Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Reader alert! Smashwords is down! — looks OK now, if they can stay up

This is a good example of why you never want to put all your ebook eggs in one online basket. Smashwords is down and has been down since yesterday afternoon. The tweet from Mark Coker (above) says the site is down because their hosting service Slicehost is down. Some research on Google tells me that Slicehost is now owned by Rackspace and they planned to shut it down by May.  Looks like it might have happened sooner.

Fortunately, the books Smashwords pushed to iBooks, Sony, Kobo, etc. are still available because those ebookstores are up. Many baskets rule!
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9 comments:

  1. iWonderFebruary 14, 2012 at 10:56 AM

    ?!?!
    Will they ever come back??

    ReplyDelete
  2. Carmen Webster BuxtonFebruary 14, 2012 at 11:05 AM

    I think so. At least now they have a notice posted. I expect Smashwords is not the only Rackspace customer who is down. Probably (hopefully) this will accelerate the transition to new servers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. iWonderFebruary 14, 2012 at 11:19 AM

      My god, I almost had a small heart-attack (maybe heartburn?) when I couldn't enter the site.
      Thanks for publishing this comment about Smashwords.

      Delete
    2. Carmen Webster BuxtonFebruary 14, 2012 at 1:32 PM

      It's back online!

      Delete
  3. Carmen Webster BuxtonFebruary 14, 2012 at 11:25 AM

    You're welcome. And take a deep breath!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Kurt KammeyerFebruary 14, 2012 at 5:04 PM

    No, it isn't... I still get the timeout page.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Philip WooldridgeFebruary 14, 2012 at 7:40 PM

    Still down as of 7:40 PM EST

    ReplyDelete
  6. Carmen Webster BuxtonFebruary 15, 2012 at 7:44 AM

    As of this morning, February 15, they are back up. Fingers crossed!

    ReplyDelete

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