Smashwords is no longer a publishing platform. As of 2026 it is an ebook store — a place readers buy your book — and all the publishing and distribution work has moved to Draft2Digital. If someone told you to “publish on Smashwords,” that advice is two years out of date.
In this review, you’ll learn:
- What Smashwords actually is now, after the merger finished
- The new royalty tiers that took effect January 1, 2026 — and the trap in the low tier
- Where Smashwords genuinely beats every other retailer, including us
- Who should still care about the Smashwords store, and who can safely ignore it
Here is the honest assessment.
What Smashwords Actually Is in 2026
Smashwords — a DRM-free ebook retail store, owned and operated by Draft2Digital, that sells direct to readers and pays authors a higher royalty than Amazon. It is a storefront, not a publishing tool.
Mark Coker founded Smashwords in 2008 as the first serious ebook distributor built for indie authors. For fourteen years it was where you uploaded a Word file, ran it through the “Meatgrinder” converter, and pushed your book out to Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and the libraries.
That era is over. Draft2Digital acquired Smashwords in March 2022, and spent the next three years migrating more than 150,000 publishing accounts across to the D2D dashboard. The migration FAQ confirms the mechanics: once your migration began, the author side of your Smashwords account was locked and every book record moved to Draft2Digital.
By early 2026, Draft2Digital had finished the job and rewritten the Smashwords terms of service to describe it as, in their own words, a dedicated ebook store only. You cannot upload a book to Smashwords. You upload to D2D, and D2D — as the exclusive supplier to the store — puts it on the Smashwords shelf.
So this review is really answering two separate questions: is the Smashwords store a worthwhile sales channel, and is the D2D pipeline that feeds it worth using? The answers are different.
What Smashwords Does Well
It pays the highest royalty of any major ebook retailer
On direct Smashwords store sales at $2.99 or above, you keep 75% of list price. Amazon KDP’s top tier is 60%, and only inside the $2.99–$9.99 band — above $9.99, KDP drops you to 35% and starts charging delivery fees on file size.
Fifteen extra points on every sale is not a rounding error. On a $4.99 ebook that is $3.74 versus $2.99 — about 25% more money for the identical book.
Author-generated coupons are a real competitive weapon
This is the feature nobody else has. You can create your own time-limited discount codes — 25%, 50%, 100% off — and hand them out to whoever you want.
That makes Smashwords the cleanest way to distribute ARCs to reviewers, deliver a reader magnet to your newsletter list, or run a private sale for your launch team without permanently discounting the book everywhere. Amazon offers you nothing equivalent.
Twice-yearly sitewide sales bring you readers you didn’t have
Smashwords runs two big catalog-wide promotions a year — Read an Ebook Week in March and the End of Year Sale in December. Tens of thousands of indie titles discount together, and the store markets the event to its own shoppers.
For an unknown author, being swept into a promotion that a retailer actively advertises is worth more than the discount costs. It is discovery you did not have to buy.
The catalog is enormous and DRM-free
The store carries over one million ebooks, with close to 100,000 priced free on any given day. Everything is sold DRM-free, which a meaningful slice of readers specifically seek out.
The pipeline behind it is still free to start
Distribution through Draft2Digital costs nothing up front — D2D takes 10% of list on retail sales rather than charging you to publish. If you are weighing going wide against Amazon exclusivity, that zero-cost entry is why most wide authors land here.
What Smashwords Does Not Do Well
The 2026 royalty change quietly punishes cheap books
Effective January 1, 2026, Smashwords replaced its old shopping-cart-based formula with two flat tiers: 75% for books priced $2.99 and up, and 40% for books under $2.99. Jane Friedman reported the change in December 2025, ahead of the rollout.
Under the old system, the store paid up to 80% or more depending on cart size. So the headline is a cut in both directions, and the low tier is brutal: 40% is worse than Amazon’s 60% on a $0.99 or $1.99 book.
