Coker

Mark Coker of Smashwords has shared a year end review that contains some interesting nuggets for the ebook author and ereader community, in among all the upbeat reporting on his firm’s continuing success. Though as it happens, one of the nuggets is the success of Smashwords – and what that says about the state of […]

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We've covered a number of stories dealing with ebooks and their disruption of normal publishing. There have been a lot of growing pains in the industry as the ebook market continues to expand, replacing physical sales (and their associated margins and intentional bottlenecks) and knocking down a healthy number of barriers to entry. Allegations of ebook price fixing are still in the air, pending the Department of Justice's investigation. No matter the final decision, publishers will still be free to set ebook prices as high or low as they want to. But if they insist on pricing themselves out

Thanks to Richard Herley for the heads up.

E-book author Victoria Hudson doesn't like Amazon or the power it seems to wield with independent writers.

She didn't want to sell her book and short stories on its Kindle Direct Publishing Select program, something she calls "too restrictive to authors." Instead she chose an alternative book distributor based in the San Francisco Bay Area called Smashwords.

"I want my work to be available in as many places as possible," she said.

Mark Coker of Smashwords became the leader of indie e-book writers — including some with dirty minds — in a fight against censorship and PayPal. He also has strong feelings about the DOJ's e-book pricing lawsuit. Mark Coker is the CEO of Smashwords, an e-book publishing and distribution platform. Coker recently won a highly publicized battle against PayPal, which briefly refused to work with Smashwords unless Coker removed certain naughty titles from the site. Fast Company caught up with Coker and learned, among other things, that writers of incest erotica can be very articulate.