The year was 2012 when I made the giant leap to publish my own books. After a lot of research, I found there was really only two choices for me. KDP or Smashwords. I had so many questions that remained unanswered for quite some time. Finally, after a few hard knocks, I learned a thing or two. Let me tell you my experience dealing with them both, and how they changed the course of my writing career.
The main differences between the two self-publishing platforms are visibility, profitability, and search engine optimization. One has too much, while the other has too little. It’s a harsh reality, but one every author should consider before venturing into self-publishing. Let’s explore why.
How Hard Is It To Use?
KDP – Kindle Direct Publishing is an easy to follow format. You can easily download a how-to on the entire process. When I first looked into self-publishing it was the KDP tutorial that first caught my eye. You didn’t need any special skills to follow the process and format your book. You just needed to set up your document the way they wanted and upload it when ready. Easy peasy!
SMASHWORDS – To this day, I wish I wouldn’t have stumbled upon the Smashwords tutorial at the same time as KDP. Just when I had my mind set on doing KDP, I thought Smashwords had a more thorough formatting process. The truth of the matter is, they do. That’s what drew me into Smashwords in the first place. It wasn’t until later that I figured out their so-called ‘meat grinder’ would give me a headache.
The ‘meat grinder’ is what they call the process in which they turn a document into an ebook. It’s necessary so your ebook pages will look good. But KDP does the same. That’s hard to understand. It’s kind of like comparing bananas to oranges. Both are good. The only difference is how they are peeled.
I found Smashwords to have unnecessary formatting particulars that didn’t need to be done. It sometimes caused me a lot of headaches because if you don’t have your document formatted exactly the way they want, it won’t be distributed to all book markets.
They made that sound like a big deal, but in reality, KDP does the same thing except they do it a whole lot easier than Smashwords, and it looks the same.
So, my conclusion after so many years of going through the meat grinder, and then doing Kindle Direct Publishing at the same time, was a bunch of needless mumbo jumbo with Smashwords. I find myself wanting to take the easy route with KDP because the end result was just as good.
Do I regret using Smashwords? No, it got me in the habit of doing a thorough job of formatting my documents but took a lot of my time up. I still may use Smashwords from time to time, and it is a good company, but the answer to my question is that KDP is easy to use, and Smashwords is more difficult.
What Kind Of Royalties Do I Get?
KDP – It’s free to join Kindle Direct Publishing, and there are no annual fees. You can get either 35 percent royalty from your book, or 70 percent royalty. It depends on what you price your book at. I like to price my books at $2.99 or over. Then you get the 70 percent. If you price your book at $0.99 you only get 35%. There is no way to price your book free. However, Amazon has a lot of incentive programs.
You can enroll in their ‘select’ program where you get a share of the global fund and paid per page-read. You can offer your book free for 5 days each term it’s enrolled. This makes your book visible and ultimately helps you get sales. It’s a controversial program because you have to be exclusive to KDP in order to qualify for ‘select’ and some authors don’t like that. They don’t like to have all their eggs in one basket. Or, they think Amazon robs authors because of it.
I was one of those people. For years I stayed away from KDP Select thinking it wasn’t fair to expect me to give my books away. I wanted to be both on Smashwords and KDP. What I didn’t realize was that I was cutting my own throat by doing that. In the end, for me and other like-minded authors, the most important question to ask yourself is whether you are able to pay your bills and put food on the table or not.
Sadly, I know authors that didn’t want to try the KDP Select program because of pride, resulting in empty pockets. They sat on Smashwords for years without making more than a few dollars. You can’t pay the bills with pocket change. I did the same thing for years, feeling obligated to fight for the little guy. The premise behind staying at Smashwords was if we just stayed long enough, we would be able to slay the giant. That was NONSENSE! The little guy cannot stand up to Amazon and win. Amazon is just too big.
So, I had to determine what I really wanted from my writing. Did I want to join a crusade and use my books as swords to fight a battle I knew was hopeless, or did I just want to make money from my books? I chose the later. How could I not?
Yes, I feel bad for Smashwords. The creator, Mark Coker is a good guy. But at the end of the day, I just want to put food on the table and pay my bills with my book royalties. That’s it. Maybe that’s selfish of me, but after so many years of sitting on Smashwords, and barely making a few dollars, I had to try Amazon’s exclusivity to get my writing career moving.
Finally, after moving all my books, over 30 to date, I am able to see real paycheques coming in. And not just from sales, from page-reads because of the free promotions I run. It’s a cool thing to start seeing royalties for your hard work, no matter how they come in.
Amazon gave me that. Smashwords did not.
