I did stick "Tigers," and "Jolly Roger" up on Smashwords, but it won't make their "Premium" status–they want formatting I don't like, and an ISBN, which I don't do for short stories, so if you want to download it from them, you'll have to do it manually. Shouldn't be a problem, just pick your format and click.
5 comments:
Any chance we can see this one and Jolly Roger over on FS& for us Nook owners?
Just wondering.
I can try, but getting on Smashwords has been a bitch of late. Last attempt, the queue for uploading was thirty-six hours ...
Smashwords gives out free ISBNs, and don't retain any of the rights to the piece. Any reason you chose against allowing them to do that?
Justin --
No major reason -- you don't need the ISNB number for Smashwords, nor Amazon. You do need it to get into Smashwords' Premium catalog, which feeds iBooks and B&N and such, but to get into that catalogue, you have to use their formatting. If you don't, the grinder kicks it back.
When Dan Moran does an ebook, it looks much better, but Smashwords chokes on his formatting. If I'm offering a POD option, I can't get that past Smashwords, either.
Upload a file to Amazon, you can use Word or ePub or .mobi or even a PDF. (Conversion, via Calibre, is easy, and the software is a free download.) Smashwords likes Word, and you can't use hard tabs, you have to use the auto-format tab, which is not a big deal, but it's just one more hoop to hop through. They don't like type bigger than 16 point, dropcaps, like that, so if you want to do a section break or anything other than plain vanilla, you can't. Little stuff.
All of which is to say that getting a short story into the Smashwords Premium list isn't worth the effort for me. At my profit margins, it'll be forever before I earn anything on it. I put it up there because a fan asked me to.
I get more sales from Dan, and way more from Amazon; Smashwords is a distant third.
I am familiar with the grinder; it required me to re-format Still Man Fights from scratch. I see your point, though. BN and all those others that Smashwords feeds into haven't done anything for my sales. And really, they don't bother to put up a proper description. In some cases, they don't even put up a proper cover image. Was probably not worth the effort, now that I think of it.
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