[LynnaMerrill]

Thanks everyone for your kind words. It is encouraging to find such a friendly community.

basschick and rhadin: My books are not on Smashwords because Smashwords won't accept anything but a .doc file, and I don't have one. I wrote my books in vim (a plain text editor) in the LaTeX format, from which I easily generate a .pdf file and, not so easily, an .html file and an .epub file. Anything Microsoft Word, however, would be a mess. Indeed, anything Microsoft Word seems to always be a mess, which is why I don't use Microsoft Word or Windows in the first place.

May I ask, why would you prefer my books to be on Smashwords? Is it because of the different converted file formats that they offer? I am not sure whether you know this, but Barnes & Noble use the open .epub format for their Nook books. All my books are DRM-free, both at Barnes & Noble and Amazon. If people are interested, I could also list various file formats on my own site, with a PayPal shopping cart. Let me know. Your advice is greatly appreciated.