#Draft2digital

[thebibliosphere]

Cost of inflation aside, the draft2digital upload process is brilliant in comparison to Ingram Spark. It's intuitive, easy to follow, and lets you see the files in real-time instead of making you wait to see your physical proof. I also had a minor problem with something, and customer service got back to me within a few hours, not the literal weeks I've gotten used to with Ingram.

The cover it auto-generated from my ebook files was not the greatest, but if you're on a tight budget or unable to afford separate covers and wanted to do paperback, you could absolutely make it work with a little tweaking.

I had separate covers already because Ingram and Amazon require you to have PDF wraparounds (both different dimensions from each other), and while the Ingram one didn't work (Ingram formatting works literally nowhere, not even on Ingram 🙃), the Amazon wrap worked. There might be a sliiiight issue with the ISBN overlapping, but it was hard to tell on screen. I guess we'll see how it looks when the physical proof copy arrives.

So. Yeah. That was way less of a stressful experience.

And none of my files are being held captive! I can hit cancel at any moment without having to pay $25 to talk to a human to get my files pulled. Incredible... And if you're thinking to yourself, Joy, that sounds like the bare minimum of competency, I need you to know that after years of Ingram Spark, the bar for this kind of thing is so low it's in Hell.

Anyway. I'll post an update on print quality once the proof gets here.

[copperbadge]

Every time, you guys. Every time I look into alternatives to Lulu.com for self-publishing I come up with “Wow Lulu really is the best of a bad set of options, huh?” 

Recently, Draft2Digital bought Smashwords in order to bring a print book company under their aegis; they’d formerly only done ebooks. I thought I might investigate them as an alternative to Lulu, which I’ve used for about twelve years now. For ebooks I would venture D2D is probably top of the line. For print books they are....not. 

I’m writing this out half so other folks can see it but half so that in the future I can look this up and remind myself of why I’m still with Lulu. 

TLDR: Not only does Draft2Digital want 60% of my print book royalties where Lulu takes 0%, and $30 for a proof that costs me $11 at Lulu, but I also appear to have solved the problem of why Lulu was making me price my books so goddamn artificially high. Which is like. Honestly the best anti-anxiety drug I’ve experienced this week. 

Basically there are a number of elements that go into self-publishing with a print-on-demand service. For some publishers, there’s a “setup fee” which doesn’t really set anything up, it’s just there to be a fee, everything is done by computer on the back end. Traditionally, Lulu has not charged a setup fee. Smashwords used to charge $50, but Draft2Digital currently waives it. I was heartened by that because the setup fee was keeping me from migrating, since I can afford $50 but I balk at knowing I’m paying them $50 for nothing. 

Next is the cost of printing -- what it costs the company in paper, ink, machinery, labor, etc, to just make a book with no profit. Lulu’s price calculus isn’t super clear and I’ve never bothered looking at what the breakdown is, because they’re pretty up-front -- they tell you in the process of setting the book up how much it’ll cost. In this case, a 140-page 6x9 trade paperback, no frills, which is how all my books are printed, is $5. Draft2Digital doesn’t tell you the flat price anywhere but they do offer the breakdown information; it costs $1.22 flat plus $0.0133 per page. So, for a 140 page book, the at-cost is $3.08. So far so good. 

Now, if you’re going to sell through Lulu, the “at cost” is the minimum price. You won’t make any money but you CAN charge just $5 for a $5 book. Any pricing above that is your cut. So -- let’s price this 140 page trade paperback at $13-$15. That’s a bit high to be honest but let’s just see. At Lulu, your take is roughly $6-$8 based on those prices, because you’re just dropping out the cost of printing from the retail price. 

At Draft2Digital, the same 140-page trade paperback, which remember is quoted as costing roughly $1.20 less to print than Lulu charges, gets you $2.75-$3.50 in royalties per book.

....wait, what? 

So now we need to sidetrack a little but I promise it’s for a reason. One of the motivations for looking into a change to Draft2Digital is that I didn’t like that Lulu was setting higher “minimum prices” than I was accustomed to -- they would tell me the book only cost $5 to print but require me to sell it for $12 or similar, and I couldn’t work out why. I’m an idiot but the penny did finally drop: it’s because when you distribute them outside of Lulu (say, on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or similar) your royalties drop like a stone. $7 in royalties purchased through Lulu comes out to like twenty-five cents purchased through Amazon. So Lulu forces you to price the book at a point where you even GET royalties and don’t end up weirdly owing Amazon money. The “global distribution” is what’s driving that minimum up. 

So in price-quoting a competitor I actually solved the problem with Lulu. 

