How to expand your audience with Smashwords

Like many indie publishers, I began my publishing journey with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Since learning to publish an eBook was more than enough knowledge to digest on its own without learning to publish on multiple platforms at once, I decided to stick with KDP for a while until I had a better idea of what I was doing. However, with the launch of my latest book project, I decided it was time to finally expand beyond Kindle and Nook and learn how to use Smashwords.

The leap from Kindle to Nook eBook publishing was a no-brainer. I wanted my print books to be available in brick and mortar bookstores like Barnes and Noble, and I wanted my B&N customers to also be able to access my books on their eReaders. But I knew there was still a vast audience that had no access to my books.

KDP publishing lesson: Convert your Word document to a webpage prior to publishing

Here’s a screen shot of me converting my Word document to a “web page.” Click the image to “enlargen.” (Yes, this is me making up new words again. I’m a writer. It’s what I do.)

They say you learn something new every day, and I tend to agree. Today, I learned something new that is worth sharing with anyone who is considering publishing their own work via Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

If you have ever published an eBook via KDP, you are probably familiar with that moment of frustration you experience when you realize that the Word document you so carefully edited and formatted has not rendered properly in Kindle format.

When I published my poetry collection last year, I spent hours flipping back and forth between my original Word document and the converted Kindle file, fixing one formatting error after another. I then had to re-publish the book with the new, updated version of my Word document. I am still not happy with the results, but I eventually just got sick of messing with it!

The self-publishing bug is back

English: A Picture of a eBook Español: Foto de eBook Беларуская: Фотаздымак электроннай кнігі Русский: Фотография электронной книги (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since I published my very first ebook last year, I kind of have the self-publishing bug. I can’t wait to finish my first novel and get it out there where people can read it! The only problem is, each of my novel projects are months (at minimum) from being publishable. I suppose that’s what happens when you allow yourself to start multiple projects rather than finishing one before starting the next.

One of my writing goals for 2014 was to begin to publish at least one ebook every year. My goal for 2015 is to focus on one writing project and finish it so I can publish it in 2016. But that doesn’t help me meet my 2014 goal, does it? I can’t really say I’ve met that goal if I only did it one year in a row, now can I?

You need to write a cheap, crappy novel. No, seriously. I mean it.

Writers write. It’s that simple. | English: penulis = writer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Lately, I have been feeling hopelessly stuck on the *Great American Novel* I have been writing for the past year. I wasn’t getting anywhere, and I wasn’t writing much of anything. I was feeling like I should stop referring to myself as a writer since I wasn’t writing anything. Then I decided to take a break from my *real* novel and knock out a cheap piece of crud just for the fun of it. I needed to write SOMETHING.

And so, I spit out a 16 chapter teen/dystopian story in 16 days and called it a finished first draft. As I mentioned in a previous post, it’s only 22,935 words, so it’s full of holes and pretty crappy. But I think I can pound it into something worth reading at the beach. It may not be the Great American Novel, but it feels like a win to me.