An Update on Moving Books to KDP Print

So, Amazon appears to have finally worked things out. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I had moved three of my print titles over to KDP Print from CreateSpace. I moved them one at a time, using the Create Paperback link on KDP, and I was able to keep the same ISBNs (I own the ISBNs for all my books; I purchased them from Bowker). The reason I could keep the ISBNs is that the interface asked me if they were published on CS and gave me a chance to enter the ISBN. Amazon has changed that protocol so that the KDP Create Paperback button didn't allow using an existing ISBN.

Amazon was working on a way to move all a writer/publisher's CS titles to KDP in a single step. They had a link for it on the KDP bookshelf weeks ago, but it didn't work! Apparently, they unplugged one way to move titles before making sure the new way worked. After a while, they took that link away, but it returned a couple of days ago, and I was able to use it successfully, if not seamlessly.

At the point in time I clicked the link, I had five titles in CS. One was in draft because I am having problems with that cover and I cannot fix them myself. One of the five I had approved for sale recently, even though the cover needs work because they are things I can fix, and I wasn't sure it would move to KDP if it was still in draft. The other three had all been for sale for sometime and were properly linked to their Kindle versions on their Amazon product pages.

So, once I clicked the "Move my titles" link on the KDP bookshelf, I got the page with the three buttons: validate my CS account, validate my KDP account, and move the books. This time all three buttons seemed to work!  When it was done, everything disappeared from CS. The account was still there, but there were NO books listed.

In KDP, results were less uniform. One of the titles moved over perfectly, and was already linked to the Kindle version. The other titles have moved over but had not linked automatically.  When a book exists in KDP in two formats, if they are properly linked, there is only one entry on the bookshelf, like this:

Each format has its own menu to edit content, details, etc., but they are one title.  If there is only one format, the entry on the bookshelf looks like this:

If the book is a Kindle book, the links are for creating or linking a paperback, and if it's a paperback, the links are for creating or linking a Kindle version. For four of the five books I moved over in one step, KDP created a second entry on the bookshelf instead of linking them. When I tried to link them myself, using the Link to Existing Paperback on the Kindle bookshelf entry, it did not work, but when I used the Link to Existing Kindle version on the newly-created paperback entries, it worked fine. I was very pleased that the draft CS title with the problematic cover came over just fine, as a draft entry in KDP. And for the one that's in better shape, but isn't really ready for prime time, I was able to pull it off sale by using the Unpublish option on the paperback menu.

My books are all now moved over. Goodbye, CreateSpace. It was nice knowing you,

I made the jump to KDP print! (well, halfway, anyway)

UPDATE, Sept. 9, 2018: Amazon has changed things. They have cut off being able to input the ISBN and move the files from CreateSpace, so at present, if you have your own paperback ISBN, you cannot move your books from CS to KDP.  There was a link at the top of the KDP bookshelf to move all your books from CS to KDP, but it did not seem to work (at least not for me) and now it's gone. Hopefully, Amazon will restore it once it works properly.
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So, I keep hearing that Amazon will shutter CreateSpace, their separate self-publishing arm for physical "printing" (they do CDs and DVDs as well as paperback books) and make everyone use KDP, which now has an option to "Create Paperback."

In the past I stuck with CreateSpace because it had some functions not offered in KDP Print but it looks like those are pretty well accounted for now.  In additon, if the book already exists in CreateSpace, Amazon has made it very easy to move the book over to KDP. When you click the link in the KDP database (illustrated here with a title I have not yet published in print) to create a paperback, you get a form to fill out that's partly filled in from the Kindle version.

If you answer yes to the question "Have you published this book on CreateSpace?" it gives you a place to enter the ISBN (whether it's an ISBN CreateSpace assigned or one you own). Once you do that, KDP retrieves the PDFs of the interior and the cover so you don't even have to load them again. One quirk I found was that if you had loaded your book to CreateSpace but didn't actually publish it, this process won't work; you need to complete publication on CS, and then move the book over to KDP Print. You still have an option to get a draft copy from KDP if you want to be sure. I notice that instead of merely marking "proof" on an inside page, KDP puts a Not for Resale banner on the draft copy's cover,

Once the paperback version exists in KDP, the entry for that book includes a separate set of options for that version. The menu there is where you can order author copies and make changes, if needed. 

