Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
So why are so many people limiting themselves unnecessarily and potentially alienating real, paying customers? It makes no sense to me.
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They don't know other options exist. Amazon hypes the Kindle as the One Reader To Rule Them All, and most of the media coverage slants in that direction as well.
While Smashwords does sometimes have conversion problems (I've got a short story from them that has a page break after every paragraph; I'm planning on downloading it in HTML so I can tinker with the formatting, even though I'm almost useless with HTML files), most of their content is good, and I plan on trying to politely respond to more of the self-published Kindlebook authors with something like,
"Did you know you can also publish your ebook at
Smashwords? They take a smaller commission than Amazon, so you can offer it for less and get the same amount of money, and they offer ebooks in a variety of formats, so your customers aren't limited to people who own a Kindle and live in the U.S."
(Anyone may borrow that or tweak it for individual posts. I'd love more ebook authors to know that Amazon's not the only place they can sell their works. Letting them know they can offer them for free at Feedbooks would also be good.)
If that's followed by replies about problems with Smashwords' formatting, that's okay too; I'd like more authors of all sorts to know that publishing isn't as simple as "throw the Word document into the book creator program and *poof* you have a print- or purchase-ready book!"