RE: Smashwords now in public beta

Nice site and nice idea Mark. Wishing you all the best.
Aaron J. WalkerPublisher
http://www.walkbroadpublishing.com


To: ebook-community-hHKSG33Tihig7M29m/[email protected]: [email protected]: Thu, 8 May 2008 02:19:33 +0000Subject: [ebook-community] Smashwords now in public beta




Hello everyone. I've been a long time member of TeBC but haven'tposted much. If you will indulge me, I wanted to share news about mynew ebook startup, Smashwords. But first a little background... Several years ago, my wife and Iwrote a novel about soap operas (she's a former soap opera reporterfor a national soap magazine). We then were lucky enough to sign withone of NYC's most respected literary agencies, and then... after twoyears and multiple additional revisions, our agent wasn't able to sellit. It bugged me that a publisher had the power to stand between usand those who might enjoy reading the book. Sure, maybe the book's nogood, but shouldn't readers decide that, not a publisher? So it gotme thinking... If publishers can't physically publish all books, whatif I could create a digita
 l publishing company that would publishanyone. Sure, we'd publish a lot of *rap, but we'd also publish (I'mconfident) works of utter genius by undiscovered, underappreciatedauthors.So I founded Smashwords. We allow any author anywhere to upload aMicrosoft Word .doc or .rtf file of their manuscript (or screenplay,script, poetry, essay, etc) and then we automatically convert it intomultiple DRM-free ebook formats, and then we let the author set thepricing and the sampling privileges. Authors receive 85% of the netsales price ([Price - Paypal fees]*.85).We just completed two months of private beta testing, and startingyesterday, we opened the site up for public beta test.I invite anyone interested to visit the site, become a member, andpublish or read with us. At the top of every screen is 
 a link whereyou can provide us direct comments and suggestions.Thanks for reading.Best wishes,Mark CokerFounderSmashwordshttp://www.smashwords.com 






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