[JeremyR]

I did find a post from 2 years about this. But I'm curious about any other experiences.

The proofreading and editing of my first novel is almost done. I was looking at Smashwords, but it seems like it would be a lot more work getting it into something they would accept (as opposed to an Epub that I can make myself) and it seems like most titles there sell very poorly, so probably not worth the dozens of hours of effort.

Same goes for Amazon. Even though I've made dozens of books for my kindle (including this one dozens of times, that's how I proofread it), they insist on doing it their own way...

So it would be much easier to just release the epub and mobi versions in various spots and hope people read it and like it enough to send something. Or just read it.

Then again, years ago when I was out of college and still knew how to program, I tried making a couple of shareware programs. Thousands of downloads, exactly 1 buyer (whose check I kept as a memento, instead of cashing). But I guess all authors secretly hope they'll be a huge success, even though they know they'll be lucky to get 10 people to read it.

And also, especially for the Epub version, what's to keep someone from just editing the file and changing the address for Paypal?