SMASHWORDS – It’s free to join Smashwords, and there are no annual fees. Royalties vary from 60 -85 percent depending on the price of your book, just like Amazon. You might think it’s better to be on Smashwords because the royalties are higher, but not if you’re not selling any books. If you are, and you’re doing well, then, by all means, stay there!
But if your books aren’t selling on Smashwords, why is that? Because they have no incentives to make your books visible. Firstly, the number one online store in the world is Amazon. If you’re not on it, you’re at a huge disadvantage. Smashwords creates a disadvantage because there is no way to become visible.
Sure you can qualify for distribution to the different ebook marketplaces they work with, but each one has its own ranking system. The odds are against you right from the get-go. To become visible enough to sell your books is not likely. Some say it takes many years to achieve proper visibility if at all. Some authors decide to wait. But how long should you wait? Bills need to be paid, now.
Will People Find My Book?
KDP – As I said before, Amazon is the number one online marketplace in the world. Your book has more chances to become visible here than on Smashwords. But beware, if you don’t go exclusively with the KDP Select program, your books will sit stagnant without visibility just like they did on Smashwords.
Yes! Amazon wants you in the program, but so what. So what if you have to go all-in to have people find your writing. It’s just a pathway. It’s a pathway by which book royalties come from. All I care about is making money from my hard work. I don’t really care about politics. Shame on the big companies fighting back and forth anyway. Stop it!
But truth be told, they probably wont’ stop. So, we writers must work with it in order to make a living from our writing. It is what it is. Just about every company out there, must work in these conditions.
Bottom line is, get your money where you can. Being an indie-author is hard enough without factoring in the guilt trip of having to support one industry or another. Just don’t. Just sell your books!
SMASHWORDS – Smashwords isn’t a search engine like Amazon is. It’s like posting something on Facebook. Once you post, it’s gone forever, never to be found again. Amazon isn’t just an online marketplace, it’s actually used as a search engine, and that means there is SEO. Search engine optimization. There are bots that crawl each page, looking for what people are searching for. When they type it in, Amazon finds it.
When someone types something into Smashwords, the site will find the book you want, but it doesn’t act as a search engine for the whole world wide web. This is something most authors don’t understand. I wouldn’t have known this either, had I not started my own website. Website building 101 is interesting. There is a lot to consider when choosing who has search engine optimization and who doesn’t.
Choose a platform that works as a search engine and start selling books!
Will My Book Look Good?
KDP – Your books will look the same on whatever ebook selling platform you choose. Both Kindle Direct Publishing and Smashwords, have formatting requirements that will show off your ebook cover. However, KDP has a cover creator built into the KDP process if you don’t want to make your own. This is handy for those who need a little help.
SMASHWORDS – Smashwords has no built-in ebook cover creator. You have to make your covers externally and then upload them. However, you must make sure to format the cover correctly or their infamous meat grinder will spit it out.
Are There Promotions?
KDP – Yes, as stated above. Amazon KDP has KDP Select. You can offer your ebook free for five days during the program, which gives it visibility. Then when people read it, you get paid per page-read. I have made a lot of money that way. Don’t ever dismiss this lovely promo. You can also discount your book for a time on this program and that gives visibility as well, though not a lot. The big bucks come from the free promotions and the page-reads and visibility that come from that. Joining the ‘select’ program and going exclusive with KDP was the wisest thing I ever did. I am getting sales after many years! Finally!
SMASHWORDS – There are no promotions at Smashwords. You get what you get and you don’t get upset. All I can say is if you choose Smashwords, you have to be creative. You can list your book for free permanently, but you won’t make money. That’s a given. What you will do is gain visibility, but you can’t have both. The choice is yours, and you have to live with it. I did for a long time until l realized it wasn’t worth it. I still have one book up on Smashwords, but it’s free. The reason it’s free is because I wrote it as a fundraiser for my son, and a link inside it directs to a Go-Fund-Me page to raise awareness for people who suffer the devastation of telemarketing scams.
If you have a cause, Smashwords is great. Sell the book for free. Set up a website where people can make donations. Put a link to your website where you sell an affiliate product. Use it for marketing to direct them to your other books for sale. Smashwords is great for that if that is what you’re looking for. But for most authors, we just want to make money from our hard work, not go the round-about way.
What e-Book Formats?
KDP – When I first started self-publishing back in 2012, books formatted on KDP could only be read on a Kindle e-reader, and books formatted for Smashwords and distributed to Apple could only be read on an iPad or Kobo e-reader. And never the twain shall meet.
Now that is nonsense! Since then, you can get apps to read on any device. So, ebook formats don’t really matter these days. Generally though, the Mobi version belongs to Amazon.
SMASHWORDS – Epub, Mobi, and PDF versions are available on Smashwords. What that means is people could read your book on an iPad, or Kobo, or any device really. But people get apps for that now anyway. Like I said before, ebook formats are really a non-issue nowadays.
