Smashwords

Smashwords is the electronic publication and distribution platform identified with Andrew Barger’s collection. Its significance is both material and contractual: it supplies the edition through which the book reaches readers while defining the conditions under which that digital copy may be used.

Digital Edition and Distribution

Smashwords is explicitly identified as the edition format for the book, and the front matter directs readers to Andrew Barger’s Smashwords profile to discover other titles. The platform therefore functions not merely as a technical container but as part of the book’s publishing identity, linking this collection to the author’s broader catalogue and to an online retail and discovery network.

The edition also states that the book is available in print from major online book retailers. This places Smashwords within a wider distribution structure rather than presenting the electronic version as the only form of the work. The same publication can circulate digitally through Smashwords and physically through established booksellers, giving the collection both an online platform identity and a conventional print presence.

Licensing and Reader Obligations

The Smashwords edition grants permission for personal enjoyment only. Readers may not resell or give away the ebook, and the licensing notice instructs anyone reading a copy that was not purchased for personal use to return to Smashwords.com and purchase an authorized copy. Sharing is permitted only through the purchase of an additional copy for each person receiving access.

These terms make the reader’s relationship with the ebook explicitly transactional. Access is tied to individual purchase rather than unrestricted circulation, and the notice frames compliance as respect for Andrew Barger’s creative effort and labor. Smashwords consequently appears in the book not only as a distributor but as the institution that enforces the boundary between licensed personal reading and unauthorized redistribution.

Fictional Status and Publication Disclaimer

The edition identifies the book as a work of fiction and states that its names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. The disclaimer further acknowledges the trademarked status and owners of products referenced in the work, while emphasizing that such references are used without permission and are not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark holders.

This notice separates the literary world from the legal and commercial identities that may be mentioned within it. Smashwords is thus part of a publication framework that anticipates possible confusion between fictional representation and real-world endorsement. The disclaimer preserves the imaginative status of the narratives while recognizing the proprietary status of any trademarks appearing in them.

Place in the Collection’s Literary History

The collection uses the Smashwords edition to preserve and circulate historical werewolf fiction whose publication histories extend across nineteenth-century magazines, anonymous appearances, later anthologies, theatrical adaptations, and serial publication. The surrounding editorial material discusses works first printed in The Court Magazine and Monthly Critic, The Romance of History: France, Hogg’s Weekly Instructor, The Olio, or, Museum of Entertainment, and The Phantom Ship, including stories that were difficult to locate in later anthologies or that survived through adaptation.

Smashwords therefore provides a modern digital afterlife for texts shaped by older forms of circulation. The collection’s account of those histories includes anonymous authorship, disputed attribution, magazine publication, theatrical transformation, and serial appearance; its electronic edition gathers that dispersed material into a single accessible volume. In this sense, Smashwords is the contemporary delivery mechanism through which the book’s recovery project becomes available to present-day readers.