Mark and Jim discuss tips and tricks for authors looking to get the most out of their Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale!
The 17th annual Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale is upon us! This is a chance for authors to get the most bang for their buck while traffic is increased at Smashwords. The D2D team discusses tips and tricks to get the most out of your advertising efforts and maximize results.
//Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//
Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We’ll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won’t charge you a dime.
We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That's the best kind of business plan.
• Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/
• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog
• Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com
Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:00:02]:
You just tuned into the hippest way to start and grow your indie author career. Learn the ins, the outs and all the all arounds of self publishing with the team from D2D and their industry influencing guests. You're listening to Self publishing insiders with Draft2Digital.
Jim Azevedo [00:00:28]:
Hello everybody. Welcome to Self Publishing Insiders. I'm Jim Azevedo. I lead marketing and corporate communications here at Draft2Digital. And today we're going to be talking about Smashwords super sales and especially the July sale that's going on now. It's an annual Smashwords Summer Winter sale. So my guest today is none other than Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords and drafted Digital's chief Strategy officer. Welcome, Mark.
Mark Coker [00:00:57]:
Thanks, Jim. Glad to be here.
Jim Azevedo [00:01:01]:
Nice haircut. I was commenting on Mark's haircut. Nice haircut. Looks all clean cut and shaven and ready to go for a second.
Mark Coker [00:01:08]:
Yeah, I, I got a haircut for you this week.
Jim Azevedo [00:01:12]:
Thanks, I'm flattered by that.
Mark Coker [00:01:15]:
And I. And I shaved as well. Wow.
Jim Azevedo [00:01:19]:
I. I feel special. I feel special.
Mark Coker [00:01:21]:
You didn't. Doesn't look like you shaved.
Jim Azevedo [00:01:24]:
No, I, no, I'm lucky I even got up this morning. I was telling Mark everybody talk about tmi. I was telling Mark everybody that my little girl like come down with a little bug and she's been up like every night this week. And so I'm just, I'm running on fumes over here. But we'll make it through this. We can do this.
Mark Coker [00:01:45]:
All right.
Jim Azevedo [00:01:46]:
Yeah. All right. So one of our biggest, and actually it is the biggest sale of the year is happening right now. It started a couple of days ago and again we're talking about the Smashwords Summer Winter Sale, 2025 edition. Mark, why should authors be so excited about the, these, the summer Winter sale? What's, what's going on and is there anything different about it this year?
Mark Coker [00:02:12]:
Well, this is our 17th annual Smashwords Summer Winter Sale.
Jim Azevedo [00:02:17]:
That blows me away.
Mark Coker [00:02:18]:
It just kind of blows my mind. Where did the last 17 years go? And the Smashwords Summer Winter Sale was our second super sale. The first one that we did was we started 18 years ago and that was the, the Read An Ebook Week sale.
Jim Azevedo [00:02:35]:
Okay, how many sales are we talking about now for those who are uninitiated?
Mark Coker [00:02:38]:
So we've got three sales now that have become traditions. So there's the Read An Ebook Week sale, which we're going to be, I think our 19th year next year. If I'm doing the numbers right. This is our 18th year for, for the Smashwords Summer winter sale. And then this December, I think is going to be the ninth annual Smashwords end of year sale. So we've got three, three of these super sales annually that have become, you know, annual traditions.
Jim Azevedo [00:03:12]:
Yeah.
Mark Coker [00:03:13]:
For the indie community. And then, you know, over the next year, we're looking to add some additional theme based super sales. So probably a, A romance. A romance super sale in, in October.
Jim Azevedo [00:03:33]:
Okay.
Mark Coker [00:03:34]:
And then next year, um, looking at an erotica super sale.
Jim Azevedo [00:03:38]:
Nice. Guillaume. Guillaume, one of our, one of our weekly visitors writes erotic comedy. So I'm just, I'm letting you know, Guillaume, if you heard it right here from Mark Hooker.
Mark Coker [00:03:56]:
Yeah. And then I think we should, we need to do something for Pride month.
Jim Azevedo [00:04:00]:
Yeah.
Mark Coker [00:04:02]:
So the, the LGBTQ fiction category for years now has been our third most popular category at Smashwords. And you know, I think there's a lot more that we need to do to support that category and the authors and the readers.
Jim Azevedo [00:04:18]:
Excellent. I would agree with that. So what's, what's exciting about this, the summer winter sale that's going on right now? Why should our readers and authors be excited about this sale?
Mark Coker [00:04:29]:
Well, you know, it is our largest super sale of the year. It goes, it runs the entire month, which opens up lots of interesting promotional opportunities for authors to get in on it and meet more readers. And this sale, you know, I was just looking at the numbers this morning. The first two days of the sale are just a blowout. Sales are up 50% for the first two days compared to the first two days of last year's 50% summer winter sale. Wow. So I don't know if these, for.
Jim Azevedo [00:05:02]:
Me, that's, that's surprising.
Mark Coker [00:05:04]:
Well, it's surprising to me as well.
Jim Azevedo [00:05:06]:
Yeah.
Mark Coker [00:05:07]:
You know, because, you know, you look at most of the ebook retailers over the last 10, 15 years, most of them have been like flat to down. You know, the, the typical author experiences, their sales on average have been dropping, you know, 5, 10% a year.
Jim Azevedo [00:05:26]:
You talk about ebooks specifically.
Mark Coker [00:05:28]:
Yeah, for ebooks at the major retailers. So the major retailers are struggling, so any amount of growth just thrills me to pieces. And 50% growth over the first two.
