March 2, 2014
As is my tradition, I’ve set my entire catalog to FREE this week in honor of Read an E-Book Week, an annual event that just might be at the end of its life as a promotional tool. But gosh darn it, it’s still fun!
When I joined my first Read an E-Book Week five years ago, it was still a struggle to get people on board with digital books. This was, of course, before Kindle. Before Nook. Before Kobo. By promoting our books at Smashwords, we were able to give people cheap or free options and show them this great new world that was waiting to be explored.
But then came the slew of e-book readers. Then the e-reader tablets, the Nook HD and the Kindle Fire. And people began adopting e-books like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Today, e-books make up a sizeable chunk of the book-buying habits of millions. I don’t have the stats in front of me, but I do know, as many authors do, that I sell WAY more e-books than print. (of course, I’ve also doubted my print sales reports for awhile now, and know of other authors who’ve verified hinky things happening on that front.)
Anyway… regardless of whether or not you’ve ever read an e-book or not, Smashwords remains one of the best places to find new books, especially during Read an E-Book Week. Pick up any titles of mine that you haven’t grabbed yet, and then surf around a bit. See what else is out there.
Yes, some of it will be lousy. Go into any bookstore and pick ten books at random. I guarantee you at least one will be lousy, if not more. But I also guarantee you that you’ll find at least one book that is so outside the norm, so cleverly executed or well imagined, that you’ll find yourself hooked.
The best part of working outside the traditional structure is that the rules are different, and in the self-publishing world, there’s room to stretch and break boundaries. To throw traditional formats and genres out the windows and invent new ones.
Come join the ride. There’s amazing books being written.
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