Smashwords Extravaganza

Just for the heck of it, all my short stories are FREE on Smashwords for the month of July.

Here's a look at what I'm offering:

	"In Memoriam" Some knew him as Clinton Abernathy Warner, others as "The Wraith." During his funeral, all witness a chilling sight defying explanation. Smashwords Edition - FREE in July!
	"I Took Over the World for This?" Dementius has finally taken over the world. But his subjects are more focused on the economy, law and order, and universal health care than groveling. What's a would-be despot to do? Smashwords Edition - FREE in July!
	"Last Stand on Cyclonus Seven" A distant planet is the perfect staging ground for an invasion of earth. Fifty-two heroes answer the call for help knowing most will fall. And no one will forget the last stand. Smashwords Edition - FREE in July!
	"The Stuntman" Superhero Stan Kirkpatrick sells Hollywood the rights to his life story as the Amazing Marvel. When the studio passes over Stan for the lead role, he reluctantly takes a job as an indestructible stuntman. Smashwords Edition - FREE in July!
	"Wing and a Plan" Morris the Penguin has big plans for his kind. The world is his mackerel...if only the other penguins would join him. Smashwords Edition - FREE in July!

A Quick Smashwords Update

The final numbers aren't in quite yet, but I wanted to take a quick second or two to talk about my Smashwords experience. Working with little publicity and relying on giving away stories for free, I "sold" more than 300 stories in the month of July. Now, "sold" isn't really the operative verb here. They count as sales on Smashwords, but I didn't make any money off those "sales."

I'm fine with that. A few people were even kind enough not to use the promotional code, which means I earned a few bucks (a few).

The Smashwords promotion concludes Sunday, but here's a look at the numbers up through the penultimate day:

Last Stand on Cyclonus Seven: 72
In Memoriam: 61
I Took Over the World for This?: 59
A Wing and a Plan: 58
The Stuntman: 52

I had set a (secret!) personal goal of 300 sales for the month under this free model. I'm pleased with the results.

I'll have the final numbers late tomorrow.

You can see my Smashwords short stories here.

Smashwords Experiment

A few weeks ago, I decided to put some of my short stories up on Smashwords to see how they'd do. With very little fanfare or advertising, I put five stories up on the site, set the price at 99 cents, and then enrolled in Smashwords' July Summer/Winter Sale, where the code SSWSF allows readers to grab a free short story.

Has the experiment been worth it?

I'm going to say yes. Sure, I haven't made any money off the 257 "purchases" readers have made on Smashwords. Without the promo code, however, would anyone have paid for one of my shorties (anecdotal evidence on Amazon.com suggests the answer to this is pretty much "no")?

This is not the final tally, of course, there's a little less than two weeks left to get one of my stories (well, actually, ALL of them) for free (shameless self plug site link HERE).

"Last Stand on Cyclonus Seven" is the runaway winner, with "In Memoriam" in second place and my other three in a dead heat. Here are the "sales" numbers:

"Last Stand on Cyclonus Seven" - 61
"In Memoriam" - 57
"I Took Over the World for This?" - 47
"Wing and a Plan" - 46
"The Stuntman" - 46

I set a goal of 300 sales for the month...and I'm getting close. The experience has been well worth it and I'm thinking about unleashing this upon the world:

This is Super, an anthology of superhero/comic book stories that includes 20 of my original works. I'm almost finished with the layout, although I'm going to have my beta readers look through it and there's that little matter of the story I still need to finish for it.

I'm wondering: does this interest anyone? Instead of getting a story for 99 cents, does 20 for $2.99 sound appealing?

Smashwords vs. Kindle

Ever a foolishly enterprising fellow, I've been trying Smashwords and Kindle to learn more about the self-publishing thing. I don't know that I'll ever publish an entire novel, but I find the formats extremely satisfying for my shorter pieces of fiction.

I'm not giving up on the traditional route...but I'm also not short-sighted enough to see what can be accomplished in this new era of electronic publishing. Of course, about 10,000 people wrote this same post five years ago (I'm only half-kidding).

Anyhow, I have four stories up on the Kindle Store and five up on Smashwords. Both formats have their quirks in terms of ease of use.

Smashwords

Summary: I like Smashwords quite a bit. I'm new to the ereader/ebook thing and the website makes it easy to upload your work.

Of course "easy" is relative. You really should read through the Smashwords Style Guide because it will help you publish with minimal fuss. Still, the style guide takes a time investment that may worry or intimidate some writers.

I had a few issues with Smashwords when I first tried uploading, but I did find out the answer. It was, however, buried in the style guide and required a Google search to find.

Smashwords also has a lot of distribution channels. However, several of my fellow authors are probably feeling the frustration stemming from the lack of free ISBNs. Smashwords ran out on June 25 (I know this because that's when I first tried the website!) and hasn't acquired additional ones. An email update said they'd be available this week, but I haven't heard for sure yet. This is keeping potential readers who have Kobi, Nook, iPads, and Sony ereaders from buying my stories from those distribution channels. It's a frustration -- not a dealbreaker -- and I expect this to be fixed soon.

I've been satisfied with the Smashwords conversions, which match up adequately with other books I've purchased from the Kindle Store. When I noticed issues with my books, I was able to fix them quickly. The site, however, can get sluggish at times. I'm fortunate in that I did most of my work with Smashwords during the overnight hours, so it wasn't as big of a problem for me.

You also get a higher royalty cut than Amazon for your stories IF you're going for the quasi-magical 99-cent price point. So that's something to consider.

