From author and TPV regular M. C. A. Hogarth:

The bad news: in one month I’ll be shutting down my Smashwords account. If you’ve bought something from me there, now’s the time to make a back-up!

The good news: If you have wanted to buy my work from Kobo or the Apple store, my work is shipping there in big clumps. I think most of my work’s already made it to Kobo, in fact.

But Jaguar, Why? Several of you have asked this question. The answer, in brief: I hate the Smashwords interface. I hate that they are fussy about uploaded documents and have mysterious/inexplicable delays shipping my work to retailers. I hate their quarterly payment schedule. I despise their customer service. Or lack of thereof. And I dislike that they have this quasi-retailer face (more about that later).

Some people have had good experiences with Smashwords. My experience with them, from the moment I started using them, has been a struggle. I have never thought ‘oh, right, I’ll just get this to Smashwords, no problem.’ It’s always ‘Oh, LORD, not the Smashwords part of this process. Why can’t it be as easy as NookPress or the Kindle dashboard??’

. . . .

Some people have asked why I want to leave at all? Can’t I just keep the account open and stop uploading things there? And the answer to that is ‘sure, I could,’ but it creates far too much accounting overhead. As long as I have a Smashwords account, I need to continue keeping tabs on whether they’re paying me on time, whether I’ve gotten a W-4, what’s there that’s not somewhere else, etc. Not to mention baseline computer stuff like ‘has anyone hacked my password,’ ‘has Smashwords changed their terms of service,’ etc. They also have this habit of automatically opting you into new distribution channels, so I’d have to keep track of that.

Finally, I like to update/tidy up my older books as I have the time. Keeping them on Smashwords gives me one more place I have to upload to. I just don’t have the time anymore. I probably never did, I was just better at ignoring my overtaxed schedule’s cries for mercy.

Link to the rest at M. C. A. Hogarth and thanks to Liana for the tip.

Here’s a link to M.C.A. Hogarth’s books

PG has to admit that he long ago gave up on Smashwords because of many of the reasons mentioned. Policy questions like quarterly payments can be a judgement call, but the thing he disliked the most was the crude author interface and the Meatgrinder. It just never seemed very technically sophisticated to him.

It’s really tough to compete against Amazon, but priority one should be to come close to Amazon’s sophistication on the screen.

From Digital Book World:

Mark Coker, the CEO of self-publishing distribution business Smashwords and an indie author himself, is rooting for Hachette in its current business dispute with Amazon.

Unlike many indie authors, Coker is rooting for Hachette to prevail against Amazon because he believes that a Hachette loss now would make it harder for big publishers to eventually switch to the old “agency” model of selling ebooks (where the publisher sets the price and takes 70% of the proceeds) and that the agency model is good for indie authors.

. . . .

Coker believes that the agency model:

1. Has allowed indie authors to price ebooks lower to consumers, creating a favorable price comparison with traditionally published ebooks, while still earning a large royalty.

. . . .

3. Benefits authors (giving them more sales channels to pursue), publishers (same as authors) and readers (who get more choice when it comes to how and where they purchase ebooks).

Link to the rest at Digital Book World and thanks to Loretta for the tip.

From The Smashwords Blog:

[W]e examined aggregated retail and library sales data of Smashwords books and then crunched the numbers based on various quantifiable characteristics of the book. 

For this year’s survey, we examined over $25 million in customer purchases  aggregated across Smashwords retailers including Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, the Smashwords.com store, Sony (now closed), Diesel (closed), Oyster, Scribd, Kobo, public libraries and others.

. . . .

The goal of the survey is to identify Viral Catalysts. 

. . . .

The underlying premise of my Viral Catalyst concept is that Viral Catalysts help drive reader word of mouth because they increase reader satisfaction.  Although every author would love to learn the single secret fast track magic bullet to bestsellerdom, there is no such single secret.  Ebook bestsellers become bestsellers based on multiple Viral Catalyst factors starting with book quality but also influenced by cover design, breath of distribution, pricing, marketing, luck and myriad other factors.  In the Smashwords Survey, we seek to identify potential Viral Catalysts that are quantifiable and therefore measurable.  