Jim Azevedo [00:05:40]:
Days.
Mark Coker [00:05:42]:
Is just, it kind of blows me away. So there's definitely a lot of enthusiasm for the sale. I don't know if we're going to keep up that 50% rate for the entire month.
Jim Azevedo [00:05:54]:
Quite a pace to keep up. Yeah.
Mark Coker [00:05:56]:
But, you know, usually the first couple days of the sale, the first two, three days of the sale are usually some of the largest and get and give a really Good indication of what the rest of the month is going to look like in terms of activity. So yeah, it's off to a great start. We have. I forget what the exact number of books enrolled is. I think we're around 175,000 books per participating.
Jim Azevedo [00:06:22]:
It was up over. Yeah, I think, I know it's over 160, 000.
Mark Coker [00:06:25]:
Yeah, yeah. So wait, so it's over 150, 000 books. So it's, it's a few thousand more books than we had for last year's sale. But only, it was only, you know, the, the enrollment was only up 3%. So the fact that the sales are up 50%, it means that the participating authors are just get reaching a lot more readers. There's just a lot more enthusiasm and we've seen, we've seen some trends at the Smashwords store now that have been developing over the last, you know, eight, nine, ten years.
Jim Azevedo [00:07:02]:
Okay, yeah, let's pull on that a little bit. What kind of trends are you seeing, Mark?
Mark Coker [00:07:06]:
Well, you know, first of all, this is going to be that I think if I've got the numbers right, the ninth consecutive year of sales growth in this.
Jim Azevedo [00:07:15]:
You do, you do have the numbers right.
Mark Coker [00:07:17]:
Okay. So that, that, that alone just is really unusual. Like what is going on because this is not the experience that that authors are getting at other stores, you know. So you know, we've talked about this a little bit in the past on this show but you know, we do think something special is going on. And the special that's going on I think really gets the down into the dynamics of what happens when you put authors in total control. So you know, from the founding of Smashwords 18, 19 years ago, all the way through to draft the digital today, you know, at D2D we believe that when authors are in control of all of their publishing, all of their pricing, all of their promotions, all of their distribution, when authors are the publishers, the readers get a better experience. And I think that's what's going on here, you know, at the store and also in our super sales because our super sales have just like, you know, after being in business for 18 years and this Smashwords store was already a good sized store, we're a smaller store compared to other stores. But the fact that we're, our growth is accelerating as we grow larger.
Mark Coker [00:08:32]:
Yeah, is that, that says something there? It says that and we see it in the data that as customers, readers interact with the store, interact with our authors and our books, interact with our systems and our tools you know, we're really well known for having great tools, you know, for authors, you know, coupons, total control over pricing and promotions, the opportunity to do priority pre sales, really creative things that authors can do for their readers. Well, we've got reader tools too. And, and so I think the, the mix of the two are coming together and what, you know, what we see is that, you know, first time customers at the Smashwords store will buy, you know, x amount and then follow on. You know, when customers make second, third, fourth purchases over time their cart size increases. So that, that also tells, tells me that as readers are interacting with the store and getting to know our tools and our search tools and our filters and everything that we have to offer in discovering our authors, they're engaging more with us over time, not less. So it means that the Smashwords store is capturing a bigger share of readers wallets. Yeah, it's one way to look at it, one way to interpret that. So you know, again, I think a lot of it really gets down to the relationship between the indie author and the indie reader.
Mark Coker [00:10:07]:
And that's another thing we've talked about a little bit in the past. But I think we really, we're witnessing the emergence of a new kind of reader. Yeah, the indie reader.
Jim Azevedo [00:10:17]:
Let's talk about that. So keep going.
Mark Coker [00:10:19]:
You know, just, you know, that think about the indie author movement. You know, when we started Smashwords 18 years ago, 19 years ago, no one was calling authors indie. It was self publishing.
Jim Azevedo [00:10:32]:
Yeah.
Mark Coker [00:10:33]:
But it was a couple years in, you know, people started talking about being indie and then that, that that label caught on and you know, self publishing went from being an option of last resort, an option of shame, to the option of first choice, an option of pride. And the indie label is now worn as a badge of pride.
Jim Azevedo [00:10:58]:
It's been legitimated. Call that, it's in the social sciences.
Mark Coker [00:11:03]:
Yeah, well, totally. And so, you know, indie authors are the cool kids, indie authors are the future. And indie authors have made such a huge, such huge inroads into the overall industry that it's fair to say that, that indie publishing is now part of the traditional publishing universe. You know, we are becoming traditional, what we think of as traditional. There's like a new traditional emerging where authors are in control. From day one when they first start writing their book, they've got the choice, do I want to go traditional, do I want to go indie or do I want to do both? I have these options. One way or another, my book is going to get out there. So the barriers to publishing have been removed, the barriers to distribution have been removed so that now any author can get their books in any bookstore.
Mark Coker [00:11:52]:
And so it really kind of opened up this new golden age for indie authorship. And at the same time, you know, we've got, I think we're witnessing the emergence of a new kind of reader, the indie reader. So the indie reader, they don't care the name of the publisher on the spine of the book. They really don't care who the publisher is. They care about the author. Is this an author brand? Is this a name that I trust? Is this a name that's going to honor my time? Because my time is even more important than my money. Are they going to honor my time with their, their book? And you know, with the tools that are out there both at the Smashwords store and at all the other major retailers. Even though there are millions of self published books out there now, it's not difficult to stand out once you think about like how readers are finding books.