So far I have moved over three out of my six print titles. One thing I thought was better is, KDP let me price the books a couple of bucks cheaper than CreateSpace did. Now, this could have been because CS lowered their prices, too, but didn't notify authors they could change prices on existing  books, but I thought it was positive. It's much harder to compete with traditional publishing in print because you can't undercut them on cost like you can with ebooks.

Anther advantage is, your print sales (once they are shipped) show up in the same Sales Dashboard bar graph as your Kindle sales. Free ebooks "sales" are blue, regular ebook sales are gold, and print sales are gray. The Month to Date spreadsheet-style chart has a button to select paperback or ebook format.

The final advantage is, the paperback version of Alien Vows was linked to the Kindle version within 24 hours, without my doing anything to request it.

At present, I have three titles in KDP Print and three still in CreateSpace. When I get ready to publish my other five ebooks in print, I will start with KDP.

My X-Rays are in!

I finished the X-Ray set up for all my titles! It was actually a fair amount of work, not difficult but a little tedious. Electronic housework, in fact.

As I blogged about earlier, Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform has a new tool for indie authors and small publishers (possibly they have something similar for big publishers). The tool creates an X-Ray file for a Kindle book and enables that function for that book.

X-Ray is a very useful feature, especially in certain kinds of books. If you're reading a sprawling fantasy trilogy that has dozens of characters, spreads over a decade or two, and has six viewpoint characters, and suddenly a vaguely familiar character's name pops up, your reading pace can stall as you try to figure who the heck this new elf or mage is.

The feature isn't supported in all versions of the Kindle app. Kindle for PC still doesn't have it, but the Android and iOS versions do. And of course, the newer Kindles all have it (not entirely sure about the ones before the Kindle Touch).

How X-Ray Works

Here's what it looks like on my Voyage when I highlight a character's name:

Here's the same function on my Android tablet: About the only difference is in the menu that lets you create colored highlights, impossible (naturally) on an e-ink Voyage screen. 

You'll notice the source is listed at the bottom as Shelfari. The new X-Ray tool allows the author/publisher to either write custom descriptions for characters and "terms" or to link to Wikipedia articles. However, before there was a tool, Amazon would use the information that authors and publishers could list in Shelfari, a book-lovers site Amazon bought. I had done that for The Sixth Discipline, and when I had a BookBub promo and gave away 14,000 copies of The Sixth Discipline, Amazon created an X-Ray file from the Shelfari info I had entered. I have since edited and added a lot of the info using the new tool, but I can't see those changes unless and until Amazon support staff push the changes to my copy of T6thD.

Here's what it looks like when I pull up the menu and Select X-Ray (next to Go To):

You can see from the menus that you can get a list of characters or terms on the page, with references to where they appear in the text (clips). I couldn't find a way to use this part of X-Ray from Kindle for Android, but I don't know if that's because it isn't there or I couldn't figure it out

For any other authors out there thinking of using the new tool, I will say that you should always go back into the tool after you publish your changes, because either it is easy to miss something, or sometimes the changes I had marked did not actually get published. Also, the sorting features are very helpful in looking for variations of names and terms.

So now, anyone who looks at my book descriptions in the Kindle store will see X-Ray enabled!  Here's Saronna's Gift, to illustrate:

Questions?

Any authors who want more info on how to do this, or readers who want to know how to use it, feel free to comment!

I'm really looking forward to launching Alien Bonds with this feature enabled from the get-go! 

I'm Becoming an X-Ray Technician!

