After hearing news yesterday that Indigo’s Shortcovers had reached an agreement with Smashwords to receive feeds of the latter’s digital books, I went back and re-examined the whole digital rights management issue. It would seem the code-breakers win once again, in that despite all the encryption you can put on digital content, if someone really wants to pirate your work they can. And faced with the fact that you’re never going to stop this sort of illicit behaviour, and that the people who break codes, and laws, aren’t likely to purchase your work anyway, why not cry ‘Uncle’, and ride the crest of this brave new publishing world?

So it is that as of yesterday Five Rivers put up our first offerings on Smashwords, Lorina Stephens’ debut novel from 2007, Shadow Song. Within the first hour appearing on the Smashwords site, nine preview downloads occurred, with two purchases. That’s enough to raise eyebrows.

Despite poor information for publishers on Smashwords’ site, they do offer digital books in ten (10!) different formats, including those compatible with the Kindle, Sony Reader, Palm devices and more. Smashwords’ content is now feeding not only to Shortcovers, but Barnes & Noble and Sony.

Today Five Rivers will be uploading Lorina Stephens’ And the Angels Sang, and From Mountains of Ice to Smashwords. Standard price for all Five Rivers’ digital books remains at $9.99. As other of our authors agree to have their content uploaded to Smashwords, titles will become available.