Here is the part that catches people. Deep-discount coupons and sitewide sale pricing can drop a book below $2.99 — which is precisely when the 40% tier applies. The two features Smashwords is best known for now interact badly with its own pay structure. If you run a 75%-off coupon on a $4.99 book, you are selling at $1.25 and keeping 40 cents.
Their own marketing page contradicts their own rates
At the time of writing, the Smashwords about page still carries Coker’s founding line about paying authors “80% or more” — a number that has not been accurate since January. That is a small thing, but it is the kind of small thing that tells you where the company’s attention is, and it is not on this brand.
Nothing here has been built in years
Development moved to Draft2Digital and stayed there. The Smashwords store works, but it has received no meaningful feature investment since the merger. Treat it as a channel in maintenance mode.
Store traffic is a fraction of Amazon’s
Be realistic about scale. A million titles competing for a comparatively small audience means most books sell single-digit copies a year direct on Smashwords. The high royalty applies to a small number.
You still cannot reach Amazon through it
D2D does not distribute to Amazon, so the Smashwords route covers everywhere except the store where roughly two-thirds of English-language ebook sales happen. You will be running two dashboards regardless. Our breakdown of book distribution options covers how the pieces fit.
How Smashwords Pricing Compares
There is no fee to have your book in the Smashwords store — the cost is taken out of each sale. What matters is the effective royalty across channels.
| Channel | Author royalty | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Smashwords store, $2.99+ | 75% of list | Highest of any major retailer |
| Smashwords store, under $2.99 | 40% of list | Includes coupon and sale pricing |
| Amazon KDP, $2.99–$9.99 | 60% of list | Minus delivery fees |
| Amazon KDP, outside that band | 35% of list | Under $2.99 or over $9.99 |
| Retailers via D2D (Apple, Kobo, B&N) | ~60% of list | Retailer takes ~30%, D2D takes 10% |
| Library channels | ~45% of list | Varies by platform |
The retail and library figures are approximate — D2D publishes its own royalty rate breakdown and the arithmetic shifts by retailer and territory.
Watch the total cost of the workflow, not the commission. D2D changed its fee structure in 2026 to add a one-time new-account activation charge and an annual maintenance fee for accounts earning under $100 a year — the current numbers are in our Draft2Digital review. And none of these percentages include what you spent producing the book: editing, cover, and formatting still come out of your pocket before a single copy sells. See what self-publishing actually costs.
What Real Users Say
Author sentiment since the merger splits along a predictable line.
Authors who used Smashwords mainly as a distributor are broadly fine with the outcome. D2D’s interface is better than the old Meatgrinder, formatting is more reliable, and the retailer list is the same or better. The migration was slow and noisy, but it landed.
Authors who used Smashwords as a direct sales channel are less happy. The 2026 royalty tiers were the flashpoint, and indie-author commentary has focused on exactly the trap described above: that the cut lands hardest on promotional pricing, the thing the store was best at. Whether the twice-yearly sales stay as popular with a 40% payout attached is a live question, not a settled one.
We are not going to invent a review score or a user count for a platform we do not own. If you want primary-source sentiment, the Smashwords blog and the store updates page are where announcements land first, and the reaction usually follows in the comments.
Who Should Use Smashwords
- Wide authors who already distribute through D2D. The store is a free extra shelf. There is no reason to opt out.
- Authors who price at $2.99 or above. The 75% tier is the best royalty available anywhere. Take it.
- Anyone who needs to hand out review copies. The coupon system alone justifies keeping the channel active.
- Authors with a newsletter list. You can point your own readers at a store where you keep 75% instead of 60%.
Who Should Not Use Smashwords
- Authors in KDP Select. Exclusivity forbids selling your ebook anywhere else. Pick one — our wide vs exclusive comparison lays out the trade.
- Authors who price under $2.99 as a strategy. The 40% tier makes the perma-cheap model worse here than on Amazon.
- Print-first and audiobook authors. This is an ebook store. It is not your channel.
- Anyone expecting volume. If you are choosing where to spend limited launch energy, Amazon and Apple Books will move more copies. Smashwords is a supplement.
