New ebook publishing startup places power in the hands of the author!
One of the great things about ebooks is the potential to place the power of publishing back in the author’s hands. I have always maintained on this blog that digital technology (including the internet, ebooks and even mobile technology) is leveling the playing field for everyone involved.
Thus I was very excited when I came across this press release for a new ebooks self-publishing platform that places publishing power back into the hands of the author. The new startup is called Smashwords and allows authors to easily upload their book (in a variety of formats), chose the price, decide how much of the book can be sampled (up to 99% of the book), and authors receive an 85% royalty on all net sales. But I think the real power of Smashwords is the free marketing tools authors have access to:
The site offers authors free viral marketing tools to build readership, such as precent-based sampling; dedicated pages for author profiles and book profiles; support for embedded YouTube book trailers, author interviews and video blogs; widgets for off-site marketing; reader reviews; and reader "favoriting."
Even if you just love to read and have no plans to publish your own book, Smashwords has plenty of tools for you as well:
For fans of the written word, Smashwords provides an opportunity to discover new voices in literature, poetry and non-fiction. The site offers useful tools for search, discovery, and personal library-building.
Certainly, offering the books directly to readers, thus eliminating the middleman, will keep ebook prices down and allow for more direct communication between writer and reader. This is one thing that mainstream publishing lacks. The process of getting a book published (that is, if you can even sell your book to a large publisher) has become so sterilized there is no sense of community among authors and readers.
So how did Smashwords come about? From reading the article, it looks like the familiar story of someone getting fed up with the traditional publishing process and looking for a better solution:
The inspiration for Smashwords grew out of founder Mark Coker’s frustrations as an aspiring novelist. In 2002, Coker and his wife, Lesleyann, co-authored a roman a clef novel entitled Boob Tube that explores the behind-the-scenes world of daytime television soap operas (Lesleyann is a former reporter for Soap Opera Weekly Magazine). Despite two years of representation from one of New York City’s most respected literary agencies, their agent was unable to land a book deal. Some publishers said they rejected the manuscript because they questioned whether soap opera fans read books.
The last sentence of that quote is particularly disturbing. It’s a good example of a publisher underestimating the potential market for a book by assuming a certain group of people doesn’t read books. While I have never been a fan of soap operas, I can tell you that I know such fans and they also read a lot of books.
The concept for Smashwords is actually pretty simple: Let authors publish whatever they want, and let the reader decide what’s good and what’s not.
It should be noted that Smashwords is only in Beta right now, so they are accepting limited author applications as a way of "testing the waters" before going primetime. I’ll be interested to see how the response is to this new startup as it grows over the next year or so. It’s also a sign of ebooks becoming more mainstream. This is one site to keep your eyes on!
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