In case you didn’t know, the first week of March is Read an Ebook Week. Apparently, this is something that the early adopters of ebooks started back in 2004 to help popularize the new reading format and break down some of the initial wariness from the general public.
Well, Smashwords does a Read an Ebook Week promo every year, and I’ve enrolled all of my books at a 50% discount. If you want to check out one of my $.99 short stories like “Memoirs of a Snowflake,” or Part II (Fidelity) and Part III (Sacrifice) of the Star Wanderers series, you can now pick those up for free. If you want to try out one of my novels, like Bringing Stella Home or Desert Stars, they’re all under $3. In fact, with the promo code REW50, all my books are under $3 on Smashwords right now.
Also, if you’re a Smashwords affiliate, I’ve juiced the affiliate bonus for all of my titles to 35%. Since I sell all my full-length novels at $4.95, you can make about $1.75 for each referral–almost the full 85% for a novel selling at $2.99.
Some indie writers aren’t too keen on Smashwords, but I’m definitely a fan of the site. Mark Coker has done a lot of great things, opening doors and breaking down walls to help us get our stories out to the world. He’s also been good to readers, especially international readers, who have to pay an extra $2 surcharge for any ebooks they buy on Amazon.
Once you purchase a book on Smashwords, you have access to multiple DRM-free formats, including mobi (Kindle), epub (Nook, Kobo ereader), PDF, and straight up HTML for online reading, among others. Anytime the author uploads a new version, you have access to that as well (or any of the previous versions since the initial purchase). All the books are screened before going up on the site, so the formatting is generally pretty clean.
So yeah, between March 3-9, feel free to check out my books on Smashwords! And while you’re at it, check out some of the other great authors as well. There’s a lot of good stuff up there–a lot of black swans that would never have made it in traditional publishing, but thanks to the ebook revolution now have a decent chance. Who knows what you’ll find? It might just be your next favorite book!
Out of curiosity, do you opt into Overdrive through smashwords, which gets your books out to the libraries?
Yes, I do. Half of my books are library priced at free, which enables libraries to loan out an unlimited number of copies, and the other half are library priced at $.99, which limits how many they can loan out at once. That’s the only sticking point for me right now–I’m not sure if it’s smart to enable an unlimited number of loans, which is something I can’t take back once I go down that path. But I’m still on the fence when it comes to that issue.