The first Smashwords coattail-clinger arrives
Well, that didn’t take long. Only a day or so after Smashwords announced its placement with Stanza, here comes a rather suspicious-looking press release from a company that
[plans] to develop an online e-book publishing business. Our internet based company will service authors who want to publish in electronic format. Our company will not charge a fee to authors to publish e-books, but rather will focus on sales and marketing efforts to earn revenue on each incremental sale of e-books to customers.
The paint isn’t even dry on their “information-only website†yet—in fact, the only thing there as of this posting is an ISP “under construction†placeholder page—but they are promoting their fund-raising stock offering. Hmm.
Make no mistake, having more legitimate e-book firms can only be a good thing for the industry, overall. Let some large number of flowers blossom, and all that. But the timing of this stock-offering announcement—before they even have a website ready to go with it—is highly suspicious.
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