Smashwords

Smashwords is an honest and helpful distributor of ebooks from independent authors. I have enjoyed their services for the sale and distribution of my dozen novels and stories for several years. I do recommend them. However, their format requirements are not the same as Kobo or Kindle and they have other requirements that are unique to them. Broken Symmetry Publishing, see Pa'an and Melt-Out.

I am writing to express my dissatisfaction with Smashwords for terminating my author account without valid reasons. They accused me of violating their terms of service, which is not true. I received a notification from them a few days ago informing me of the termination, without any prior warnings. According to Smashwords, I had published the same or similar book under two different author names, but this is incorrect. What I actually did was repackaging, a common practice on all online book platforms, including Smashwords. I write romance novels with male/male gender pairings and then convert them to female/female pairings. Occasionally, I also convert male/female pairings. Smashwords claimed that my books "***'s Slavery" and "Lesbian Slavery" were the same, but this is false. "***'s Slavery" is a male/female book, while "Lesbian Slavery" is a female/female book. I have been doing this on Smashwords for several years without any issues, and I believe other authors have done the same. If Smashwords had a problem with this, they could have simply asked me to remove one of the books, as their terms of service do not prohibit repackaging. However, they abruptly terminated all my accounts without warning or explanation. This is inappropriate. Initially, I accepted their decision since I wasn't earning much from them anyway. However, upon further reflection, I realized that Smashwords made an error and should reinstate my accounts. They provided no warning before terminating my account, falsely accused me of publishing the same book under different names, and claimed to have emailed me about questionable books I published, which I never received. Smashwords terminated my account despite the fact that I have not violated their terms of service. This is highly inappropriate and unethical, and I request that they reinstate my accounts. Thank you.