Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Smashwords Unveils New Indie Author Interview System

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Smashwords is one of the largest self-publishing websites in the world and pumps out hundreds of new titles each day. It is one of the most vibrant ecosystems for authors who write digital books exclusively. Smashwords Interviews is a new service that guides authors to create, edit and publish their own Q&A interview. Authors simply answer a series of questions, or create their own questions, and then click publish. The final interview can be easily integrated with their own websites, blog, or in the book description area on mainstream digital stores.

In order to use this new interview service you don’t actually have to publish an eBook with Smashwords. You simply have to just register for a free account and the system will generate a series of questions. It is a solid idea in spirit, because readers can know more about the author and also gives another marketing tool in the marketing arsenal.

Smashwords Interviews only launched today and the entire system is plagued with bugs. Many authors are getting the system message that the service has run out of questions. Mark Coker the CEO of Smashwords has addressed this issue and are currently working on a solution. Authors can still make their own questions and answer them, so its not totally broken.

In spirit, this is a great tool for authors to employ. Many of Amazon’s top eBooks have an author interview in the description field. This is normally generated by a PR company, or the author themselves, you never know. When you are looking at an unknown writer and maybe their eBook looks interesting, it might lead to a sale. A large number of readers might dig the authors style or their writing voice. Lots of people follow specific authors and it all starts with the first glance at the book description.

Smashwords Unveils New Indie Author Interview System is a post from: E-Reader News

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