Get smashed

If you are an avid reader of the e-book variety, one of the cooler websites out there is smashwords.com. It's filled with books from independent authors, many of whom have gone on to be best-sellers, as well as other shlubs like me.

There's no registration cost, tons of variety and you don't get those annoying emails filling up your mailbox every week. So far they have over 350,000 books published, with over 50,000 of them free.

They run the gamut from “how to” books on business to compilations of poetry to vampire erotica and regular old mysteries and romance. The talent level runs the gamut as well, just like at Amazon, with some authors better than others.

As for me, I use it for business and pleasure. I distribute my e-book versions there because of its ease of use, and the fact that they then convert my books and distribute them to Barnes & Noble, Apple, Sony and several other book sites and libraries. So in addition to being available for sale on Smashwords, they are made available everywhere else, except Amazon, though you can download it to a Kindle at Smashwords. It distributes in all formats, even just to read on your laptop. Pretty slick, and it's worked well for my needs. Another feature I like is that the author sets the price and gets a much-higher royalty than at the big stores.

I’ve sold hundreds of books there, with almost 4,000 downloads of my e-books and free short stories. So Stephen King and John Grisham aren’t losing sleep about ol’ Haugen cutting into their business, but it’s also not like I threw a party and nobody showed up. Also, that’s just on Smashwords and doesn’t include Amazon and Kindle and direct sales to drunks at the Hermosa Bar.

The site was started by a dude named Mark Coker in 2008. I got on board in 2011. It's well worth checking out and it has a default "safe search" if you don't want to be caught looking at book covers of werewolves in thong bikinis and such. (You don't have that problem with my books ... yet.) And if you want to be able to look at the more risque romance novels, you can turn the safe-search option off, or so I hear. Check it out.

From Wiki:

Coker, a former Silicon Valley publicist, started Smashwords in 2008 with the lofty goal of using technology to democratize publishing - allowing writers to appeal directly to readers without having to deal with gatekeepers such as agents and editors.

In keeping with this mission, Smashwords applies no editorial screening. The only e-books Coker refuses to distribute are ones that contain plagiarism, illegal content or incitement to racism, homophobia or violence.