to the books at Smashwords, and they were satisfied.  You can do the same if you receive such an email.  4.  We're working to bring three new distribution partners online.  One of them was leaked at the London Book Fair, and another is a library partner that will revealed next week by the partner at Book Expo America.  We'll hold off on our own formal announcements until we're further along with the technical integration.  As is our standard practice, we'll notify you of the new partners then give you 48 hours advance notice to opt out, if you choose, before we commence shipments.  I expect all three of these to start small. 5.  Wondering where our biggest sales channels are?  Here they are, ranked in order:  1.  Apple iBookstore.  2.  Barnes & Noble.  3.  Smashwords store.  4.  Kobo.  5.  Sony.  6.  Diesel.  7.  Baker & Taylor (new).

May 18, 2012 - Distribution items.  1.  Sony is now selling Smashwords ebooks in Canada.  Between early April and up until 1-2 weeks ago, Sony had a pricing glitch that caused Canadian dollar mispricings affecting 204 Smashwords books (out of over 80,000).  After an eagle-eyed Smashwords author pointed out the error (their book had been mispriced to $.99), we contacted Sony and learned the glitch had already been fixed.  2. Several thousand missing titles were re-shipped to B&N this week, and are now being ingested by B&N.  We and B&N will audit the shipment early next week to ensure things are flowing properly again. 3.  We've been re-shipping missing titles to Kobo as well, per the update last week.  At the current rate, they should be up to date within two weeks.  We'll update as progress warrants.

May 11, 2012 - What a week.  Items.  1.  Putting everything in a new light.  Meet Phyllis Campbell, my new hero, profiled over at the Smashwords blog.  When I first met Phyllis over email, I was immediately struck by her courage and self-reliance.  I offered her special help and she declined.  She's blind.  Read her story.  I can't imagine being without sight, but after reading her interview I'm convinced the blind can see things us sighted folks cannot, and thanks to technology and indie ebooks, their writing talent can now see the light of day.  2.  Our tech team is busy ironing out some distribution issues between B&N and Kobo.  At B&N, several shipments failed or partially failed over the last two months.  As of this evening, the team is completing an audit and will soon reship titles.  If your book is showing as shipped but has not appeared there yet (and ironically, this affects my latest ebook too, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success which should have appeared at B&N a month ago.  Yes, I can laugh at myself.), this is probably the reason.  At Kobo, this week we reshipped several thousand titles, and will ramp up reshipments next week.  If all goes well, missing titles should reappear soon.  Also behind the scenes, we're putting some very exciting pieces in place that will allow us to increase the frequency of shipments and metadata updates to retailers that can support it.  Imagine a day where you update the price at Smashwords and the new price reflects at Apple within a couple hours, or faster.  That's the direction we're headed, one step at a time.  For takedowns at Apple, that day is already here (thank you Amazon, that which won't kill us [KDP-S] is ultimately making us stronger.  When we first started designing our distribution systems three years ago, we never imagined authors would willingly remove their books from retailers.  My opinion on KDP-S is known, and hasn't changed). Stay tuned for more in the weeks ahead.  3.  I was interviewed over at Digital Book World this week.  I talk about how indie authors are poised to inherit the future of publishing, and a lot more.  Find the interview here.  4.  Progress on support backlogs and vetting backlogs.  The support queue response time is down to about 4 days (not counting weekends), much improved over the 10-11 days we were running for awhile.  Still not acceptable, but progress in the right direction.  On the vetting backlog (currently running about 15 days), we'll soon have new staffers on board to start attacking that.  In the meantime, thank you for your patience.  I'm excited by the direction we're headed on service levels.

April 30, 2012 - Two items.  1. Microsoft made a $300 million investment in Barnes & Noble.  This is good news.  It lifts a cloud that was hanging over B&N because some industry watchers questioned they had the financial wherewithal to battle Amazon.  Question no more.  Congrats to our friends at B&N!  Here's the story from Publishers Weekly.  2.  Testing direct deposit.  We invited a very small number of Smashwords authors to participate in a one-time direct deposit test for Q1 payments.  Emails went out this afternoon.  It was a record quarter.  Payment processing is underway.

April 25, 2012 - The other day I mentioned the new research we conducted to identify such metrics as ideal pricing and ideal word count.  Now posted over at the Smashwords blog.  We conducted the research in preparation for a presentation I gave at the RT Booklovers convention in Chicago.  Fun stuff!

April 22, 2012 - Two items:  1.  Check out the latest Smashwords author interview over at the blog.  Following a heart attack, Bill Dicksion's family purchased him a computer, and as Bill says, this allowed him to take his passion for storytelling to an entirely new level.  Bill writes authentic Westerns.  His sales are doing really well, growing each quarter.  Are we looking at a future Smashwords bestseller?  Oh, his age.  He's 87 and his mind is so sharp it puts the rest of us to shame (I've met him).  2.  Reminder.  Earnings go out at the end of this month.  Make sure your payment preferences (especially postal mailing addresses, for US authors who want to be paid by check) are up to date, otherwise you'll delay your payment until the next quarter.  Click to Account then click Edit/update Payment Information.