. . . .

The ebook sales power curve is extremely steep - This isn’t a surprise, but for the first time we share some numbers along the curve (see the slides in the Series section).  A few titles sell fabulously well and most sell poorly.  An incremental increase is sales rank is usually matched by an exponential increase is sales.  Despite the steep sales curve, a lot of Smashwords authors are earning good income from their books.  Your opportunity as a Smashwords author or publisher is to do those things that give you an incremental advantage so you can climb in sales rank.

Readers prefer longer ebooks - We observed this in the prior surveys.  Longer books sell better, and when you view the data through the prism of the power curve, it becomes clear why longer books give authors such a huge sales advantage.
Pricing - The highest earning indie authors are utilizing lower average prices than the authors who earn less, but this doesn’t mean that ultra-low prices such as $.99 are the path to riches.  $2.99 and $3.99 are the sweet spots for most of the bestsellers.

. . . .

Series yield sales advantage - For the first time, we examine the performance of series books.  This new analysis is enabled by the fact that in September we launched Smashwords Series Manager which allows us to capture enhanced metadata on series.  The results are interesting!  Series books outsell standalone books.  

Link to the rest at Smashwords and thanks to Deb for the tip.

From the Smashwords Blog:

Amazon and Hachette Book Group are locked in an epic battle over the future of ebook publishing.

The outcome of this dispute will have permanent ramifications for publishers and indie authors alike.

On one side you have Hachette, the fourth largest trade book publisher. Hachette earns over 1/3 of its US sales from ebooks. Hachette wants agency terms for its books. Hachette wants to control the list price of its books and earn 70% list from each sale. Smashwords announced agency terms with our retail partners in 2010.

On the other side is Amazon, a fierce opponent to agency pricing. Amazon wants the ability to discount books, and to enable greater discounting Amazon wants a larger percentage of the publisher’s pie. A story out Friday by Jeffrey Trachtenburg of the Wall Street Journal confirms Amazon is seeking to reduce the percentage paid to publishers. Amazon is seeking to weaken or abolish the agency model.

. . . .

In an attempt to force Hachette to capitulate, Amazon is employing a shock and awe campaign of scorched earth retribution against Hachette. According to multiple press reports, Amazon has increased Hachette’s book prices to its customers then turned its automated merchandising algorithms into attack dogs that encourage customers to consider “similar items at a lower price”; Amazon is telling customers Hachette print books are out of stock; and is denying Hachette the ability to list preorders. For a company that prides itself in customer service, these are all customer-unfriendly moves. These actions also punish Hachette authors, who through no fault of their own will suffer reduced sales at Amazon.

For the last four years, indie ebook authors have endured similar iron-fisted policy enforcement and lost earnings with Amazon’s KDP price-matching, even when Amazon knew the out-of-sync ebook prices were not the author’s intention or fault. Amazon plays business like war. Overwhelming force pushes weak hands to surrender and comply.

. . . .

Amazon is playing a game of divide and conquer. Amazon knows if they weaken or cancel their agency agreement with Hachette that the other publishers will have less leverage to hold the line on agency. And whatever concessions Amazon gets, other retailers will want the same, further undermining the ability of publishers to control their prices or maintain their profits.

. . . .

In 2014, publishers are more disposable to Amazon than they once were, thanks in part to the rise of indie authorship, and thanks also to better business diversification. Amazon’s business is no longer as dependent upon books as it once was. They sell everything under the sun, from diapers to shoes to cloud services to groceries to media devices.

Books represent only one of hundreds of layers of icing on the cake of Amazon. Amazon can lose money on books while still operating a profitable business.

Pure-play book retailers – Kobo and Barnes & Noble for example, must earn money from book sales. Unlike Amazon, they don’t have the financial resources to sell books at a loss forever. Publishers must also earn money from book sales, otherwise they can’t keep the lights on.

Link to the rest at Smashwords Blog and thanks to Bill for the tip.

