Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Douglas County Libraries and Smashwords' FREE Titles, an Update


"Just checked: we are not getting ALL of Smashwords free titles. After they run the list of the top 10,000 downloaded titles, they are giving us the top 1,000 free titles. We're still waiting on the list of final titles, so I can't check to see if you're on it. But it shouldn't be more than a couple of weeks till we have them all in our catalog."

If you've been following this post and its comments, you know that Jamie has been the greatest at explaining Douglas County Libraries' relationship with Smashwords and Bilbary. Jamie patiently replied to my endless questions – probes regarding sort and selection criteria for acquiring titles from Smashwords.

Well, it seems that Smashwords' first round of titles does not contain ALL of the free titles within Smashwords. Unless I'm wrong, I didn't get the impression from Jamie that DCL has a concern with receiving ALL the free titles. So, what's the snag? Who, then, made the decision to cut off delivering all free Smashwords titles to DCL? … and why?

The subset of only the 1,000 top-selling free titles is being delivered to DCL. This fact leaves the rest of probably 40,000 Smashwords authors wondering what the heck the purpose is of Smashwords' new toys, "Library Direct" and "Pricing Manager."

 I am comfortable with my belief that Smashwords authors whose free titles didn't make the "top 1,000 cut" must be very frustrated; Smashwords provides the highly-touted "Pricing Manager" option, allowing differing retail  and library pricing, but then our free titles are ignored in subsequent library purchases/acquisitions.

When I approached Smashwords' founder, Mark Coker, with a series of closely-related questions, I did not get answers.

The discoveries shared within this ongoing post (and comments), then, represent a lapse in good judgment by Smashwords' leadership. They should be forthcoming regarding setting realistic expectations for authors and publishers free titles in the library models.

As such, I request that Smashwords management makes it a protocol to deliver ALL free titles (those approved by their authors) to library customers and aggregators.

Your thoughts on this subject?

5 comments:

  1. Interesting. I need to go see the other comments on the last blog... be back :)

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  2. Haven't heard back from Jamie yet, and Mark Coker remains silent regarding the subsort criteria. I wonder how he proposes that SW, then, is fair to all its authors regarding the Library Direct and Pricing Manager functions.

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  3. Hi, I still haven't heard back from Mark, either, and we haven't gotten a lot of the titles yet. But don't make too many assumptions until we do. He may be filtering out non-English titles, or explicitly sexual titles. (I want to have our first batch of titles be well-received by our community.) I gather that Smashwords has a lot of irons in the fire. - Jamie

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  4. Hi, I still haven't heard back from Mark, either, and we haven't gotten a lot of the titles yet. But don't make too many assumptions until we do. He may be filtering out non-English titles, or explicitly sexual titles. (I want to have our first batch of titles be well-received by our community.) I gather that Smashwords has a lot of irons in the fire. - Jamie

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    Replies
    1. Hi, Jamie. Thanks for updating us. I don't think anyone's surprised; Smashwords is growing by leaps and bounds and, as Mark admits, gets backloggged at times. Just a couple of years ago, no one expected self-pub'ing and ebook distribution to grow like it has, and Smashwords remains at the forefront.

      Thank you, also, for setting realistic expectations and for describing your processes and thoughts behind the purchasing decision. It's nice to read a customer's viewpoint. You're very kind to share your experiences across several occasions within this post.

      I hope you have a pleasant week.

      Take care,
      LC

      Delete

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