Smashwords Reviews

Reading other people's experiences here actually made me feel better knowing I'm not alone in getting treated this way. It's hard to put into words how angry this kind of treatment makes you. These guys only charge 10% but apparently that's not enough, so they shut down accounts with zero valid reason and ignore their own rules. They especially seem to target international authors. I'm from outside the US and they basically stole my money - they owed me a few hundred but kept over $400 in commissions. Think about how many accounts they do this to, we're talking massive amounts of money disappearing. Don't waste your energy on these people, you'll lose more than just time.

Pretty sure they're ripping off their authors. The sales records are a complete mess with dates all over the place. My payments don't match up with what I actually sold. Where's the rest of my money? I confronted them about it and got a ridiculous response denying the whole thing. If you're thinking about self-publishing, look anywhere but here.

Your associates are criminals and thieves. They've robbed me and countless authors - shutting down accounts, stealing money, and keeping all the profits from our work while locking us out permanently. Run away from this operation.

Should've looked at the reviews before trying this. Getting a book through their formatting checker was incredibly frustrating - I followed all their guidelines to a T and kept getting rejected over and over. Wasted so much time on it. Never had this kind of trouble with any other publishing platform. I pulled the plug and removed everything today. Honestly feels like a huge burden is off my shoulders now.

I had 32 books up here with my name on them and they closed my account with no notice. They gave me confusing answers when I asked what happened, claiming I broke some rule about content, which didn't even make sense for books I'd published years earlier. When I disagreed they said I stole the work but wouldn't explain how, and then said their decision was final. Only sold 1 copy on their site but almost 100 through their so-called premium service, mostly to libraries. Their review process is way too strict and overly complicated compared to other book distribution services. Be prepared if you go with them - you might get rejected for vague reasons. I've switched to other platforms that actually understand how to handle this business fairly.

Out of all the ebook sellers I use, this one's definitely the hardest to work with. The file creation is complicated and they review everything way too strictly. When you do the math on time spent versus actual earnings, it just doesn't make sense. Do the numbers - they report $6 million in sales across a quarter million authors, that's about $24 per author per year. Compare that to other retailers pulling in way more. People just aren't shopping here. Plus their payment setup is slow and clunky, and they only send checks once you hit a certain balance. The premium catalog they push isn't even worth it. You're better off signing up directly with the major retailers. Once you format something to pass Amazon's check, you're basically ready for everyone else. Skip the middleman and skip their fees.

Haven't seen them do much to make their platform stand out. They don't seem interested in driving traffic to the site to help authors find readers. It would help a lot if there was some kind of paid advertising option available, something authors could use at a fair price point.

Can't complain about my experience here. One thing I'd say is they could let people upload bigger files, but I'm sure that'll change eventually.

I put up 4 books here under my name and within days, no warning, they shut me down. Every time I asked what was happening I got vague responses that made no sense. They claimed I violated some rule, and when I pushed back they said I plagiarized without explaining anything. Later they said I'd published the same books under different names, which isn't true - my cover is identical on every platform I use with my name clearly shown. I can prove this. If I could give minus one star I would.

This platform is really not great for people writing ebooks. Anything that looks remotely like it could be PLR or similar gets shot down immediately. No other publishing site I've used has this weird problem. Won't be recommending it to anyone.