April 20, 2012 - Greetings from Colorado Springs, where I'm at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference for the next few days.  I'm giving two workshops and participating in a panel.  Two items:  1.  Thanks to the keen eye of Smashwords author Elaine Shuel, we discovered an obscure reporting glitch that caused the sales reports of 350 authors (out of 40,000) to appear as if we overpaid the author for sales related to about 500 titles sold at Kobo between July and December 2011.  We corrected the reports so all the sales appear properly as paid. Thanks, Elaine!  2.  PayPal retrospective.  The PayPal censorship victory marked a watershed event for indie authors.  Indie authors and their readers rose up and spoke out with a unified voice against censorship.  Smashwords authors and publishers drove the campaign.  Today, FastCompany published the condensed transcript of an interview with yours truly that took place yesterday, in which the reporter examined some aspects of the battle (we also talk about the DoJ lawsuit).  For more details on how the PayPal censorship saga unfolded behind the scenes, listen to my two part audio interview conducted by erotica author Alex Anders, in which we explored everything in great detail. Links:  Part I (PayPal) and Part II (ebook publishing best practices).

April 18, 2012 - Smashwords is growing.  To keep up with the growth, and help us reduce the backlog in our vetting and support queues, Smashwords is hiring for our vetting team.  All Smashwords employees (other than our software developers) start in the vetting team. It's a tough job.  South Bay/Silicon Valley applicants only, please.  The job listing is here.

April 15, 2012 - Three items.  1.  Next week, I'm in Colorado Springs at the Pike's Peak Writers conference. I'm doing a primer on ebook publishing, and then a session on best practices. Come say hi!  2. Great meeting so many Smashwords authors at the RT Booklovers Convention in Chicago and at the Nebraska Writer's Guilld conference in Omaha over the last five days.  You're all awesome.  At both conferences I presented new data that answers a bunch of questions such as, "What word lenghts to readers prefer," "what prices move the most units," and "what prices yield the most author profit."  In the next week or two I'll probably start sharing this information at the blog.  I'll also upload the presentation soon.    3.  CNN asked me to write an opinion piece for them on my views regarding the Department of Justice's lawsuit against Apple and five big publishers.  It's causing quite a debate, much of it... uhm... interesting.  Read it here.

April 8, 2012 - Items.  1.  For anyone who followed my previous warning about KDP Select at the Smashwords blog, or who has read my new Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success, you know I'm not a fan of Amazon's KDP Select program because of its exclusivity requirements.  In the last week, Amazon started enforcing the exclusivity requirements.  If you're in the KDP Select program, and you've been waiting longer than three weeks for a Smashwords retailer to process your removal request, see the Smashwords FAQ on how to correct retailer listing errors.  Although we're always sorry to see any author remove any book from any retailer, if you want your book gone and it's not disappearing we want to help you.  Don't email our staffers direct because it'll delay or prevent correction.  Please always contact us over the "?" question mark button.  And please note I am not an appropriate support contact.  Due to the volume of emails I receive, I'm unable to respond to every email, and I miss many.  Although our support team may take several days to respond, they do respond to every email.  2. On the road.  Jim Azevedo (our marketing manager) and I are in Chicago for most of the week ahead for the RT Booklovers convention.  Looking forward to seeing many Smashwords authors there.  Next weekend, I'm in Omaha for the Spring convention of the Nebraska Writers Guild.  Looking forward to seeing Ruth Ann Nordin there!  3.  We've signed a new retail distribution agreement that will be disclosed shortly, this time with a mobile retailing platform.  News of this deal will probably be disclosed by the partner as early as this week at the London Book Fair, but we'll hold off on a formal announcement until we get further along with the technical integration.

April 7, 2012 - Paranormal romance author Nicky Charles is interviewed over at the Smashwords blog.  All her books are priced at free.  Over at the Apple iBookstore, her books have received nearly 25,000 ratings, averaging over four of five stars.  Here at Smashwords, her author profile has been favorited over 450 times, making her one of our most popular authors.  Although (in my opinion) she could be earning a healthy living selling her books, she would prefer readers support charities instead. 

April 4, 2012 - Our ISP (not Smashwords) experienced a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, which affected one of their data centers.  This caused Meatgrinder conversions to fail for a period of time.  By the late afternoon the same day, Meatgrinder service was restored and the temporary backlog processed.

April 3, 2012 - Smashwords author Claire Farrell from Ireland is the latest author profiled over at the Smashwords blog.  In a message I think will resonate with many authors, she eschews most marketing.  She speaks of the importance of patience, hard work, broad distribution across all retailers, and writing every day.  In my new free ebook, the Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success, I write that the most important marketing you can do is to write a book that markets itself.  If readers love your writing, it will eventually spread if you have all your other viral catalysts in place.

