ebooks

All posts tagged ebooks

Smashwords Means Ebooks Galore!

Posted by george on January 13, 2010
Posted in: Fiction, Writing. Tagged: , , , . 13 comments

Long time readers of this blog know that I love Smashwords.  I’ve written about it on several occasions and I truly believe that it is one of the best tools out there to get your writing work noticed.  I won’t go into great detail here because I’ve done that in a previous post.  I will give a thumbnail sketch of how it works though.

Smashwords has a conversion interface that takes your word document  and converts it to virtually all ebook formats.  You name it.  You add a description, a cover, set your price and you are set.  The owner of Smashwords is Mark Coker and he and his team work tirelessly to help make certain your work is available through an astounding collection of markets.

I want to let you know of the books I’ve got listed at Smashwords.  Most are free, and a couple of them you set the price for what you would like to pay for the ebook.

The Writing Experience – An Inspiring Guide for Aspiring Authors

Description – “The Writing Experience… offers the beginning writer down-to-earth and proactive advice for how to start—and succeed—in writing. Dozens of clever writing prompts are guaranteed to get your pen or keyboard moving!” – Maria Schneider, Former editor of Writer’s Digest magazine.

Price – Set your own!

The Inspired Query Letter

Despcription – A short and sweet little e-book filled with powerful information about how to write the perfect query letter. As a writer, if you can’t write a good query letter, you’ll never be able to market your work. The Inspired Query Letter e-book will help make your query letters shine.

Price – Free!

Flashy Fiction – Under A Thousand

Description – A wonderful collection of Flash Fiction Stories, all under a thousand words.

Price – Set your own!

The Vanity of it All – A Collection of Vanity Plate Shorts

Description – A hard-hitting, surprising set of short stories based on Vanity Plates from around the US. The authors are: Matt from SmallBizBee, Steven Male, Matt Hayward, George Angus

Price – Free!

As a writer, you owe it to yourself to go over to Smashwords and sign up.  It’s absolutely free and it’s easy as pie.

For my Kindle friends, The Writing Experience is available for download here.

I hope you’ll take the time to go over and download some of these and I hope you enjoy the stories contained within.

Ebooks VS Paper: It’s Not All Or Nothing, Folks

Posted by george on January 6, 2010
Posted in: Writing. Tagged: , , , . 32 comments

The great debate about the downfall of printed books and the role that ebooks play in that downfall still rages on.  I’ll start this post with a quote highlighted in a book I’m currently reading, The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future .

“…I have lately kept praising the age in which we live, because of the great, indeed divine gift of the new kind of writing (delivery system).  …It was for this reason that I was led to hope that within a short time we should have such a large quantity of books that there wouldn’t be a single work which could not be procured because of a lack of means or scarcity…”

Care to guess what this quote refers to?  Is it the Kindle, or even Google?  Sorry, not even close.  It’s from a letter written less than twenty years after Gutenberg’s Codex machine and references the hopes and fears related to impending change.

One more quote from this same book, and I think it’s important:

“…One medium does not displace another…newspapers did not wipe out the printed books, the radio did not displace the newspaper, television did not destroy the radio and the Internet did not make viewers abandon their TV sets.”

In short, there is plenty of room for ebooks and the printed word.  Can electrons live side by side with cellulose fiber?  If I were pressed to make a prediction I’d say, “Absolutely.  At least for the foreseeable future.”

The machinery of time turns slowly, my friends.  Bibliophiles will not be trashing their book collections anytime soon.  Every day in the library, I see today’s youth coming in and checking out YA books by the dozen.  There seems to be some kind of balance between Warriors and the World of  Warcraft.

As well, I consider myself balanced  in this regard.  Oh, boy do I love my Kindle.  I love reading from it, I love the portability and the features.  I love the free content available and paying nine bucks for a bestseller hurts me feelings nary one bit.  With that said you can have my books when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.  I love my bookcase.  I love adding books to it whenever I can.  I don’t think I’m special or unusual in this regard.  My sister told me recently, “I love my Kindle, but I’ll always be a page turner.”  Couldn’t have said it better myself.

I don’t believe that e-books will ever completely displace the printed word.  There is room enough for both.

Where do you weigh in on the Great Debate?

I told you so – Smashwords Rocks!

Posted by george on August 28, 2009
Posted in: Writing. Tagged: , , . 4 comments

smashwords logoSince my very first post about the great e-book publishing service, Smashwords, I’ve been raving about what a great deal it is for authors.  In fact, it is great for anyone who is considering publishing an e-book.  Well, Mark Coker over at Smashwords has just raised the bar another notch and left a lot of e-book publishers in the dust.  I just received an update email where he announces that:

“Smashwords is evolving to become a full service ebook distributor.  Smashwords will soon begin distributing e-books to major online retailers, the first of which is Barnes & Noble and their various properties including Barnesandnoble.com, Fictionwise and their eReader app.”

As an author who has had 750 copies of my 5 e-books downloaded, I am ecstatic about this news.

The email from Mark outlines what it takes to be included in the “premium” catalog.  There are no tricks or silly hoops to jump through.  Essentially, if you have done what you should have done in the first place when you published your e-book, there is a good chance you’ll be included.

For authors already published at Smashwords, this will increase your shelf presence tremendously.

For those of you who have not published at Smashwords, what in the wide world of sports are ya waiting for?  It doesn’t cost a darned thing to get started, the interface and styleguide are steeped in common sense and Smashwords is not going to suck your royalty well dry.

Thanks, Mark.  Thanks, Smashwords.