Silicon Valley Company Acquires BookHabit
Media Release
WELLINGTON, New Zealand and Los Gatos, Calif.
20 November (NZDT) --Silicon Valley based Smashwords, Inc. has acquired Wellington New Zealand company BookHabit Limited, consolidating Smashwords' position as the world's premier ebook publishing and distribution platform for independent authors and publishers.
BookHabit was
founded in 2008 as an ebook publishing platform for
independent authors. During that time, BookHabit developed
relationships with 340 authors who collectively published
over 600 books.
Smashwords launched in May, 2008.
Today, the fast-growing service publishes over 4,700 ebooks
from 2,100 independent authors and publishers around the
world. In the last several weeks, Smashwords has opened new
distribution channels for indie authors and publishers by
announcing distribution relationships with major online
retailers Shortcovers, Sony and Barnes & Noble.
"I'm
pleased to welcome BookHabit authors and readers to the
Smashwords family," said Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords.
"This acquisition boosts our international base of authors,
ebooks and customers. We look forward to helping BookHabit
authors gain access to our worldwide distribution
network."
"This acquisition benefits the BookHabit
author community by offering broader sales and distribution
opportunities, especially in North America," said Clare
Tanner, founder of BookHabit. "Smashwords makes it fast and
easy for authors to publish multi-format ebooks, readable on
all the popular e-reading devices. I'm pleased to help our
authors take full advantage of the free publishing,
marketing and distribution tools offered by
Smashwords."
Smashwords purchased the assets of
BookHabit for an undisclosed cash sum. Smashwords and
BookHabit will immediately begin migrating BookHabit's
authors, books and customers over to the Smashwords
platform. BookHabit authors, as with Smashwords authors,
will continue to retain all ownership and copyright to their
books, and are under no obligation to migrate their books to
Smashwords.
BookHabit authors who wish to migrate
their books to Smashwords are encouraged to carefully read
and implement the formatting requirements of the Smashwords
Style Guide, a link to which can be found at http://www.smashwords.com/about/how_to_publish_on_smashwords
and should also study the requirements for distribution
at http://www.smashwords.com/distribution
About
BookHabit
BookHabit was founded in 2008 by Clare
Tanner, an entrepreneur and avid reader. BookHabit's mission
was to give published and unpublished writers a conduit to
the reading world, and give readers access to new,
undiscovered writers. BookHabit was funded by WebFund, an
online business incubator / angel investment firm in
Wellington, New Zealand. Visit BookHabit at http://www.bookhabit.com
About
Smashwords, Inc.
Launched in 2008, Smashwords is a
publisher and distributor of multi-format ebooks. The free
Smashwords ebook publishing platform puts authors and
publishers in full control over the pricing, sampling and
distribution of their works. Authors and publishers receive
up to 85 percent of the net proceeds from sales of their
works. Smashwords books are distributed via leading online
retailers such as Shortcovers, Sony and Barnes & Noble, and
across all mobile smart phone platforms via e-reading apps
such as Stanza, Shortcovers, Aldiko and Word Player.
Smashwords, Inc. is based in Los Gatos, California, and can
be reached on the web at http://www.smashwords.com/. Visit the official
Smashwords blog at http://blog.smashwords.com/. For frequent Smashwords
updates, follow Smashwords' founder, Mark Coker, on Twitter
at http://twitter.com/markcoker
ENDS