Mark Coker [00:12:46]:
So it's really about making yourself findable. And if you make yourself findable, readers will find you. And then if you honor the reader with a fantastic read, they're going to honor you with their repeat reading and the repeat purchases. And so, you know, so the indie reader, I think they're, they're less concerned about like, you know, they, they do care about, you know, beautiful covers, obviously.
Jim Azevedo [00:13:13]:
Yeah.
Mark Coker [00:13:13]:
But I, I think they also want.
Jim Azevedo [00:13:15]:
A professional, they want a professional experience. A beautiful experience. They expect that.
Mark Coker [00:13:20]:
A professional experience.
Jim Azevedo [00:13:21]:
Right.
Mark Coker [00:13:22]:
But they also understand that these are self published authors and that you're gonna have a wider variety of quality within the self publishing space. So there are indie authors who are, who publish like amateurs and there are indie authors who public publish like professionals. And it's not difficult for a reader to quickly suss out which books are the quality books and which, you know, are the quality reads and which are not. And you know, a lot of that just gets back to best practices for indie authorship and professional indie authorship.
Jim Azevedo [00:13:58]:
Yep. Mark, in your experience, what kind of authors benefit the most from participating in a smashword still? And by what kind of authors, I mean like, does it depend on the genre? Does it depend on the experience level? Who, who benefits the most?
Mark Coker [00:14:13]:
Well, you know, going back from the beginning of time in indie publishing, romance has always been a really top category and it's always been a top category at Smashwords, but it's no longer the number one category at Smashwords. Erotica is the number one category at Smashwords. And, and you know, I was just looking at, you know, Some of the data the other day and you know, asking myself, what can the erotica authors teach the rest of everyone else? And one thing, that, one thing really unusual about the erotica authors is that when you look at the percentage of titles that they have that are listed at Smashwords, that they, that they enroll in the sale, when you look at the number of the percentage of titles that carry a price, so they're going to put it on sale, but it's going to carry a price.
Jim Azevedo [00:15:10]:
Okay.
Mark Coker [00:15:13]:
The, the percentage is up like 35%. It's like erotica authors are all over these sales with the highest enrollment numbers. And so they're getting the most success. And it's not just because they're enrolling more books, but there seems to be something going on where if you enroll more books, the exposure that you get actually attracts more readers.
Jim Azevedo [00:15:39]:
So the visibility leads to more visibility.
Mark Coker [00:15:42]:
Yeah. And so the second highest enrollment rate for authors is romance. So the number one sellers are erotica. The second best sellers are romance. And it's because they've got, they also have a really high enrollment rate. But you go down to some of the other genres, you know, horror, fantasy and science fiction, you're getting down to enrollment rates of maybe only 2 or 3% of the authors are putting their books in there. So I mean, I think right there is a pretty strong indication that, you know, if you're not participating in the sale, obviously you're going to miss out on it completely. You know, during these sales, our traffic, you know, just goes through the roof.
Jim Azevedo [00:16:25]:
Yeah.
Mark Coker [00:16:26]:
So it's not uncommon for us to have throughout the sale double, triple, sometimes quadruple the normal amount of customers coming into the store. So the authors who aren't participating in the sale, they're missing out on all of that. Okay. They're going to get some indirect benefit because, you know, during the sales we also see just with a whole bunch more customers coming into the store, we've got lots of customers buying full price books as well that aren't participating in the sale. So definitely you got to participate in the sale. And then, you know, you want to talk about, you know, different tips for doing better in the sale.
Jim Azevedo [00:17:07]:
Yeah, I'll pick up a quick little. Absolutely, I do. Because anybody can participate, right?
Mark Coker [00:17:13]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:17:14]:
But does participate mean just put your book up on the sale, just enroll your book and that's it? Hey, my book's in the sale. And you just wait around and wait for things to start happening magically?
Mark Coker [00:17:24]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:17:25]:
Or what, what do you see? Like what is driving Sales for those authors who are having the most success.
Mark Coker [00:17:32]:
Well, number one, they're enrolling more books into the sale. So the more books you enroll, I mean, you should really enroll every single one of your books in the sale.
Jim Azevedo [00:17:40]:
Okay.
Mark Coker [00:17:41]:
Nothing to lose. You can choose 25% off, 50% off, 75% off, or free.
Jim Azevedo [00:17:47]:
Okay, well, I just want to be clear to everybody who is watching and who may be listening, mark that the enrollment period for D2D sales has ended. But for future sales, you're saying that you can roll, you can roll all your books?
Mark Coker [00:18:01]:
Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, everything's a learning experience. So, you know, some of what I'm going to share here, you can implement immediately, you know, for the Next, the next 29 days of the sale, some of the stuff you're gonna have to wait until next year or the next super sale to enroll. So number one, enrollment as many of your books as possible. If you're publishing 100 books, enroll them all. Because every single one of those books is like a fishing line out in the water and you're going to catch one fish and then that fish is going to discover all your other lines. It's all like networked together. Just cast a wider net with more books, more discovery opportunities.
Mark Coker [00:18:44]:
So that'd be number one, enroll. Number two, take a look at the, at the Smashwords summer Winter sale promotional page that we have up now and study it. So at the top of the page you see a carousel of featured titles. So those are titles.
Jim Azevedo [00:18:59]:
I'll get there by going here. Whoops, that's the wrong way. Hide that.
