Smash-ing

My Kindle has opened my world to many sources for finding ebooks. One of those is Smashwords.
http://www.smashwords.com/
I was a bit confused about this site when I first read about it. But recently I've purchased 2 books there and found it very easy to use. Today, I'll share a little about Smashwords, you can check it out and hopefully enjoy some new reading.
What is Smashwords?
Smashwords is an ebook publishing and distribution platform, serving authors, publishers, readers and major ebook retailers. Smashwords is ideal for publishing novels, personal memoirs, poetry chapbooks, short and long-form fiction, and non-fiction. If you've written it, they will help you share it and sell it.
As a reader, it's a place to find free books, very low priced books and terrific new authors.

The very fact that this site allows self-publishing means that we get opportunities to read many stories that may never make it to the big publishing houses. Did you know that Kathryn Stockett received over 60 rejection letters before finding a company to publish The Help? How many other authors with terrific stories are wading through rejection letters? It also means that you may find a few that don't meet your usual standards...that's why you should read a sample of the book before making a purchase!

Once you make a purchase, you can download the file to any e-reader-the books are available in many formats and can even be read on a pc without an ereader app. It's downloaded as a pdf for that purpose. For my Kindle, I have to connect via the USB cable to my computer and transfer the file manually. It can't be moved wirelessly the way Amazon books are transferred.
The Smashwords website says the books cannot be shared because of licensing. I haven't tested this yet.
Happy hunting (for new books/authors),
Pauline