Monday, April 2, 2012

Another Smashwords downtime problem? (Fixed now!)

Smashwords occasionally has downtime problems and it's looking like this morning could be one of them.  I only see a little bit of Twitter traffic on it, but the problem seems to have started early this morning, US EDT.

Here's hoping it doesn't last as long as last time!

p.s.  I found a service that reports when a website is down.

UPDATE: (1:15 pm, US EDT) Looks like it's back up. Hopefully, it will stay that way!

5 comments:

  1. I googled this Smashwords problem and your post came up at the top! Thanks for the link to that service that can check for you if a website is down.

    I keep checking Smashwords and keep finding it down... I'm hoping to announce a book release today but I don't want to do it while the website doesn't even work!

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  2. They were working when I got up this morning at about 7:00 GMT, but it was down when I got to work at 9:00 GMT and as far as I know has been down ever since. We're up to about seven hours of downtime now.

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  3. That's bad! I wonder if it's hardware again? Sounds like it. Thanks for posting this additional info. I got email that another comment had been posted by someone who just loaded her book to Smashwords but her comment seems to have disappeared! Maybe it's sunspots disrupting the web? -)

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  4. Maybe - it's damn annoying though. I just posted my first ebook to Smashwords last Sunday. I've been waiting over a week for some sort of word on their premium catalogue thing, and just as I was about to start promoting the book on Twitter, etc, their site goes down... not terribly impressed.

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  5. The real value of Smashwords for most authors is as a distributor rather than a direct retailer. If your books has an ISBN and is the premium catalog, it can be pushed to iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Sony, and all the others (except Kindle; I don't think that's working yet), and those outlets are where you will see more sales. And thankfully, those folks don't seem to have downtime very often. :)

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