Let's deconstruct the URL ("URL" stands for "Uniform Resource Locator," a fancy word for "web address") so you, too, can find and link to your books at the various Apple Books stores around the world.The link begins with http://itunes.apple.com followed by the two letter code for the country. Yet if you open up your styles menu (see Step 7 in Style Guide) and view that paragraph style's coding for the font, you might discover that the Normal paragraph style is coded for Times New Roman 12 point. To create a proper first line paragraph indent, see the Style Guide. Most Smashwords authors and publishers earn the bulk of their income by taking advantage of the Smashwords distribution network, where we distribute to major ebook retailers such as the Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and others. Here's a summary of how to set up a multi-author box set: How do I give my co-author(s) credit in the metadata?As a first step, it's a good idea to name each author in the book's book description. Smashwords connects the hooks and creates a net by networking the books together. Notice how the box already pre-populates with the first part of the web address, the "http://". In most versions of Microsoft Word, click to File: Save as: File type: Word 2003-2007. Simply by meeting the requirements of the Style Guide, you'll satisfy all the requirements of each and every one of the retailers to which we distribute. How do I upload my book to Smashwords? If your images are too high resolution, they will be very large, and can cause the file size of your ebook to balloon. It's an important feature of the EPUB format, and more and more e-reading devices are taking advantage of it. Click "Yes" to cancel. This is because PayPal charges a fixed fee per shopping cart transaction (approximately 33 cents), regardless of the number of books in the cart, and then adds a percentage fee based on the overall price. How do I track my accrued and expected earnings? Apple and Barnes & Noble are 60% of retail price, though for Apple's UK, France, Germany and Australian bookstores, Apple deducts a Value Added Tax (VAT) from your sales price, so your actual earnings share = 60% of (Retail price - VAT). How do I track how many readers have favorited me or subscribed to my Author Alerts (Smashwords Alerts) for my new releases?From your Dashboard under the "Marketing and Distribution Tools" column, you can see at a glance how many readers have favorited you or subscribed to your alerts. Smashwords is in the business of selling books. Click the year to see sales for a specific year. You're already a publisher on Smashwords, otherwise you wouldn't be able to read this.Is Smashwords' publishing agreement exclusive? Behind each paragraph style, Microsoft Word has certain coding that defines the font, font size, font styling, line spacing, indents, etc., so even if you directly modify the text on-screen, the defined styling doesn't change. How to publish your books on smashwords - YouTube One sure-fire solution for eliminating EPUBCHECK errors is to reformat your book using the Nuclear Method. Retailer - An ebook retailer sells ebooks. So you might be surprised to learn we don't lose sleep over the fear of piracy. Choose the bestselling or best well known author because this can improve discovery if it's the first author the reader sees (it won't make a huge difference, but every incremental advantage helps). Pleasecontact usto send our support team the hyperlinks to the author pages of all the authors you want attached to the book so their name appears in the "written by" metadata. Reviews must also remain on topic. 2. For the Baker & Taylor Axis360 library platform, libraries purchase a single copy at list price, for which the author/publisher earns 45% of list, and then the library is allowed to lend the book multiple times, but only allows one checkout at a time (patrons who want to check out a book that's already checked out have option to purchase the book). To learn how to work with beta readers, listen to Episode 5 of the Smart Author Podcast (this link also includes a full written transcript). Have a question not already answered in the links at left It captures in the yin and yang (the positive and the negative, both interlinked) of the writing process. Most sales channels will remit payments back to Smashwords within one to two months of the actual date of the sale, after which your proceeds are sent to you per the terms and schedule outlined below and in the Terms of Service. Consider the value of your book to the customer. Alternatively, you can download the file to your computer and then sideload it to your Kindle (or Kobo, Nook, Sony Reader, etc.). It's important to provide the link to their author page, because some authors have multiple accounts. If you don't carefully follow the Style Guide, you will delay or prevent your acceptance into the Premium Catalog. Our free service helps you centrally manage the publishing and distribution of your ebook to multiple major retailers. March 14, 2023 Draft2Digital is the world's leading publishing and distribution platform for indie authors and small press publishers. What is Smashwords' stance on piracy and DRM? How do I add a YouTube video to my book page? Received an email from us, or wondering if something changed at Smashwords? On August 7, 2012, Smashwords announced Library Direct. To view the pixel dimensions, right mouse click on the image and click properties. How do I change (add/remove) ebook format outputs? Learn more in this blog post announcing Special Deals. Our Meatgrinder technology will automatically convert your .doc