From a Smashwords press release via Digital Book World:

Smashwords and OverDrive in Worldwide eBook Distribution Agreement

200,000 eBooks from 80,000 indie authors and small independent presses
to be available through OverDrive’s global library network

OverDrive, the world’s largest library eBook platform, and Smashwords, the world’s largest distributor of self-published eBooks, today announced that 200,000 self-published titles will be available for public libraries in OverDrive’s global network.

. . . .

To streamline collection development, OverDrive and Smashwords are creating curated lists of Smashwords bestsellers and popular genres. Libraries will soon have the option, for example, to purchase the complete catalog of the top 100, 500 or 1,000 bestselling Smashwords authors. Smashwords will also produce curated buy-lists by genre, such
as the top 1,000 bestselling Smashwords romance titles, or the top 1,000 bestselling mysteries and thrillers.

Under this agreement, readers may borrow each eBook an unlimited number of times on a one copy/one user model on a perpetual basis. Alternately, patrons can purchase the eBook from the library website and support their local libraries through OverDrive’s “Buy It Now” feature.

Link to the rest at Digital Book World and thanks to Caro and others for the tip.

From the Smashwords blog:

Each month, Publishers Weekly publishes the Smashwords Self-Published Ebook Bestseller List.  We report our bestsellers based on dollar sales aggregated across the Smashwords distribution network which includes retailers such as iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, the Smashwords store and others.

The other day I was browsing our February 2014 Smashwords bestseller list at Publishers Weekly and realized that all the top 25 bestsellers were written by women.  Cool beans.

Wondering if this was a fluke, I looked at our December 2013 Smashwords bestseller list at PWand bingo, same thing.  All 25 books were written by women.

Then I looked at the bestseller list for November 2013.   Same thing again.  100% women.

Our ebook bestsellers for October 2013?  You guessed it, 100% women.

. . . .

Why are women dominating the Smashwords bestseller lists, other than the fact that these women are all super-awesome writers?  One likely factor is that romance is the #1 bestselling genre at Smashwords, and romance is overwhelmingly written by women.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  I’m constantly blown away the smarts, savvy and sophistication of romance authors.  These ladies have pioneered many of the ebook publishing and distribution best practices that so many indies take for granted today.

Link to the rest at Smashwords

From Mark Coker via The Huffington Post:

There’s a debate raging about the impact self-published ebooks will have on the book publishing business.

By my estimates, self-published ebooks will account for 50 percent of ebook sales by 2020.

. . . .

On one side of the debate, you have people such as myself who believe all signs point toward indie ebook authors capturing an ever-greater percentage of the book market.

On the other side you have folks who think self publishing represents an insignificant portion of the book market. The naysayers think we indie optimists are delusional.

. . . .

1. Print will decline as a book-reading format – More readers will continue transitioning from print to screens. The transition to screens will be driven by the low prices, selection, exceptional discoverability and instant reading pleasure delivered by ebooks.

. . . .

3. The perceived value of publishers will decline in the eyes of writers – As the importance of print distribution declines, the importance of publishers will decline. Prior to the rise of ebooks, publishing was a print-centric game. Publishers controlled the printing press and the all-important access to retail stores. Print distribution remains an important glue that holds many writers to their traditional publishers. When publisher stickiness decreases, writers will be tempted to explore the indie author camp.

. . . .

8. Writers are discovering the joy of self publishing – If publishers are from Mars, authors are from Venus. They speak different languages and hold different values. The rewards of self publishing transcend the conventional and myopic commercial-metric value systems of publishers. Indie authors are enjoying total creative control, faster time to market, ownership over their publishing future, and the flexibility to innovate and evolve their immortal ebooks which will never go out of print. Indie authors enjoy the freedom to serve their fans as they want to serve them. Icing on the indie author’s cake: Indie ebook authors earn royalty rates four to five times higher than they’d earn from traditional publishers.

Link to the rest at The Huffington Post

From Mark Coker via Publishers Weekly:

With a debate brewing about how much indie authors can, and do, earn from their writing–much of it sparked by a blog post from author Hugh Howey–PW asked Mark Coker, founder of indie publishing platform Smashwords, to offer his two cents. Here is Coker’s take:

The rift between authors and publishers grew more pronounced last week with the release and ensuing controversy surrounding Hugh Howey’s Authorearnings Web site. Critics have accused Howey and his anonymous Data Magician of perpetuating horrible crimes against statistics. Supporters–most of them indie authors and indie author sympathizers – hailed Howey’s conclusions as further evidence that authors no longer need publishers.