Pros:

*mostly easy to use
*flexible formats (epub, mobi, PDF, etc.)
*variable pricing
*changes take effect quickly
*variety of distribution channels (Nook, Kobi, Sony, etc.)

Cons:

*requires some homework
*some formatting quirks that aren't readily apparent
*fear that books are "cookie cutter"
*sometimes sluggish
*Free ISBN shortage limits exposure

Amazon's Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP)

Summary: Amazon's format is as tried and true as it comes in the world of ebooks. The company's Kindle is the best-selling ereader and Kindle has apps for PC, iPhone/iPad, and Android that give you the potential for a very large reader base (if you can find it, of course).

Amazon's interface is fairly simple (my full experience here), but it gave me the feeling that I didn't necessarily have complete control over my book and formatting. Most of this is a mental game and not the reality, however.

Unlike Smashwords, Amazon's KDP doesn't have a style guide. You're mostly safe with uploading an HTML file to the Mobi Pocket Creator and going from there. It's an extra step that makes it feel like you have to do a little more to get your book to the Kindle Store. The Mobi Pocket Creator is, thankfully, easy to use.

My biggest problem with KDP is the perceived sense of sluggishness I get from the platform. When you upload to Smashwords, BOOM!, your book is there, shiny and new and available. With Amazon, it takes a day or two before your book shows up. It's not a huge deal for the initial publication, but if you want to change something or upload a new version, that change won't be reflected for at least 24 hours (and 2-3 days in international marketplaces). Therefore, I feel I have less "control" over the Amazon offerings.

Pros:

*huge exposure base
*Security of having Amazon's power behind it
*Kindle Store easy to buy from
*more perceived quality control

Cons:

*lower royalties for $0.99 price point
*feels like you have less control
*changes are sluggish
*Mobi conversion feels like "extra" step
*"legalese" in uploading may turn off some

Conclusion:

Both formats have their quirks and I'm sure other writers have had different experiences (and therefore different opinions) with Smashwords and Kindle Digital Publishing.

But I'd advise all writers to learn both of them. And if you're not comfortable epubbing yourself, find someone willing to help.

Hulk Smashwords!

I have a lot of short stories.

Other than submitting to different publications, I don't know what to do with them.

Several have already been published, with the rights reverting back to me. Others can't seem to find a home.

What's a writer to do?

Try Smashwords!

Yes, I realize this is 2011 and this post is SOOOOOOO 2010 (maybe even 2009).

But I wanted to give it a shot. I wanted to see what this was all about:

They sell these at Target now.
I got a Kindle because that's where things are going right now. Sure, the days of the dedicated e-reader may already be numbered, but I don't like reading from my phone (too small) and I don't like reading from my computer screen (you can't lie down and read from a desktop computer). So I went with a Kindle because I have no use for an iPad, even though I'm sure they're very cool.

In addition to being a nifty gadget, the Kindle serves a practical purpose for my writing endeavors. It will allow me to see how my self-published works look on a device they're designed to run on.

I dusted off a couple of short stories I still have the rights to and put them up on Smashwords.

The experience was a robust cocktail of easy, mind-numbing, and diabolically frustrating.

I've been contemplating playing around with Smashwords for a while. A few weekends ago, I spent some time developing covers for several of my short stories.

But before I delved into Smashwords, I consulted a few other writers, including Ian Thomas Healy. Mr. Healy and I both had stories in the latest edition of A Thousand Faces. He has several stories up on Smashwords, so I shot him an email on the best way to approach it.

His response:

My best advice for Smashwords is to follow the Nuclear Method they describe in their How-To manual. To wit: Copy the text from your original document into Notepad ...copy the text from that document into a brand new Word/OpenOffice/LibreOffice document. This eliminates ALL formatting. I use the following formatting for my ebooks:

Titles: 14-pt. Bold Times New Roman, centered
Body: 12-pt Times New Roman, 1.5x line spacing, justified, 3/8" indent (use your ruler for this, not tab).
Margins: 1" all around, no headers, no footers.

It seemed simple enough.

I opened my short story "In Memoriam," pasted it into Notepad and then copied that text into a new document in Microsoft Word. I followed the formatting directions from both Ian and the Smashwords style guide.

BOOM!

I uploaded my cover.

BOOM!

I uploaded my Word document.

But we had a problem:

For whatever reason, there were several sections in the text that bounced back and forth between Times New Roman and Courier New.

This. Does. Not. Look. Professional.

My heart sank when I downloaded the Kindle version and saw the difference in text.

I did the Nuclear Method again to strip away all the formatting,

Same problem; the majority of the text was in Times New Roman, some portions appeared in Courier New.

I kept trying.

I kept having the same exact problem.

So I did what any smart person does when confronted with a frustrating technical problem: I consulted Google.

After typing in an exacting search phrase ("Smashwords sucks story in different fonts someone please help me before I smash my face in!"), I found a few forums and then went back to the Smashwords Style Guide.

It seemed, for whatever reason, not all of my text was in the same "Normal" format. When I scrolled through the document, I found a few places where the "Normal" box wasn't highlighted. I selected all the text, set it to normal, and reloaded the file.

The solution seemed so simple, three hours later.
I downloaded the Kindle file with anticipation, hoping that this fifth upload would finally work.

Success!
Confident I'd figured it out, I then went to work on editing and reformatting my short story "The Stuntman." That was, indeed, completely painless.

Now, I'm happy to say I have a couple of stories up on Smashwords:


Next stop: Amazon's Kindle platform!