Q: Can I upload a work in progress?

No. Smashwords is only for books that are complete and ready for public consumption.

Q: Can I upload only a sample chapter or two?

No. We only publish complete books. If your story doesn’t represent a complete reading experience, you can’t publish it at Smashwords, because our customers expect a complete story. However, when you upload your complete book, you can designate a certain percentage of the book, starting from the beginning, that you make available as a free sample.

Q: Can I upload public domain books?

No. We do not publish public domain books.

Q: Can I upload “Private Label Rights” articles to Smashwords?

No, never. If you do this, we will delete your account without warning and you will forfeit all earnings. We have a zero tolerance policy on PLR. If you’re not the 100% author of the book, or the sole exclusive distributor or publisher, we don’t want it. Learn more in my guest blog post for Writer Beware at http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2010/03/guest-blog-post-scam-of-private-label.html

Q: Can I take my Smashwords ebook conversions and sell them elsewhere?

No. The ebook conversions at Smashwords are not to be re-distributed or re-sold elsewhere, per the Terms of Service. Why? Our free conversion services, for which we have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to build and continually improve, are provided to authors and publishers as a benefit of our ebook distribution services. It's bad karma to take the files we create and upload or sell them elsewhere. Of course, you can do anything you want with the Microsoft Word source file you create. Just as our books are DRM-free and you're trusting readers to honor your copyright, we trust our authors and publishers to respect our terms of service.