Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.
Don’t forget to click the link to see what everyone else has to say on this week’s subject. It’s at the end of my post.
How many of you use Draft2Digital? How will the new pricing structure affect you?
I think this is what’s called perfect timing. Last year, I was talking to a fellow writer, and they recommended that I take my books out of Kindle Unlimited and go to wide distribution for my novels, using Draft2Digital. At the time, I was only getting a few KU page reads, so it seemed like a good idea to try something different.
I had to wait for the end of the ninety-day exclusivity period to end for each publication. This was complicated by the existence of box sets and compilations, each with its own end date. As each title became available, I reformatted it, amending the back matter to include expanded purchase links, before uploading them to Draft2Digital’s servers for submission.
I’d just about finished doing that when the D2D email arrived, although I knew about it the day before, when it was trending on social media. It appears that I have until October to earn enough money to avoid paying the maintenance fee.
To say I was shocked and annoyed would be an understatement. If I’d known that would happen, I might not have bothered. Considering that I have over thirty publications, it was not an insignificant job to change things over. That was time spent that I could have used for something else.
When I calmed down, I assembled my thoughts.
I can sort of understand the reasons behind such a charge. I think that the implementation was botched and clumsy, coming as it did out of a clear blue sky with no warning. And I’m all for regulating the amount of AI-generated content that’s swamping the market. Its low quality gives self-publishing a bad name. Not only that, the proliferation of titles makes discovery a lot harder, meaning we have to shout louder to be heard.
However, the kicker for me is that it will apply only to the lowest earners, or those like me who are just starting on the platform. This seems a little harsh. After all, everyone has to start somewhere, and we already pay a percentage of the purchase price to D2D for the service they provide.
If they think that the way to stop AI books is to raise more cash from authors, would it not be better to apply an annual fee to everyone, or those over a threshold? Perhaps, and this is really radical, they could employ some other means of limiting AI-generated content on the platform? Just look at social media, there are loads of suggestions from the people who will be affected, some of them are quite sensible.
A lot of the attraction of D2D was its ability to distribute to library services. Each library “borrow” earns around $0.40. To make $100, it requires at least 250 units to be borrowed in a year. Which, for a new author, is a lot.
I’m fortunate to have time to see if I can make a success of D2D before I have to decide on my future. I’ll see how sales go between now and September before I commit to staying or close my account.
One thing it has galvanised me to do is set up a direct sales channel for my eBooks. This avoids all payments to distributors, only costing me the credit card processing fees.
You can find the first iteration of my shop here, with some opening offers. More titles will be added soon.
What do you think about this week’s subject?
Let me know by leaving me a comment.
While you’re here, please click the InLinkz link to check out what my fellow writers have to say about this week’s topic.
I’ll be back with another post on Thursday. See you then. Meanwhile, have a great week.
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