Mark Coker of Smashwords became the leader of indie ebook writers--including some with dirty minds--in a fight against censorship and PayPal. He also has strong feelings about the DOJ's ebook pricing lawsuit.Mark Coker is the CEO of Smashwords, an ebook 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.FAST COMPANY: What is Smashwords?MARK COKER: We’re probably the world’s largest distributor of self-published ebooks and ebooks from small independent presses. We were founded in 2008. A writer comes to Smashwords, uploads a Word document, which we instantly convert into multiple formats to be read on a Kindle or other device. Those are then available for sale at Smashwords.com at a price set by the author. 85% of all proceeds go to the author, so we flipped the compensation model upside-down. In traditional publishing, in the best case, an author earns 17.5% off an ebook’s list price. In 2008, we had 140 titles; in 2009, we had 6,000 titles; today we have just over 115,000.You recently came to prominence by picking a fight with PayPal, which threatened to stop working with you if you failed to remove some smutty titles from your store.On a Saturday, I received an email from PayPal notifying me I had... Continue reading at 'Fast Company'
[ Fast Company | 2012-04-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Tired of the subtweets? The peevish reviews? The [gasp] indecorous email sign-offs? Do you wish the literary world would just conduct its brawls out in the open for all to see? Well, now you can fight along at home with Street Writer, Maxwell Neely-Cohen’s absolutely wonderful literary homage to... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-04 14:06:11 UTC ]
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The Pontas Literary & Film Agency and author J J Bola are partnering to create a mentoring prize for unagented, unpublished, under-represented writers. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-02 23:50:57 UTC ]
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"My policy around this book is to say as little as I possibly can, in case I blow the twist!” says Erin Kelly, only half-joking, during our conversation about her latest psychological thriller, which does indeed contain a central twist so ingenious that this reader gasped out loud—and not just... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-29 09:32:52 UTC ]
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Bernardine Evaristo is collaborating with the Royal Society of Literature to create a mentoring award scheme for emerging authors of colour as part of a £300,000 Sky Arts project. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-28 18:33:57 UTC ]
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The Stanfords Travel Writers Festival is going digital this year with a line-up including Raynor Winn, William Dalrymple, James Naughtie and Simon Reeve. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-25 04:31:56 UTC ]
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Some people are “constantly ringing the bell on how dangerous it is to be fat, but that’s not making fat people thin,” Gordon says. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-01-22 16:48:02 UTC ]
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Children's indie Nosy Crow is mounting an open call for submissions from writers of colour to broaden its picture books list. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-21 11:03:39 UTC ]
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Nadia Owusu recounts her sense of dislocation and her search for a place to call home. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-01-15 13:00:00 UTC ]
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Sevastian Volkov has won this year’s Impress Prize for New Writers, for his YA novel Orris and the Shadow Maiden. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-14 11:33:47 UTC ]
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The London Library's Emerging Writers Programme will run for a third year in 2021, including a new Virago Participation Bursary to support Black women and Black non-binary people overcoming financial barriers to accessing it. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-11 12:47:07 UTC ]
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The National Book Award recipient plumbed the natural world for its wisdom, exploring the Arctic tundra, the Antarctic waters and the spaces in between. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-12-30 17:34:15 UTC ]
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The Magic Attic Club. The Cheetah Girls. Do you remember these junior varsity of lesser known nostalgic children's book series? Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-12-21 11:33:00 UTC ]
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Cornerstones Literary Consultancy has been awarded Arts Council funding for its Elevate mentoring scheme, following a successful pilot run. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-12-18 23:53:53 UTC ]
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Drinking sherry, bingeing Downton Abbey ... how authors keep up the spirit of the season, even when writing during heatwaves and a nightmarish ChristmasChristmas novels are not a new phenomenon. Charles Dickens sold out of his first print run of A Christmas Carol in days in December 1843, while... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-12-17 15:22:04 UTC ]
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Acclaimed designer and thought leader Cheryl D. Miller shares her decades-long quest for design justice. Cheryl D. Miller is an acclaimed New York communications designer, artist, and theologian. She is the author of the memoir Black Coral: A Daughter’s Apology to Her Asian Island Mother and... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2020-12-17 08:00:08 UTC ]
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On Late Night with Seth Meyers this week, Slave Play and Daddy playwright Jeremy O. Harris announced he is donating a collection of 15 plays by Black playwrights to 53 libraries and community centers across the United States—and is donating one such collection to Northwestern University in Seth... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-12-09 17:29:54 UTC ]
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Black History Matters: The Story of Black History, From African Kingdoms to Black Lives Matter by historian Robin Walker has been crowned the winner of the 2020 ALCS Educational Writers’ Award. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-12-09 12:12:03 UTC ]
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Author Lauren James has established The Climate Fiction Writers League, a group of over 50 international published authors writing about climate change. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-12-07 22:31:59 UTC ]
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Book Reviews Sonia Nimr / Source: TAMER Institute for Community Education This whirlwind adventure begins with protagonist Qamar’s birth and follows her life along the titular wondrous journeys around the Mediterranean. Less novel than novella,... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-12-07 20:34:56 UTC ]
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