I'm curious to see answers here. What are the pros and cons of each? You guys have any evidence in sales that conclude which one you prefer? Is the KDP benefits like 70% royalties and kindle unlimited even bribe you to try smashwords? Also Amazon is the biggest market for kindle ebooks. Or does Smashwords have marketing values for newbies, by putting their books on other formats and websites around the world, including itunes, nook, barnes and noble, etc. Just a thought. What do you guys think?
Unless something has changed recently, you can do both Smashwords and KDP. 70% royalty is for any book priced at least $2.99 on Amazon. I follow the Smashwords formatting guide for uploading documents to KDP.
I mean when you join Kindle select. That's when you earn 70% royalties i believe. And are not allowed to publish on other platforms. https://kdp.amazon.com/select
Kindle Select is exclusive, but you don't have to be in it to get 70% royalties, except maybe on sales in certain foreign countries.
Hi, I used to put my books in both KDP and Smashies. I like smashies. However the introduction of KU - especially KU2 has radically changed things for me. Sales on and through smashies were always lacklustre. I always regarded it more as an extra advertising channel than anything else. KU was especially good for short story guys. KU2 has shifted that balance to include us novelists, and the results have been awesome. To give some weight. My latest went live three weeks (nearly) ago. In the first four days of this month it's sold perhaps 300 copies. It's also had around 200,000 pages read. At half a cent per page that's about a grand to me. It's also the equivalent of 321 sales. Smashies can't compete. Cheers, Greg.
I had two novels with Smashwords for about ten years (not 100% sure on the length of time, but it was about that). I was first approached by ActionTales in 2002 and they published both novels. When they were bought out/taken over/whatever by Smashwords, my novels were then handled by them. This was before either one of those companies morphed into vanity presses (and please note: I'm not sure if SW is a vanity press, but ActionTales definitely is). At first, while I was still with ActionTales alone, royalty cheques came every quarter. They weren't big, but they were steady. After Smashwords took over, my royalty cheques became infrequent for the first few years, then pretty much dried up. The last one I got was for a single sale this year. Now, likely the drying up was due to the novels reaching the ends of their productive, money-making lives. But one odd thing sticks out for me. Earlier this year, I got into a conversation with someone on Facebook and the subject of my novels came up. This person then went and bought both novels through Amazon.ca. But when my royalty cheque came, it was for (as I stated above) one single sale. I suppose to be fair, there may be two reasons for this, one of which is not so good and the other downright unsavory: 1) the royalties were split over two quarters for some reason, or 2) Smashwords (or maybe ActionTales) decided to keep the royalties for the second sale. I have no idea which is the case, so I'm not making any accusations. Also, since the amount of money involved wouldn't buy a bottle of water at a convenience store, I see no reason to get all huffy about it. And I suppose a third option may also be the case: the person I talked to lied and actually only bought one of the novels. I touched base with that person a month or so ago to get her opinion and we discussed a few details of one of the novels, enough so I know she actually read it. She then said she had to wait for another day off to read the second, so I only have her word (until I hear from her again) that she actually did buy it. That leaves the first two possibilities again.
There are also venues such as iTunes, Kobo and Nook, and more beyond Smashwords, if you don't decide to go exclusive with Kindle. As was indicated, if you want to become part of Kindle Unlimited, which requires exclusivity with Kindle is a question to determine. There are a ton of articles out there on KU and how it's evolved and what to expect, which might give some insight if it's the right choice for you and your works. I'm not self-published, nevertheless my sales through Kindle far exceed those through Smashwords, but I do get sales through Smashwords, which are readers I may not have reached if my works were available only in the Amazon neighborhood. If you decide not to go exclusive, you should publish through more markets than just Smashwords and Kindle to take best advantage of not being exclusive via Amazon/Kindle--have your work available in those other ebook neighborhoods.
My sales for Kindle have far exceeded Smashwords, Nook, and Kobo combined, which is part of the reason I went with Kindle Select after an initial period of trying all of the other markets as well.
for better or worse we got published on smashwords tonight. We are waiting for inclusion in their premium catalog, then our novel will be on all of the ebook stores. So time will tell. Here it is 3 hours later 2 people bought and 10 dwonloaded the 20% free view. So far we have made like 6$ and that's more than we made the last 18 months writing it so thas a good start, I guess.If ya want a free peak here the book is:....https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/566680
