Smashwords has been around for many, many years. It was one of the first bookstores to cater to the indie publishing scene.
In late 2022, Draft2Digital bought Smashwords, which was a smart move, because Draft2Digital is an indie distributor/aggregator. It didn’t have a bookstore front of its own. But now it does.
I distribute books through Draft2Digital, and a couple of weeks ago, they gave me the option of bulk-uploading all my books to the Smashwords bookstore. So I did. And I’m sure that most authors distributing through Draft2Digital also one-clicked the same option to sell on Smashwords.
That means there’s a lot of new titles on the store.
If you are a savvy reader who can sideload books no matter where you acquire them, then the Smashwords store is another great source. There, you can find books that you rarely trip over on Amazon. for a number of reasons, including Amazon’s active downgrading of the sales ranks of books that are not in Kindle Unlimited (including mine).
Smashwords’s interface is a bit old-fashioned, but it’s simple and easy to navigate. On the positive side: Smashwords won’t hide books from you, or “anticipate” what you want to see and present only titles that they think you should see.
As a Canadian author and reader, I’m particularly sensitive to this. If I click a link that takes me to the Amazon US store, when I click through to the Canadian store, often, the book I was just looking at on the US store does not appear. I get a search results list of “related” titles, but not that book. I have to search for the book using full title and author, and even then, the book I’m interested in doesn’t show up until halfway down the page of results. I’m shown a lot of Kindle Unlimited titles, and Big 5 NY publisher titles, first.
Smashword’s algorithms are far more simple, in comparison, and as far as I’m aware, have no inbuilt biases and agendas.
That makes the store refreshing to browse.
Check it out. You’ll find Smashwords here.
Taylen