April 2, 2012 - Items.  1.  Cool widget for WordPress users allows you to create a slideshow of your book covers:  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/smashwords-book-widget/  Developed as a community service by Sherrie and Patrick McCarthy.  You can find their blog here and their Smashwords publisher page here.  Tell 'em thanks by buying their books!   2.  We had a site outage that hit in the early morning hours Pacific time and was fixed this morning. 

March 29, 2012 - Are you writing (or have written) a memoir?  If so, don't miss the National  Association of Memoir Writers' Telesummit on Friday.  It's FREE.  Register at http://www.namw.org/tele-summit-call-in-information/  I'm doing a one hour chat on ebook publishing best practices (10am Pacific), and then the panelists who follow include Dan Blank (Build Your Audience Before Your Book is Published), Brooke Warner and Linda Joy Myers (Write Your Book Fast in the Digital Age), Tessa Smith McGovern (Digital Age Secrets to Write, Publish, and Promote your Memoir) and Lynn Serafinn (How Authors Can Find Loyal Fans: Blogging & Social Media Strategies While Writing a Book).

March 28, 2012 - I had a conversation with the Department of Justice yesterday.  Question: Does agency pricing lead to higher prices?  Answers in the Smashwords blog.  Thanks to Henry for crunching the numbers, and thanks to Jim for setting up the conference call.

March 28, 2012 - From the Department of "Don't Let This Happen to You," a cautionary tale.  Several Smashwords authors (as well as at least one author not on Smashwords) received spam emails from a "Mogoli Angelberg" over the last two days promoting a book by Jeff Rivera for sale at Amazon.  This person apparently looked for email addresses on the blogs and websites of Smashwords authors then sent them all the following poorly written spam (I left all typos and bad grammar in their original glory):  "Just checked out your book on Smashwords and you're so so talented. Do you have any suggestions for a budding writer like me?  What has worked and what hasn't? Tried FB, Twitter, even book marks. I just don't want to waste my time on things that don't work. I just read a couple EXCELLENT books on it. One was recommended by my friend called "Effortless Marketing": {link removed} I got it cause Mark Coker the Smashwords guy endorsed it and cause it's free for the next 24 hours anyway. And it was surprisingly really, really good."   For those who don't know Jeff, he's a publishing consultant and a writer for MediaBistro's GalleyCat blog.  Jeff showed me the book before publication and asked me for a blurb, which I provided.  His book explores how authors can use message boards to build their platforms.  Then the spam went out, and as you might imagine I'm not terribly pleased to see my name used in a promotion like this.  I forwarded the spam to Jeff, along with some evidence that this Mogoli person travels in close orbit to him.  I asked him to clarify what happened.  You'll find his response here:  http://jeffrivera.com/index.php/component/content/article/583-an-update.html.  I doubt Jeff's initial response will be satisfying to most people.  For the record, I like Jeff and think he's an honorable guy.  If we take him at his word (and I do), I think the big cautionary lesson learned here is that if you're going to hire others to do your marketing for you, you better be prepared to step up and own their actions because such bad marketing will harm your reputation as I expect it has harmed Jeff's.  I've always encouraged authors to do their own marketing to the extent possible, though my advice was based on the cost of outside marketing.  Now you have another reason to do it yourself, or, at least now you've got reason to approach such campaigns with new precautions.  Make sure you pre-approve all aspects of your marketing consultant's proposed campaign because you own it, and your personal brand is at stake.  For more on the reaction to this misadventure in marketing, see the Catherine, Caffeinated blog, where Jeff has now personally responded in greater detail. 

March 26, 2012 - The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success is now out!  Download it now (and forever) at the super-affordable price of FREE. Learn the best practices of the most successful indie authors. If you enjoy the book, please help spread the word by sharing the book with all your writer friends.  More at the Smashwords blog.  A big thanks to my beta readers who provided feedback, all of whom are credited in the book (if you emailed me feedback and I missed it, let me know!).

March 22, 2012 - Items:  1.  This week we've got an interview with romance novelist Ruth Ann Nordin over at the Smashwords blog.  She speaks about the importance of patience and perseverence, and above all, writing because you love to write.  She's one of an increasing number of authors who now earn more through the Smashwords distribution network than they earn through Amazon.  She shares her numbers.  2.  FREE ISBNs are available again!

