Powerful, Proven Tools to Manage Ebook Publishing, Metadata, Distribution and Sales Reporting

LOS GATOS, Calif., November 17, 2011 — Smashwords, the leading distributor of indie ebooks, today introduced a new service for literary agents. The service provides literary agents simple but powerful tools to manage the publication and distribution of their clients’ indie ebooks. Service highlights include free ebook conversions, centralized metadata management, distribution to major worldwide ebook retailers, time-saving aggregated sales reporting across all retailers, and special merchandising at Smashwords.com.

“Literary agents will write the next chapter of the indie ebook revolution,” said Mark Coker, founder and CEO of Smashwords. “Agents represent the most commercially successful authors. These authors are now asking their agents to add e-publishing services to exploit the potential of their reverted-rights works and unpublished works. Although all authors have the freedom to self-publish, many would prefer to delegate the e-publishing and back office duties to their agent so the author can focus their energy on writing.”

Over 32,000 authors, small presses and literary agents have utilized Smashwords to release 85,000 ebooks in the last three years. 7,500 of these titles were released in the last 30 days.

Until recently, the Smashwords platform labeled literary agents as “Publishers,” even though most agents consider their authors the publishers of record. To address this subtle but important nuance of metadata labeling, Smashwords created this new service expressly for literary agents.

Agents have the ability to upload multiple books on behalf of multiple clients.Agented books appear as “Written by [Author Name], Agented by [Agency Name].”

When Smashwords distributes the book to retailers such as the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and Diesel, the author is recognized as the publisher, not the agent.

Smashwords has also introduced a new home page catalog to showcase agented works, making it easy for readers to browse ebooks represented and curated by literary agents.

To work with Smashwords, agents simply sign up for a free Smashwords account, upgrade the account to Agent status (also free), and then upload books and metadata on behalf of their clients. A co-branded bookstore within Smashwords showcases the agency’s clients and allows readers to view books by recent releases, best-sellers, and highest rated. When readers browse the book pages of agented books, they enjoy contextual discovery links such as “Other books by this author” and “Other books from this agent.”

The Smashwords Agent service makes e-publishing fast, free and easy for literary agents. Service benefits include:

• Centralized metadata management – Agents control the book’s price (Smashwords retailers don’t discount), marketing description and other metadata at their Smashwords Dashboard. They make a single change once and Smashwords propagates
the update to all retailers.
• Aggregated sales reporting saves time – Each quarterly payment includes a downloadable report that makes it easy to map earnings to each of the agency’s authors. Agents can perform custom queries to provide authors granular sales reporting by title, date and retailer.
• Distribution to leading e-retailers – Smashwords distributes to the Apple iBookstore (32 countries), Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel eBookstore. Amazon distribution is available through Smashwords on request. Books are also distributed to the native catalogs of leading mobile e-reading apps including Aldiko for Android devices and Stanza for the iPhone/iPod Touch. More distribution points in the works.
• Free – No fees for ebook conversion or setup. Smashwords earns a 10% of list price commission for books sold through major retailers (agent receives 60% list). The commission for sales through the Smashwords.com retail store is 15% net after credit card fees, with 85% net going to the agent.

Multiple literary agencies – including Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, the Beverley Slopen Agency and Larsen Pomada Literary Agents – are utilizing Smashwords to publish and distribute ebooks on behalf of their clients. Diversion Books, a publisher founded by literary agent Scott Waxman, is also a Smashwords client.

What literary agents are saying about Smashwords: “Smashwords has offered what many other self-publishing platforms do not, a way for agents to be involved with digital publishing without having to take on the title of ‘Publisher,’” said Abby Reilly, E-Book Project Manager at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, based in New York. “Giving our clients a space in the new and exciting world of digital publishing, while continuing to shepherd all aspects of their literary careers, is a thrilling challenge for our agency. We are delighted to be working with Smashwords to make this happen.”

“Smashwords makes it easy to begin exploring the new digital terrain,” said Beverley Slopen, whose literary agency shares her name and is based in Toronto, Canada. “It is an exciting time in publishing, a time like no other, and our authors want to be there. They are pushing us to broaden our knowledge and our skill set. While ebook publishing is not a substitute for traditional publishing, it adds an amazing new dimension.”

