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Saturday, January 26, 2013

My Smashwords Experience (Part 1)

OK, after waiting 3 months for my Amazon KDP contract to expire, I published Five Times Vengeance on Smashwords. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/276881

Actually, it was surprisingly easy. The one thing that had me worried was their "meatgrinder" technology that automatically vetted your book for formatting errors. Too many errors, and your book was excluded from their "Premium Catalog." Whatever that means. But hey, I wanted in...not sure what it was that I wanted in to, but I like the word "premium."

A few days later, I was approved. Simple as that. Follow their formatting rules, and you're in. I used the "Nuclear " method. Basically, you copy your book to notepad and it strips out everything. Paste it back into a Word document that is set up accordingly, and you have a perfect book.

So far, I have been in the Premium Catalog for 4 days and sold a whopping 2 books at 99 cents and had 10 samples downloaded. Those 2 books made me $1.60. If I sold 2 on Amazon, I would have made a paltry 70 cents.

I'm going to look into this "Coupon Code" that Smashwords has.It will give anyone visiting this site a code to download my book at a discount..or for free. I'll let you know.

All in all, so far, I give Smashwords a grade of a solid A.

Jason Lee

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Amazon KDP Select vs Smashwords.

The Battle Royal is about to begin.

After 3 months of exclusivity on Amazon's KDP Select, I have sold under 10 copies of Five Times Vengeance.

Now that the contract has ended, I will be uploading the novel to Smashwords. This upload will have a few inaccuracies corrected that were pointed out to me.

It will be interesting to see what happens after 3 months on SW. Smashwords distributes to multiple retailers, and hopefully that will result in more exposure, and more sales.

I will be devoting the same amount of marketing effort now as I have been in the last 3 months with Amazon so as not to skew the results.

As always (and I'm sure this is why I sold less than 10 copies) I refuse, I refuse, I refuse to pay for reviews. Not that I"m a cheap skate, but to me, it seems kind of sleazy. Sure, it could be said to be a form of advertising, but I'm not ready to advertise that way.....yet.

10 copies and honest vs 20,000 copies and sleazy..........hmmmmmmm. For now, I'll just rely on the court of public opinion and not slip a few bucks under the table to get the court to rule in my favor.

I'll keep you updated on the SW progress.

Jason Lee.