March 15, 2012 - Items:  1.  We have an interview by David Weir at the Smashwords blog with best-selling erotica author, Selena Kitt. Even if you don't read or write erotica, she provides a facinating peek into this enormously popular yet controversial genre.  Next week we'll have an interview with best-selling romance author, Ruth Ann Nordin.  2.  We've been making multiple updates to the Smashwords Dashboard.  The underlying code that communicates the status of a book (pending review, awaiting modification, etc.) is being completely rewritten to eliminate a series of recent bugs that caused the Dashboard and Channel Manager to incorrectly label the book's Premium Catalog status.  The glitch didn't affect distribution, but it was understandably unnerving to many.  3. Today we introduced a much-requested "Are you sure?" question that displays if you click the unpublish button.  In the past, many authors accidentally unpublished their books by clicking the wrong link.  4.  Reminder:  If a Smashwords retailer is listing your book incorrectly, view our FAQ on how to correct retailer errors.  5.  Reminder II:  Although I try to make myself accessible to all Smashwords authors, and I try to personally respond to every email, I receive over 500 emails every day and I invariably miss many.  As much as I want to help everyone, please don't contact me for support inquiries.  Instead, contact the support team by clicking the "?" question mark button. They're backlogged now, so it make take several days for them to respond. They do respond to everyone.  When you contact them via the "?" question mark button, your account information is attached to the email, which makes it faster for us to respond to your questions or concerns.  If you have a question about a particular title, please help us by providing a hyperlink to your book at Smashwords.  If your inquiry involves your book at one of our retailers (see #4 above), remember to send us hyperlinks to the retailer's listing of your book.  And above all, please read our helpful FAQ before you contact us.  Most questions are answered there, including questions you haven't even thought to ask yet.  Thanks!  6.  When we display ISBNs, we no longer display the hyphens.  This is because the hyphens are superfluous, the retailers don't use the hyphens, and for some reason (for which I'm not qualified to explain because I don't understand the reason myself), hyphens generate about 50 times more database load than a simple number.  We're always looking for opportunities to make the site faster.  It's been really zippy in recent months, even though we're achieving record traffic each month. Kudos to our engineering team!

March 13, 2012 - Two items:  1. EOPCS (end of PayPal censorship saga) - It's official.  Today's a very good day for indies.  Indies stood up, spoke with common purpose, and together we moved mountains.  More in the Smashwords Blog.  Now, I look forward to some sleep followed by getting back to business.  2.  This Friday and Saturday I'm in Witchita, Kansas for the KWA Scene conference.   Next Tuesday, I'm speaking in Monterey, CA at the Central Coast California Writers Club. 

March 12, 2012 - PayPal update:  I met with PayPal this afternoon at their office in San Jose.  They will soon announce revised content policies that I expect will please the Smashwords community.  Effective immediately, we are returning our Terms of Service to back to its pre-February 24 state.  Beyond that, our friends at PayPal have asked me to hold off sharing additional details until they've had a chance to finalize their new policies. Thank you for your patience and support during this crazy last few weeks.

March 12, 2012 - Items:  1.  We ran out of FREE ISBNs today.  A new batch of 50,000 have been ordered so as soon as we receive them, we'll make them available from your ISBN Manager screen.  2. Many authors (including myself!) were surprised to look at their Dashboards this weekend and see that previously approved titles were suddenly listed as "Pending Approval."  If you click through on the link, however, you'll see the true status of the book.  Rather than patch the bug with bubblegum, the tech team is rewriting the underlying code.  There are also cases where books appear as if they've been rejected from the Premium Catalog, but the notes field is blank.  In both cases, this is simply an error of labeling.  The actual status of the book hasn't changed, and this will not impact your distribution.  Sorry for the confusion!

March 11, 2012 - Two items.  1.  Censorship - A representative from Visa has strongly denied they have pressured PayPal to censor legal fiction.  Read the letter the here. Now it's time for Mastercard, American Express, Discover and the major banks to speak out again censorship as well.  As previously mentioned in my dispatches (see PayPal #1, #2, #3, #4 in Press Room), PayPal communicated to us that their policies were necessary to maintain compliance with the credit cards and banks upon which PayPal's services depend.  If we can get these companies to back away from censorship of legal fiction, this will give PayPal the room it needs to update their policies.   2.  Smashwords Premium Catalog status.  A new bug is causing the Dashboard to incorrectly identify the status of a book.  Several authors have reported that their previously-approved titles suddenly appear as "Pending Review."  Investigating...

March 8, 2012 - PayPal today made what I believe is their first public written statement regarding the censorship saga, here:  https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2012/03/paypals-acceptable-use-policy-on-sale-of-certain-erotica/   I read it four or five times.  My overall sense is that PayPal is doing their best to responsibly and carefully re-evaluate PayPal content policies that have been in place for many years - content policies that probably could not have anticipated the rise of self-publishing, the rise of indie ebooks (the rise of Smashwords and its authors and publishers!), or the incredible explosion of content availability, diversity and choice enabled by the indie ebook revolution.  Prior to this indie ebook revolution, books not selected for publication and distribution by publishers had limited commercial outlet.  Long story made short, I'm cautiously encouraged by PayPal's statements.  We're not yet where we want to be (we want no censorship of legal fiction), but I sense we're a lot closer now than if we had simply packed up our marbles, flipped 'em the bird and quit PayPal for an alternative as many encouraged us to do.  I think their statements today give them the flexibility to do the right thing.  They say they understand many people believe PayPal is moralizing and restricting free speech (this is a reasonable conclusion for reasonable people to reach based on PayPal's actions up until two weeks ago), and they seek to assure everyone that is not the case (now the onus is on PayPal to show you, rather than tell you).  Possibly, I'm reading too much between the lines of their carefully worded post.  Time will tell.  In the meantime, please continue doing your part to move this campaign forward.  Tweet, Facebook, blog.  Call your credit card company, or the bank issuing your credit card, and tell them you want them out of the business of censoring legal fiction.  If you haven't done so already, also be sure to add your name to the EFF petition.  The blog post by PayPal today has a comments section, but it doesn't appear to accept comments.

