By Lori Perkins
Smashwords, a 14 year-old digital bookstore and ebook platform, and Direct2Digital, a 10 year-old ebook company known for ease at creating ebooks and selling them on many platforms, announced that they were merging their resources to create what will essentially be the largest indie publishing bookstore and portal of English language titles throughout the world. According to an article in Publishing Perspectives, the merger of Draft2Digital-Smashwords will represent 250,000 writers and more than 800,000 ebooks.
And no one I knew saw this coming!
But it makes perfect sense.
While some might consider the two companies competitors, the owners were able to see how they could improve their market share and services offered to authors if they worked together and were able to come to terms for a stock merger in a mere three months of discussion.
Said Mark Coker, the founder and creative force behind Smashwords in a public Facebook chat on Wednesday, February 9, this merger will make the new company (yet unnamed) “The most indie-friendly publishing platform in the industry.” He went on to explain “while everyone else is trying to exploit authors, we are here to empower authors.”
In addition to merging their stores, marketing and formatting capabilities, the combined resources will offer ebook authors print sales capacity, as well as an expanded reach of publishing platforms.
The merger is hoping to be fully operational by the beginning of March, but authors can continue to upload and sell their work in the individual platforms now and should not create new accounts to accommodate the new services.
If you would like to watch the Facebook chat, please follow this link:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=notif&v=4958046210921582¬if_id=1644429613585231¬if_t=live_video_explicit