Not really. I mean, I won't be x-raying people. But Amazon's KDP platform now offers the ability to create ae edit X-Ray files for Kindle books. X-Ray is a cool feature in Kindle books that lets you find out about characters and terms (places, organizations, etc) used in the story. It's handy especially for books with a huge cast of characters.

I blogged about X-Ray before, when Amazon created the file necessary to create that feature for my first book The Sixth Discipline. That method relied on my having created the set-up in Shelfari, but I don't think that site even exists anymore. It was absorbed by GoodReads. Now, however, I don't need to rely on Amazon creating X-Ray for me, because KDP has given me the tools to do it myself. I've already created and published files for several books.

KDP has a pretty good write-up on what to do in their help section. The only thing that wasn't clear to me is that you need to click the "Item Reviewed" link for every character or term you edit and are ready to publish. I really do like that you don't have to have done all the characters to publish. And the program that creates the list that you work from is pretty good. It captures pretty much all the characters names; if anything it errs on the side of too much rather than too little, at least when it comes to terms.

I'm excite to think that when Alien Bonds comes out, it will have X-Ray from the get-go!

Dueling promotions and Amazon lets me see the future!

I've been running two promotions this month, one to advertise that Turnabout is only 99¢ (for a few days only) and one to advertise that The Sixth Discipline is free.

One advantage to advertising a book, even a free one, is if you sell or give away enough copies it gets into Amazon's ranked groups (100 top free science fiction, e.g,), and folks who didn't get the email promotion notice it.  Turnabout did okay, It made it to:

• #199 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Dystopian

But The Sixth Discipline jumped up to:

• #8 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction

Even though the email promotion for T6D was Friday, it's still going strong; I've given away over 200 copies today.. But in checking for free downloads via the KDP interface,I discovered something I had never noticed. Using my phone (I was walking the dog and when we stopped to rest in the shade, I checked my numbers), the Sales Dashboard tab let me select tomorrow's date as part of my date range! And when I did that, I could see I already have 23 downloads, presumably from time zones where it's already August 6. 

The screen shot below was created in Firefox, as I discovered the Chrome browser didn't let me select a one-day future date, but the Firefox version did.  I highlighted the date range so you can see it's for those two days. I couldn't include Thursday because it had over 1,000 downloads and that would make tomorrow's 23 too small to show as more than a tiny blue line.

The really odd thing is, I was using Chrome for Android on my phone when I noticed this! 

Also note, these numbers are for Amazon only. iBooks and B&N take a little longer to report "sales figures" because I get them via Smashwords. 

Where Magic Rules is re-launching!

So, now that I have mastered InDesign, I am working on putting out my books in print, via CreateSpace. This is going to be a fair amount of work, so I started with the shortest, the fantasy novella Where Magic Rules, which is only 25,000 words long. I made it free a while ago, and have left it that way until now.

[For those who care, the way to make a book free in the Kindle store is to load it to a platform like Smashwords, which will let you make it free forever, and also sends it to the B&N Nook store, the Apple iBooks store, Kobo, and others, as a free book. Once AMazon knows it's free on those platforms, they will price match.]

Now, however, as the paperback is coming out, I am going to price the ebook version at its original price of 99¢ but I will offer it free to anyone who buys the paperback. The Amazon program for this is called "matchbook."

So, if anyone wants a free fantasy novella on Kindle, get it now! In a day or two, it will cost 99¢ (or $5.99 for the paperback).

Check out my book on the Kindle Scout site!

Kindle Scout is the program Amazon started when they killed the ABNA (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award) contest. The deal with Kindle scout is, an author posts a never-before-published book-- cover and manuscript-- of at least 50,000 word. Amazon displays the cover and the first 5,000 words of the book for 30 days. People (Amazon customers, the author's fans, anyone a US Amazon account) can nominate the book to be published as an ebook by Kindle Press. In fact, they can nominate 3 books per month.  As a nice bonus, if a book wins, everyone who nominated it gets a free copy a week before it's released, with some encouragement to write a review.