March 7, 2012 - Censorship update items.  1.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) posted an action letter at their web site.  Multiple new organizations have signed on in support of EFF's call on PayPal to prevent the censorship of ebooks, including the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild, Feminists for Free Expression, ACLU of Northern California, Internet Archive and several others.  All that's missing is your name.  CLICK HERE to read the letter and send it to PayPal and encourage your friends to do the same.  2.  Major media began picking up on the story today, starting with a story from Publishers Weekly and followed soon after by Reuters, Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal and CNET.  3.  Smashwords author LC Cooper complied some interesting research that analyzes some of the "objectionable" content on eBay, PayPal's parent.  View it here.

March 5, 2012 - This afternoon, we started sending out an email to hundreds of thousands of registered Smashwords members.  The email went primarily to customers to promote Read an Ebook Week and update customers on the PayPal situation (authors/publishers were not included in the mailing because you received substantially the same update a couple days ago.  Archived in the Press Room. Mentioned in the email is a book that represents the best $.99 you can spend anywhere - a parody on the PayPal drama titled, Two People Having Sex.  Brilliant brilliant.  Buy it.

March 4, 2012 - Tidbits.  1.  Randolph Lalonde is profiled at the Smashwords blog today.  He's got the #1 bestseller in the Smashwords store with The Expendable Few, the latest in his super-popular Spinward Fringe series of sci-fi soap opera novels.  2.  Good story in the Sunday issue of The Independent, a large U.K. newspaper.  Two Smashwords authors are quoted - Andrea Juillerat-Olvera and Vella Munn.  3.  Read an Ebook Week kicked off today. 10 hours in, we're seeing some great sales volume.  Might be an all-time record sales day.  There was a glitch in the catalog page that was causing it to not correctly display the books by discount categories.  Investigating and will fix.  The coupons appear correctly on your book pages.  Now fixed.  When you promote your participating books, link directly to either your author page or your books page so readers aren't distracted by all the other great participating books.  4. The Atlantic has a story titled, Digital Self Publishing: Should Publishers be Worried.  I commented.  If you'd like to share your own experience, chime in.  Be polite.

March 2, 2012 - Evening update.  A Smashwords author/publisher update email is now bouncing its way through the Internet on the way to your inbox.  It notifies all authors of the Baker & Taylor news, prompts people to enroll their books in the Read an Ebook Week promotion that begins Sunday, and provides an update to the latest developments in the PayPal case.  You'll find an archived version of it in the Press Room.

March 2, 2012 - Smashwords today announced a two-part distribution agreement with Baker & Taylor that will expand distribution of Smashwords ebooks to the Blio e-reading app and online store (reaches millions of devices) as well distribution to public libraries via Baker & Taylor's Access360 library platform.  The Blio e-reading app comes pre-installed on millions of personal computers from major manufacturers.  This is also our first full foray into the public library market.  The Access360 platform was launched last year and is now being rolled out to several libraries.  More at the Smashwords Blog. If for some reason you don't want your books distributed to Baker & Taylor, you've got until Monday to opt out.  I don't recommend opting out.  We always give you at least 48 hours advance notice before activating your books at a new channel.  Both Blio and Access360 are relatively new, so I would expect low sales at first.  Remember, every incremental sale represents a sale you would not have earned otherwise. 

March 1, 2012 - Censorship update:  1.  My thanks to all of who who have written in to support us as we try to work in good faith with PayPal to reach a better outcome. Your kind words of encouragement mean a lot especially after the weekend of hate.  2.  Wow, I don't know how I missed this until this morning:  The Electronic Frontier Foundation blogged about our case yesterday.  I'll have a conversation with them tomorrow.  I look forward to brainstorming how we can work together toward common cause.