Mark Coker [00:19:05]:
Just visit the sale after our talk today. There you go. It's easier to get to just clicking from the homepage. So we've got all these different shelves. Every single one of these shelves is a different, different opportunity for an author to get visibility. And sometimes you can get visibility in more than one shelf. So the first shelf is featured titles. This is automatically curated based on our algorithms, which, which monitor quantitative metrics that serve as signals of readers endorsing books.
Mark Coker [00:19:41]:
So I don't want to go into too much of that detail there, but it's, it's. These are reader powered algorithms.
Jim Azevedo [00:19:46]:
Okay.
Mark Coker [00:19:48]:
And then you, then, you know, the next shelf you see 25% off, 50% off, 75% off free books. So when you enroll next year, make sure you've got books enrolled in each of those different discount categories, because some readers are going to go straight to 75%. Some want 50% off, some want 25% off. Some like to browse everything. So the more books you have in the different price categories, the more chances you have to connect with the readers.
Jim Azevedo [00:20:17]:
Okay, that's good advice.
Mark Coker [00:20:19]:
There's at Smashwords, something that we have going year round, 365 days a year. We have a self serve merchandising feature using Smashwords coupons. Anytime you create a public coupon, you have a chance of having your book merchandise directly on the, on the homepage. So you should be doing that all the time. When you sell a book during the sale, that increases your shelf rank. Also I should add when you sell a book at Apple, Barnes and Noble or Kobo, if you're distributing through D2D, that also increases your shelf rank at Smashwordss. So distribute wide distribute to all of our partners.
Jim Azevedo [00:21:03]:
And say that again, say that again. Because I, I hear that and I've heard it before but I forget it and it's so important. So when a drafted digital, when a, when a, when an author is using drafted digital to distribute their books globally or to our retail partners, your sales at Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and other places that will impact this, the shelf rank not just at those retailers, but also at Smashwords.
Mark Coker [00:21:32]:
Yes.
Jim Azevedo [00:21:34]:
That's awesome. That's really cool.
Mark Coker [00:21:36]:
Yeah. So another thing that you'll see in there, every time you sell a book, your book goes into the queue to get an additional homepage promotion both on the Smashwords homepage and on the, on the, on the July summer, on the summer winter sale promotional page. On both pages, your book will appear on the scrolling carousel of recent purchases so customers can look and see what other customers are purchasing. So that's another thing to keep in mind. So you know, going back to your question, what can authors do other than enrolling? Well, participate, you know, join, join the celebration. If you just enroll and then forget about it, yeah, you're probably going to sell on average twice as many books as you normally sell in a given week or a given month. But if you want to do better, get out there and celebrate it. Tell your fans about it, tell your readers about it.
Mark Coker [00:22:37]:
The most effective form of promotion is your private mailing list. If you maintain a, an opt in mailing list, let, let your fans know that your books are all on sale. Now for your super, super fans who've already purchased every book that you've ever published. Yeah, you can encourage those fans to join in the celebration of this super sale.
Jim Azevedo [00:22:58]:
It's really become like a community.
Mark Coker [00:23:01]:
Yeah, it's a community thing. And you know, if they, if your fan loves your books, encourage them to Tell their friends about this sale and that their favorite author's books are on sale. You know, so enlist your readers to help amplify this.
Jim Azevedo [00:23:25]:
Those super fans who have already purchased books from you, they can gift books as well, right?
Mark Coker [00:23:30]:
That was going to be my next point. Yeah, yeah. Encourage them to gift one of your books to a friend. Maybe it's a series starter of their favorite series. So, you know, engage with your readers. But your private mailing list is really your most powerful platform because you can reach your readers your way when you want. And then of course, all the social media networks, you know, celebrate there, join with other authors. So if you've got author friends that are participating in the sale and they write for the same target audience as you write for, then promote each other's books.
Mark Coker [00:24:16]:
You know, if you honestly enjoy this other author's work, if you're willing to endorse them and they're willing to endorse you, that's a great way to join in the celebration without, you know, getting that icky feeling that you're just always, you know, buy my book, buy my book, buy my book. But it's a completely different thing to say, buy this great indie author's book. This is one of my favorite authors. This author inspired me, this book. These books are amazing. This is an amazing author.
Jim Azevedo [00:24:43]:
You know, every sale that we have, I feel like, like a broken record because every sale that we have and we're communicating with our authors via email and via the blog and we're always saying, like, these are collaborative events. The more collaborative you can be, the more successful that you'll be. But we're telling authors this and we're reminding authors of that because we've seen it working. This is going back years and years and years. And when we're talking about best practices, to me anyway, Mark, that's what I've seen work better than anything else is when the authors get together with their friends and their same genres that they know and that they respect and they're fans of themselves, then that's when it just kind of begins to mushroom out there. Because it's a word of mouth business. And we all love hearing about books that we should read from those who are closest to us. But I want to remind our authors out there that the readers know and they trust their favorite authors.
Jim Azevedo [00:25:38]:
And if their favorite authors are saying, hey, check out this other author, you might like them, then they're going to be like, oh, cool, I got. There's somebody else I can check out.
Mark Coker [00:25:45]:
It just, it Works, right? Yeah. So that, that, that collaborative aspect has always been part of these super sales and it just emerged organically. You know, the, the very first, you know, the very first Read an Ebook week.
Jim Azevedo [00:26:03]:
I had to pop this up real quick. That's awesome, Bria. Thank you for that comment.
Mark Coker [00:26:07]:
Oh, wow. 32 sales. Congratulations, Bria.
Jim Azevedo [00:26:10]:
Congratulations.
