Time to get smashed

I’m not an e-book guy. I’ve read one book, maybe parts of two others on my Kindle. But I recognize I’m in the minority on this, kind of like my presidential vote for Darrell Castle. I’m a 1-percenter. I get it.

Many people love their e-readers, and I’m happy for you. So happy for you that I would again like you to take a look at a really cool e-book site called smashwords.com. I got on the site years ago in its inception as a book seller. I have my novels there and some short stories.

There are several great points for you to consider as a reader.

Firstly, the variety. There’s a category for everybody: fiction, non-fiction, essays, poetry, plays. You want travel? Got it. Religion? Yep. Gardening? Uh, huh. Some sexier stuff? Oh, yeah.

Now you aren’t going to find Dean Koontz or JK Rowling hanging out at smashwords. But you might find the NEXT Koontz or Rowling there.

I won’t lie to you, there’s some total crap writers there. But the majority are very good writers. And the downloads are much cheaper than you’ll find at Amazon. And it’s free and simple to sign up. Plus you get free samples of almost everything you might want before you buy.

Secondly, you can download in whatever format you want. Got a Kindle, a Nook, a Cranny, a Pad, whatever.

Smashwords says: The Smashwords Store provides an opportunity to discover new voices in all categories and genres of the written word. Once you register, the site offers useful tools for search, discovery and personal library management.  Most of our books are affordably priced and multi-format. Over 55,000 of our books are priced at free.

As a book seller there, I’ve found it to be better than Amazon.

It seems the customers at Smashwords are very loyal to the authors there. I’ve sold hundreds of e-books and thousands of free downloads. The freebies are everything from short stories (to hopefully encourage people to buy this dude’s novels) to other give-aways and specials I’ve had on those books.

That’s the other cool thing they do is set up coupons and deals at whatever discount I want for however long I want. Amazon is much more heavy-handed. They have rules for everything and are very territorial. I get it. Fine.

But I’ve sold books in both places, and Smashwords has smashed Amazon when it comes to digital sales for me.

Smashwords lets me set my price and I get a much bigger percentage of that than Amazon too. It's not even close.

Perhaps my favorite thing about Smashwords though is that once I upload my novel (an easy process) and my cover and my particulars (cost, etc.), then within days, sometimes hours, they then ship it to other outlets like Barnes and Noble, Apple, libraries and everywhere (except Amazon).

This isn’t to bash Amazon. That’s where I buy majority of my pulp fiction. But Amazon controls 70 percent of the market. If you want to help the little guys, get signed up at Smashwords and throw a couple bucks to an independent author. He or she might be famous someday and you can take partial credit.

And you'll be all signed up and ready to go should my next novel pop up there this spring. That's the rumor anyway.