The process isn't purely a popularity contest. The Kindle Press editors review each book that gets enough nominations to merit it, and they decide what gets published, not the number of votes. But it needs some nominations in order to be looked at.

My book is called Alien Bonds. It's a science fiction romance set on a world in my ThreeCon universe. Here's the blurb from Kindle Scout:

• Imagine Pride & Prejudice if Lizzie Bennett had gone to the dance, met Mr. Darcy, been overcome with desire, and gone home with him that night. Now imagine Mr. Darcy as an alien, and the party happening in the far future on another world. In Alien Bonds, two lives are changed in an instant. Dina Bellaire and Kuaron Du both know they can’t go back to the way they were before they met. They just have to convince the rest of the universe that what happened to them is real.

Okay, that's the romance. The science fiction part comes from my creation of an alien world where a person's looks don't matter. No one chooses a mate; biochemistry does the selection based on pheromones. It doesn't matter if you're short or tall or thin or fat. No one is gay or straight. People can still be beautiful, but no one is considered sexy. Pairing off is entirely a matter of being near the right person. Once the pheromone lightning hits, those two people are bonded for life. What impact would that have on their culture? Or actually, their cultures, since no world would ever have just one.

Anyway, Alien Bonds has 30 days to live on Kindle Scout. Please visit it, and click the "Show full excerpt" button. If you like it, consider nominating it (hit the Nominate button!). Remember, you can nominate up to three books if you see something else you like! If you have any questions about my book or the Kindle Scout program, leave me a comment, and I'll answer.

What I Learned from Self Publishing: My Love/Hate Relationship with Amazon

Amazon is certainly not the only player in the self-publishing game, but it is dominant, and it does offer a print option, which is rare. Smashwords is a great way to get into ebook publishing on every platform except Kindle, but they don't deal with print. Barnes and Noble recently announced they would also offer print on demand via Nook Press. It will be interesting to see if that goes anywhere. Unlike CreateSpace, B&N offers a hardcover option as well as paperback.

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is pretty easy to use, and I have put out eight books with it. CreateSpace is the name of their print self-publishing platform, and I have used it only once for my latest book Saronna's Gift. CreateSpace is possible because of print on demand (POD) technology; the book is uploaded to a database, and when someone shopping on Amazon orders a copy, that copy is printed individually and mailed to the customer. Authors can also order multiple copies directly from CreateSpace to sell themselves, or to give to reviewers.

The two platforms have separate set-up requirements, although you can publish a CreateSpace book to Kindle, with no additional set-up, if you're willing to convert the PDF. I don't recommend that, by the way. PDFs are difficult to convert reliably. For one thing, you can end up with excess hyphenation. Also, using the print PDF doesn't allow for a a difference in the elements in the ebook. Because ebooks can't be flipped through in the same way print books are, it's important to offer a clickable table of contents as a navigation aid, whereas in print, it's not that big a deal for novels—especially if the chapters only have numbers and not titles. Also, because of the free sample feature, you might want acknowledgements, blurbs, and lists of your other books in the back of the ebook, instead of in the front.

My Amazon wish list:

• Add a way to connect KDP and CreateSpace so that the author can specify that the two books are the same thing. This would not have to be automated. It could just notify Amazon to do whatever linking up they do, but at least it would save having to send an email, and hopefully it could happen faster than it does now. Alternatively, the CreateSpace set-up could let you load the digital file that KDP currently uses, instead of using the PDF.
• Stop requiring ebook exclusivity for almost every marketing benefit (making a Kindle book free or on sale, participating in Kindle Unlimited, etc.)
• Add a button to the CreateSpace set-up pages to include the “Look Inside the Book” feature; Amazon already gets the PDF, so this should be easy to do
• Change the set-up protocol for CreateSpace so that you can switch between glossy and matte covers without having to upload the PDF again. 
• Add X-Ray to KDP. I know from having had it happen to The Sixth Discipline that Amazon can create the file needed for the X-Ray feature to work by using the Book Extras information (lists of characters names and descriptions, places, etc). Currently, this info is entered via Shelfari (accessible from each author's Author Central pages). It would be nice if the author could create the X-Ray file info this way and click a button to submit it. The X-Ray feature is something only Kindle has, so it would make sense to do this.