“I have been an avid Smashwords supporter since its inception, and over the past three years have integrated digital publishing initiatives in the career plans of all my clients,” said Laurie McLean of Larsen Pomada Literary Agents in San Francisco. “Most of my clients have both traditionally published books and ebooks in their bag of tricks, and it is exciting to see how they complement each other. While many people have been bashing literary agents as gatekeepers of the old guard in publishing, I feel that digitally-engaged agents are the perfect mentors to guide authors through these turbulent waters of opportunity. The new Smashwords Agent service has made my job even easier.”

Literary Agents – How to Get Started with Smashwords

Visit www.smashwords.com to sign up for a free account in the name of your agency. The confirmation email you receive will walk you through next steps. The “How to Publish at Smashwords” link on the home page at https://www.smashwords.com/about/how_to_publish_on_smashwords provides helpful links to a vast array of Smashwords resources.

For an online presentation outlining the opportunity for agents to serve the indie e-publishing needs of their clients, see this post at the Smashwords Blog and its accompanying Slideshare presentation, the Literary Agent’s Indie Ebook Roadmap: http://blog.smashwords.com/2011/08/literary-agents-indie-ebook-roadmap.html
or visit www.slideshare.net/Smashwords

About Smashwords
Founded in 2008, Smashwords is the world’s leading distributor of indie ebooks. More than 32,000 authors, small presses and literary agents publish over 85,000 indie ebooks at Smashwords. Smashwords has released over 7,500 ebooks in the last 30 days.

Smashwords makes it fast, free and easy for the world’s authors, publishers and literary agents to publish and distribute multi-format ebooks. Smashwords distributes to major online retailers such as the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel eBook Store, and also distributes to the leading mobile e-reading apps such as Aldiko, Stanza and FBReader. Smashwords is based in Los Gatos, California, and can be reached on the web at http://www.smashwords.com/. Visit the official Smashwords blog at http://blog.smashwords.com/.

The service provides literary agents simple but powerful tools to manage the publication and distribution of their clients’ indie ebooks. Service highlights include free ebook conversions, centralized metadata management, distribution to major worldwide ebook retailers, time-saving aggregated sales reporting across all retailers, and special merchandising at Smashwords.com.

“Literary agents will write the next chapter of the indie ebook revolution,” said Mark Coker, founder and CEO of Smashwords. “Agents represent the most commercially successful authors. These authors are now asking their agents to add e-publishing services to exploit the potential of their reverted-rights works and unpublished works. Although all authors have the freedom to self-publish, many would prefer to delegate the e-publishing and back office duties to their agent so the author can focus their energy on writing.”

For details, click on Smashwords’ release.

That may sound like the first line of a satirical story in The Onion but in fact it’s the pitch for a startup venture called Pubslush, which describes itself as “a revolutionary publisher that utilizes the power of community support and social networking to select books to be published by connecting writers directly with their readers.

“Through a collaborative method,” the venture’s press release explains, “Slushers (registered users) review, share, and fund their favorite submissions. Upon reaching the required support level, Pubslush will facilitate the complete publishing process , including editing, design, marketing, distribution, etc. Also, Pubslush simultaneously acts as an agent, allowing editors at major publishers to easily browse the top submissions and extend deals to authors if they wish.”

The scheme is reminiscent of AOL Time Warner’s ill-fated iPublish program launched at the dawn of the Digital Revolution.  “The centerpiece of iPublish.com is iWrite, a community area that offers writers a direct way to get their work in front of other writers and iPublish.com editors. Writers must review at least three short excerpts from works by other authors before they can post an excerpt of their work for consideration. If an excerpt receives high ratings, an iPublish.com editor will read the full manuscript and decide if the work should be published as an e-book and, if it meets certain requirements, as a print-on-demand book. ”

iPublish lost an estimated $13 million.  But maybe Pubslush founder Jesse Potash knows something that AOL Time Warner didn’t?

