Comments on: Publish your ebook on Smashwords

By: Huw Thomas

Huw Thomas — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 10:19:41 +0000

Thanks Joanna, that’s very interesting since (perhaps) if you’re doing enough business to make this a major issue, then you might well be doing enough business to justify setting up a company — thus bypassing the jungle that is an individual ITIN application.

By: Joanna Penn

Joanna Penn — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 10:13:29 +0000

I didn’t have to do that Huw. I have a company so got an EIN and then just phoned the IRS for the tax number and then put that on the W8-BEN – I think it’s much harder to do it as an individual than for a company.

By: Huw Thomas

Huw Thomas — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 10:09:59 +0000

Great news on getting your ITIN and tax refund, Joanan! I’d be interested to know how you handled the passport certification, since that’s the thing that seems trickiest (or at least, most expensive, given the price that international notaries seem to charge. I have heard of someone in the UK who used the Post Office’s document certification service successfully, but I don’t suppose one can rely on that).

By: Joanna Penn

Joanna Penn — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 08:28:29 +0000

Thanks Huw, I think BookBaby do offer a good service and they do formatting etc as well, so definitely a competitor to Smashwords in that way. I did fill in a withholding tax form for the US and got all my tax back , so that can definitely be done. W8-BEN I think it’s called. But it is a minefield, that’s for sure!

By: Huw Thomas

Huw Thomas — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 16:40:21 +0000

Joanna, since my previous comment above (about withholding tax) I’ve signed several books up with Bookbaby which *doesn’t* withhold tax from non-US authors, and which distributes to B&N (non-agency) as well as iBookstore & Amazon (both agency), and Sony (non-agency) for their respective devices. The agency thing is important because B&N and Sony will discount — typically by 20% — meaning that Amazon will then price-match, taking a certain amount of pricing control away from you.

They have up-front fees instead of taking a cut as smashwords does, so on balance smashwords will be a better deal for lower-sellers, while bookbaby will be better for big-sellers.

Another non-wittholding-tax distributor I looked at is inscribedigital.com, but I haven’t signed with them. They could be worth checking out though.

As to why some of these companies withhold while others don’t … I tracked down both the appropriate US tax legislation and the IRS guidance leaflet, and it turns out that only certain kinds of revenue are subject to withholding. My understanding (backed up by what I observe) is that if a publishing intermediary pays you a royalty, or gives you some kind of retail presence in the USA, then they have to withhold. I suspect that if Smashwords didn’t have their web-store, but instead acted purely as a distributor, they could pay all non-US authors in full.

By: Joanna Penn

Joanna Penn — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 10:29:38 +0000

Thanks Jim, most of us non-US people need Smashwords to get on B&N as well as the rest of them – so it makes sense in general to be on it – but with the advent of Kindle Select it will be interesting to see if Smashwords loses indie market share with the exclusivity deal.

By: Joanna Penn

Joanna Penn — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 10:28:18 +0000

Hi Sally, I must confess to not being very clever in the formatting area! Mark Coker at Smashwords has a list of people who can help you so you can just email him for that. Or contact my friend Simon who is a children’s author who also formats ebooks http://www.bookdesign.me.uk/
On the money side, Ruth Ann Nordin does very well – she talks about it in this interview – I’d say $20,000+ is a pretty good taking
http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2011/04/15/book-marketing-for-introverts-with-ruth-ann-nordin/

By: chezjim

chezjim — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:21:45 +0000

Interesting to read my own comments and those of others going back a few years.
I do make significant – not life-changing – income on Smashwords, comparable to what I make on Barnes and Noble and Kindle. It only comes in every few months and their stats are ungodly complicated, which makes it hard to track as exactly as I do other channels. Lulu for instance gives you, plain and simple, a list of all-time sales for each book. Extracting this from Smashwords’ spreadsheets is less than straightforward, as is reconciling the total money due at left with the different amounts shown in the grids at right. But in general it’s doing as well as the others overall.
Ironically Sony, my original target in joining, remains pretty minimal in terms of sales. For a big company they seem to have completely missed the boat on the importance of content vs technology.
There are books I still can’t put up on Smashwords. Anything with lots of footnotes is hopeless – you really don’t want to “nuke” this kind of document and start from scratch. It would help if their Meatgrinder had a way of simply converting footnotes to the format they use. As for “floating images”, I’ve never tried that (another thing Smashwords needs is a test bed, so you can try things out without their going on sale). But any complexity of formatting is generally iffy at this point.

By: Sally Huss

Sally Huss — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:58:20 +0000

Hi Joanna,

I’ve read Smashwords Guide until I’m blue in the face! Haven’t figured out how to get rid of floating images. I do children’s books and need the images. I have followed what Smashwords suggests: click on image/format picture/layout/ok/save — but it still moves if I left click and drag the image around. I’ve tried to ask Smashwords, but am referred to the same info. Do you have an answer?

On more question — do you know of authors who are actually earning significant incomes from Smashwords?

Many thanks.

By: Publishing a Book Can Cost $0 « ASTER: Women in Business Achieving Success through Enhancing Resources

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 18:43:23 +0000

[...] Publisher Typeset book: $0 done by self on Microsoft Word Publish book: Published as an Ebook on Smashwords for free and up for sale for US$4.99. Now for sale on the iPhone. [+] Share & Bookmark [...]