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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This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, a destination literary and arts festival created in response to the Bali bombings in 2002 Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-10-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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It was just more than a year ago that Ev Williams and Biz Stone created the publishing platform Medium. The Internet officially met the site in August 2012, and since then, Medium’s popularity has grown enough for even the most ske ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2013-10-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In the wake of the government shutdown, Baltimore-based breathe bookstore café is offering a 10 percent discount to furloughed workers. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2013-10-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In the wake of the government shutdown, Baltimore-based breathe bookstore café is offering a 10 percent discount to furloughed workers. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2013-10-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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We swear, we won't be giving you the blow-by-blow on every single app that gets updated for iOS 7 today, but this one seemed like a biggie. Amazon just announced that its Kindle reader for iOS has received a major redesign, with fonts, menus and other details retooled to match the flat,... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2013-09-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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InboundWriter wants to help big publishers and niche bloggers figure out how much demand there is for their idea in the Web ecosystem before they type a word or hit "publish." At least that's the idea behind the newest version of the startup's software, which the company said will be used by... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2013-09-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon said on Tuesday that it will unveil a program that will let Amazon customers purchase the digital versions of print books they've already bought -- or will buy -- from Amazon, for $2.99 or less. The initiative, called Kindle MatchBook, will launch in October with at least 10,000... Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2013-09-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Following a promotion in which the site sold books at 10 percent off Amazon's prices, Overstock.com says it will now match Amazon prices for books. And it's not a temporary measure. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2013-08-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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New documents published in The Guardian reveal that the NSA can snoop on you in real time--and that the agency is building a giant keyword-based database of everything connected to the Internet, including Word and Excel docs on users' hard drives. Sometimes life seems a lot like dystopian... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2013-07-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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While some books on this year's Man Booker prize long list have gotten buzz here in the US, none of them compare (so far) with the success of last year's winner, Hilary Mantel's 'Bring Up the Bodies.' Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2013-07-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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PayPal, which claims more than 128 million active accounts in 193 markets and 25 currencies around the globe, is now looking at outer space.As space tourism is expected to take off, PayPal is exploring what payment systems will be like in outer space.The payments processor is launching Thursday... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2013-06-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sylvia Day's Entwined with You (Penguin), the third instalment in her Crossfire erotica... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-06-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Twenty-two published and unpublished authors last night (18th) shared the £40,000 prize... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-06-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The digital publishing platform will let fans write, publish, and sell the stories they've written based on popular books, TV shows, and more. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2013-05-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon's taken a number of steps to bring different types of content to the Kindle Store, and it's now venturing into an area that has a long history with the internet: fan fiction. The company's today announced Kindle Worlds, a new publishing platform that promises to pay writers royalties for... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2013-05-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Guild of Food Writers Awards shortlists include a “wonderful diversity of subject... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-05-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Journalist killed in Syria is shortlisted for Orwell Book Prize, which celebrates political writing. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2013-04-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Thanks to a certain middle-aged former TV producer called Erika James and a little publishing phenomenon called Fifty Shades of Grey, erotica seems to have not so much crept its way into the mainstream, as landed with noisy squawks and a puff of feathers on the bestseller charts. Continue reading at Stuff
[ Stuff | 2013-04-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A previously unpublished writer has won the inaugural Historical Novel Society International... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-04-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The death of novelist Chinua Achebe has been confirmed. A statement from The Wylie Agency... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-03-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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