February 28, 2012 - Multiple items (updated):  1.  You can now enroll in our annual Read an Ebook Week promotion.  Enroll on the home page.  The sale kicks off March 4.  It's only one of two regular sales we do each year (the other is the annual Summer/Winter sale in July).  Previous sales have been known to crash the Smashwords web site from the flood of customers.  Enroll today and then do your part to help celebrate the joy of ebooks!   2.  We kicked off the first in a new author profile serices at the Smashwords blog featuring an interview with Shayne Parkinson, a best-selling Smashwords author from New Zealand who writes historical fiction.  The interviews are conducted by David Weir, a veteran reporter who previously has written for The Economist, The New York Times and Rolling Stone Magazine.  You might wonder, how can you be considered for an interview?  Unfortunately, we're not considering nominations or pitches at this time.  We hope to make this a weekly series, and even if we manage to 52 interviews over the next year, we'll only be able to interview about one in one thousand of our authors.  If you have a favorite author at Smashwords, consider interviewing them for your blog and then share the interview over at the official Smashwords Facebook page, which gets thousands of visitors each month.  It's a great way to support your fellow indies.  3.  Censorship update.  I've read that various petitions are popping up, but so far have only found this one at Change.org: http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-censorship-2

February 27, 2012 - Censorship update.  I had another call with PayPal this morning, and as a result of that conversation I extended the deadline (previously set for tonight) by which authors, publishers and agents should voluntarily remove content that no longer fits the PayPal guidelines.  When there's a new deadline, I'll communicate it here and via email.  

My dialogue is continuing with them as I seek to achieve a less onerous, more sensible result.  Today, they hinted at a willingness to consider a more relaxed definition of prohibited content as [I'm somewhat paraphrasing], "books for which rape, bestiality and incest are the major theme.  If rape, bestiality and incest are incidental plot points, then that content might be allowable."  This is a significant clarification in my ongoing attempt to delineate the gray areas and push back the onerous, unfair and restrictive definitions as they now stand.  It's an opening, but not the final word from PayPal.  It also opens up new gray area.  How does one judge whether incidents of the taboo subjects are incidental instances or major themes?  Where does one draw the line?  We agreed our discussion will continue, and they sought to assure me our services will not be cut off as we continue our discussions.  Smashwords and myself particularly have take a lot of heat over the past few days for our willingness to work with PayPal.  If authors don't agree with our approach, they have other options.  I want all our authors to know that we're working on your behalf.  We may not get the result you want, but we're working for you.  I just emailed out a new update to all Smashwords erotica authors, publishers and agents.  You can find an archived version in the press room, along with information about where we go from here and how you can help.

February 26, 2012 - The censorship saga continues.  TechCrunch picked up on the story today.  I've spent all weekend doing my best to personally reply to those who are both attacking us and thanking us.  There's not much in between.  The flood of emails has been overwhelming.  One angry author wrote me on Facebook to inform me she is now a former Smashwords author now that we have "caved in to PayPal's policies."  I'll share my response here so you know where my head is at:  "Hello,  . We have of course given very serious thought. I'm sorry to learn of your decision. We are not happy with what is happening. As I mentioned in my letter, it marks a dark hour for free speech and the rights of writers and readers to explore their own imaginations. I did not make the decision lightly, and those who attack us for this decision have no idea how I have lobbied on their behalf over the last week. It's not so simple to just unplug PayPal. Their policy originates with the banks and credit card companies that power them, and if we want to continue accepting credit cards either with PayPal or any other payment provider, we need to understand from where this originates. I'll continue to work on behalf of all our authors to stand up against this, but I'm unwilling to martyr our business for the sake of one day's battle. We live to continue the fight on another day."

Februaru 24. 2012 - Special update:  We modified our Terms of Service tonight to clarify our policies related to bestiality, rape and incest in erotica.  This move was forced by PayPal, the payment processor that drives transactions at Smashwords.com, and that we use to pay our authors/publishers.   Although this news may come as sudden, I've been in conversation with them all week about it, trying to strike a reasonable middle ground.  The folks at PayPal have listened, and they support our mission, but they're simply unable to allow certain types of content to be transacted through their payment processing platform.  All authors, publishers and agents who have published erotica at Smashwords received an email notice.  I also posted the email publicly in our Press Room.  The slipperly slope is indeed slipperly.  Let's hope the slippage is done and this can be the end of it.  If you publish erotica under themes of rape, bestiality or incest, please read the new policies carefully, and unpublish/archive books that no longer meet our Terms of Service.

February 24, 2012 - Save the date.  On Monday, I'm the guest on a live 60-minute teleconference with Florrie Binford Kichler of the IBPA (Independent Book Publishers Assn.).  The call is free.  Topic:  Ebook Publishing Best Practices.  Register here to attend:  http://www.ibpa-online.org/conferencecall.aspx  Speaking of best practices, I'm almost finished with my next book.  The previous working title was The Seven Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success.  Now that I'm up to about 25 secrets, the title is simply, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success.  It's all about best practices to help you reach more readers with your words.  The best practices I share were all inspired by my observations of Smashwords authors and publishers.  Want to be a beta reader?  Stay tuned to this space.  I'll post information here at Site Updates about how you can be the first to read it.  Your feedback will guide my final revision before I release it for public consumption. 

February 19, 2012 - Two items.  1.  It's the last day of the San Francisco Writers Conference.  It's been great fun meeting with so many current and future Smashwords authors.  I'm doing an "Introduction to Ebooks" primer this morning followed by a two hour panel moderated by the super-awesome Carla King.  2.  NPR did a story today on how ebooks are democratizing the world of publishing. Give it a listen and Tweet it/Facebook it/share it with a friend!  Listen to it here.  

