Smashwords is a platform for eBook publishing and distribution.

It’s the world’s largest indie distribution network and it offers its titles in all kinds of formats so that they can be read by any device.

In addition to publishing your work on its site and all of its micro sites, it also gets the title listed on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple’s iPad Store, which are the three main places people buy their eBooks.

Why Use Smashwords?

Smashwords is great because it’s the cheapest way to get your title in front of the most people. The publishing process is relatively user-friendly and their time to the market is incredibly fast. It takes minutes to publish with them.

When you become a Smashwords author, you get your own profile page and you can connect it to your site, blog and social media sites. It also shows up in web searches, so if you keyword optimize it and make the content interesting, you can get some exposure there.

One of the things that makes it unique is that you have total control over the final product. Absolutely everything is up to you. You can even go back and update your books with changes if you end up finding typos or something like that.

Our Smashwords Experience

We launched on Smashwords a few weeks ago. It takes a little while to feature on their premium list, which you really need to be on, and lots of that comes down to your formatting. Following their style sheet details is a must as is having a flat cover image, two areas that held up our acceptance.

Now my tip is get someone who ‘Knows’ to format it, Smashwords will supply a list of if you like recommended people, its not expensive and saves  a whole load of time and potential grief.

Click on the cover to check out my ‘How To’ book

And coming soon will be my second which is a diary of our 12 years experiences of property investing here in the UK – watch out for that

How to Get Published

I said that it was ‘relatively easy’ with Smashwords. The truth is that there are other self-publishing platforms that make it much easier. Smashwords has an 8-step publishing process that’s a little bit complicated at first, so I suggest downloading the guide they offer new members and reading along as you go. It’ll teach you some good tips and techniques.

One suggestion I have about formatting is to choose the nuclear method. This means copying your book into Notepad and then copying it back into the original file in order to get rid of any funny code or anything.

Promoting Your Book

Smashwords does a lot of your promotion for you. You get listed at all the marketplaces mentioned above and your book’s page on Smashwords and its micro sites appears in search engine results.

One thing that’s truly unique about Smashwords is that you get to issue promotional coupons. You can give coupon codes to people so that they get it at a discount and this is really powerful. For example, give a discount to your Facebook fans or list members. This is much better than just lowering the price because you can use it as an offer for your fans.

Smashwords also lets you show your potential readers a sample of your book. This option is great because people are much more likely to buy if they’ve read a few pages and gotten into it.

Another thing that sets Smashwords apart is all the different formats it publishes in. It automatically transfers your file into nine different formats so that anybody anywhere with any device can read it.

Smashwords is great because it gives you lots of options in terms of publishing and promotion. It’s a great tool for selling your eBooks and getting your name out there as an expert author in your niche.

Tony (aka Toby Russell – my writing pen name!)