[India Drummond]

Help! I need the advice of folks with more experience with Smashwords.

My book was accepted to the Smashwords Premium Catalog A MONTH AGO, but it still isnt' showing up on B&N or Sony. (It showed up on Apple within a week, which surprised me.) Anyone know what to do about this? I've written to support, but historically, it takes them a week to respond, and they've never been helpful (or particularly enthusiastic about being helpful, either), so I'm not holding out much hope they'll be helpful this time. For those who've used Smashwords before, is it just a matter of waiting, or is this way outside the norm?

Even though I've been self-pubbing for almost two years, I was always exclusive to Amazon before. Pulled this book out of Select because I wanted to try to make the first in the series free. I tried reporting the Apple freebie link ( https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/blood-faerie/id594065601?mt=11&uo=4 ) , but so far, Amazon hasn't pricematched. Will they pricematch on Apple alone? I've heard they won't on Smashwords alone.

Thank you!

 

[India Drummond]

Ugh. Not good news. I was so hopeful about them too. This whole experience has been much less than I'd hoped.

I wonder if the problem is Smashwords or B&N. I was thinking of pulling my book and trying this service: http://www.ebookpartnership.com/ebook-distribution/ebook-distribution-for-authors/ , but if the issue is B&N's fault, using another distributor won't help. Ebook Partnership charge a flat fee instead of a percentage of royalties, but if it's better to use than SW (and their CS people are more inclined to be helpful), then I may at least try it for all future books.

Thanks for the replies. It does help somewhat to know I'm not alone. On the other hand, it makes me realise the SW customer service probably won't/can't help.

 

[India Drummond]

I'm direct with B&N. It normally takes about 2 days for a new book to go live. I submit in ePub format, and make sure that the book passes epubcheck without errors or warnings before submitting, so perhaps that makes all the difference.

I live in the UK, so going direct isn't an option. I submitted via Smashwords in epub format, and it passed all the checks. So, my guess is that they treat Smashwords books differently than pubit submissions. Either that or Smashwords isn't actually sending the books through in the first place (or there's some other problem in how the books are sent/distributed.)

 

[India Drummond]

After hearing the stories of others here and on a similar post I made on Facebook today, I think I'm going to yank my book from Smashwords and go with http://www.ebookpartnership.com/. I talked to someone there today (they have LIVE CHAT!) and she was very helpful. Because I'm British, it's a good option for me (Simplifies taxes, for one), plus they can get my book into Apple, Waterstones, and WH Smith, which D2D can't (yet). The Cust Serv rep at EBP did tell me it would take 1-2 weeks for my book to show up in Barnes and Noble, but at this point, I don't mind the extra waiting time just to get away from the Smashwords experience. (Besides, there's no guarantee if I wait the extra two weeks with SW, the book would be up anyway--The wait times seem to be very long and unpredictable for some people.)