The critics of Howey’s data and methodology are missing the point. The thrust of Howey’s conclusions is that indie authors are taking e-book market share from traditional publishers. Whether the indie percentage today is 10% or 50% of the overall e-book market or a particular genre doesn’t matter. It’s not worth arguing. What matters is the directional trend, and the strong social, cultural and economic forces that will propel the trend forward in a direction unfavorable to publishers.

The indie author insurrection has become a revolution that will strip publishers of power they once took for granted.

By every measure of great historical or contemporary revolutions, the indie author revolution is real and gaining strength every day. At the heart of every revolution is growing disparity between haves and have-nots, abuse of power, and the innate human desire for greater self-determination, freedom, fairness and respect.

. . . .

I’m in the moderate camp. I think the business of Big Publishing is broken, but the people of Big Publishing are not. Although it would be beneficial to my business for big publishers to collapse, it’s not the outcome I desire. I think the world is better served with more publishing options. I want to see more publishers, more self-published authors, more books, more retailers, and more book-loving people earning a living contributing their talent to books and book culture.

For decades, aspiring authors were taught to bow before the altar of Big Publishing. Writers were taught that publishers alone possessed the wisdom to determine if a writer deserved passage through the pearly gates of author heaven. Writers were taught that publishers had an inalienable right to this power, and that this power was for the common good of readers. They were taught rejection made them stronger. They were taught that without a publisher’s blessing, they were a failed writer.

. . . .

As more and more indies achieve commercial success on their own terms, the stigma of self-publishing is evaporating. Indie authors have become the cool kids club. It’s a movement where its members self-identify as indie. It’s a worldwide cultural movement among writers. Indies are regularly hitting all of the most prestigious retailers and news media bestseller lists. Many indies have turned their backs on traditional publishers.

. . . .

One of my favorite moments since launching Smashwords in 2008 was a conversation I had with Donald Maass two years ago at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference. I told Donald I thought he was underestimating the impact self-publishing would have on the publishing industry, and he responded, “and I think you’re delusional.”

Today, the myth of traditional publishing is unraveling. The stigma of traditional publishing is on the rise.

. . . .

Authors are also disappointed by Big Publishing’s misguided foray into vanity publishing with Pearson/Penguin’s 2012 acquisition of Author Solutions, a company known for selling over-priced publishing packages to unsuspecting writers. Multiple publishers have formed sock puppet imprints powered by ASI: Simon & Schuster’s Archway, Penguin Random House’s Partridge Publishing in India, HarperCollins’ Westbow, Hay House’s Balboa Press, Writer’s Digests’ Abbott Press, and Harlequin’s Dellarte Press. These deals with the devil confirmed the worst fears held by indie authors who already questioned if publishers viewed writers as partners or as chattel.

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly and thanks to Paul for the tip.

PG thinks Mark has hit on an explanation for why Big Publishing and its associates have reacted so vehemently over the Author Earnings information. In a former era, they would have blown it off, but this time, it hit a nerve.

All along, they’ve believed they were the cool kids. Tradpub authors swallowed declining advances and dodgy royalty reports from their publishers because they were the cool kids. Underpaid workers in Big Publishing accepted the low wages because when they mentioned they worked for Random House at parties, everybody thought they were cool kids.

Now indie authors, a bunch of losers if there ever was one, are taking away the cool kids brand from traditional publishing. Of course, tradpub is going to give them the mean girls treatment, but it’s not sticking any more.

The geeks have taken over and traditional publishing is looking like the Losers Club.

From TeleRead:

“The big question for B&N is whether there is a profitable ebook and digital content business to be pulled from the mess of Nook,” Purcell concludes. “For too long, the digital content side of the business has been a slave to the device side.” He also cites the falling unit prices of ebooks, which leads to B&N’s huge challenge in rebuilding unit sales.

