So I finally finished my horror novel, Xmas Carol. It’s time to publish. I’ve come to this forum before but never posted. From what I’ve read in other posts, it seems one publishes at both Amazon and Smashwords. Is that the idea? This covers the bases? I confess I’m not clear on what Smashwords is all about. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. But hey, I’m done! Just finished editing the book yesterday. I feel like such a mensch.
Smashwords is good for getting yourself out there on all e-book formats in in the different e-stores. You can check them out (www.smashwords.com) and if you click around enough you’ll see it’s fairly self-explanatory.
I would personally create your ebook using Scrivener. By the way, congratulations on the finished product. 
I’m sure it does feel great to have it accomplished.
Unless you’re going the traditional publishing route (which I assume you aren’t, given the fact that you mention Amazon) then of course, Amazon is the way to go for self-publishers. If you want a print edition of your book as well, you may want to consider www.createspace.com
If you need a cover for your ebook or print cover try these guys: 52novels.com/
If you want some ideas about how to use Amazon Prime check out this blog link: jakonrath.blogspot.com/2012/08/e … aries.html
Come to think of it, you can learn quite a bit from Jo Konrath’s blog as well as the special guest bloggers that write on it form time to time as well.
Good luck and cheers!
That was a great response. Thanks. I haven’t been back here much since posting my question. I just went ahead and published at Amazon and Smashwords. And yes, I used Scrivener to produce the mobi file for Amazon. That worked very well. It was so simple. I’m a huge Scrivener fan. And hey, my book is out there. That’s so cool. I’m proud of the book I wrote. “Xmas Carol” may not get noticed this Christmas, but I bet it will in the long run. Again, thanks for your suggestions.
While amazon is going to give any author the lion’s share of their sales from ebooks, unless there’s some initial outlay of cash, there’s no reason not to at least publish to nook as well, is there? Is it really that hard to set up?
I ask patly for myself, since at some distant point in the future, I might self-publish. Things will likely change dramatically by then, but I’m still curious why people limit their books to just one reader format.