What I liked about Amazon:

Conversion: In the past, when I had a day job, and time was more of an issue than money, I relied on paying a conversion house to create the ebook digital file, and didn't bother with print at all. Now that the time/money equation is reversed, I decided to try print, and to experiment with creating my own ebook file. I tried using Scrivener and Calibre to convert the MS Word file, and was not happy with either result. Scrivner offers the advantage of being able to keep the book elements (title page, contents, dedication, chapters, etc) as separate things and assemble them different ways, but I didn't like the look of the resulting ebook file. Calibre creates valid files, but it doesn't translate any of the print style features. Imagine my suprise when I tried loading the MS Word file directly to KDP, and found that their conversion had radically improved! 

Kindle Bookmatch: Finally, a feature that doesn't require Kindle exclusivity! If you publish your print book via CreateSpace and have the same book in the Kindle store, you can opt to have the Kindle version be free or very, very cheap to anyone who buys a print copy.  As soon as they order the print, they get a button to download the ebook.

No DRM: Some people seem to think that all Kindle books have DRM because Amazon requires it, but in fact, they don't all have DRM. It's a publisher's option, not a requirement. All KDP authors have the option to leave the DRM off. 

So you see, I love that Amazon makes it possible to publish my books, and to reach readers, I just don't like everything about Amazon. 

Self-publishing in print: Biting the technology bullet

From Wikimedia Commons: by Daniel Maclise_-Caxton Showing the First Specimen of His Printing to King Edward IV at the Almonry, Westminster

I recently (as in yesterday!) retired from a legal and regulatory publishing company where I worked in systems support. I also recently attended Balticon, where I attended panels on self-publishing.

The thing about self-publishing is, the author is the "publisher" but not generally the distributor. He or she decides on the content of the book, but rarely does he sell it directly to readers. For self-publishing in ebook form, there are many places on the web that an author can go to to upload their book for sale to the public. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, and iBooks all have platforms that allow an author (or someone with rights to publish) to create an account, upload a file, and start selling ebooks. I have used Amazon KDP, B&N Nook Press, and Smashwords, and they were all pretty easy. Smashwords also pushes the book out to the other other retailers, as most of their authors sell more books on those platforms than on Smashwords itself. I have heard good things about Kobo Writing Life but I have never used it because my Kobo sales are so small it hardly seems worth it. My understanding is that Apple is the most difficult to deal with because for one thing, it requires you to download their ebook producer app, which runs only on a Mac. I am also ignorant of Google Books, which seems to be a thing unto itself. Even Smashwords cannot publish to Google Books.

On all platforms, what the author has to provide to publish an ebook successfully is usually a file with the text of the book (the formats accepted vary) and a file for the cover, plus assorted bits of information collectively known as metadata (data about the book), such as author, title, ISBN (in some cases), and genre/tags.

If you're willing to accept the platform's standard conversion, some platforms allow you to upload your book in MS Word, but the problem with that is, the conversion is not great at maintaining the style and features you want. The standard format for ebooks is ePub, which, like Mobi (the format on which Kindle books are based) is simply a set of HTML tags that are used in an agreed-upon standard way. Even KDP will accept ePub, although Amazon does not like advertising that fact. I have been relying on a conversion house to produce the files I needed; the ebooks look great-- nice style for scene breaks, consistent chapter title pages, and working table of contents-- but they are not that cheap and they can only be edited by going into the HTML, which is tedious.

To self publish in print and sell on the web easily, (Lighting Source and Amazon CreateSpace are the two most popular venues), what an author/publisher needs is a PDF of a file laid out in pages, with headers (and possibly footers) and all the standard info a book needs about copyright and such. Strictly speaking, you can do this layout in MS Word, but that is not only incredibly painful, it's also very time-consuming, as Word tends to decide what it wants to do in some circumstances, and wresting control from it takes knowledge and the kind of patience of a Dalai Lama.

