Draft2Digital is Going to Start Penalizing Indie Authors with Low Sales

 

Photo Credit: Gustavo Fring on Pexels

 

Self-published authors and independent publishers who have used Draft2Digital (D2D) for publishing books were given unfortunate news this week: Anyone who did not earn $100 in sales in a year would have to pay an annual fee of $12. That may not seem like much, but for a lot of self-published authors using Draft2Digital – myself, included – annual sales of books typically did not reach that magical amount of money. Never mind that Draft2Digital already takes a large cut of sales of each book sold through their services. Now they wanted their clients to pay a fee if they don’t earn $100 in sales in a year.

This penalty for failing to earn a minimum of $100 a year in book sales feels like a punishment for not being successful in selling our books. It’s basically penalizing an author for being poor.

 

As an author and a publisher, I have to say that the one thing we do not have any control over are book sales. Believe me, I know. I once spent three months doing ALL THE THINGS to promote and market a new book, but there was not a single sale of this book in that time period. That’s right; I worked my ass off to promote my book, only to earn ZERO sales for my efforts.

 

Because of this fee that Draft2Digital will begin charging, a lot of authors and independent publishers I know who have used them have reacted by canceling their Draft2Digital accounts and taking their business elsewhere. 

 

Until I started using Draft2Digital as well as Smashwords (which is now in partnership with Draft2Digital), I used Kindle Direct Publishing, which is a service offered by Amazon. I started out using CreateSpace before it became Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). But after I ran into a host of problems in trying to get books and covers formatted, I switched to Draft2Digital.

 

That worked until it didn’t.

 

I was planning to once again start using Draft2Digital when I resume self-publishing books in June, but in light of this recent turn of events, I am not so sure.

 

One problem with using KDP is that a lot of people boycott Amazon. They refuse to buy ANYTHING from Amazon, or even get a free ebook. (Not everyone has a Kindle Unlimited account.) You would think that Amazon’s Expanded Distribution program, which allows for books to be available through other sites such as Walmart and Books-A-Million, would solve this problem, but unfortunately, it’s not a very broad reach. What Draft2Digital offered was making ebooks AND print books available through more sites, such as Kobo, Thalia, Apple Books, and more. An author really wants to have their book EVERYWHERE in order to increase their chances of more sales and visibility – AND especially to appease the crowd who refuse to buy anything from Amazon!

 

Another thing that Draft2Digital did for authors who published through them was eliminate the tedious work of formatting ebooks for various sites, such as Kobo, Smashwords and Apple Books. This was another thing that appealed to me, since I don’t have formatting software like Atticus, so formatting is a nightmare for me.

 

And those perks were great, but now they are ones many of us have been forced to go without once we choose to leave Draft2Digital over this very unfair annual fee.

 

This whole situation has brought up a lot of discussion over whether authors should pay to publish, as well as sparking controversy over the ones who choose to leave Draft2Digital because of this fee.

 

In an email by Ricardo Fayet, one of the founders of Reedsy, he takes a stab at trying to justify just why D2D is now charging an annual fee:

 

“In the AI age, this doesn’t seem sustainable anymore. Distributors like Draft2Digital have a responsibility to the retailers they work with, and part of that responsibility is to make sure that the books they send to them don’t infringe on copyrights, don’t contain plagiarism, and aren’t full of AI-generated nonsense.

 

Running these checks has a cost — and not running them would have a much higher cost, as retailers would just start treating all D2D books (and all indie books in general) as spam.

 

So what’s the solution? We just saw it: introducing fees high enough to prohibit scammers, but low enough to keep publishing accessible.”

 

First of all, it would seem that us authors who DO NOT use AI and are not plagiarizing content in our books are going to carry the brunt of those who refuse to follow the rules. We have to pay just to prove that we are honest.

 

Second, while the fee may seem small, that is not at issue here. What is at issue is the principle of the matter. We should not have to be forced to pay an annual fee just because we failed to earn $100 in a year, which would make The Powers That Be at Draft2Digital very happy because that would mean more money for them. And since we won’t be bringing in more money for them, we will have to pay a fee, which is equivalent to being taxed.

 

And contrary to what Fayet states in his email, I will NOT use this fee as an incentive to work harder to promote my books published through Draft2Digital. Been there, done that. Won’t do it again. (I DO promote my books, but I don’t put an insane amount of energy into it. I don’t have that kind of time!)

 

Yes, we could just ignore this whole mess and explore other options to self-publish our books, but most of those other options do not look good.

 

In Fayet’s email, he notes that B&N Press will no longer list any book on their site which is less than $14.99. I publish a lot of poetry chapbooks, and none of them are for sale for that amount of money (and they never will be; it’s an outrageous price to pay for a book that is only 25 pages).

 

As far as Lulu is concerned, while I have heard good things about them, I have also heard that they usually take longer to publish a book or ebook.

 

IngramSpark is another option. They do charge a fee to “go wide” (which means to have your book available on more retailer sites), but so does KDP (the charge is a higher cut of royalties). IngramSpark also charges a fee for their clients who want to get one-on-one support from customer service. Actually, this article breaks down the fees one can expect to see when using IngramSpark.

 

Kobo Writing Life is another option. They do not charge fees and authors receive a higher percentage of royalties. Read their FAQ here. Additionally, they allow for books to have a price as low as $2.99, something that is desirable for ebook publishers.

 

So, while many indie authors and publishers are expressing their displeasure over Draft2Digital’s recent installment of fees, keep in mind that there are other options. As for me, using D2D was nice while it lasted, but because of this annual fee, it looks like I won’t be using them anymore.