Sol S.

As an author with an account on several ebook retailers, I would rate Smashwords as the most difficult platform to use. Their ebook file creation process is clunky and their review process is overzealous. Looking at time spent vrs amount of sales you can make, it's simply not a good option. See below for some numbers.

Sales are very low on the platform. (6 million reported revenue with 250k authors = $24 average per author, yearly) For context, Kobo, a very small ebook retailer, does 97 million in sales. Amazon and B&N are in the billions of dollars of sales. From those numbers, taken from a quick google search, the book-purchasing public is clearly not at Smashwords.

Overall the ROI is not impressive, especially since their payment system for authors is clunky and slow. They cut paper checks with a threshold of $ in your account before you can be paid.

I don't find their "Premium Catalog" to be of value. You are better off creating separate author accounts for major retailers and using those to publish your book directly. Once you have created a book that satisfied Amazon's requirements, you are 95%+ of the way there with other retailers. There's no need to let Smashwords take a cut of your sales on other platforms, especially Amazon.

I would only use Smashwords if you are a completist about platforms for your book, or if you're publishing some kind of niche content that already has an audience on that site. Avoid otherwise.