Read details in Publishing Startup Offers Aspiring Authors New Opportunities

Richard Curtis

Is the pen mightier than Perseus's sword?

Perseus Book Group, a leading publisher and distributor for small presses, has announced a service to distribute and market self-published books, particularly out of print titles whose rights have been reverted to authors.  It will pay a 70% share of net revenues to content providers, as opposed to the 25% share paid by major publishers and 50% by some independent e-book publishers including E-Reads.

“The service,” writes the New York Times‘ Julie Bosman, “arrives as authors are increasingly looking for ways to circumvent the traditional publishing model, take advantage of the infinite shelf space of the e-book world and release their own work. That’s especially the case for reviving out-of-print books whose rights have reverted back to the author.”

The service is not offered to the general public but is open only to authors represented by literary agents. And though it offers distribution (to such retailers as Kindle, Nook, iPad, Kobo and Sony) it does not produce the books themselves, meaning that the authors have to create (presumably through scanning) text files, proofread them, format them (such as putting them into ePub), design covers, and undertake other editorial functions now performed by full e-book publishers such as Open Road, Rosetta, and E-Reads (full disclosure: Richard Curtis is CEO of E-Reads).

Perseus CEO David Steinberger made it clear that while the new company, called Argo Navis, “provided distribution and marketing services, the author remained the publisher,” writes Bosman. “While authors get a much higher share of the revenue under this arrangement, they’ll receive fewer of the services, and financial support, provided by publishers under more conventional contracts.”

Authors and agents interested in Perseus’s offering will undoubtedly factor in the time and labor involved in producing books themselves, but this service nevertheless opens the door for literary agents to find a comfortable place in digital publishing on behalf of their clients.  By helping their clients to produce books, they can justify the higher commissions or management fees that many agents now seek to balance softening revenue flow resulting from a struggling book industry.  It is also a way for agents to strengthen bonds with their clients whose eyes may be roving in the direction of independence and self-publication.

New Service for Authors Seeking to Self-Publish E-Books

Richard Curtis

That is the prevailing doctrine governing the Big Six book business and it is as unshakeably rigid as the Credo of the Catechism. For a publisher to buy “P” without “E”  is to all but succumb to the status of printer, to become the dog wagged by the tail of e-books.

To make an exception, to acquire just the print rights and allow the author to retain e-book, sets such a treacherous precedent for the rest of the publishing industry that it would take an extraordinary author to move a publisher off that position.

Enter John Locke.

For those who confuse him with the 17th century philosopher (and no mean author himself), a visit to his website will quickly set you straight. No one will confuse A Girl Like You or The Love You Crave with his namesake’s Essay on Human Understanding.  The 21st century Locke is the phenomenal indie writer whose self-published Amazon thrillers have launched him into the rarefied stratosphere of the world’s most successful authors.  Above the stratosphere, actually, because to many fellow writers he resides on Olympus.

If he doesn’t reside there he has just moved a little closer, for Simon & Schuster has made him an exception to the aforesaid doctrine. Next winter S&S will commence print-only distribution of his books. which Locke himself will package.

One reason why publishers have resisted print-only deals is simple economics: it’s hard to imagine how to make a profit competing against cheaper e-book editions of the same titles. That goes in spades for John Locke whose Kindle editions sell for $.99, compared to a mass market or trade paperback in the vicinity of $7.99 or $16.99 respectively. But when you have a blockbuster author jamming bandwidth with downloads of his e-books, it stands to reason that a profitable percentage of that audience will want to own a hard copy.  For Simon & Schuster it absolutely stands to reason.  Which occasioned Locke to tip his hat to S&S and declare “I applaud Simon & Schuster’s incredible vision.”

So do we. Simon & Schuster’s publishing establishment allies may complain that S&S has betrayed them by opening the gates to the invading hordes of the self-published.  But there’s an even more important military lesson in the Locke deal: If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em.

Richard Curtis

To those of us who grew up before the current Age of Entitlement, in which trophies are awarded to every child in a tournament for merely showing up, the above statement sounds like the ravings of a writer unhinged by one disappointment too many. Yet that conviction is solemnly espoused by Mark Coker, founder of e-book publisher Smashwords.

