Our favorite week of the year is approaching! You can enroll now for Read an Ebook Week, a week-long celebration of ebooks and the readers who love them, running March 2-8.
Enrollment in this year’s sale starts February 13th and closes February 27th, so enroll NOW!
Read an Ebook Week, founded by Smashwords author Rita Toews in 2004, is the longest-running international celebration of ebooks. The Smashwords Read an Ebook Week Super Sale is the first annual storewide sale ever introduced at Smashwords, going all the way back to 2009.
Draft2Digital Authors can find a prompt to enroll in the Read an Ebook Week Sale on your My Books page.
To ensure your books are enrolled in the sale:
- Make sure you’re logged in to your D2D account
- Look for the enrollment message on your My Books dashboard (you can’t miss it)
- Click the “Choose A Discount” button to get started
You now have two discounting options when it comes to enrolling your books in Smashwords super sales: One-Click Sale Pricing or Advanced Sale Pricing.
- The One-Click Sale Pricing option is a simple way to choose a single discount level and have it applied to all your books distributed to Smashwords. You can choose discounts of 25%, 50%, 75%, or even 100% off (free).
- The Advanced Sale Pricing option allows you to offer the same discount levels as the One-Click option, but do so book-by-book. This option is useful for authors who may want to provide a deep discount on a series starter, and less discount applied to follow-on titles or to a box set.
The discount levels you set for the sale are for the Smashwords store only and will not impact your retail prices at other stores.
Marketing Checklist: How to Reach More Readers During the Sale
Although many authors will sell books during the sale without proactively marketing themselves, effective promotion has always been the best way to maximizing your success. To help authors make the most of the sale, here are 7 simple ways to promote your participation in this week-long sale:
- Enroll Now – Enroll before the sale begins on March 2 to benefit from our email marketing. During the first three days of the sale, over one million Smashwords members will receive an alert about the sale, along with category-specific hyperlinks they can use to jump directly to their favorite categories.
- Celebrate Read an Ebook Week – This is more than a sale; it’s a celebration. Celebrate your participation across social media and on your private opt-in email newsletter, if you have one. Share a direct hyperlink to your author profile page which serves as your personal author bookstore.
- Amplify Peak – Peak sales days for this one-week sale are typically the first two days and the last two days. Plan to launch your first wave of promotion on the morning of Sunday March 2, and a second wave on March 7 as customers prepare to top off their carts before the sale’s conclusion on the evening of Saturday, March 8.
- Improve Discoverability with Smart Categorization – Unlike a physical store that might organize its shelves around a dozen or two high-level categories, an online store such as Smashwords supports hundreds of micro-specific shelves catering to every sub-category. Along with our reader-powered algorithms, this creates discoverability opportunities for every author. Before the sale begins, make sure each of your books is accurately categorized in up to two of the most specific sub-categories for your title.
- Each Paid Sale Triggers More Promotion – For most of the themed shelves, each paid sale provides an incremental boost to a book’s shelf rank. This makes the book more discoverable to the next reader. A paid sale also lands the book a brief feature on the “Recent Purchases” shelf. That means appearing on the Smashwords home page and on the front page of the dedicated Read an Ebook Week sale catalog. Customers browse this shelf to see what fellow readers are buying.
- Collaborate with Fellow Authors – Like all Smashwords super sales, this is a collaborative, author-driven event. In addition to celebrating your participating titles, be sure to celebrate the titles of your favorite authors too. If you have author friends who write in the same genre or category, consider cross-promoting each other’s titles to your respective reader bases.
- Download and Share Our Social Media Images – Draft2Digital has created several sharable Read an Ebook Week images you can use to promote your sale participation on your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, website, or wherever else you connect with your readers online.
The official hashtag for this year’s Read an Ebook Week is #ebookweek25
Read an Ebook Week Marketing Copy
Here are some text templates (or “copy”) that you can “swipe” to use in your marketing. You can use them as is or update them, and you can update the link to one of your books or your author page on Smashwords.
Email Copy
I’m excited to announce that my books will be available as part of a promotion on Smashwords celebrating Read an Ebook Week from March 2 to March 8. Now’s the perfect time to take advantage of great deals to load up on new ebooks, mine included!
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You will find the promo here starting on March 2, so save the link:
https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/
Please share this promo with friends and family. You can even forward this email to the avid readers in your life!
Thank you for your help and support!
Happy reading!
Social Media Before March 2
Read an Ebook Week is almost here! For the week of March 2nd, you’ll be able to find my books on sale at @Smashwords to celebrate. Be sure to follow me for more updates and links to the promotion for my books and many more! #smashwords #ebookweek25
Social Media During the Sale
Now is your best chance to find my books available for a promotional price at @Smashwords to celebrate Read an Ebook Week 2025! Find my book and many more at https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/ #smashwords #ebookweek25
If you’d like to include a graphic with your social media posts or emails, here are a few options!
We hope you’ll join us for our 15th annual Read an Ebook Week sale!
Have fun!
Best wishes,
The Draft2Digital/Smashwords Team