Studying data can turn up surprising information, but it's important to get the best results in what you do. Smashwords CEO Mark Coker recently released the results from data that was mined during an 11-month period from May 1, 2012 to March 31, 2013. This data studied trends of more than $12 million in sales for 120,000 Smashwords e-books. One of the more interesting findings that came out of the study was that longer works actually sell better. “The top 100 bestselling Smashwords books averaged 115,000 words,” Coker wrote on his blog. “When we examined the word counts of books in other sales rank...

Christopher Harris has a thought-provoking essay up at The Digital Shift in which he argues that self-published books are "not a solution" for K-12. He argues that publishers "serve a critical role in the information ecosystem" by vetting and recommending quality books to school librarians, who often work alone without the benefits of a large paid staff to assist them in their book-buying choices. I sympathize with the task Harris, and other school librarians, face. But I think he misses the point that publishers have the prominence they do simply because until recently, we lacked the technological abilities for anyone else...

A couple of weeks ago I read about Draft2Digital, an e-book distributor still in beta mode. They got my attention with their claim to be able to turn a Word doc into a functional EPUB or Mobi (Kindle) file. Naturally I had to check them out, so I asked for a beta code, and I've been playing around with their conversions ever since, to see if they're any good. The results so far have been fair. I threw them a Word doc of my nonfiction book, which had previously given Barnes & Noble fits. Amazon had handled it well, but the...

I always keep an eye out for freelance work. I enjoy writing, and sometimes I like to get paid extra for it. I recently saw an ad on Craigslist for a book reviewer. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was better than nothing for something I enjoy doing anyway. I like reading, and writing reviews afterward on Goodreads, sometimes Amazon, and always on Smashwords. So I put together an email, complete with a copy of a recent review I wrote of a self-published book, along with some basic information about myself. The ad didn’t ask for a resume, so unfortunately...

Digital products like e-books are licensed—not sold—to a buyer, so they can’t be legally resold, shared, or loaned. (See my article on e-books and the first sale doctrine for more information.) A group called the Owners' Rights Initiative wants to change that. The ORI believes that the owner of a digital book should be allowed to sell it used.  Members of this group include some library trade groups, used resellers of paper books, and eBay. Some readers consider this a good thing, because they can get cash back on books they've read, in the very same way many readers do with paper books. But...

Self-publishing a book can come with pre-conceived notions from readers, other writers and even publishers. People used to think self-publishing a book meant it wasn’t good enough to get picked up by traditional houses. However, the stigma of self-publishing is changing. Success stories have become more and more abundant, and the shock those successes caused even five to 10 years ago is slowly beginning to dissipate. Those in the industry have watched the development closely. Smashwords founder Mark Coker began his site five years ago as an outlet for self-published authors. It started small and has grown into a site where nearly...

By Arnold Zafra In a move to encourage more self-published authors to make their masterpieces available on the iBookstore, Apple has created an entirely new section, Breakout Books, where self-published e-books will be displayed prominently. According to Apple, Breakout Books is aimed at helping readers find the next reading sensation by way of this collection of books from emerging—and hopefully talented—writers. All e-books on Breakout Books are independently published and were rated and recommended by iBookstore customers. And as Leslie Kaufman opined yesterday in the New York Times' Media Decoder blog, this is clearly "yet another sign that self-publishing is making inroads into...

At the end of 2012, I made a pledge to limit my e-book spending to only DRM-free e-books this year. I made this pledge for a number of reasons, the primary two being that firstly, since the whole rise/fall of agency pricing debacle, the books I want to read seem to be unreasonably expensive, and secondly, these very expensive books since to have an increasing quantity of typos and quality control issues, which makes the high price especially galling. I still am allowing myself to borrow books with DRM—I use my public library regularly, and feel that the function of DRM...

If you're a do-it-yourself kind of author, you've probably encountered the "fun" of formatting your book for the various sites. I had no problems uploading my fiction book to Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I created a clean HTML file and followed all the prompts. Presto! Published. My non-fiction book was similarly easy to upload to Amazon. But Barnes & Noble stopped me. No matter what I did, I couldn't make the bulleted lists display properly. Being stubborn, I refused to pay someone else to do it for me, so I went in search of a good e-book formatting guide. After reading...

Mark Coker's 2013 Book Publishing Industry Predictions (Smashwords) B&N will give away free ebooks in stores, including Big Six titles (Paid Content) Top 100 Business, Leadership and Technology Twitter Accounts You Must Follow (Huffington Post) The Ray Kurzweil era begins at Google (Digital Trends) Kindle Daily Deals: We the Animals by Justin Torres {and 3 other choices}...

There's a new e-reader in the house! I had been eying the Kobo Glo with some envy ever since it came out. It seemed like Amazon's readers kept getting thicker and chunkier-looking, while Kobo's kept getting smaller and cuter and faster. The glow light was what really sold me, though. I read in bed a lot, and was growing weary of the tiny iPod Touch screen—I wanted to take a book with me again! And even with the light on, it was too dark to bring my reader into bed. We have one power outlet, and it's not on my...

From Part 1: I love DRM-free books! I know that for most people, DRM is an issue they might not think about often; if their books work, they’re happy. But for many more experienced e-book users, it’s an issue to care about. Unless, that is, you buy and read books that are DRM-free. The books referenced and linked to below can be kept forever, converted using free software such as Calibre, and read on any device you might own. But where to get them? Here are some of my favorite sources: 3. SMASHWORDS This is the Amazon of self-published books. Some genres are better represented...