Smashwords: The good, the bad, the ugly

Those who know me well probably think I'm anti-smashwords. I'm not really, they just have a lot of issues that make me cast about for an alternative from time to time, and I often post about what I find to forums I belong to. So I thought I'd collect my thoughts in one spot for an official statement. The Good: Smashwords.com (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/71489) allows a writer to do a basic conversion of an ebook file into the ten most common file types. It also allows an author to have a commerce page to sell that book in any format. The advantage here is huge, because when you are out selling your book and someone wants it electronically you can send them to one location no matter what their reading device. There is also a nifty coupon feature which allows a writer to print a card with the link and the code, then sell that card to folks who then go download it for free. Best of all, Smashwords provides all this for free. Smashwords is also really good about fixing issues when things go wrong. The Bad: The bad news is that it can be hard to get your file formatted for their program to convert it and even when its perfect they may not accept it for expanded distribution. So it's quite likely that you'll have to contact them to fix your problem. The Ugly: The reality is that no one is searching smashwords for your book. There is no one stumbling upon your book while looking for something to read. That's the big advantage to the big fish in the market like Kindle. I had high hopes for the expanded distribution list, but I've not generated any sales through that until I went to places like Kobo (http://goo.gl/THcXq) and directly uploaded the file myself. So is smashwords worth doing? Until there is a viable option, yes. It's free. There's a chance you'll get some sales out of it. It's the easiest way to get a basic conversion (I'm not really a fan of calibre either). One possible option is http://direct2digital.co.uk/, but as yet I've not had a chance to investigate them. I'll update this post when I do (Likely June when I start publishing short stories for my upcoming anthology.)