Mark Coker [00:26:12]:
What are your secrets? Put your secrets in the comments, you know, share what's working. That's really fantastic. That's. I love to hear that. Love to see that. Yeah. So I was saying that, you know, read an ebook week 18 years ago started as a celebration of ebooks.
Jim Azevedo [00:26:31]:
Yeah.
Mark Coker [00:26:32]:
But then as we added these other sales, these sales really morphed more into a celebration of ebooks, a celebration of readers, a celebration of indie authors. And now it's really like, you know, when the authors participate in these sales, they're really, it's their gift to their readers. They are celebrating their readers. Here are my books that were already affordably priced. Now they're super affordably priced. Affordably priced. Give them a try. And you know, indie readers are discovering there's just an amazing diversity of high quality books available to them, you know, at Smashwords, at the major ebook retailers, from indie authors that are just incredibly affordable.
Jim Azevedo [00:27:19]:
Yeah. Hey, Mark, a quick question before I forget to ask this. And I do want to ask it because not every author is comfortable discounting their books. Some authors just flat out refuse some of them, which I can understand. Some authors don't want to go down to free, but some authors just won't discount their books at all. What would you say to those authors who just don't want to try it?
Mark Coker [00:27:43]:
Well, look, I totally respect, you know, when I hear from authors who say, look, I don't want to devalue my books, to me, that's music to my ears. When people say they don't want to devalue their books when they're concerned about this. Sure. But sales are a great opportunity to amp up the excitement around your books. A great opportunity for new readers to take a chance on you. Because a lower priced book means less financial risk. So it's a great opportunity to get to, to introduce your, your writing to new readers. If you write series and you've got a series starter that carries a price, consider offering either like a 75% discount on that series starter or even putting it at free, free for the duration of the sale, just to drive readers into the sale.
Mark Coker [00:28:40]:
And then the other books, you can discount them. You know, discount them maybe 25%. Give the reader some Incentive to not just buy that first book, but to snap up the entire series all at once. Give readers an incentive to try you. So when, when you enroll your books, you know, most authors have multiple books. You know, I talked about enrolling at the different price points. You should also have at least one book that's free. You know, books that are free get a lot more downloads than books that carry a price.
Mark Coker [00:29:14]:
And, and readers are not a, the market for readers. It's not monolithic. Not all readers are the same. So some readers, if they, if they've never read you before, they're only going to download you if your book is free. And then afterwards they'll pay, you know, if you earn their trust. You know, other readers don't want to buy books more than 2.99 or 3.99 or 4.99. Other readers, they'll, they'll see a book that's less than $5, and they'll think, oh, that's a cheap book. I don't want to bother with it.
Mark Coker [00:29:47]:
So every reader is different. And, and so the advantage of occupying multiple price points, including free, is that you make your books accessible to all of these different, you know, prejudiced attitudes that people have. You know, it's kind of a prejudiced attitude. Okay, I'm not going to buy any book that's more than 2.99 or 3.99 that's a prejudice. And, and we all have, you know, those different, those different filters in our minds of what's acceptable, what's not.
Jim Azevedo [00:30:24]:
Gotcha. I'm going to bring up a quick question here from author Tom McAuliffe. He's asking, can an author purchase being featured? So I think that means, like, enhancing your visibility at the Smashword. Like almost like an ad, I would presume.
Mark Coker [00:30:39]:
Yeah, yeah. So the answer is no, and that's by design.
Jim Azevedo [00:30:45]:
Okay.
Mark Coker [00:30:50]:
It's always been important to us that the bookstore experience for readers and for authors is fair and organic and driven by readers not driven by who can pay the most price, who's willing to lose the most money on their loss leaders. So when a book is featured, most of the time, when you see a book featured on the Smashwords homepage, it's automatically featured by our algorithms. There's not a person who's choosing that book.
Jim Azevedo [00:31:19]:
Now is that completely reader driven.
Mark Coker [00:31:23]:
The algorithms are reader driven. Now. You will see, like, typically, like you saw for Pride Month and you saw for Black History Month, you know, we do regularly run, you know, one or two carousels at the top of the homepage that are manually curated by our merchandising team. Yeah, but 90%. Basically every other shelf on the homepage and every other shelf on, on the sales page, those are all automatically algorithmically driven, you know, based on these, these quantitative inputs that are signals for reader endorsement of a book. So, so things like, you know, people buying the book, people reviewing the book, how they're reviewing the book, those are a couple of the signals that are, you know, probably be pretty obvious, but we look at a lot of other things.
Jim Azevedo [00:32:21]:
I love that we don't do that because like, let's say, Tom, that like, yeah, you could, you could purchase the opportunity to be, to become featured. And then I'll go to the Smashboard store and do a search on Tom McAuliffe books. But then I see a list of five to 10 authors who are ahead of Tom in my search for Tom McAuliffe books because they paid more for the advertising. And that's what we want to avoid like the plague, because we don't want to pit our authors against each other like that.
Mark Coker [00:32:49]:
Yeah. So, you know, for an example of the plague, look at Amazon in Amazon ads, which I think is an out. I, I think Amazon ads are absolutely horrible for what they do there. Because if you purchase an Amazon ad, you're basically trampling on the brand equity of your fellow authors. And any author can test that. Go to Amazon, type in your author name, your pen name, and look at how your search results, how your readers search results are polluted with listings of other authors, books. So that's a bad customer experience for the reader and it's a bad experience for the author. You worked hard to build your brand and to build your reputation.