Inspired by the ringing diatribe of Berkeley College student Mario Savio that launched the Free Speech movement of the ’60s, Coker has posted a broadside inveighing against publishers who turn submissions down, and rallying spurned writers to strike back. “My challenge to you, the author, is to throw yourself upon the gears of big publishing. Take a stand and say no to those who tell you no. Say No to no”

If disaffected writers seek a publisher champion to storm the establishment Bastille with them, they have found him. (See You Say You Want a Revolution)

Every author feels a sense of injustice when a publisher rejects his treasured manuscript. But until now none that we’re aware of thought of rejection as an act calculated to curtail freedom of speech. Coker, however, leaps over the barricades of rationality with this statement: “Publishers acquire books they think they can sell. They say no to most authors, thereby preventing those authors from expressing themselves through the communications vehicle that is their book.”

Coker concedes that publishers are entitled to turn books down. “After all, it’s not their responsibility to enable your free speech rights when they think Donald Trump, Snookie or Justin Bieber have more important things to say,” he righteously declares.

Fortunately for the world of letters, Coker has exercised his First Amendment rights by publishing such sublime literary works as Sweaty Mascots start Grease Fires,  The Toilet Business and Intimate Confessions of a London Escort Volume 1, Sex With An Arab Man In His Hotel Suite and its companion, A Helicopter Ride and then Sex on a Russian Billionaire’s Yacht. Thank God Smashwords didn’t say no to these masterpieces lest we be forever bereft of antidotes to the shallow prating of Donald Trump, Snookie and Justin Bieber.

Mark Coker has built a lucrative business offering a home to amateur and professional authors frustrated with the publishing establishment, and there is nothing wrong with promoting it as such. But to glorify it as a haven for first amendment refugees is disingenuous to say the least and, for some of us, a cynical gimmick for drumming up business.

We’re sorry to be so blunt, but, as Mario Savio might have said, it’s a free country. So, to “Say No to no” we say…No.

Read Authors: Throw Yourselves Upon the Gears of Big Publishing

Richard Curtis

Czarist Russia?

How about the book industry?

The Old Feudal Order Must Go

The Marxist analogy is far from strained. The denunciations of some independent authors evoke the acerbic eloquence of revolutionaries. “I don’t want to waste my time raging against a dinosaur who continues to ignore the fact that the meteor has already hit the earth,” writes Joe Konrath, arguably The Movement’s spiritual father. “I don’t need to have my name appear on a faulty, bullshit bestseller list to feel good about myself or my accomplishments, and I don’t need recognition from a bunch of morons who would rather try to maintain the fading status quo than report the truth.”

The members of this underclass have bonded with each other and coalesced into a discrete movement marching under the banner Independents. The most radical among them find almost no redeeming values in the established order and denounce their publishers and agents from the very platforms that those former partners and patrons helped them to attain

Angry Authors

There is more than a core of truth in their fulminations. The traditional trade publishing business rests on that artifact of another era, the printed book. It is an archaic, labor-intensive industry that utilizes energy-devouring vehicles to distribute tangible products to brick and mortar retailers who are entitled to return unsold inventory to the publishers for full credit, an idiotic and appallingly wasteful business model. The perpetually cash-starved business has become more and more blockbuster-driven, disenfranchising talented newcomers and driving them to seek alternatives outside the established system. Those alternatives are many, robust, cheap and exceptionally profitable. Enter independent authors.

Biting the Hand

Such a viewpoint was expressed by Barry Eisler, the movement’s most recent and sensational arrival, in an interview with Jason Pinter. “It might be okay if I thought my publishers were making all the right decisions,” he told Pinter, “but when your publisher is doing something you think is stupid and that’s costing you money—something like, say, saddling your book with a closeup of an olive green garage door, or writing a bio that treats your date and place of birth as a key selling point, or misunderstanding the concepts of automatic resonance and acquired resonance, or otherwise blowing the book’s packaging—it can be pretty maddening (at least it can be for me).” [Eisler subsequently signed a lucrative contract with Amazon.]