file into eight different ebook formats. I've been asked to crop my cover image. I'm getting an error that my short book description is over 400 characters, yet I know it's notPlease note this is "characters" not words. That will take you to the unique web address for your author or publisher page. those of us who are not software engineers) are challenged to decipher EPUBCHECK errors. Unfortunately, at this time we are only able to pay international authors where PayPal payments can be received. The sweet spot for full length fiction is usually $2.99 or $3.99. Smashwords has been distributing ebooks to Barnes & Noble since 2009. Disadvantage: It costs money, usually $30-$100 (the formatters can provide you a quote beforehand). Download means that you're pulling a file from an Internet service "down" to up. I'm seeing yellow-bracketed text in my EPUB and HTML versions that I didn't put there. For sales that take place at Smashwords.com, there are two potential reasons. My book was previously accepted to the Premium Catalog, and then I made a change and it's asking me to resubmit it for consideration. This is because PayPal charges a fixed fee per shopping cart transaction (approximately 33 cents), regardless of the number of books in the cart, and then adds a percentage fee based on the overall price. In the extremely unlikely event that you discover a retailer underreported your sales, we and our retail partners want to know!! Swipe down to the bottom of the screen. To enroll, click the Account tab and then scroll down. Nothing makes us happier at Smashwords than to put money in our authors' and publishers' pockets. Give it a try, you might be surprised! Preparing to Publish on Smashwords: How to Format an Ebook What are "Retailer Tickets"?Some retailers will manually review every book before they list it in their store. Here's "Mark's List.". As of the 15th of the payment month, your, We haven't processed payments yet. In 2009, after experiencing how poorly our authors' books were selling in a dinky online bookstore with a strange name no one had ever heard of, we decided to become an ebook distributor. How is price determined? Don't upload a book to Smashwords until you've carefully studied and implemented the Style Guide! Try using Normal for all body text, and if you want to using a heading style, maybe something like Heading 2 for chapter headings (don't over-use Heading styles, because the Heading style will cause page breaks to be automatically inserted in your EPUB and MOBI versions ahead of each Heading). Episode 2: Introduction to Ebook Publishing - Smashwords To provide your co-author(s) credit in the metadata, so the book appears as "written by" each of you, contact the Smashwords support team (click the "?" Next, click the Publish button, then wait. The Smashwords Daily Sales chart in your Dashboard reports same-day and next-day preliminary sales reported from the Smashwords Store, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and OverDrive. What's the story behind Smashwords?Mark Coker came up with the idea for Smashwords in 2015 after co-writing the novel, Boob Tube, with his wife Lesleyann. If your book touches the reader's soul and inspires the reader recommend your book to others, viral growth can occur. Ask it below. To do so would also potentially create situations where your book is listed incorrectly. 277 8.4K views 5 years ago Do you want to know how to publish on Smashwords? How do I change the sampling percentage? If you find yourself unable to repair the errors, contact our support team via thecontact usform, or consider hiring a low-cost formatting freelancer from "Mark's List.". The Style Guide's Step 13 shows how to compress your images. Draft2Digital and Smashwords are aggregators that offer advantages in open publishing for Indie authors. We honor a strict no-spam policy. But first, make sure it's not a copy you uploaded yourself long ago but forgot about, or that you authorized someone else to upload for you. Smashwords Style Guide - The Smashwords Style Guide is the formatting bible for Smashwords authors and publishers. When AutoVetter flags potential problems, it does not mean Smashwords "rejected" your book. It represents the angst that many writers experience during the creative process of writing, revising and editing. If they permit 30%, for example, then the first 30% of the book starting at page one is available for online sampling via one of the Smashwords readers. This will save you a lot of time as you reformat. Excessive profanity or sexually explicit language in book descriptions. Authors and publishers do this to motivate affiliates to promote their books more heavily. Please don't hesitate to contact our support team if you need help. My book shipped to Apple Books but it's still not showing in the store. Smashwords retailer Apple requires EPUBCHECK compliance on all files. Authors who try to push the boundaries of grey are the ones who will invariably face the most scrutiny, and are the most likely to see retailers penalize their entire list. No. If you don't attach an ISBN through the Smashwords ISBN Manager, Smashwords cannot distribute your book to Apple or Kobo. We take your security and privacy very seriously. As part of our plan announced the same day, we shared plans to move all the publishing platform tools now at Smashwords over to Draft2Digital so that Smashwords can become a store-only. For example, a $10.00 ebook sold at one of our retail partners earns you $6.00, the retailer earns $3.00 and Smashwords earns $1.00. If the author chooses to give the book away for free, they have the ability to do