Mark Coker [00:33:34]:
So, yeah, so there is a, there is an inclination to not allow authors to pay for sponsored spots. Now. That may change in the future. If we ever did offer like a promotional shelf where authors were paying, we wouldn't want them paying with money. We'd probably have them pay with a, you know, you know, take a, a lower royalty rate, you know, rather than 80% list, maybe something less. But again, I would never want to make that the, the main focus of how customers discover books. I, I really want it to be customer driven, reader driven.
Jim Azevedo [00:34:15]:
Okay, I want to bring up another question here. This one's from Kuldeep. Kuldeep, thanks for joining and asking your question here. Kuldeep asks, sir, can I add my new coming two books on this week? Unfortunately, Kuldeep enrollment for drafted digital authors for this sale closed on June 29th. So there's usually an enrollment period. It starts about two weeks before any of these Smashwords supercells. The next super sale is going to take place at the end of this year. We call it the End of Year sale because we're really creative when we name these sales.
Jim Azevedo [00:34:52]:
The Smashwords End of Year sale will begin usually about the middle of December. So just, you know, kind of put that on your, on your mental calendar. And don't worry, we're going to remind you and remind you and remind you as that sale approaches.
Mark Coker [00:35:06]:
But yeah, keep an eye on the emails that you get from D to D because those deadlines will be listed there. Now, Khalid, if you happen to still manage your books at Smashwords, if you haven't migrated your books yet to draft the digital, then authors that are still at Smashwords can add new books anytime during the sale.
Jim Azevedo [00:35:29]:
Okay. You know, Mark, earlier you were talking about readers coming back to Smashwords year over year over year. I want to ask you, what is it that keeps these readers coming back year over year over year? And one thing that I think is going to excite both readers and especially authors is that we've seen this influx of new readers visiting these sales. These sales. Now I don't want to misquote, so correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I remember, the reading ebook sale earlier this year, the first week of March had first time customers that were 30% higher than the previous year. So we're seeing these new customers come in and they're buying books. They're not just coming in and checking it out, they're buying books, right?
Mark Coker [00:36:20]:
Yeah, definitely. During these sales, a lot of new customers discover the Smashwords store for the first time and then they're like kids in a candy store just snapping up all kinds of books.
Jim Azevedo [00:36:35]:
Yeah. The next. And then I also want to underscore too that they don't just come to the store and buy a book and they're gone. They come back. They come back like a couple days later, the next week.
Mark Coker [00:36:47]:
That's another thing that we noticed, we've started noticing more and more is that I don't have the exact numbers at the tip of my tongue. So I'm speaking broadly here, but it appears that most customers visit the sale more than once during the sale. So we've got some customers that are visiting every few days, some customers every week. Every day.
Jim Azevedo [00:37:18]:
Quick comment from Guillaume. Guillaume, I wanted to mention your comment here because you said in 2024 I sold six of my ebooks during Read an Ebook Week. That's excellent. How can authors keep their foot on the accelerator pedal? So now we're talking a month long sale. Is there any worry about driving readers crazy if they're going to keep telling their readers? I always suggest, hey, once a week, remind your readers that your books are enrolled in the Smashwords supercell. You know, once a week. If you want to go more than that, that's fine, but maybe in your newsletter, let them know once a week. I have found that they actually appreciate those reminders, especially if you can point them to other authors that you know and respect and enjoy reading.
Mark Coker [00:38:10]:
Yeah, definitely. If someone signed up for your private mailing list, it's because they want to know what's happening in your publishing life and what you're doing with your books, where your books are, special deals, stuff like that. So yeah, definitely.
Jim Azevedo [00:38:29]:
Okay, let's see. I'm gonna go through some questions here because I just looked up and I'm like, oh, we've got like six minutes left. That happens every single time. Okay, let's see. Oh, I wanted to get to this question and I almost forgot, Mark, I want to know what it means to you personally to see so many authors and readers participate in something that started out just as an idea. Here we are 18 years later.
Mark Coker [00:39:05]:
It tickles me pink that, you know, my crazy ideas from 18 years ago are still alive today and still industry unique today. No other retail, no, no other retailer puts on larger ebook sales than Smashwords. These are the world's largest ebook sales with, you know, tens of thousands of participating authors who are setting their own discount levels. They are in control. The promotion. This is really a author driven sale and it really kind of runs against the grain of how other retailers operate. You know, other, other retailers are, you know, trying to optimize their stores and their performance for things that aren't necessarily always aligned with authors. But this is an author sale.
Mark Coker [00:39:58]:
The authors run the sale. And you know, so to, to see the, the sales persist for so many, long, for so many years. To see the, you know, it's. Every year the, the sales get bigger and bigger and bigger with more and more customers buying more books. It just says that there's, there's something happening here when, when you put authors in control of the reader experience, it's like a reflection books readers get a more pleasurable experience and everybody wins.
Jim Azevedo [00:40:34]:
I was just going to say it's like a reflection of the indie author revolution in whole. That's part of that. We were talking about the readers and readers who are becoming indie readers and it's interesting because if you look at the entire publishing industry, a lot of the hottest trends are coming out of the indie community. They're not coming out of the mainstream, they're coming out of the indie community. So then you've got this group of readers who are indie readers who are looking for the diamonds in the rough. They're looking to, to them it's exciting. They want to find that next breakout best selling author because that gives indie readers and influencers the social credibility to find these people.
Mark Coker [00:41:18]:
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of that going on. I mean many of to today's largest global bestsellers started at Smashwords and Amazon as self published authors.
Jim Azevedo [00:41:30]:
Yeah.
