Smashwords has added an awesome new feature: Smashwords Alerts. When you sign up, Smashwords will send you an email alert when the authors you’re following have a new release. That means whenever I publish a new free short story, or a new novel, Smashwords will let you know. All you have to do is sign up.
To follow an author, log into your Smashwords account at http://Smashwords.com, then find your favorite author’s page. On the left side, under users who’ve favorited the author, you’ll find a button to favorite the author and to subscribe to author alerts.
But what if you don’t buy books from Smashwords? What if you like Barnes and Noble, or Amazon better? I can’t speak for all authors, but when I publish a book or story on Smashwords, I also publish it on Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Apple, Kobo, and all the others, so an alert from Smashwords would still let readers know that a new story was out there, waiting for them on their platform of choice. (Of course, Smashwords has file types compatible with all eReaders, so you could go ahead and grab it from them while you were there.)
And, should you ever decide you don’t want alerted anymore, shutting them off is as easy as clicking the button. You really have nothing to lose. So, head on over to Smashwords and sign up for alerts from all your favorite authors today!
Amaranthine by Joleene Naylor 
The Story Reading Ape
/ August 25, 2016Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog and commented:
My thanks to Joleene for posting about this new feature 😀
Audrey Driscoll
/ August 25, 2016As you mentioned, readers why buy their books from Smashwords’s retail partners (B&N et al.) won’t get these alerts unless they go to Smashwords and sign up by “favouriting” the author. And even people who get books from the Smashwords store don’t always do that. I wish there was a more direct way to communicate with readers, but I guess customer-retail privacy rules the day. Smashwords as distributor isn’t about to pass customers’ email addresses on to authors (although I wonder if there is a way to do that in some non-invasive way, e.g. ask readers if they want to add their names to an email list when they create their accounts. Although even that would be limited to the Smash store).
Joleene Naylor
/ August 26, 2016Yes! I know what you mean I’ve added a newsletter sign up link to all my books but I only get maybe 5% of them to actually do it, and that figure may be high.
Audrey Driscoll
/ August 26, 2016It’s never easy, is it? 🙂
edmondslance
/ August 25, 2016Reblogged this on Readsalot and commented:
Nice feature!
Barb
/ August 29, 2016What I HATE about Smashwords, is that every implementation is compulsory. If you don’t want it, you need to opt out. They add a new channel? You need to opt-out manually if you already go there.
I much prefer Draft2Digital, that at least allows me to choose where I want to send my books. And it has the Author alert. And it updates the backmatter with the other titles by the same author with a simple click. And…
I’m still on Smashwords because it was my first distributor from the time when Mark Coker answered personally to emails, LOL! 😉
Joleene Naylor
/ August 29, 2016Lol! I like the auto opt in because there’s usually no way I want to go click through all the books/stories to turn stuff on. On this one there’s probably authors I faved that I don’t care about alerts from (I really haven’t looked to be honest) but unless they go on a spree I’ll either ignore the email or, when I get one, click through and unfollow at the time.
I’ve never tried D2D. Do you sell through them?
Barb
/ September 2, 2016Yes, their meatgrinder is nicer than Smashwords’ – they have less channels, but it’s quicker to get into Apple (you can use it also for Kobo, I go direct for them) and B&N (can’t be bothered to sign up, even though now I can even from Italy). They don’t have a storefront like Smaswords, but it’s a nice and very friendly distributor! 😉
Loni Townsend
/ August 31, 2016Oooh, that is a nifty feature. 🙂