Ebook publishing through Smashwords.

In my last post I told you that I had just published half of my novel Girl in the Glass with Smashwords.com.

Smashwords not only convert your file which you produced in Microsoft Word or Open Office Writer into a full range of ebook formats and sell it through their website, but they will also distribute it for you to all the major outlets: Amazon, Apples i-books, Barnes and Noble, Kobo (which supplies WH Smith), etc etc. This is great because some of these outlets won't take them from self-publishers plus they all seem to require different formats etc.

But there are downsides to Smashwords - they are dominating the ebook self-publishing world and with the boom in e-publishing this means that their trade has expanded massively but it seems that their staff numbers may not have. The web discussion boards are alive with people complaining about delays at Smashwords. Is that because the files people are submitting to them have errors or is it something else? I have to say that my experience so far has been pretty good, but then I have a relatively simple book and I am not fazed by technical problems in formatting and the like. I do not doubt that for others the process of getting the book through the Smashwords meatgrinder (a tongue-in-cheek name for their conversion software) is far from smooth. Then having got through that your book has to pass e-pub validation, which can throw up more problems. That said it is perfectly possible to check for problems beforehand (more of that some other time).

Once through the automatic validation your books appear on the Smashwords site for downloading, But they are not shipped to other distributors immediately, your book is now waiting in line for manual approval by some bod in the Smashwords vetting team. Only then will it be shipped to Amazon et al.  Word on the web is that this last stage can take time as the team try to keep up with the large number of ebooks being uploaded. And then if you fail to pass muster you have to go back sort the problem and reapply. My book is waiting approval from the human vetters. I will let you know how I get on.