Mark Coker [00:41:30]:
And a lot of them are still with us.
Jim Azevedo [00:41:34]:
What's exciting about that too. Mark, go ahead. I keep cutting you off.
Mark Coker [00:41:38]:
No, that's okay.
Jim Azevedo [00:41:39]:
I'm going to blame the Bluetooth headset.
Mark Coker [00:41:41]:
No, no, you got to cut me off, otherwise I'll just keep babbling.
Jim Azevedo [00:41:45]:
Well, I just wanted to add that. So a lot of the authors just started in the early days and they became back bestsellers and some of them became, you know, multi New York Times bestsellers and then they got picked up by traditional publishers and then went back to indie. And most of those most successful and most financially successful authors today are hybrid authors. So they're, they're publishing some of their catalog themselves, they're self publishing and they're using traditional publishers to handle other books in their catalog. It's a really interesting time.
Mark Coker [00:42:19]:
Yeah, well I think that's kind of the pinnacle. You know, if, if an author can, can participate in both of those worlds, then you can play the two worlds, you know, in concert with one another. They can help each other. So what you're doing on the indie side can help your traditional work and what you're doing on the traditional side can help your indie work.
Jim Azevedo [00:42:43]:
Yeah. Okay, we've got a couple of minutes left. So I want to ask you, you know, what do you envision for the future of Smashwords sales and for the Smashwords store itself? And I know we've got a lot of irons in the fire right now, things that we're, that we're working on. So yeah, authors and readers look forward to at the Smashwords store.
Mark Coker [00:43:06]:
Right. So as authors understand, you know, following our merge with Draft2Digital three years ago, the plan was to migrate all of the publishing, the self publishing operations, publishing platform stuff over to D2D for Smashwords's authors and let the Smashwords store just be a store. And so that's what we're looking at going forward. So the big priority project that we're working on now is bringing pre orders to the Smashwords store. Smashwords was an early innovator in pre orders in terms of distributing pre orders back in the day, like 15 years ago or whenever 2013 was the first time. Okay, 2013, okay. It's 22 years. 23.
Mark Coker [00:43:56]:
No, 13. Anyway, but we never, we never allowed pre orders in the Smashwords store just because the store was never our priority. We were focused on distribution. That's where all the sales were happening. But you know, the, the store has since grown, so it's now not uncommon for our authors to be selling more at Smashwords than they sell at Barnes and Noble or Kobo. So, you know, for a lot of authors, Smashwordss has become a major retailer for them. So pre orders are coming. I don't have an exact date for those.
Mark Coker [00:44:35]:
It's been delayed multiple times. But it's going to be this year. I, I will say it's, it's going to be this year.
Jim Azevedo [00:44:44]:
Okay.
Mark Coker [00:44:45]:
And hopefully much sooner than that. So that, that's really exciting. And then, you know, we've got a very long list of other things that we want to do at the store. You know, most, most of the, the new development ideas revolve around, you know, how do we, how do we help authors get closer to their readers? How do we help readers get closer to the authors? Yeah, you know, it's all about making a win win for them.
Jim Azevedo [00:45:16]:
Yep. I want to bring up another question from, from Tom McAuliffe who asks, you know, how about ebook print sales where the reader gets to choose both. Anything, I don't know, maybe long term, where the Smash Restart starts offering print on demand books for sale.
Mark Coker [00:45:34]:
Yes. Yeah, so that's, that's in the plans. We don't, there's no date, but there is agreement among the D2D team that we want to make D2D's print on demand books available for sale in the Smashwords store. That's going to create all kinds of really exciting opportunities for bundles and promotions. So just, you know, look at what Smashwords has always done with Smashwords coupons and giving authors incredible flexibility to create any kind of custom promotion that works for you. So just, you know, superimpose that kind of thinking, that kind of flexibility, that kind of author empowerment where we want the author to make the decisions. We want the author to have the freedom to promote their book their way. So imagine that with the combination of print and ebooks and then maybe someday audio as well.
Jim Azevedo [00:46:33]:
Cool.
Mark Coker [00:46:34]:
But you know, we're getting future future stuff there.
Jim Azevedo [00:46:37]:
Can we. I know we're actually overtime now, but can we talk about your idea for like book launch? Like almost doing some in person stuff or. Yeah, I know those eyes. I know those eyes. I've been working with this guy over 20 years. Everybody way pre drafted digital. That look just told me. Jim, this is not for public consumption yet.
Mark Coker [00:47:02]:
Jim, you're pre announcing something.
Jim Azevedo [00:47:06]:
Hey, Apple used to do that stuff all the time and create a little bit of buzz and stuff, so.
Mark Coker [00:47:12]:
Yeah, yeah. So you, you and I do have a plan for shortly after we launch pre orders something tentatively called Smashwords book launch. It's going to be a new opportunity for readers to get closer to authors. Okay, we just leave it at that.
Jim Azevedo [00:47:32]:
I'll leave. We'll leave it at that. If we don't leave it at that, I'm going to get in trouble. And you're not promoted and.
Mark Coker [00:47:40]:
No, you're the marketing boss. So you, you, whatever you say is now public, y'. All.
Jim Azevedo [00:47:47]:
Oh yeah, I thought you're gonna say whatever I say goes. So then I was gonna have Lexi create a short of that and then broadcast it all over the world.
