Rumors have been flying about the Apple event announced for later this month. It seems pretty obvious that it’s about time for a new iPad to make the rounds, of course, but Good eReader thinks that Apple is going to announce a new self-publishing platform. “Sources close to the matter have told us that they intend on launching a new digital self-publishing platform to get peoples content into the iBookstore,” writes Michelle Kozlowski. She notes that it’s currently possible for independent authors to get on the iBookstore through Smashwords, but the Apple program will be designed to give authors...

 Smashwords author Charlene Bays Rothenberger yesterday published the 20,000th book at Smashwords at 8:23pm Pacific time.Two months ago we reached 15,000 books and five months ago we hit 10,000.To put the growth in context, we published 140 books in 2008, our first year of operation. By the end of 2009, we reached 6,000. We're on track to surpass 25,000 by the end of the year.Do numbers matter? Yes. Each new author at Smashwords brings more books, and more books bring more readers and more readers bring more authors who bring more...

On October 2 in New York, I'm giving a talk at the Self Publishing Expo Conference titled, "The Seven Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success."While preparing the presentation, I started thinking about how it's possible to succeed as an author yet still fail to achieve your full potential.Every author is the CEO of their own budding publishing empire, full of unrealized potential. Decisions you make today will determine your success in the future.We all make multiple decisions every day, and some of our decisions will inevitably prove incorrect or ill-conceived. The secret...

I released a new revision to the Smashwords Style Guide that makes it easier to produce, publish and distribute a great-looking multi-format ebook with Smashwords.In parallel, in the last 30 days we developed, tested and introduced new EPUB and MOBI Meatgrinder conversion blades that give authors and publishers more control than ever over the final look and feel of their ebooks.The new Style Guide marks the 42nd and most significant update to the Style Guide since we first released it in November 2008. Our last major revision was in April, which is when...

Several weeks ago, Greg McQueen released a 100 Stories for Haiti Podcast focused on ebooks, offering an insightful and well-balanced look at the state of ebooks. He interviewed multiple authors and even yours truly to explore what ebooks mean to authors, readers and the future of publishing. For me, the highlight of Greg's excellent podcast was Smashwords author David Robinson, a 60-year Yorkshireman who presented an audio essay on indie ebook publishing. This is a must-listen. Mr. Robinson is a gifted orator, and he has created one of the best-articulated manifestos on e-publishing I've heard. One comment that struck me as...

Charles Dickens didn't invent serialized novels, but he's certainly one of the best known authors to use the serial approach. Whereas the traditional story has a beginning, a middle and an end, the serial novel is often characterized by the never-ending middle. The author starts the story, and then releases new installments over time. I wonder what Charles Dickens would think of serialized ebooks. The topic is on my mind today because when I woke up this morning and looked at the Smashwords home page, it was dominated by five installments of a single ebook, each about 10,000 words. The other day, I...

Smashwords authors can now add enhanced navigation to their ebooks with linked, clickable ToCs. This is good news for our 4,992 authors (we should reach 5,000+ by tonight or tomorrow!) and their 10,943 books. The lack of live ToC support has been one of the biggest, most glaring holes at Smashwords ever since we launched two years ago. For fiction, it was a tolerable omission for most readers because people read fiction serially, from word one forward. For our non-fiction authors, it was more problematic because readers interact differently with non-fiction. For some non fiction, navigation is essential to the reading experience. The newly...

Jim Milliot over at Publisher's Weekly reported today on new data out of R.R. Bowker that shows a huge spike in the number of self-published titles in 2009. Milliot reports: A staggering 764,448 titles were produced in 2009 by self-publishers and micro-niche publishers, according to statistics released this morning by R.R. Bowker. The number of "nontraditional" titles dwarfed that of traditional books whose output slipped to 288,355 last year from 289,729 in 2008. Taken together, total book output rose 87% last year, to over 1 million books. - snip - The Amazon...

The Smashwords catalog of original indie ebooks surpassed 10,000 yesterday. With your help, I think we can hit 25,000 by the end of the year. And hey, if we fall short and hit 20,000, it'll still blow a lot of people away, myself included. 10K is a huge milestone, not only for us as a business but also for the entire indie movement. Indie authors and publishers will inherit the future of publishing. I'm convinced of it. What was once called the slush pile - the unpublished manuscripts languishing on the desks of literary agents and acquisition editors - is now moving...

The ebook market is growing faster as it grows larger. The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) on Friday reported U.S. wholesale ebook sales for January, 2010 were $31.9 million, up 261 percent from the same month a year earlier. To put this in perspective, I created the chart at left. The chart compiles annual ebook sales data from the Association of American Publishers. For 2010, I took the latest IDPF January data and annualized it. The data is collected from only 12-15 U.S. trade publishers. This means it dramatically understates what's really happening in ebooks, because thousands of large and small publishers, as...

I updated the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide this morning. If you're not familiar with it, it's a free ebook that offers over 27 easy-to-implement marketing ideas for authors. Even if you're naturally introverted, as most of us authors are, you'll benefit from this ebook. Best of all, all of the ideas can be implemented at no cost. I made various minor updates, and then added a new Tip #27, which I'll excerpt here: Tip #27: Promote your book to top ebook listing sites Many popular websites and blogs specialize in providing directory-style links to ebooks, and routinely link to Smashwords ebooks. The sites I...

John Buffalo Mailer, the author, journalist, actor and playwright son of Norman Mailer, has published a great ebook at Smashwords titled, Music, Food, and Death. The ebook explores post-Katrina New Orleans through the eyes of strippers. As part of the Read an Ebook Week promotion, you can download it now through Saturday March 13 for free, exclusively at Smashwords or at Diesel-Ebooks. In the weeks ahead, the ebook will also be available at Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and Amazon. John Buffalo Mailer is the youngest of nine children of this literary family. His father, the two-time Pulitzer-prize-winning literary giant, requires little introduction....