- Anyone who does not have a finished book yet. Which brings us to the honest part.
Where Smashwords Beats Chapter
We build Chapter, AI book writing software, and it would be dishonest to pretend it competes with Smashwords. It does not — and on everything Smashwords is actually for, Smashwords wins outright:
- Smashwords sells books. Chapter does not. Chapter cannot put your manuscript in front of a single reader, take a payment, or send you a royalty. Smashwords does all three. That is not a feature gap, it is a different job.
- Smashwords is free. Chapter is $97. You can be earning on Smashwords having spent nothing.
- Smashwords is a permanent asset. Your book sits on that shelf earning for years. Chapter is a production tool you use once per book and then close.
- Smashwords pays better than the market. 75% at $2.99+ beats every major retailer. We have no equivalent to offer, because we are not a retailer.
- Smashwords handles the boring, essential machinery. Payment processing, international VAT, currency conversion, library channels, delivery. None of that is our problem, and all of it would be yours without a distributor.
- Coupons are genuinely unique. No writing tool replaces a direct-to-reader discount code you control.
If you have a finished manuscript and you are deciding where to sell it, close this article and go read our best self-publishing platforms roundup. Chapter is not on that list, and it should not be.
The Alternative We Built — For the Other Half of the Problem
Our Product — Chapter
Chapter is AI book writing software that produces a complete, formatted manuscript. It solves the step before distribution: actually having a book to sell.
Here is the pattern we see constantly. Someone researches Smashwords, D2D, KDP, ISBNs, categories, and pricing tiers for six months — and still has no manuscript. Distribution research is a very comfortable form of procrastination, because it feels like publishing without the risk of writing.
Chapter exists for that gap. You give it a topic, audience, and structure; it builds the outline first, then writes the manuscript — 80 to 250 pages for nonfiction in roughly an hour, or 20,000 to 120,000+ words for fiction using structures like Save the Cat and the Romance Beat Sheet. Output comes back as KDP-ready files you can push straight into D2D or Amazon.
Best for: authors who have the idea and the audience but keep stalling on the draft Pricing: $97 one-time for nonfiction — no subscription, no credits Why we built it: 2,147+ authors and 5,000+ books later, the bottleneck was never distribution. It was the manuscript.
Chapter has been featured in USA Today and the New York Times, and you can read our honest self-review — including what it does badly — before you spend anything.
Then take that finished file to Draft2Digital, and let Smashwords sell it at 75%. The two tools do not compete. They sit next to each other in the same workflow.
FAQ
Can you still publish on Smashwords in 2026?
No — you can no longer publish directly on Smashwords. As of 2026, Smashwords is an ebook store only. All publishing, uploading, and distribution moved to Draft2Digital, which acquired Smashwords in 2022 and is now the store’s exclusive supplier. You create a free D2D account instead.
What royalty does Smashwords pay authors?
Smashwords pays 75% of list price on direct store sales for ebooks priced $2.99 and above, and 40% for ebooks priced under $2.99, effective January 1, 2026. The 75% tier is the highest royalty of any major ebook retailer — Amazon KDP tops out at 60%.
Is Smashwords better than Amazon KDP?
Smashwords pays better; Amazon sells more. Smashwords gives you 75% versus Amazon’s 60%, plus author coupons Amazon does not offer. But Amazon’s audience is far larger. Most indie authors use both — unless they are locked into KDP Select exclusivity.
Did Smashwords authors lose their books in the migration?
No. All 150,000+ Smashwords publishing accounts and their book records were migrated to Draft2Digital, with the process completing by early 2026. Books stayed live and on sale throughout. Author-side editing now happens in the D2D dashboard, not on Smashwords.
Is Smashwords worth it for a new author?
Smashwords is worth it if you are already going wide and pricing at $2.99 or above. It costs nothing to add, pays the best royalty available, and gives you coupons for ARCs and newsletter offers. It is a supplement to Amazon, not a replacement — expect modest direct volume. See how much self-published authors actually make.