Having decided to take the publishing plunge and move into print (now that I have more time), I just ordered a copy of Adobe InDesign, the premier desktop publishing application, which will produce well formed pages, and also ePub files. The advantage to doing this is that I pay for it once, and then I can also use it will all my books. Adobe also offers a cloud-based monthly subscription service, but they had something of a security scandal with that, so I don't want to go that route.

Assuming I can learn to use the software, I am hoping it will provide a solution to the problem of corrections. Once I put a book into InDesign, I will proof from paper copy, make corrections, and then make the software spit out the ePub file. I realize I might have to do a few tweaks in ePub, but it should still be better than my current workflow. And this way, I get two birds with one stone; you can never have too many dead birds!

The Sixth Discipline just got X-Rayed!

The X-Ray feature on Kindle is really handy for epic books with a large cast of characters or those stories that span years, where a character can disappear for pages and pages and then pop back in again. X-Ray give you a idea how important the character is, and who they are, but it only works if the publisher has gone the extra step and provided Amazon with a file to use to generate the X-Ray.

In addition to the newly-purchased Goodreads, Amazon also owns social reader site Shelfari, and one of the things this means is that on Shelfari, the author or any reader can create lists of characters and places in the book. Those lists are then available to view on the bottom of the product page on Amazon.

It looks like Amazon might be planning to spin this function off into creating X-Ray files for KDP books, because my book just got a whole bunch of characters added by someone known as "X-Ray," who has also added characters to a boatload of books!

It would be cool if it's true!

Update:  I just downloaded this book again and it now has the X-Ray feature!  Yay!

The Nostalgia Gambit is on my Kindle!

Of course, it's only the proof copy. I loaded the version that 52Novels sent me onto my Kindle so I could  do one last final proof, especially to check for conversion errors, which fortunately, are usually very rare. Once I send them my corrections, it should not take long before I will get back a file I can load into KDP.

I will be launching this on KDP Select, so it won't be on other platforms for a few months.

Almost there!

Status on The Nostalgia Gambit

The manuscript is still at the proof reader's but it's due at the conversion house next week. It usually takes them anywhere from four to 10 days to give me the file back. Then I have to load it onto my Kindle and do one last proof. Their conversion is usually excellent except for occasional problems with quotation marks or places in the text where there's special formatting.

After I give them the corrected HTML files, it usually takes only a few days to get the corrected Kindle and epub format files back. I plan to launch the book as a KDP Select book, which means that it will be only on Amazon for three months. Amazon only takes a day or so to load a book via KDP, which means the book could be in the Kindle store before December 1.

I'll post a link and add it to the Books page as soon as it's for sale.

Hello, Columbus!

A very confusing aspect of American English is that the indigenous tribes of North America are known collectively as Indians because in 1492 Christopher Columbus arrived in Cuba thinking that he had sailed to India.

Amazon.com seems to have a similar confusion. They have opened a new Kindle store in India, but unlike sales from the Kindle stores in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, Indian sales are reported with US sales!

This is totally different from how sales reports look for other countries, each of which have their own entry in the pull down menu for KDP sales reports.

Which means that a KDP author can never tell if he has sold any books in India! In fact, if he happens to have written a book about football in Dallas, you could say that he can't tell the Cowboys from the Indians.

Upcoming freebie and a new release is near

I have the converted copy of Shades of Empire back from the conversion house and I'm proofing one last time. In honor of that, I have scheduled Where Magic Rules to be free in the Kindle store on May 4. This is my first foray into KDP Select promotions. The KDP Select author interface allows me to select a date or a range of dates that a book can be free. I'm going to start with one day the first time, and see how it goes.

Funny to think that I hope to give away a lot of books!

