Quote:
Originally Posted by Smashwords
Hi Richard, when I first started Smashwords 3 yrs ago, I posted a survey over at LinkedIn where I asked book authors what word processor they preferred using. At the time, 95% of them answered MS Word, which is why it made sense to build Meatgrinder and the Style Guide around it. To date, the decision has worked quite well for us and our authors, despite the non-stop ridicule we receive from people who find it absurd we'd build a publishing platform around Word. But then, many found the entire notion of Smashwords absurd, so thank you very much, I guess I like absurb.  This survey represents my attempt to do a reality check and get a feel for how things have changed in the last three years. Thanks to everyone who has already provided great insight! |
Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to pay the Microsoft tax. They're not going to be in your Word-using contingent. LinkedIn probably isn't a good cross-section of the writing market, either, because it caters primarily to people who are already professionals in some sense -- who, again, are more likely to have both the money and the willingness to pay Microsoft hundreds of dollars for a word processor. So, you may not have actually gotten as good a selection of potential users as you thought.
There are also a fair number of people who have their own ideas about how they want things formatted and don't want to go through a word processor at all. As Smashwords grows, I think you'll encounter increasing numbers of those people. "Just put your MS-Word file in here" is adequate for some people, but not everybody, and the last I looked, there was nobody in the publishing business, even Smashwords, who could afford to leave money on the table. I think, instead of looking for reasons to continue to restrict authors from using anything but Word, it would be more profitable for you -- and certainly more practical for
us -- for Smashwords to find alternatives that would allow authors to set up their work the way they like it and submit it in ways that are not necessarily Microsoft-specific.