Today I'm delighted to welcome back Mark Coker, who is CEO of Smashwords, a leading ebook publishing and distribution platform. Last year I interviewed Mark about how authors can publish their ebooks through Smashwords at no cost and get distribution through Barnes & Noble, Apple, Sony, Kobo and other major ebook retailers. I have asked Mark to update us on what's new at Smashwords.
Welcome, Mark. I have been following the spectacular growth of Smashwords this past year. How many ebooks are available on Smashwords now?
We now have 72,000 books in our catalog, up over 6,600 in the last 30 days. 28,000 authors, publishers and agents now use Smashwords for ebook publishing and distribution.
We’re on track to reach 100,000 by early next year. To put this in perspective, in 2008, our first year of operation, we published 140 books. That grew to 6,000 by the end of 2009, and 28,800 by the end of 2010.
Library lending of ebooks is growing in popularity. What do you think of this trend, and will Smashwords be helping authors and publishers distribute to libraries?
I’m excited about the opportunity to distribute our books to libraries. We’re participating in a US and Canadian beta-test orchestrated by the Internet Archive, and we’re also considering other options to reach the market. Stay tuned.
We signed a deal a few months ago with ScrollMotion for them to transform our Premium Catalog .epub books into standalone apps for distribution to the major app marketplaces of the Apple App Store, HP’s app store, and the Google Android market.
We announced the deal a few months ago, and since then it has been stymied by a number of delays. In fairness to ScrollMotion, they took on a challenge with us that has never-before been attempted by anyone. Prior to this deal, authors and publishers could expect to pay thousands of dollars to convert a book into a standalone app. They’re doing this at no cost to our authors and publishers.
To date, I’m told they’ve completed about 16,000 books, though the books haven’t appeared in app marketplaces yet due to some issues beyond their control. Many of the books are pending approval in Apple’s App store, but ScrollMotion tells me that following some changes to App Store guidelines, there’s uncertainty as to whether or not those books will be approved.
The second, most recent obstacle was HP’s abandonment of their tablet and their app marketplace a few weeks ago. Had HP followed through on their tablet strategy, these books would have appeared on HP devices.
The final remaining marketplace opportunity is the Android market. I await further updates from ScrollMotion on our status there.
Long story made short, I remain hopeful we’ll see our Premium Catalog realized as standalone apps, but I’m keeping my expectations low because it remains to be seen how customers will react to ebooks as standalone apps. My expectation is that a very small percentage of customers will prefer ebooks as standalone apps.
If this new channel can expand the total available market opportunity for our authors by a mere three to five percent, I’ll be thrilled. I’m a big believer in offering content in multiple formats so the customer can choose what they prefer.
What's next for Smashwords?
For Smashwords, our dominant theme for the remainder of the year is faster-faster-faster. We’ve enjoyed incredible growth over the last three years, and with growth has come some challenging but welcome growing pains. This growth put strains on our systems and slowed down some of our processes.
We’ve already made great strides in the last couple months. A month ago, it was taking almost four weeks for our vetting team to manually review new books for our Premium Catalog, a necessary step before we can ship books to our retailers. Now it’s averaging four days or less.
Three months ago, our conversion queue was so backlogged it was taking over 30 hours to convert a book. Now books go live in three minutes. So we’ve made good progress on faster-faster-faster. But there’s still more progress needed.
Our web site, which has seen its traffic explode, could provide faster page loads and queries. We want to decrease the time it takes for our books to reach retailers (it’s currently one to two weeks for most authors, which, while an improvement over last year, it’s still not satisfactory to me). We want to get it down to mere days.
Probably the most common request we receive from our authors is that they want faster sales reporting from our retailers. We’ll show dramatic improvement here later this quarter.
Each of these individual tasks in isolation represents a technical and logistical challenge. Taken together, these projects represent a huge undertaking. Luckily, I think we’ve proven over the last three and a half years that we’re expert at solving these big problems, even as we double, triple or quadruple the scale of our business each year.
Beyond faster-faster-faster, which will remain an underlying theme for years to come, you can also expect to see some new and interesting distribution relationships announced over the next few months.
About Mark Coker and Smashwords
Mark is currently working to complete his next ebook, The Seven Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success, which examines the best practices of the most commercially successful Smashwords authors. The ebook should be out in October.
To learn more about how Smashwords works, read the How to Publish on Smashwords page or the publishing FAQ, and be sure to download a free copy of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide (how to market any book) and the Smashwords Style Guide (how to format and publish an ebook).
Visit the official Smashwords Facebook forum to engage with Smashwords authors, publishers and readers. Several Smashwords authors are also posting their personal tips and tricks for publishing at Smashwords as part of a coffee mug promotion at Smashwords. Read the entries here.
Stay tuned for Mark's next guest post, Pricing Stategies for Ebooks, on September 22. Subscribe to the blog so you don't miss it!
Great post.
Arthur
Posted by: Arthur Levine | 09/15/2011 at 09:28 AM
Great article Dana! I love Smashwords and had my book converted last year for the Premium Catalog. I also participate in Operation Ebook Drop and love that concept. Thanks for having Mark on as a guest. What a great platform Smashwords is to the novice author. It's a transformational concept to be sure!
Posted by: Deborah McCarragher | 09/15/2011 at 11:25 AM
Arthur, I'm glad you enjoyed the article. I am thrilled to have Mark Coker doing a 3-article series for us.
Deborah, thanks so much for sharing your experience with Smashwords!
Posted by: Dana Lynn Smith | 09/15/2011 at 12:02 PM
I enjoyed your interview with Mark Coker of Smashwords. I have been aware of them for a while now and have other writer friends who publish through them.
I have a membership because I purchased a book or two which are stored in my library on their site.
I'm interested to see them develop. Nice interview.
Posted by: Glenda Fralin | 09/15/2011 at 02:06 PM
Thanks Glenda, I'm glad you enjoyed the interview with Mark! Stay tuned for his next article on ebook pricing on Sept 22.
Posted by: Dana Lynn Smith | 09/15/2011 at 04:02 PM
Hi Dana,
Great guest post with Mark Coker! We are so thankful for Smashwords and all the opportunities that it has opened up for indie authors! I too love Smashwords and we've not even had anything published yet! We are just starting on the formatting of our Christian Suspense novel. (Can't say I really love the formatting part, but alas, it is the means to the end.)
Thanks for the interview, Dana. We look forward to your next post with Mark.
Posted by: Dee for D.I. Telbat | 09/15/2011 at 06:46 PM
I'm a Smashwords fan and publish my ebooks there in preference to Amazon Kindle. Fantastic service so thanks to Mark Coker and his team.
Posted by: Stephanie | 09/18/2011 at 01:48 PM
Wow, we have a lot of Smashwords fans here! Thanks for your notes Dee and Stephanie.
Posted by: Dana Lynn Smith | 09/18/2011 at 03:15 PM