Just a quick tip for authors who have their books listed on Smashwords. You can get a second chance at being a debut author. Draft2Digital is slowly migrating Smashwords titles to D2D, but if they haven’t done this already for your books, you can do it yourself. You might consider doing so, as there is an unexpected benefit from doing it – your books, when added to the Smashwords store from D2D, are treated as new releases. As such, they show up on the landing page of Smashwords, where they will likely be seen by a lot more people than wherever they are currently lurking. I discovered this after I unpublished my books on Smashwords and then went over to D2D, where I already had all my books listed, and checked the Smashwords box on their list of stores to get them back into the Smashwords store. Being featured as new releases made a brief, but nice, increase in sales. If you don’t already have your books listed on D2D you’ll need to set them up there, but it’s a very simple process to old Smashwords hands. While your mileage will very, it could result in something like the bump in sales you get upon releasing a new book.
Debut Again!
Published by chucklitka
I was born in 1950 and spent the 1960’s reading hundreds of SF books while dreaming of becoming a SF author when I grew up. I enrolled as a journalism major in college, but dropped that after my freshman year when I realized I was too shy to be a journalist. I then decide I either had the talent to write or I didn’t. Time would tell. In the late 1970’s I finished and submitted a SF novella, a SF short story, and a fantasy novel. They brought me a small collection rejection slips. I continued to write for fun. In 2009, now with a computer with a built in spellchecker I got more serious and completed three novels the course of next six years, for the fun of writing. I had no intention of submitting them to traditional publishers. Been there, done that. If I felt they were good enough, I’d self-publish them, which I did in 2015, for free since I don’t need to be paid for having fun. As of 2021 I have published 10 SF/adventure novels, 2 novellas and one children’s short story. I’m married. My wife and I have two children, and two grandchildren. I have lived most of my life in Wisconsin. I’ve worked at various jobs, including 13 year with a commercial printer and small town daily newspaper. I operated a cottage industry mail order tea business for a decade, and quit my day job at 53 to try my hand a making a living as an artist. Never made it big, never went bust. We’re retired these days and living a quiet life. The type of life I like. View all posts by chucklitka
Writers Supporting Writers 
I went wide on D2D, including Smashwords, a few months back. It’s a very liberating feeling. 😊
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Thanks for commenting. Going wide simply offers more opportunities. I always bang the drum for Google Play Store as well. A lot of people read & listen to books on their phone, and there are a billion android phones out in the world. Google outsells all the other outlets combined for me by a wide margin.
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We need to take every opportunity that offers. 🙂
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As an ‘old hand’, I was on Smash when D2D was merely a twinkle in the literary world. Now with everything on both, I just let them both get on with things. I pick up quite a few readers, mostly my freebies (my own fault for having so many) but I do get a few £ now and then. I find myself stifling a yawn when yet another outlet is heralded on smash as the next great opportunity, as apart from smash itself, my readers are 90% on Apple. I have a new book in the works, about two thirds done, it is my winter hibernation project to complete. Painting and gardening have been my summer outlets. But to all Indies everywhere, just follow your dream. Write as a professional, and you never know. You could be in top ten best seller list one day.
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Thanks for your thoughts. I sell all my books for free (except when Amazon doesn’t let me). I started on Smashwords, added D2D when they bought Smashwords, and in January, moved the distribution of all my books to D2D except for Smashwords, which I kept there for old time’s sake. However, having sold only two free books on Smashwords in July, I decided that I might as well simplify my life. I unpublished them on Smashwords and then checked their boxes for distributing to Smashwords on D2D. Their reappearance on Smashwords via D2D netted me 142 sales on 15 free books in the last four days of July for the reasons above. Sales have already settled down, but the move may have netted me a couple of dozen new readers – just by clicking some boxes.
If your books are not on D2D yet, perhaps just waiting for D2D to migrate them over might do the same thing – make your existing books look like new books, and be briefly easily visible for a day or two, and get the sales that generates.
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Thanks for the tip!
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