Purcell sees one of B&N’s key challenges as to “increase its stock of exclusive content (which sounds like an impossible task given Amazon’s attractiveness in this area).” I don’t think he’s understating. Personally, I believe that self-publishing in general, and Kindle Direct Publishing in particular, is having a transformative effect on the publishing industry and book trade far beyond its audience share, which is already substantial enough. And Purcell is essentially saying that it’s not enough to be an online bookseller or ebookstore if you want to be serious competition to Amazon: You need to have your own direct publishing operation as well. Otherwise you’re just not going to have a compelling offering as an alternative.

Well, who does have that? Smashwords. In fact, it’s almost the only entity I can think of offhand that does, at least on so significant a scale. There’s Kobo, of course, but I don’t think anyone expects Kobo to buy the Nook assets. However, if Smashwords wanted to pick up a large chunk of book market real estate that would flesh out the operation and put it on closer to an equal footing with Amazon Kindle, then they could consider them.

Link to the rest at TeleRead

Interesting idea, but a sale of Nook would require that Barnes & Noble, as a public company, disclose the sales price for Nook, a sum which would likely be embarrassingly small. From a public perception standpoint for the larger organization, it might be better for BN to allow Nook to shrivel on the vine.

From Mark Coker on The Huffington Post:

What does 2014 hold in store for ebook authors, publishers and readers? Today I bring you 14 book publishing industry predictions.

. . . .

3. Ebook growth slows - Here comes the hangover. After a decade of exponential growth in ebooks with publishers and indies alike partying like it was 1999, growth is slowing. We all knew this day was coming. Year over year growth of 100 percent to 300 percent a year could not continue forever. The hazard of fast-growing market is that it can mask flaws in business models. It can cause players to misinterpret their success, and the assumptions upon which they credit their success. It can cause successful players to draw false correlations between cause and effect. Who are these players? I’m talking about authors, publishers, retailers, distributors and service providers — all of us. It’s easy to succeed when everything’s growing. It’s when things slow down that your business model is tested. The market is slowing. A normal cyclical shakeout is coming. Rather than fear the shakeout, entrepreneurial players should embrace it. Let it spur you on to become a better, more competitive player in 2014. Players who survive shakeouts usually come out stronger the other end.

4. Competition increases dramatically - With hundreds of thousands of new books published annually, and with retailer catalogs swelling to carry millions of ebook titles, it may come across as no surprise that completion will increase in 2014. Yet in 2014, the competition faced by authors and publishers will increase by an order of magnitude, and will make some players wish it was 2013 again. The ebook publishing playing field, which until recently was significantly tilted in the indies’ favor, has now leveled a bit. Yet indies still enjoy a number of competitive advantages, including faster time to market, greater creative freedom, closer relationships with readers and thus a better understanding of reader desires, higher royalties rates and ultra-low pricing flexibility including FREE.

5. Ebook sales, measured in dollar volume, will decrease in 2014 - Yikes. I said it. The nascent ebook market is likely to experience its first annual downturn in sales as measured in dollar volume. This will be driven by price declines among major publishers and by the slowing transition from print to screens. Although readers will continue migrating from print to screens, the early adopters have adopted and the laggards will shift more slowly. Another driver of the drop is that the overall book market growth has been moribund for several years. As ebooks as a percentage of the overall book market increase, it means the growth of ebooks will become constrained by the growth and/or contraction of the overall book industry. Global sales in developing countries remain one potential bright spot that could mitigate any sales contraction.

. . . .

7. A larger wave of big-name authors will defect to indieville - Multiple market forces will conspire to cause more traditionally published authors to turn their backs on big publishers. Publishers will try to hold the line on their 25 percent net ebook royalty structures, which means big authors will see their royalties suffer as prices drop and as the unit sales advantage of low prices decreases, and as the disadvantage of high prices increases. At the same time, readers will continue to transition from print to ebooks, making the print distribution to physical bookstores less important, and thus weakening the grip big publishers once had on bigger-name authors. Big authors, eager to maximize their net, will feel greater impetus to emigrate to indieville.

Link to the rest at The Huffington Post and thanks to David for the tip.