In my last post I mentioned that I had just published a free ebook with a company called smashwords.com. Well, I thought it would be worth telling those of you who haven't come across smashwords before a little more about them because the news is all good.
After I'd written and published a print copy of my fishing book: Learn from the Tips & Laugh at the Tales, I thought it would be a good idea to publish it in ebook format. My first thoughts led me to amazon, and I published it quite easily through their Kindle platform. I was happy with the results and soon started selling ebooks. Anyway, all was well with the world, I had my book available in print from most big retailers and in an electronic version with amazon, but then I read an article in Writing Magazine about publishing ebooks.
The article suggested several routes that authors could take when looking to publish an ebook and smashwords was one of the companies mentioned. To cut a long story short, I decided to publish my book with them. They have a brilliant website, with free downloads to help authors achieve their goals and they only take a small commission from every book sold.
Publishing with smashwords makes your book available in every ebook format worth talking about. These include Epub, which is the open industry format and used by a lot of ereaders including Stanza.
Other formats include:
PDF = Highly formatted and useful for home printing.
RTF = A format that can be read on most word processors.
LRF = The format used by the Sony Reader.
PDB = A format used by many palm reading devices.
It is by making so many formats available that smashwords is able to distribute books through major retails like: Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Diesel.
It may be of interest to those who are still not sure about the popularity of ebooks when I tell you this. Stanza, which is an ereading apps for iPhones and ipads, has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times.
So if you are an author, and have not yet published your book in an electronic format, I suggest you check out smashwords because you will have nothing to lose. If you are just a reader and haven't yet bought an ereader, it will still be worth having a look at smashwords because they have lots of books available that can be read on your computer. Even better news, many books are free including one of mine which can be seen in the photo on the right. Click here to go to smashwords Here is a link to my free book on smashwords. If you would like to find out more about my books, writing and proofreading services,
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