Mark Coker

I never set out to become an "indie" author. I simply wanted to become a published author. Back in 2005, my wife and I co-wrote Boob Tube, a novel that explores the wild and wacky world of daytime television soap operas. My wife is a former reporter for Soap Opera Weekly magazine. Our dream was to see our novel on the shelf at Barnes & Noble. Even though we were repped by an excellent agent at one of New York's most respected literary agencies, publishers refused to acquire the book because previous soap opera-themed novels had sold poorly.

Yes. It was our agent who suggested we self-publish back in 2007 (he was ahead of his time!). I liked the idea, and had read Dan Poynter's excellent reference, Dan Poynter's Self Publishing Manual, but I realized without the benefit of print distribution - something only a traditional publisher could offer - our self-published print book would go undiscovered and unread. I began to imagine the hundreds of thousands of other writers facing the same dilemma, where traditional publishers had all the power to crush their dreams of publication simply because they didn't see the commercial potential. I began to realize that publishers in the business of selling books, not publishing books. I don't hold this against them. Of course they need to make money to keep the lights on. Yet the value of books to humanity, in my opinion, cannot be measured by dollars alone. If you want to publish a cookbook of your family recipes for the benefit of your children and grand childen, that book in my mind is every bit as valuable as anything put out by New York. I decided that this focus on perceived commercial merit, and the inherent economic inefficiencies of producing, publishing and distributing print books, was threatening the future of books. I felt there needed to be a better way. I decided ebooks might provide the path toward democratized publishing. I thought it would be really cool if there was an ebook self-publishing platform that would make it fast, free and easy to publish an ebook. This was the genesis behind Smashwords. I wanted to create a global publishing platform that would allow *me* to take a chance on every author, at no cost or risk to the author. I wanted to give every writer in the world the freedom and opportunity to publish, and I wanted to give readers the freedom to decide what was worth reading. I believed that if writers were simply given a chance, that the entire world would be surprised by the amazing talent and knowledge locked between the minds and fingertips of ordinary writers around the globe. We launched Smashwords in 2008, and today we help authors publish and distribute over 200,000 titles.