How to Publish an E-Book at Smashwords

So, you've written a book. Not only a book, the great American novel. Or, the end-all, be-all of reference books. So, you're done, right? No.

I've heard people say that the hard part about writing a book is writing the book. I don't believe that. Writing the book is the easy part. Getting it published and then actually selling copies is the hard part.

Smashwords makes the publishing part easy! More than 30,000 writers and independent publishers publish on Smashwords. That equates to more than 85,000 books! This makes Smashwords the world's largest ebook distributor.

Smashwords is an e-book publishing company founded in 2008 by Mark Coker. The idea behind the company is that anyone can write a book and upload it to Smashwords and it is converted into multiple e-reader formats (including: Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, iPhone & iPod Touch, among others). The best part about it is that this service is FREE. Yes, I said FREE. It costs nothing to upload your book.

You can sell it for as much as you want or offer it FREE. When your book is published at Smashwords, you earn 85% of the proceeds. If your book is purchased through a retail site like Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, etc., you earn 65%.

Smashwords offers numerous FREE services when you publish your ebook with them.

♦ FREE ISBN

♦ FREE ebook conversion to nine different formats

♦ FREE marketing tools

♦ FREE unlimited updates

Steps to publishing your book at Smashwords:

* Write the book.

* Proofread the book.

* Let as many other people as possible proofread the book.

* Have a professional edit the book.

* Make corrections.

* Read Smashwords Style Guide

* Re-read Smashwords Style Guide

* Make changes to the book following the Smashwords Style Guide

* Design (or have someone else do it) the cover

* Follow the directions at Smashwords to upload your book.

* Market your book to everyone you know and even more people you don't know. Smashwords has also published The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide to help. There are great suggestions in there.

I have (so far) only discovered two things I don't like about publishing at Smashwords.

1. When I uploaded my book, I was #1049 in the queue, meaning that there were 1048 people ahead of me to publish their books. It took six plus hours for my book to be uploaded.

2. It also takes awhile for your book to be reviewed for possible inclusion in the Smashwords Premium Catalog - something you really want to have. So far, it's been a week and no one has looked at it yet.

I think it's definitely worth it to give Smashwords a try, especially if you don't have a lot (or any) money to put up front to publish your book.