Mark Coker

Mark Coker
Founder, CEO and Chief Author Advocate, Smashwords

Mark Coker founded Smashwords in 2008 to change the way books are published, marketed and sold.

Mark is co-author along with his wife, Lesleyann, of Boob Tube, a novel that explores the behind-the-scenes world of daytime television soap operas. It was Mark’s experience trying to get Boob Tube published that inspired him to start Smashwords. He believes Smashwords holds the promise to make publishing more enriching for authors, readers and publishers.

In the three years since its launch, Smashwords has grown to become the leading ebook distributor serving indie authors, small presses and literary agents.  Over 28,000 authors from around the world have published more than 70,000 books at Smashwords.

In June, 2010, The Wall Street Journal named Mark one of the “Eight Stars of Self-Publishing.”

With Mark’s previous startup, BestCalls.com, which he launched in 1999, he helped level the playing field for small stock market investors, who at the time were denied access to the earnings conference calls of publicly traded companies. His work with BestCalls, as a champion for fair disclosure, was a catalyst for the SEC’s ground breaking Regulation FD. BestCalls was acquired in 2002 by Shareholder.com and is now owned and operated by the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.

In addition to Mark’s work with Smashwords, since 1993 he has owned Dovetail Public Relations, an award-winning Silicon Valley PR firm that specializes in representing technology startups.

Mark is a long time angel investor and advisor to technology and media startups. He currently serves on the advisory board of GetQuik, a provider of restaurant order automation technology and services.  Mark previously served on the advisory board for Flat World Knowledge, the leading publisher of open source textbooks.

Mark is a contributing columnist for the Huffington Post, where he writes about ebooks and the future of publishing. You can find his previous columns here.

Mark is a graduate of the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley, where he received his B.S. in marketing.

For Smashwords updates, follow Mark on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/markcoker