01-24-2013, 08:45 PM | #16 | |
Indie Advocate
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If you make a Smashwords edition - fitting all their criteria, do they pass on that work automatically for B&N and iTunes? Would that make it so you'd only need one ePub? I hope that's not an extraordinarily stupid question, but I thought that was meant to be one of the advantages of submitting to Smashwords. If it's not that simple, then I wonder what the advantage of Smashwords actually is for content creators. I always thought Meatgrinder looked a bit painful for someone unless they were going to get the advantage of all distribution channels (iTunes, B&N, Amazon etc..) |
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01-24-2013, 09:42 PM | #17 | |
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I have a few that can't upload to Apple directly, so they want distro there (at least, until they've got a year with iBooks under their belt and have seen what type of sales it garners), and yes, those folks would then ONLY need two; one for B&N and one for SW. The "advantage" of SW has been, over the past few years, primarily that people with books on Amazon use it as a tool to force Amazon to price-match to a free book. Most of the clients that we have who've asked us to make Word files from their final ePUB files to create SW books (prior to the great SW experiment) tell us that they're simply using the ability to set (mobi-formatted via Calibre) books to free on SW as a way to leverage Amazon into price-matching. {shrug}. That's all I really know, other than, what I see is not less than two ePUBs and now maybe three. I would expect very few of my clientele to actually use SW for distro to those outlets that they can do themselves, since this is, after all, business, and 14.25% is a good-sized chunk of cash. Hitch |
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01-24-2013, 09:56 PM | #18 | |
Wizard
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When I first started I pushed a word file to Smashwords, and a mobi to Amazon. Through those to outlets I got my book out to 95% or better of the ebook market place (US Market at least). But now I make : 1) One EPUB for B&N 2) One EPUB for Kobo 3) One WORD file for Smash 4) One MOBI file for Amazon The reason is partly speed and partly accuracy. For example, B&N represents a large (maybe 20%) piece of my sales, but going through Smash can delay releases/updates as much as 2 months. Kobo I think is poised to become a major player, so I am hedging my bets and treating them as one ahead of the game but currently they are a distance 4th behind Apple in my sales. I have dealt with other small outlets, like Bookiejar, and etc, directly but it frankly is not worth it. I really only sell via those 4 files mentioned above, and pretty much with my forth novel I have abandoned the rest. Smash also gets me in Libraries, but that is a new market for them and still being developed. I know of no other way for me to get in to libraries. |
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01-24-2013, 10:03 PM | #19 | |
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P.S.: I concur, 100%, about Kobo. They are poised for big biz in the Far East. H |
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01-29-2013, 07:01 PM | #20 | |
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I told the client today that we would not provide any further ePUBs for "testing" at SW. I've had no end of back-and-forth emails with "just change this!" and "just change that!," and "advice" from (wait for it SMASHWORDS FORMATTING EXPERTS that the client contacted, who said "follow the formatting guide and use the "nuclear" option (i.e., remove all formatting)...and I said, enough of this crap. I told him we'd give him the books in Word format, and he can format them to his heart's content. This is a simple fiction title. Nothing fancy. No embedded images, no dropcaps...not even smallcaps. It should have been a near-perfect test ePUB. Seven "versions" later, the book is still not in, for absolutely no apparent reason. So, our participation in this experiment is over. I never thought I'd say that Apple had been surpassed in their ridiculousness in intake, but, they have been. Maybe people who are bookmaking for a hobby, or to blog about it, have the time to play around with making and remaking titles to see what submits, but we're producers, not authors or publishers, and we don't. Worse, since there's no such thing as publishing "draft," it's not like we can even test the intake for ourselves, so...it's over for us. If and when SW gets their procedures down, and has an actual Guide that can be relied upon, and if we have a client that wants to submit there (we get a few a year), then, great, but until then...enough already. Creating a Beta with no visible rules, requirements, standards, etc., is just absurd. if authors want to be tortured trying to hit an invisible target, and want to spend all their time doing so, great, but, that's not for us. I'm out my own time on this, and as we only get 2-3 requests a year for SW "formatting," I won't earn it back any time soon. Hitch |
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01-29-2013, 07:18 PM | #21 |
cacoethes scribendi
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I find this an odd requirement. Are they a distributor or a publisher? If the latter then I understand the requirement, if the former then they have no place being mentioned inside the book at all.
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01-29-2013, 08:07 PM | #22 |
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Where's the problem? It says you have to say 'SMASHWORDS EDITION' on the copyright page, right there in the style guide.
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01-29-2013, 09:10 PM | #23 | |
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I make epubs in Sigil. There is no "CTRL-A" option for all files, and there is no "Normal" style. Sounds like the epubs are being run through the Meatgrinder's verification process, rather than anything that checks "is this a valid EPUB," and doesn't worry about whether it's compatible with other formats, which won't be generated from it. |
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01-29-2013, 10:24 PM | #24 | |
cacoethes scribendi
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Of course Smashwords, being a free service, have to pay their way somehow, and hitching an advertising ride on each "edition" they publish is one of those ways. I'm not saying it's wrong, just saying that it changes what they are, despite their insistence to the contrary. |
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01-30-2013, 04:00 AM | #25 | |
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@elfwreck: Of course there isn't (a way to do that in ePUB). That's their instructions on how to "clean" a Word file, for crap's sake. That was their "expert advice" on the second pass. @gmw: Yes, of course they're the publisher, despite Mark Coker insisting that they are not. Easy way to prove it? Try to take an ePUB you've made at SW with a SW ISBN--even the "premium" ISBN--and try to pub it anywhere else. It will be rejected. Why? Because by using a SW ISBN, that makes them the Publisher of Record. Mark can try to hair-split and call himself a "distributor" or "aggregator" from now until Hell freezes over, but when buyers pay a company the monies for purchase, and they in turn pay them to the content creator, that makes the company receiving all the money from sales the PUBLISHER. Because they control the ducats. The whole point of ISBN's, despite enormous popular misconceptions, is the supply and payment chain. That's why you can't use a SW ISBN at, say, B&N if you try to publish it yourself with your own publishing entity. SW isn't a "free" service. AFAIK, they earn 14.25% of the sales, so it's not exactly free. Hitch |
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01-30-2013, 01:22 PM | #26 | |
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