February 17, 2012 - Four items.  1.  We discovered a new bug in Meatgrinder that was introduced during the recovery from the Slicehost/Rackspace outage.  The bug caused some new epub files created after February 14 to not include embedded cover images in the epub and mobi files.  The cause was identified and repaired today.  We're now in the process of regrinding all 2,200 affected books.  This will not affect Premium review status or anything else, though you will notice that the "date last updated" will reflect today or tomorrow.  This is one cool advantage of Meatgrinder.  2,200 files automatically repaired with no need for affected authors to lift a finger.   2.  Greetings from the first day of The San Francisco Writers Conference, which goes through Sunday.  I'm on several panels and then will do an ebook publishing primer Sunday morning.  Lots of good sessions today.  Dan Poynter gave a great talk on self-publishing where he shared a great marketing tip:  Sign up for multiple Google Alerts on keywords and genre categories related to your writing so you can identify bloggers who might represent publicity opportunities for you (guest posts and book reviews).  After his talk, I sat down with Dan to learn more about his second annual Global EBook Awards.  The deadline for award entry is coming up - March 10.  There's a $79.00 entry fee.   They don't automatically accept all applications.  The awards are only open to authors with books at Smashwords because they're using the Smashwords Coupon feature (you supply them the coupon) so their reviewers can obtain a copy.   They also want to see that the book has complete metadata (title, description, etc.) and a good cover.  After the book is accepted for consideration, the author receives a 6-week mini-course in the form of once-weekly emails covering six foundational topics related to self-publishing, marketing and promotion.  Think of the mini-course as an unexpected bonus.  To learn more about Dan's Global Ebook Awards, visit http://globalebookawards.com (NOTE:  Smashwords does not earn a referral fee if you sign up.  I generally never mention paid marketing opportunities but I make an exception for Dan because he's always been a great friend of Smashwords and all self-published authors.  For many of us, myself included, our first exposure to self-publishing was Dan's classic book, Dan Poynter's Self-Publishing Manual).    3.  If you want to follow the Twitterstream for the San Francisco Writers Conference, click here for the Twitter hashtag SFWC2012.   4.  Just two days ago I was at the Tools of Change conference in New York.  You can watch several of the keynotes and presentations for free on YouTube here.  One of my favorites was Clay Johnson's, "Is SEO Killing America?"  Access many of the Powerpoints here.

February 14, 2012 - Systems have been restored after a major outtage caused by our hosting provider Slicehost, a division of Rackspace (one of the largest hosting providers in the US).  The outtage caused the Smashwords site to become inaccessible.  The site has been unstable since restoration.  Meatgrinder is offline.  No need to contact the support team about the glitches.

February 9, 2012 - Updated.     1.  1099 tax forms went out today via email to all US authors/publishers who received over $10 in payments.  Since we don't do withholdings for US authors/publishers, the amount in your form will match the payments you received from us in 2011.  You'll receive an email with a subject line of "ShareFile Login Information" with instructions on how to view and print out the 1099.  Unfortunately, our service provider used an incorrect subject line and body text, so as a result it has caused some authors to express concern about the legitimacy of the emails.  Yes, it's a trusted service. It's the same service we used last year, though last year these forms were sent out via snail mail, and only to people who earned over $600.   Please accept our apologies for the confusion.  The emails they sent out were ugly, embarassing and confusing.  We will develop our own solution for these next year.   1042 forms will go out in the next couple weeks for authors/publishers outside the U.S.      2.  Florian Rochat, a journalist, writer and Smashwords author living in Switzerland, published an interview with me today in French.  We spoke extensively about how indie ebook publishing creates unprecedented opportunities for European writers to reach a worldwide market.  I also talked about how the European market will develop over the next few years.  Read the interview in French here.  If you have friends who read French, please share a link with them.  Click here to read the interview in English courtesy of Google's English language translation.  If you use the Google Chrome browser (I'm starting to love this browser!), it will automatically translate the interview into any language.  The English-language translation is surprisingly accurate and readable.  My thanks to Florian for helping to spread the word about Smashwords to a global market. 

February 4, 2012 - Two items.  1.  A different look at copyright.  When author Penelope Farmer discovered a huge rock band had written a song inspired by her novel, and the song's title and even full phrases were lifted without permission, she was understandably upset.  But then something unexpected happened.  Read the story in the Smashwords Blog.     2.  Bug.  We have a relatively new bug affecting some authors that causes the Dashboard to state your book "Needs submission" yet when you click through to the Premium Status page, it tells you the book is Pending Approval.  We've been wrangling with the bug for a few days and will continue wrangling until it's fixed. 

January 31, 2012 (updated) - Payments went out tonight via PayPal.  As a refresher (since we've already received dozens of questions asking how payments work), here's the *** FAQ on payments.***  Please review it before contacting the support team.  Congrats to everyone, and thanks for your continued support and partnership. Update Feb. 1: Payments have been recorded in your Sales and Payments Report, and Quarterly Earnings Mapping Report. 