Do I Get A Paperback Version?
KDP – You can publish ebooks or paperback versions on Kindle Direct Publishing. You needn’t go anywhere else to figure this out. Amazon has a print-on-demand partner called Createspace that moved over to KDP in 2018 and it’s still going strong. Whenever I upload an ebook, I immediately start working on its paperback counterpart. I’ve had a lot of paperback sales because of this cool feature on KDP.
SMASHWORDS – You have to publish your paperback version somewhere else. Smashwords has no print-on-demand capabilities like KDP has.
Is There A Qualifications Process?
KDP – Writers who have never self-published before may think there is some kind of qualification process you must go through first before your book is good enough to upload. That is a myth. All you need to do with KDP is to write your book. Make sure you format it properly. I use Microsoft Word. And then upload to KDP. It’s as easy as that. You are an author simply because you are, and you’re in control of the whole process. Once your book is uploaded, KDP or Createspace will tell you if you have to fix something. But that’s usually minimal. The process is really easy.
SMASHWORDS – You don’t have to qualify to be a self-published author per-say, but you must meet stringent requirements to pass their meat grinder process during the upload. That can be daunting for the beginner writer and can actually deter self-publishing altogether.
Will My Books Be in Bookstores?
KDP – Most brick and mortar bookstores will not carry self-published books anyway, so this is a non-issue. I’ve learned over the years that the moment they hear ‘indie author’ they shy away. Print-on-demand books just don’t cut it according to them. I say, who cares. Online marketplaces are there for a reason and you can make plenty of sales without your book ever being in a physical bookstore.
If you really want your book in a bookstore, you can try and market it yourself, but that’s a lot of work. Or you can order your own print-on-demand books from Amazon at a discounted author price, and sell them at craft shows or self-publishing conventions.
SMASHWORDS – The same thing goes for Smashwords books. They won’t be in bookstores unless you do the dirty work. That means to supply a link to where people can order a print-on-demand version. And since Smashwords doesn’t have the capability to order a print versions right now, this is a non-issue as well.
Oh and just a little FYI, your marketing requirement as a self-published author is the same as a traditionally published author. You still have to go out there and do the dirty work and market your own books. Publishing companies rarely do the leg work.
So, since the work is the same, being an indie author is the best way to go in my opinion, even if it’s harder to get your self-published book into a physical bookstore. It’s all politics anyway. They fight to stay alive, just like the rest of us. And traditional publishers have always seen indie authors as a threat anyway. Nothing’s going to change with that, so we have to choose our battles wisely.
How Will I Get Paid?
KDP – Simply put, Amazon KDP pays you by direct deposit into your bank account depending on what country you live in. Some countries only get paid by cheque. I am in Canada so I get my royalties directly deposited into my bank account.
Amazon is very professional and makes you set up your tax information and even sends you a T4 at the end of the year. I was very impressed with that.
SMASHWORDS – I was also very impressed with the professionalism of Smashwords in regards to taxes. Everything is legal. They don’t pay you through direct deposit or cheque, however. They only pay you through PayPal. Personally, I don’t care for PayPal, but that’s just me.
Conclusion
KDP – By far, Kindle Direct Publishing is the way to go, but that said, we are all unique. Your needs may be different from mine. My experience with Kindle Direct Publishing has been positive. I never really appreciated it for what it was until I went exclusive with them for all my books.
I never thought I’d be able to make a decent paycheque with exclusivity, but I did. I underestimated the power of the global fund and page-read conversions. I love the fact that I can make money from free book promotions. I think Amazon is the only company that can actually make that happen.
And that’s NOT nothing!
SMASHWORDS – I know it seems like I’ve been beating up on Smashwords, and maybe I have. But in all honesty, it’s a fabulous organization. I have great memories there. I remember that hot August day in 2012 when I watched my first book go through the meat grinder and pass. I jumped for joy all over the house.
I really had great plans for Smashwords. I wish it had worked out. Their professionalism is amazing and I wish them good luck. Fighting to stay afloat in an Amazon world is not easy. It’s a gigantic battle, but it’s not mine. I don’t need to take on a mega market like them. I’m just a little guy myself, and I need Amazon’s search engine to bring people to my books.
But if you like Smashwords, find a way to stay there and still make a living as an author. Many succeed, and many fail for reasons we’ll never know. Bookselling is a strange animal.
And in the end, do what YOU need to do to stay afloat as an indie author, guilt-free. Find a way to pay your bills and put food on the table doing what you love.
Be the writer you’ve always wanted to be, no matter where you sell your books!
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For more about Kathleen Morris, go to Author Kathleen Morris.
The opinions in this article are strictly that of the author.