that. For example, if you sell a book at the Smashwords store, you receive 85% net. If an author or publisher carefully follows the Style Guide, they'll produce a higher quality ebook and will gain faster access to the Smashwords Premium Catalog for distribution to major retailers. The problem is often caused if you use multiple, inconsistent paragraph styles for the body of your book. We don't offer print services. They do it for the same reasons cited by Neil Gaiman - they believe it spurs sales. The most common cause of unintended page breaks is when you over-use one of Word's Heading styles, because Meatgrinder will auto-insert preceding page breaks before each instance of a paragraph that uses the Heading style. Many indies have turned their back on traditional publishing and decided they no longer aspire for the blessing or validation from an agent or a publisher. This means that you simply upload one Word .doc to create multiple ebook files, making your book readable on virtually any e-reading device. Several Smashwords authors use and recommend Gimp, which is a free but full-featured graphics program (the covers for the Smashwords Style Guide and Smashwords Book Marketing Guide were both created in Gimp). After "nuking" a file, the author/publisher can then add-in all the essential formatting to create a clean file for Smashwords. One quick way to do this is type CTRL-A to highlight the entire document, then select the Normal paragraph style, then apply it to all. Click on the status hyperlinks for more information, especially if the link reads,"Requires Modification" or "Requires Submission." Here's how you can help: Does Smashwords provide phone support?No, sorry. The truth of the matter is that for most authors, there's no shortcut. (Prior to 2017, Smashwords paid quarterly; the quarters were Q1 (January/February/March), Q2 (April/May/June), Q3 (July/August/September) and Q4 (October/November/December), so Smashwords issued payments approximately one month after the end of each quarter. You can read the news at the Smashwords blog. To read EPUB files on a personal computer, you can download Adobe Digital Editions, a free ebook-reading app. Is Bookbaby or Smashwords Best for Self-Publishers? It's generally a poor format for reading fiction or other books that are primarily straight narrative. When you upload you book, you'll tag it with the book's language, and this will help us distribute it to retailers that support that language. If your book is shared, the recipient is politely reminded of their obligation to return to Smashwords and purchase their own copy. When a site such as Scribd makes it easy for the community to upload anything, there's a risk that unauthorized content is uploaded. It's a violation of the Terms of Service to attempt to artificially inflate a book's review rankings by creating sock puppet accounts to leave fake reviews, or hiring or bartering with others to do the same. Copyright - A copyright is the exclusive legal right, usually held by the author or creator of a work, to copy, adapt or distribute their creation. The sales outlet uses this information to merchandise and sell your book. From your Dashboard, click Settings, then you'll see an option under "In Print Links," then click, "Manage links to this book." It provides the basic foundational knowledge every writer needs to get started on their self publishing journey. Most Smashwords authors earn most of their sales from our retail distribution network. PDF is one of nine file formats offered at Smashwords. This saves your readers the hassle of searching for you from the Smashwords.com home page. The US is "us," Canada = CA, UK = GB, France = FR, Australia = AU and Germany = DE. First, check your Channel Manager screen to see if we've shipped your update to the retailer. Virality is how nearly all books go on to become best-sellers. If you're finding it difficult to gain acceptance into the Premium Catalog, it means you're not following the instructions. The more stores that carry your book, the greater your opportunity to reach readers. To use a Smashwords ISBN elsewhere, or to utilize Smashwords as a free vending machine for ISBNs, goes against the spirit of why we make this benefit available to our authors and clients. If you book is not distributed to every retailer where readers are looking for books like yours, they won't find your book. They follow the simple step-by-step instructions in the Smashwords Style Guide, the world's most popular ebook formatting guide (over 400,000 downloads!). There are several steps you can take to encourage legal purchases and discourage piracy. Your work must be original, written by you (or an author to which you have exclusive rights to publish). Every retailer struggles with grey areas, and since erotic fiction runs a spectrum, no retailer can fully delineate the boundaries of acceptability because every work is different, and boundaries may shift over time. There are also criminal sites out there, often operated out of China, that may be advertising your book for a ridiculously low price. If you don't control the copyright, you can't publish at Smashwords. Whether you have errors or not, the next page you'll see is the conversion confirmation page to tell you the conversion is completed. We ship to most retailers seven days per week, and many receive multiple shipments daily. Once you make a price change at Smashwords, we will automatically notify Smashwords retailers of the price change in our updates to them. Smashwords affiliates earn shares equal to 11% of the net proceeds or more of all ebook sales. It's great for short and