Serious issue on Smashwords...check your recent books!

[lovecraft68]

On Tuesday Night I published a book and it failed totally. I've never had that happen before and when I clicked details to find out why it did not give any.

I went to the dashboard and clicked publish and the book posted fine, it showed up on their him page, my page etc...

Wednesday morning I did not have one download as in no one even checked out the sample. I looked at my page and...

The book posted without a manuscript(which I did upload) so of course no one could download a sample of it and who the hell is going to purchase what they can't check out?

So I contacted SW who claimed this glitch happened last Saturday night and they had fixed it... I said, umm....my book went out on Tuesday.

They contacted me again and said they were checking into it. Meantime I was looking at some books this morning and found this author whose last several books all look like this

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/572438

I feel badly because I can't contact her to let her know as I don't have twitter-maybe if someone here does they can do her a favor?

I've also contacted SW again.

This is a horrendous glitch that is costing authors sales. Its like lit, you have max exposure for a very short time on SW before your book is buried and even if these get corrected now all those book lost initial sales and people may not come back to the author themselves.

Bigger picture, SW themselves is going to lose customers if they continue to click on books and not be able to sample them. Worse if someone is just a fan of the author and buys without looking they can't download their purchase.

So hopefully SW gets on this thing and damn quick.

In the meantime for any of you that have uploaded a book recently go look and make sure its okay. In my case once I saw the problem I edited it to add a new doc and it went through.

However I unpublished it and will republish it in a couple of days so it is treated as a new book once more.

Just wanted people to be aware of this.

 

[redzinger]

Meantime I was looking at some books this morning and found this author whose last several books all look like this

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/572438

I feel badly because I can't contact her to let her know as I don't have twitter-maybe if someone here does they can do her a favor?

Can't find her on Twitter, which is weird, but I noticed that she's only been on SW since the 28th of July, and is charging $2.99+ for <5k word stories, so I'm not feeling too much sympathy for her.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I just published on yesterday on Smashwords and it went through just fine. I also posted it on Kindle and it was up within an hour after publishing. I think that was the quickest I have seen a title go live.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

it's almost like she forgot to check what formats she wanted it in. Although it does say the format epub is supposed to be available.

 

[lovecraft68]

Can't find her on Twitter, which is weird, but I noticed that she's only been on SW since the 28th of July, and is charging $2.99+ for <5k word stories, so I'm not feeling too much sympathy for her.

Two points to that. One she will learn two if she is on amazon she can't be lower on sw than there and that is how those unethical scum control the market and cause people to have the reaction you just did and that costs sales every where but bezos sinkhole

I feel for anyone losing sales on a site glitch especially one claimed to be fixed

 

[lovecraft68]

it's almost like she forgot to check what formats she wanted it in. Although it does say the format epub is supposed to be available.

They are automatically checked. This is not author error.its site wide

 

[lovecraft68]

I just published on yesterday on Smashwords and it went through just fine. I also posted it on Kindle and it was up within an hour after publishing. I think that was the quickest I have seen a title go live.

Its not on every book I went down the first erotica page and found three all ddifferent authors

 

[redzinger]

Two points to that. One she will learn two if she is on amazon she can't be lower on sw than there and that is how those unethical scum control the market and cause people to have the reaction you just did and that costs sales every where but bezos sinkhole

I feel for anyone losing sales on a site glitch especially one claimed to be fixed

Sorry, I don't understand. She can't have a lower price on SW than Amazon?


From looking at her books, sorry, I can't call them 'books', 'stories', she has a similar profile to that plagiarism case a few months back. Lots of very short, overpriced stories, uploaded in a very short space of time, with little or no other online presence. Even someone new to writing can't be that naive/greedy?

Perhaps I'm just too cynical? I'd like to grab some text and check it anyway, but can't figure out how.

 

[sr71plt]

Sorry, I don't understand. She can't have a lower price on SW than Amazon?

Not from Amazon's perspective. They will mark their price down to lowest they find out it is anywhere.

From looking at her books, sorry, I can't call them 'books', 'stories', she has a similar profile to that plagiarism case a few months back. Lots of very short, overpriced stories, uploaded in a very short space of time, with little or no other online presence. Even someone new to writing can't be that naive/greedy?

Perhaps I'm just too cynical? I'd like to grab some text and check it anyway, but can't figure out how.

No, I agree with you, a 5K-word work shouldn't be offered for $2.99 unless it comes with a massage. Of course it's the reader who is naive if they buy it.

 

[lovecraft68]

Not from Amazon's perspective. They will mark their price down to lowest they find out it is anywhere.




No, I agree with you, a 5K-word work shouldn't be offered for $2.99 unless it comes with a massage. Of course it's the reader who is naive if they buy it.

I agree with both of you. I just saw a 2700k "book" on sw...that's not a book. But I think people have to learn on their own.

And whether its right or not, because of amazon's pricing terrorism your option is price it the same everywhere and have people say what is being said here, or settle for 35% amazon royalties and price the book .99-$1.99 there to be able to do it in other places

Either way this is what makes me laugh when amazon tries to sue others for pricing issues.

 

[lovecraft68]

Oh and the glitch is continuing on SW and tow of their team today told me its fixed....I do not think they will enjoy my last e-mail that contains links to 13 books with that issue.

Also I tried e-mailing coker direct and oh, his e-mail is no longer valid. he has twitter, but I don't have that...


Meantime another glitch...their new book page on the home page and every category I checked it not updating, same books in the same order for hours now.

Another major issue for someone putting out a new book, who the hell can see it?

I was wondering why this has been by far my lowest month on SW in close to a year....I can see what now

 

[redzinger]

I've done it the other way - I rewrote a story here as a freebie taster/prologue to my Scarlet Series of novels. It was only 15k and only semi-pro edited. However, Amazon would only give it away for free if I took it off here, which I wasn't willing to do, and stuck it in their KUL programme (or whatever it is), which I was also unwilling to do.

So, published it on Amazon for 99c/p, then published it for free on SW, and told Amazon they had to price-match. Lo and behold, a way to get around their ridiculous pricing policy.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I have several stories here for free, but under a different name than Amazon, where I have the same stories published for $'s. Haven't heard a word from Jeff about it either.

ETA: The home page is updating just fine...now. It actually was working fine for me earlier.