January 24, 2012 - Additional new discovery features added today.  You can now sort by Unit Best Sellers (most units sold carrying a price) in addition to Best Sellers (dollar volume).  We also added new price range filters, and new book length filters (Short, Medium, Full and Epic).  Also effective tonight, books uploaded without covers no longer appear on the home page, although they will appear elsewhere on the site.  The special beta testing email address we set up for the gifting feature is still active, so please send feedback or bug reports related to these new discovery featuers to gift@smashwords.com.

January 22, 2012 - Three items: New staffing, check your payments settings, bestseller list revamped.  1.  Please join me in welcoming Valerie as the newest member of our support team, joining Raylene and Angela.  These are the great people you reach when you click the "?" question mark button.  Our support team is backlogged, so please expect delays as we slowly eliminate the backlog and work toward faster response times.  To help us help you, please carefully review our FAQ before you contact the support team.   2. Record Q4 payments should go the last day of this January.  Reminder:  Please click to your payee profile and make sure your information is correct and you're set to be paid.  Each quarter, authors miss payments because the mailing address or paypal address is incorrect.  We want to pay you!  Click here to review payment policies in the FAQ.  3.  In my annual year-in-review, I mentioned how we'll improve discovery in 2012 for the Smashwords retail site.  Already this month, we've made two important improvements.  We upgraded our categorization options to the support all the latest BISAC codes, and last week we revamped our bestseller algorithms.  The bestseller lists are now based on actual dollar sales and can no longer be gamed by free coupon redemptions.  The new lists provide customers a more honest, accurate and trustworthy representation of how their fellow readers are voting with their dollars. More changes coming this week, all designed to help readers discover books they'll enjoy reading.

January 19, 2012 - SOPA and PIPA got a good spanking yesterday as Internet users spoke out in force against these ill-conceived attempts to protect intellectual property.  There are a lot of good stories out today on the topic.  Click here for a good analysis by Clay Shirky on why SOPA/PIPA were so dangerous, and why we'll see more attempts at the same.  His view is that SOPA/PIPA are really about getting people back on the couch to consume Big Corporate Media content as opposed to allowing you to participate in social media (or blogging, or indie publishing, etc.) as a content creator.

January 18, 2012 - Kobo reported December sales results to us today.  December sales up 159% over November, likely a combination of strong Kobo holiday results and thousands of new Smashwords titles arriving at Kobo as part of Operation Floodgates.  Cool beans, and congrats all.

January 13, 2012 - Meatgrinder got backed up the last three days due to an unusual (but welcome) spike in uploads and some web server gremlins.  We upgraded capacity 67% and now she's merrily chopping away at the conversion backlog.  If all goes well, conversions should be faster than ever within 24 hours.  Happy weekend all. Update: We've now doubled it! Update 9:50pm PST: The Meatgrinders have already caught up with the backlog!  Update 10:10pm PST:  Over 414 new titles added today.  I think that's is an all time record.  Welcome new Smashwords authors and publishers!

January 11, 2012 - The good folks at Dan Poynter's Global eBook Awards are preparing their second annual awards nomination process, and they're looking for volunteer judges who would like to read ebooks in any of the 76 award categories.  In exchange for your volunteer contribution, they will feature you as a judge and promote a link to your website, blog or Smashwords author page.  They also will provide judge logos if you wish to promote your participation.  Although your participation in the judging is public (unless you choose to remain anonymous), you will not be identified as the judge of particular titles.  To apply, visit their application page for judges.  Smashwords is a sponsor of the Dan Poynter Global eBook Awards, but we do not receive compensation from them.  To learn more about Dan Poynter, see my interview with him at the Smashwords blog (the interview is three years old but his comments are just as prophetic and timely today as they were then).

January 9, 2012 - Congrats to Smashwords author Darcie Chan, author of The Mill River Recluse, who today hit #1 in the Apple iBookstore.  That's right, the #1 best-seller.  More at the Smashwords blog.

January 7, 2012 - (UPDATE: This is no longer available) Widgets, buttons!  An independent software developer has created some cool widgets for use by Smashwords authors.  These widgets make it easier for you promote your Smashowords books and author page on your personal blog or web site.  Some of the widgets contain affiliate links so the developer can earn an affiliate commission.  I think this is *really cool.*  I like the idea that independent developers might create useful tools for the Smashwords community, and in return they can earn a small cut (The affiliate earns 11% net, the author earns 70.5% net).  If you're a software developer, you might consider the same, either with or without the affiliate links.  If you're a Smashwords author or publisher, give the widgets and test spin and provide the developer your feedback.  

January 4, 2012 - Ebook buyers prefer full length.  Smashwords author Gene Grossman emailed me a word count analysis of the top 20 Smashwords ebook performers at Barnes & Noble from my December 27 blog post and found they averaged about 105,000 words each.