You might have heard of Smashwords.com, but you may not know what it is, or why you should care. Never fear, I’m here to tell you!

For Readers:

Smashwords has an extensive selection of ebooks with authors whose experiences are as varied as their works. Available Ebook categories include Adventure, Children’s books, Drama,Erotica, Fantasy, Humor, Horror, Romance, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thrillers, Biographies, Reference books, Inspiration, Parenting and more.  with a Vampire)

Aside from variety Smashwords is also a good place to find eBook deals. Many books (like my Shades of Gray and 101 Tips for Traveling with a Vampire) are available to “set your own price”, meaning you pay exactly what you think the book is worth.  And, for the frugal shopper, there’s a huge variety of free reads.

But, I think the absolute best thing about Smashwords are the multiple file types. eBooks are available as

• HTML (good for computers)
• PDF’s (good for computers, some phones, Mobipocket, iRex iLiad, iRex DR1000, Sony Reader, Bookeen Cybook, Foxit eSlick, Amazon Kindle (1, 2, International & DX), Barnes & Noble Nook, the iPad, PocketBook Reader, Bebook Neo and the Kobo eReader.
• .mobi (for Kindle, many smartphones, blackberries and others)
• Epub (good for Kobo eReader, Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble Nook, Sony Reader, BeBook, Bookeen Cybook Gen3 (with firmware v. 2 and up),COOL-ER, Adobe Digital Editions, Lexcycle Stanza, BookGlutton, AZARDI, Aldiko and WordPlayer on Android and the Mozilla Firefox add-on EPUBReade)
• RTF (rich text format – this is good for computer reading and some phones if you have the right programs/applications)
• LRF (for Sony Reader)
• PDB (for palm reading devices)
• Plain text (good for computer, but not my favorite format)

Most smashwords books are also available at iTunes, kobobooks.com, barnesandnoble.com, among others, however, the set your own price does not apply on third party sites like those.

For Authors:

To start with, Smashwords is free, and, as I mentioned above, it automatically turns your uploaded document into several different formats, so that nearly every eReader on the planet can open it.  And, if your document passes the formatting standards for Premium catalog inclusion, you can opt in for distribution through other sites. Current distributors are Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Amazon, Sony and Diesel.  Or, if you prefer, you can opt out of any, or all, distributors. For instance if you use Amazon’s dtp service you may want to opt out of Kindle, or if you use Barnes and Noble’s new publishing service you may want to opt out of them.

Smashwords doesn’t do any advertising for you; they’re a distributor and YOU are the publisher. You own all the rights and you can simultaneously publish with as many other companies or POD’s (print on demand) as you like. You can also take your book off the market whenever you want without breaking a contract. Smashwords also allows you to update your files (both your cover file and your interior files) as many times as you need to.

If you want to know more, check out Smashwords.com, or stop by their FAQ page.

And, here’s a really cool video that will probably explain things much better than I ever could!