Mark Coker [00:47:54]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:47:56]:
Okay, so we're coming to a close here. So I just want to remind everybody that if you want to check out the Smashboard store, you could. The easiest thing to do is just to go to smashwords.com and once you get to the Smashwords store, you'll find this longer link where you can click into and see all of the different books that are currently on sale and almost every genre imaginable. Discounts of 25% off, 50% off, 75% off, and of course free as well. And for drafted digital authors, if you are enrolled in the sale and you're feeling like, well, hey, I just, I might need a little bit of a nudge to help me come up with some, some social media posts. If you go to drafted digital.com smashwordsale at that site, you can have access to pre made social media graphics. There is some copy there that you can swipe or you could, you know, take that and copy and paste it into your own marketing initiatives to help you spread the word out there. Okay, Mark, we're coming to a close here.
Jim Azevedo [00:49:06]:
I just, I want to thank you for your time. I know you're a busy guy. As chief Strategy Officer Divisionary, behind the scenes, high title.
Mark Coker [00:49:18]:
Yeah, I don't know why, you know, it's great to be here. It's great to talk about the cool things that our authors are doing and now our customers are doing, you know, this is a, you know, it's an exciting sale and because it's a month long, it creates a lot of fun opportunities for authors to join the celebration.
Jim Azevedo [00:49:40]:
Right.
Mark Coker [00:49:41]:
You know, the biggest selling days are the first few days of the sale, the last few days of the sale, and then the weekends. So you can use that knowledge to, you know, maybe plan when you want to do your promotions, when you want to get that spike in shelf rank so that your book becomes more visible to the more readers that are visiting at that moment.
Jim Azevedo [00:50:03]:
That's right.
Mark Coker [00:50:04]:
And have fun.
Jim Azevedo [00:50:05]:
Remember, I'm just gonna say have fun. Right.
Mark Coker [00:50:08]:
Have fun. Because, you know, it's not like you're going to join the sale and you're going to sell thousands of dollars worth of books. That's not going to happen. You know, if you normally sell one book a month, maybe you're going to sell two books during the sale. But think of it as a celebration. This is a chance for you to show your appreciation to your indie readers. This is your gift to them. You're giving them an opportunity to, to obtain exclusive discounts on your books for this limited period of time.
Mark Coker [00:50:40]:
And it's, it's your gift and readers appreciate that.
Jim Azevedo [00:50:45]:
That's right. That's why I love this community and I love my job. We get to not just participate in the community, but help it grow and evolve.
Mark Coker [00:50:55]:
Yeah, and help your fellow writers, your fellow authors are not your competition.
Jim Azevedo [00:50:59]:
That's right.
Mark Coker [00:51:01]:
The more authors that are participating in the sale and celebrating and talking about just brings more readers for all, all the authors. We see that all the time. You know, an author will be out there, you'll, you'll promote, you know, definitely promote direct hyperlinks to the books that you're promoting. And those, those, those readers are going to come and they're going to buy your books and then they're going to browse around and they're going to buy other authors books and it's going to make your reader happy that they learned about the sale through you. And you know, as we see once customers discover the Smashwords store, a lot of them come back for more and that's good for the author community as well. So, you know, I think there is something to an author powered store that's something that makes the Smashwords store different and I think better than any other retailer out there. And you know, this is what we believe in. We've always believed in author empowerment and reader empowerment.
Mark Coker [00:52:00]:
We've always believed that authors should be able to publish what they want. And readers should be able to read what they want. And you can get both at the Smashwords store.
Jim Azevedo [00:52:07]:
In other words, authors, this is your story. It's your store. We want you to have full control over how you sell your books there.
Mark Coker [00:52:14]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:52:16]:
Quick reminder for those of you who are watching and listening, if you could comment and share and like this video and then subscribe to our Self Publishing Insiders show, it helps us kind of help spread the word out there and create more visibility toward the show. Do us a favor and bookmark dddlive.com when you do that. You can see what next week's show is going to be all about and who the guest is. And talking about next week's guest, we're going to welcome James Blatch from Self Publishing from the Self Publishing show live in the UK that show just wrapped up. So we're going to talk about, you know, what's going on over the pond. How are indie trends and indie authorship shaping up over the pond? What are they seeing over there? That's going to be a fun conversation. James is a lot of fun to talk to. And finally, if you're joining us for the first time, you know, maybe you are an aspiring author or maybe you are a traditionally published author who is just investigating self publishing for the first time, why not go over to Draft2Digital.com and sign up for a free account today? Well, to all of our viewers out there, I see a lot of names who are joining us week in and week out.
Jim Azevedo [00:53:36]:
So we want to thank you all for continuing to visit us and to put your trust in us. I've also noticed several new names today. So for those of you who are new to drafted digital and to this channel, I want to sincerely welcome you to our little community and we hope that you keep coming back. And Mark, thanks again for your time today. Hang out in the green room. You bet. Hang out in the green room. I've got some snacks and drinks back there for you.
Jim Azevedo [00:54:01]:
Brought some of your favorite stuff. I'll see you in a second, everybody.
Mark Coker [00:54:06]:
Yeah. Thank you everyone. Thanks for your questions.
Jim Azevedo [00:54:10]:
Take care.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:54:12]:
Ebooks are great, but there's just something about having your words in print. Something you can hold in your hands, put on a shelf, sign for a reader or that's why we created D2D Print, a print on demand service that was built for you. We have free, beautiful templates to give your book a pro look and we can even convert your ebook cover into a full wraparound cover for print. So many options for you and your books and you can get started right now at draft2digital.com that's it for this week's Self Publishing Insiders with Draft2Digital. Be sure to subscribe to us wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with your will be author friends and start build and grow your own self publishing career right now at draft2digital.com.