The future is now, continued
A new American website, Smashwords, promises to combine self-publishing with digital delivery. As Globe and Mail columnist Matthew Ingram notes:
At Smashwords, authors simply upload their novels as Word documents and then decide how much they want to charge. Users can then download the chapters or books as “e-books” that can be read on mobile devices, including Amazon’s Kindle electronic-book reader — all without any digital rights management or DRM controls. Smashwords keeps 15 per cent of the revenue from the book downloads and the author gets the rest, Coker says. Authors are also encouraged to give away chapters as a way of promoting their work.