G'day, mate! Apple iBooks Down Under

One reason I like Smashwords is it gives you the option of also selling your ebooks in other retailers, specifically the Apple iBooks and Sony Reader stores. Sony has provide a slow but steady sales stream, but Apple is interesting because their stores have resulted in some international sales for me.

When you own international rights to your book and publish it via KDP,  your ebook is also for sale in the Kindle stores in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. But of course, except for the UK, an English language book is not going to do as well in those countries. The Apple iBooks store, however, sells in the UK, Canada, and Australia as well as parts of Europe. For some reason, Tribes has done better in Australia than anywhere else! Maybe it's the desert setting for the opening scene? Or maybe it's the remoteness of the colony world? Who knows!

But I'm happy they like Tribes Down Under!

Self-publishing: Changing the channel

eBooks make self-publishing much easier. Both print and ebooks offer formatting challenges, but in the print world, the truly hard part is getting the books where readers will see them. You can use a print-on-demand (POD) service, of course, like Amazon's CreateSpace, but the problem is the books are sold only online (or by you, if you are willing to buy them and resell them) and you can't price them any cheaper than traditionally published books (often sold at a discount!) without losing money. Some day there will be POD machines in every bookstore and it might be worth it to self-publish in print, but right now it's an iffy thing.

eBooks are still iffy, of course, in that you're never guaranteed success. But the distribution channels are easier to manage with ebooks partly because all ebooks are sold online, not just self-published ebooks. Also, Amazon and Barnes & Noble both offer easy-to-use self-publishing platforms (KDP and PubIt, respectively), as does Smashwords,

Smashwords is unique (to the best of my knowledge) because it is a retailer that sells only self-published books and because it offers three major advantages over the other DIY publishing platforms,

The first is that aside from Smashwords itself, once your book is loaded there, it offers the opportunity to push it out to other retail platforms, specifically (as of now) Sony, Kobo, Barnes & Noble Nook, Amazon Kindle (although this does not seem to be fully implemented), Diesel, and Apple iBooks. It's true that Amazon is still the gorilla of ebook sales, but all the other platforms added together can make it worthwhile to pursue this option.

The second advantage of Smashwords is that, unlike KDP and PubIt, Smashwords lets you make your book free, either by offering a code for downloading or just by making the price zero. Further, once you have done that, some (but not all) of the other retailers will also make the book free.

Making a book free might not seem much of an advantage. You could post a book on your own website and make it free to download, after all. But readers troll the online stores for free ebooks, and if you have more than one book, giving one away for free can get you sales on your other books (especially if the free book is the first in a series).

The third advantage of Smashwords is they make your book available in multiple formats, without DRM. Surprisingly, that's related to the one disadvantage of Smashwords. They require a Word file be loaded that corresponds to their guidelines and then they convert that file to the other formats they offer, and this gave the writer less control over how the book looks in the downstream retail outlets. However, Smashwords recently announced they plan to start supporting ePub uploads, so that might help because the other retailers will want ePub.

Perhaps because they only sell self-published works, Smashwords actually reviews each book that is uploaded, not for editorial quality (now there's a loaded term!), but for formatting. They make the distinction of having a premium catalog, and only well-formatted books are assigned to it. Your book cannot be pushed to major retailers like iBooks unless it is in the premium catalog (some retailers also require an ISBN).

In many ways, Smashwords acts more like a publisher than the other platforms; when they push books to other retailers, their name appears as the publisher of those books.

In the eight months since I started publishing, the one platform that has been a total disappointment has been PubIt; unlike Amazon, I don't think Barnes & Noble treats self-published books the same as traditionally published books. Ergo, I recently decided to pull my books from PubIt and use Smashwords to sell on Barnes & Noble. This will provide me considerably less swift feedback on any sales, but I would rather have slower feedback and more sales. I'll post about the results of this experiment after a while, but I'm not taking the books down from PubIt until Smashwords has shipped them to Barnes & Nobles, so that might be a few weeks.