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

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