A Literary Woodstock

Whether or not you feel their anger is justified, it fuels the storms that are sweeping across the publishing landscape much like the those that swept the musical landscape of the Sixties. The brilliant and exciting artists of this literary counterculture display the same energy, insouciance, fearlessness, joy and creativity as the firebrand troubadours of the Janis Joplin/Jimi Hendrix generation. That uprising culminated in Woodstock. Where will the Indie Author Revolution be celebrated?

We know where it won’t be: New York City, headquarters of the tottering, buffoonish, ossified ancien regime.

The Wealth of the Indies

But something about this revolution makes it far different from all the others: the rebels are making money. Lots of it. In fact many of the self-styled Have Nots are making a better living writing than the Haves. Their blogs are replete with boasts of how much money they are coining – how much money they are minting!

Revolutionaries tend to lose their credibility and their slogans start to sound hollow once they become wealthy. Not many shackles to break except mortgages on fancy condos; no barricades but the speed bumps in their gated communities; no bricks to throw save those of gold. But for now, independent authors are the shining hope for a languishing publishing industry, and we need to listen to them and learn. And what we need to learn from them above all is how to make money in the publishing business. So -  more power to them.

Power to the uploaders!

Richard Curtis

According to Wired’s UK website, “Three writers have teamed up to launch a new publishing platform — Unbound — that allows authors to pitch their book ideas directly to readers who then pledge their support through funding.”

Here’s how it works: “Authors upload their ideas to Unbound.co.uk and readers then choose the ideas that they like and pledge their support (from £10 to funding the entire book). Once the idea has enough supporters, the book is written and supporters receive a clothbound limited Unbound First Edition with their name in it. Supporters can track the creative process via the author’s private area or ‘shed’, where they can read the author’s blog, watch interviews and meet other supporters. Rewards for higher pledges include an invitation to the book launch party and lunch with the author.”

Okay, authors, time to kiss up to rich Aunt Edna…

For details read Kickstarter for Book Launches

Credit for the first fan-financed story goes to Stephen King, but here’s a cautionary tale: even so august a name as King struggled to make the venture pay for his story The Plant.   Here is Wikipedia’s summary:

In 2000, King published the novella Riding the Bullet over the internet, making it the world’s first mass-market e-book. However, there were technical problems with downloading, and hackers eventually cracked the encryption on it.

Later that year, King decided to release The Plant directly via his website, unencrypted and in installments. People could pay a one-dollar fee for each installment using the honor system. He threatened, however, to drop the project if the percentage of paying readers fell below 75 percent. He viewed the release as an experiment in alternate forms of distribution, writing on his website at the time, “My friends, we have the chance to become Big Publishing’s worst nightmare.”

More than 200,000 customers downloaded free copies of the story in a 24-hour promotion through the Barnes and Noble website.[citation needed]

The book received over the desired 75 percent for its first installment, but this fell to 70 percent after installment two. With the third installment, the numbers surged back up to 75 percent.[citation needed]

King decided to double the cost of the fourth part of the novel to two dollars, while at the same time doubling the number of pages to 54. He also promised to cap the total cost of the entire book at a total of 13 dollars. Paying readers dropped to 46 percent of downloads. The number of downloads decreased overall as well.[citation needed]

The last installment was published on December 18, 2000. The book has yet to be completed.

Richard Curtis

With publishers shifting the responsibility for promotion onto the shoulders of authors, those who don’t have a flair for hype or a face that breaks hearts are not going to make it.

Salon‘s Laura Miller picks up on this theme in a recent piece entitled Author, Sell Thyself. “It has become a mantra that today’s author — whether self- or conventionally published — must learn to promote his or her books,” she writes. “Some, like [Barry] Eisler and [Amanda] Hocking, happen to be good at it, but many aren’t. People often become writers because they’re introverted or awkward in personal encounters and have poured everything they want to say to the world into their work. What usually gets lost in the perpetual refrain about authors becoming their own marketers is that there’s no particular connection between writing talent and a gift for self-promotion.”