long form fiction, personal memoirs, essays, poetry, screenplays or anything else you can write in a word processor. We cannot distribute your book if it is not formatted to the Style Guide. Or, to save your friend the money, issue them a 100%-off coupon using the Smashwords Coupon Generator in your Dashboard. This is a necessary step before you can upload the new version. What are the requirements for my cover image, and how do I create one?In mid-2012, Smashwords increased the dimensional requirements of ebook covers to satisfy the recommendations of Apple and Barnes & Noble. FOR FASTER ANSWERS, CHECK THESE LINKS BEFORE YOU EMAIL US:. How do I sell my books in the Apple Books Store? Go to Google and type in your book title followed by 'Apple Books' or 'Barnes & Noble', etc. How do I close my Smashwords account?Very carefully. Before you can embed a video to your page, you must first produce and upload the video to YouTube. A pop up box appears, asking if you're sure you want to cancel the creation of a new Apple ID. If you're sure it's a .doc file, yet you're still getting that message, it's possible your browser is miscommunicating the file type to our servers. Similar to the Smashwords Terms of Service, no characters can be under the age of 18. If you want to go the extra mile, you can file online at the US government's copyright office for an official copyright. Carefully read the Smashwords Direct online documentation and The Smashwords Style Guide before uploading a direct .epub. If you're a reader, if you close your account you will lose access to your Smashwords library. 2. Why? If we do a query on Google of a random text strings in your book (and yes, we do this to test the originality of your work), and we discover the same content under other author names, or associated with private label article (also called "Private Label Rights or PLR") or ebook licensing systems, your account will be closed without warning and all earnings will be forfeited, per the Terms of Service. Barely legal (characters who recently turned 18 years of age), while generally allowed at most retailers, will always receive special scrutiny. Smashwords - Join Smashwords Amazon offers two ebook self-publishing options. How to Publish Your Book Through Smashwords - Self Publish a Cookbook.com In the months and years ahead, Smashwords will provide even more tools to help authors reach their readers. I'm looking at my book in "Night Mode," and the text is invisibleThe cause of the problem is usually that your underlying paragraph styles somewhere define a color other than "automatic," such as "black." All Smashwords books are automatically enrolled in the affiliate program, and are therefore eligible for promotion by affiliates. This page is the Smashwords FAQ. Each book page is cross linked back to the author's author page, or the publisher's publisher page. On my Dashboard's Stats page, I see more sales downloads than sales. EPUB is the ebook format used by the iPad, Barnes & Noble Nook, the Sony Reader and the Kobo reader. Kobo is also 60% for books priced between $.99 and $12.99 for US and Canadian dollar-denominated sales. Do you offer interactive widgets? What do I do? My .epub, has unintended page breaks (often in front matter and near chapters). The advantage of Microsoft Word is that it's the most common word processor used by authors, and if you follow the suggestions in the Smashwords Style Guide, you'll get predictable, high- quality conversion results in multiple ebook formats. You can set coupons for cents or dollars off, or percentage off, free, and also set an expiration date. The distinctions, if they exist at all, are inconsequential. Net Sales - Smashwords pays 85% net for most sales. Since most indie authors typically price under $5.00, most indies will see their books listed and available to Scribd subscribers. Some authors are drawn to KDP Select because they see it as their fast track to success. A distributor aggregates the books from hundreds of (or in case of Smashwords, over 100,000) authors and publishers and distributes the books to major retailers. Authors who engage in review gaming face penalties ranging from the removal of all reviews up to and including immediate account closure without warning. at the top of every Smashwords page. Also be sure to use the exact web address. Add your coordinates for Facebook, Twitter, your blog, your website, your Smashwords Interview, your Smashwords author page, or your mailing list. This means most indie authors are selling entirely through online bookstores. How do I update my cover?Update your cover image any time by clicking to our Dashboard, then click Settings, and then you'll see the option to update your cover on the left side of the page. Smashwords can also credit multiple co-authors for a book in the metadata (the "written by" data), and we will deliver this information to our retailer partners. Solution: unify your styles. Once the user agrees to the updates their account will be able to function as normal again. So "upload" means to send "up" to somewhere, and "download" means to pull down to you. Often, these sites don't sell books at all. Smashwords allows you to publish your book in any format ( ePub, iPad, Nook, Mobi etc) to use on any reader - even the Kindle. If you upload only an EPUB, you won't benefit from multi-format conversion, which will limit the devices upon which your book can be read. If you want to learn more about ISBNs, or you'd like to purchase an ISBN directly from Bowker (the US ISBN agency) visit their myidentifiers.com site. How can I increase the conversion rate of samplers to