Fast Facts:
Pursuit: Founder and CEO of ebook publishing platform Smashwords
Definition of success: “Doing a job for which you have passion, and that provides you enough income for food, shelter, vacations and savings.”
Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Oyster, Kobo: if you’ve shopped at any of these ebook retailers there’s a good chance the book you purchased was published using the super easy, free to upload platform Smashwords. Featuring in excess of 100,000 writers and over 320,000 books, Smashwords is an ebook phenomenon. Started by one man and his programmer, the company has grown to a $20m annual turnover and features in the INC 500 list.
Here to tell us how it all started is the man behind the mission, founder and CEO Mark Coker:
“My wife and I wrote a novel titled BOOB TUBE, a satire on the daytime television soap opera industry. Despite representation from a top tier literary agency, we were unable to sell the book to publishers. Publishers were concerned that previous soap opera-themed books hadn’t sold well, so they were reluctant to take a chance on our book. The experience helped me realize that big New York publishers were unable, disinterested and unwilling to take a risk on every author. I imagined hundreds of thousands of other rejected writers just like us whose dreams of publication were crushed by big gatekeeping publishers. I decided to create an alternate publishing system – an online publishing platform – that would allow any writer to publish for free, and would allow me to take a risk on every writer. I wanted to give writers the freedom to publish and give readers the freedom to decide what’s worth reading. Today, Smashwords is an INC 500 company. We had revenue last year of over $20 million and we’ve been profitable every month for almost four years.”
Pursuant to custom here on The Secrets of their Success, I want to get a picture of the nitty gritty – what’s it really like in the day-to-day world of Mark Coker?
“My day starts early in the morning with a strong cup of coffee and an inbox full of email,” Mark explains, sketching a morning routine most of us can relate to. “As founder and CEO, I have myriad duties. We’re a small company – 25 employees – with a flat management structure so I’m involved with various functional groups within Smashwords such as customer service, engineering, marketing, finance and business development.” I have the notion that morning regime I related to is about to be dumped out the window. I’m not disappointed. “I work directly with our authors to help them troubleshoot problems, I work with our engineers to establish priorities and manage projects, I negotiate business deals with prospective retailers, I work with retail partners and authors on merchandising promotions, and I’m 1/2 of a two-person marketing team whose job is to get the word out about Smashwords. I spend many weeks each year on the road presenting workshops and keynote addresses at writers’ conferences and publishing industry events. My job is never boring!”
That much is evident! But which part does Mark enjoy the most?
“My two favorite parts of the job:
1. Helping writers reach readers. I teach writers how to employ ebook publishing best practices (I write books on the subject, blog on the subject, and speak on the subject at conferences).
2. Working with our engineering team to invent and design exciting new tools and features that give Smashwords authors a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
But every other aspect of my job is fun as well. Writers are the most interesting people you’ll ever meet, so every day I’m spending my time working with fun and interesting people.”
And yes, Mark does mean every day: “65-70 hours a week,” he calculates. “Maybe more.”
All those hours, the commitment – I have to ask the classic question: doesn’t he ever long for something just a little more routine? That concept most of us refer to as the Day Job?
“No. I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I’ve never had a better job. It’s fun work, never boring, I can work from anywhere. And there’s the satisfaction of knowing we’re helping our authors reach tens of millions of readers each year.”
Like everybody I’ve had the privilege of talking to here at The Secrets of their Success, I find myself inspired by Mark’s words and I’m keen to know if there’s a formula – a route map to success. (Hint: this stuff is pure gold dust – if you’re looking to start your own enterprise, pay attention!)
“The entrepreneur’s life is no bed of roses. It’s tough and all-consuming. Most startups fail. Success requires passion, perseverance, vision, execution, timing and luck. When you’re getting started, very little will go as you plan. People will doubt you and you’ll have many reasons to quit. Quitting is the fastest way to fail.
Find your customers and serve them like there’s no tomorrow. Great businesses grow on customer word of mouth. If you wow your customer – just like an author must wow the reader – then each customer will bring you more customers.
Run a tight ship. Pinch your pennies. You can’t easily control your sales, but you can control your expenses. Spend every penny like it’s your last. Bootstrap. Force yourself to make do with less. For the first two and a half years of Smashwords, it was just me and the programmer. I did everything except the programming. The hours were close to 18 a day, and by the end of the first year we were losing $10,000 a month and I was the sole funder. In year two of our business we made the decision to become an ebook distributor and that made the difference. Even still, we didn’t reach profitability until almost three years in. We almost ran out of cash on the way. Lesson learned: Make sure you have enough cash runway to get you to profitability.
Once you reach profitability, protect your profits. Profits are the lifeblood of business. Even after you’re profitable, pinch your pennies and invest wisely so you can build cash.
Even rapid growth can threaten the viability of your business. It’s tough to scale a successful business while keeping clients or customers happy. If you take the eye off the ball of who you’re serving, your business can fail quickly.
Always innovate. You’ll find in business that expectations for service levels will always increase. If you’re not constantly pushing the envelope and putting a smile on the faces of your customers and clients, then you risk falling behind.
Have fun!”
(See what I mean about gold dust?)
Thank you Mark for taking the time to share your inspirations and obvious passion with us. If you’re an aspiring author you could do a lot worse than uploading your work to Smashwords here: www.smashwords.com Follow the instructions, check out Mark’s very sage advice (you don’t need to part with a penny to become an adept ebook marketer) and get your words out there! If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, you can follow Mark’s Twitter feed @markcoker