Miller cites Thomas Pynchon, Emily Dickinson, J.D. Salinger and Harper Lee as reclusive writers who probably would not cut it in an age when we demand that authors be media stars.

Miller also cites self-published superstar Hocking, who recently created a sensation by crossing the avenue against the red light and signing a multimillion dollar deal with a traditional publisher.  Her motive for the move was simple: “Being me is a full-time corporation.” Meaning that self-publishing has drained the time she needs to write.  “The amount of time and energy I put into marketing is exhausting. I am continuously overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do that isn’t writing a book. I hardly have time to write anymore, which sucks and terrifies me.”

A few months ago we wondered Do Authors Make Good Publishers? Read Miller’s Author, Sell Thyself and you’ll see why the jury is still out on that question. And while you ponder it, here’s another: Will a day come when we pick up a book and ask “Is that all there is?  Just words on a page?”

Richard Curtis

Whereupon the author lost it. First she blamed the proofing problems on the fact that BigAl had reviewed a flawed copy of the book. “You obviously didn’t read the second clean copy I requested you download that was also reformatted, so this is a very unfair review.” Then she marshaled positive Amazon reviews to prove her book deserved more stars than BigAl had awarded it. Then she got out the knives and took after BigAl personally, calling him names, insisting he withdraw his review and demanding that he come out and fight like a man and answer private emails she sent him.

A host of commenters rushed to BigAl’s support, accusing the author of unprofessionalism. Finally BigAl defended himself in a comment of his own, citing such solecisms as:

“She carried her stocky build carefully back down the stairs.”

and

“Don and Katy watched hypnotically Gino place more coffees out at another table with supreme balance.”

We have not read the book and cannot judge its literary or grammatical merits. We can however draw some inferences from the author’s rabid attacks on her tormenters:

• “Al was given the option of a free copy from smashwords the following day to download in any format he preffered…”
• “…you could choose any format you wanted to read it in and if their were any spelling mistakes they were corrected.”
• “This is not only discusting and unprofessional on your part, but you really don’t fool me AL”
• “Your the target not me!”
• “Just look at your ball all of you”
• “Why read the wrong copy? that don’t make sense.”
• “Also in the new copy you did not have to click at all to get to the next page on Kindle, so thats how I now he never downloaded the clean copy.”
• “You are a big rat and a snake with poisenous venom.”

It’s hard not to concur with the anonymous commenter who said “The best part is that even your comments, Jacqueline, are full of misspellings, awkward phrasing, grammatical errors, and typos. So I’m certain those creep into your writing. And if you didn’t have a good editor (or even an editor at all), then it’s not hard to believe what the reviewer is saying.”

Ms. Howett’s response?

“Fuck off!”

You can read it all here.

Richard Curtis

Thanks to SRB.

A team of researchers has unlocked the secret of successful self-publication and is ready to guarantee that anybody applying the formula can duplicate the 100,000+ Kindle sales reported by Indie superstars.

Studying the techniques of pioneer indie writers like Joe Konrath, Amanda Hocking, John Locke and Selena Blake, the grad school geeks focused on multiple price-changes in concentrated periods of time. “What unlocked it for us was the realization that e-books are an ever-fluctuating commodity like soybeans and sorghum,” said  the mellifluously named Trini Rongbuk, leader of the research team.  “By changing the price hundreds of times within the hour, we are able to rival the bestselling independent authors and get any book, no matter how bad, on Amazon’s top 100 list.”

To prove that the formula works, Rongbuk, who had never even published a letter to the editor, uploaded a 50,000 word stream-of-consciousness screed she titled Garbage and began manipulating the list price between $.99 and $9.99 thousands of times over a 24 hour period. Sales soared and by the end of the test period she smashed the one-day Kindle sales record to smithereens.  At the end of the experiment she collapsed and was taken to the hospital for dehydration and severe carpal tunnel syndrome.

“This proves that anyone can sell hundreds of thousands of e-books as long as you keep the list price constantly in motion,” said one of her partners.

The experiment has attracted the attention of a group of asset managers  interested in packaging the program and developing e-books as a speculative commodity.