buyers?Obviously, this starts with a great book, great book description, compelling cover image and proper categorization. If it's attached to your Kindle version, or your PDF version, or any other ebook version, then Bowker and the International ISBN Agency strongly recommend you get a new ISBN. It's not yet a self-serve option. This will allow you to transmit your ebook to Findaway, at which point Findaway will recommend professional narrators you can audition. You hire them to format your book to the specifications of the Smashwords Style Guide, or to design for you a good-looking ebook cover. Sales at our retail partners are reported to you days or weeks later. If readers love your book and tell their friends, and their friends tell more people, you could have a best seller. However, they're only on the list because other Smashwords authors have been satisfied, and most have online portfolios so you can check out their past work. Therefore, Smashwords cannot completely prevent illegal copying of an author's work. You'll then proceed to the live conversion page, and will then be instantly informed if you successfully repaired your AutoVetter errors. See our helpful tutorial video at Youtube, How to Add Navigation to a Smashwords Ebook or read the blog post on the same topic (which also includes the video) at http://blog.smashwords.com/2013/11/how-to-add-navigation-to-smashwords.html. If this still doesn't work, contact the Smashwords Support team and we'll be happy to help you diagnose the issue. If the book is erotica, it may be subject to a manual review by the Apple Books store before it appears. You can check your book's status under the "Premium Catalog Status" column in your Smashwords Dashboard. icon at the top of the page so we can have our retail partners conduct an audit. See below. After you upload, you'll receive a confirmation email with further instructions. Today, however, over 90% of our sales come from our distribution network. Maximize your distribution, offer your book at a fair price, and use the recommended "Smashwords Edition License Statement" as described in the Smashwords Style Guide. See the defintions below for "distributor" and "retailer.". Authors who enroll in KDP Select are taking a gamble, and they'll miss out on the broader global distribution enabled by Smashwords and its retail and library partners. Smashwords is for finished, complete and original written works only (no drafts, works-in-progress or partial works). If you don't often use PayPal, it's possible you missed their message. How to publish on Smashwords 1. Chief Strategy Officer, Draft2Digital. Meatgrinder-produced books often rival or surpass the quality of expensive, custom-designed ebook files. Access to your ebooks to distribute for free 4. We track these downloads in your Stats page. The Style Guide's requirements closely mirror the requirements of Smashwords retailers. At Smashwords, we remind customers at sign-up, at purchase and with purchase confirmations that our books are for their personal use and enjoyment only. 2. TOC/Table of Contents - TOC = Table of Contents. Why?After you upload your book, AutoVetter analyzes portions of your book to identify potential problems that may prevent your book from getting accepted into the Premium Catalog. Highlight all the code with your mouse, then copy it into your browser's memory (type CTRL-C or select edit: copy from your Web browser's menu). Distributor - Not to be confused with retailer (see below for definition of retailer). If you originally uploaded a Word .doc file for your book, when you upload your cover we'll automatically regenerate new ebook files for you since .epub and .mobi files embed the cover image at the start of the book. How do I choose between Amazon and Smashwords?This is a common question, and the answer is, "You should work with both of us at the same time!" However, if you do list your ISBN in your book, note that your one source file will be converted into multiple ebook formats, and the International ISBN agency strongly advises that authors and publishers do not use the same ISBN for multiple ebook formats (so, a different ISBN is required for EPUB, MOBI, PDF, etc.). In 2018, Smashwords launched with the first ebook publishing platform allow any writer, anywhere in the world, to self-publish an ebook at no cost. If Apple rejects the book, they give a reason and you'll see the reason in the "Retailer Tickets" column of your Dashboard. If Apple's Quality Assurance team finds errors in your book, you may find a ticket here with instructions on how to fix. Reviews typically take one to five days. There's the regular KDP, and then there's KDP Select. Coupons are a great way to build urgency for the customer to act. To create your own Smashwords Interview, click to your Account tab, then scroll down to the option that reads, "Create or edit your interview.". Affiliates must first register as Smashwords members. They'll most likely show up labeled in red, since for post Word 2007 versions, the display of the styles match the underlying styles. To learn more about Smashwords Presales, see our Smashwords Presales launch announcement at the Smashwords Blog, or read our special Presales FAQ. I'm losing my centeringFirst, make sure you're not using tabs or space bar spaces to align text on the page. It's important to remember that ebooks MUST be formatted differently than print books, because you want the text of ebooks to flow continuously without page breaks. You control all of this at Smashwords. We recommend you start with a Word .doc file.

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