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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Fifty Shades of Grey has sold more than 28 million physical copies around the world, though... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-10-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Syrian writer Samar Yazbek, author of A Woman in the Crossfire (Haus Publishing), has been chosen... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-10-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot Diaz, reporter David Finkel, and writer Dinaw Mengestu were honored by the MacArthur Foundation, each receiving a $500,000 grant. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-10-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Booksellers have become book writers for a popular science project from Icon Books. Icon’s... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-09-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Eight of the top 10 bestselling novels in the UK last week were works of erotica, with E L James... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-08-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The recent boom in sales of erotic fiction is "cannibalising" the rest of the UK book market, trade magazine The Bookseller says. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2012-08-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In its first frontlist deal with agency Conville & Walsh, US digital publisher Open Road has... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-08-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Romance specialists Mills & Boon has launched its first billboard advertising campaign,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-08-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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To him, the world was both subject and spectacle. Yet he remained, always, an author difficult to categorize.Gore Vidal, who died Tuesday night at age 86, was a fixture on the American cultural landscape for so long that it seems hard to imagine our literature without him. From 1946, when his... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-08-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Hamish Hamilton has signed up a novel from South American writer Daniel Galera, a... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-08-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The foundation behind a proposed museum honoring American authors has published a plan for the building. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-07-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Cornerstone has reprinted the Fifty Shades trilogy a further three times this week, as retailers... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-07-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Rights in E L James' Fifty Shades trilogy have sold to 41 foreign publishers to date, with... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-07-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Erotica is continuing to steam-up acquisition meetings, with 19th July a potential sweet spot as... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-06-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The erotica trend sparked by Fifty Shades of Grey looks set to sizzle all summer, with... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-06-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Hot on the heels of Cornerstone’s Fifty Shades of Grey, Penguin’s Michael Joseph has... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-06-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A dozen books a year? Some writers are accelerating the pace in this brave new world of ebooks. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-05-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Hot Keys Books has partnered with the Guardian to launch a new young person’s writing prize... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-04-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Figment is a website that gives teenagers and young adults a forum for posting their work and giving advice to others. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-04-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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