Which is good, because the fun doesn’t stop there. If you want a proof copy of a book from Lulu, it’s the at-cost of the book, plus tax, plus postage. Buying a proof copy of this book from Lulu would cost me $11. Lulu makes you order a new proof copy every time you make a change, which is shady, but usually I only need to make 1-2 changes across the life of a book, so at most the cost will probably be $35 and for that I’ll get three copies of the book. Draft2Digital doesn’t give you an option. If you want a proof pre-publication, it’s $30 flat. If you want to publish and then buy a copy you can, but you can only make one change to the book every 90 days once it’s published. If you want to make more than one change, it’s $25 every time you upload a new version of the manuscript within that 90 day period.

So Draft2Digital’s books cost less to print but they take a massive cut of your royalties out of the retail cost of the book. If the book costs $3 to print, and I price it at $15, that’s $12 in profit on the book. Of that $12, however, I only receive $4. Draft2Digital literally wants 2/3 of my royalties per book. They want $20 more than Lulu to send me a proof copy. If I need to correct the proof, the correction is free, but I’m assuming the second proof will also cost me $30. Any changes after that, within 90 days, will cost $25 plus $30 for a new proof.

Which means my upfront costs at Lulu are about $35 per published book; to do the same thing at Draft2Digital is between $60 and $105 depending on whether I need to make changes after the second proof copy. And even after that, my royalties at Lulu are just about twice what they would be at Draft2Digital per purchase. 

So, well, Lulu it is. And the problem I was having with Lulu is solved if I decide to just retail through Lulu rather than selling globally. Which...selling globally has done two things that I’m aware of:

1. Fucked up my author page so badly on Amazon that one of my books is still attributed to Kathleen Starbuck, and one of her books is for sale on my author page. 

2. Raised the minimum price I’m allowed to set my books at by like, 40%. 

So I think probably what’s going to happen is going forward my books will be for sale only on Lulu. I can still assign them ISBNs and they still will ship worldwide, and the prices will fall significantly. My deepest apologies to those of you who have paid an artificially inflated price for the last few books; I’m going to fix that going forward, I’m going to go in and try to fix it retroactively in the books that are already on Lulu, and if it’s any consolation at least the cash came to me, and TWO THIRDS OF IT didn’t go to Lulu. 

It’s gonna take me a little time, untangling Lulu’s relationship to other retailers is tricky, but eventually the Shivadh Omnibus and Twelve Points should come down significantly in price, and there ought to be a dollar or two drop for the older books as well. 

This is why it always pays to do the math, even if like me you are dreadful at it. 

[scarlettgauthor]

Hey, fellow Draft2Digital authors: I just got a survey from them in my email about licensing for LLM/"AI" training. Go find yours and then fill it out in the most scathing language possible, so we can hopefully head them off from engaging with this garbage before they get dragged down with the ship.

"A company wants to license your content to train--" They should hire and pay an actual human person.

"But they want to use it to--" They should hire and pay an actual human person!

"But in this instance it would be used for--" They should hire and pay an ACTUAL HUMAN PERSON!!!

[praeobscura]

Cross-posting from my mention of this on Pillowfort.

Yesterday, Draft2Digital (which now includes Smashwords) sent out an email with a, frankly, very insulting survey. It would be such a shame if a link to that survey without the link trackers were to circulate around Tumblr dot Com.

The survey has eight multiple choice questions and (more importantly) two long-form text response boxes.

The survey is being run from August 27th, 2024 to September 3rd, 2024. If you use Draft2Digital or Smashwords, and have not already seen this in your associated email, you may want to read through it and send them your thoughts.

Plain text for the image below the cut:

D2D AI Rights Licensing Survey:

This survey is going to all authors and publishers of Draft2Digital and Smashwords. We seek feedback from our community regarding potential rights licensing opportunities.

This survey is anonymous and should take only about five minutes to complete. Survey responses will be accepted until Tuesday, September 3, 2024.

Introduction:

In recent months, a growing number of AI developers have begun approaching large publishers, seeking to license books for the purpose of training Large Language Models (LLMs).

Books – both fiction and non-fiction – are highly prized for LLM training due to their long form narrative structures which teach Natural Language Processing.

Common uses for these LLMs include powering personal productivity applications such as customer service chatbots, virtual assistants, and the drafting of written communications for marketing, customer service, and internal communications.

What are your AI training rights worth? There’s no hard and fast rule to answer this question because each licensing deal is different.

Some early compensation models for news publishers suggest the equivalent of about $100 per license for LLM training rights for a 75,000-word novel, which works out to a little over 1/10th of a cent per word.

Some experts believe training rights for long-form book content justifies higher compensation for training rights than news content.

[weremoose]

PARANORMAL DEERTECTIVE: THE LAUNDRY ROOM HAUNTING IS OFFICIALLY OUT! Available as both Ebook and Paperback! Click here to find it at select stores now!

Guys this has been SUCH a long time coming. I have had this draft finished since 2022 — a whopping TWO YEARS! But, finally, I now have a fully published book that people can actually buy! Isn't that awesome!? I am so happy to finally be able to get this out into the world. Here's a quick rundown the book:

"Elmer's a deer down on his luck with a passion for the paranormal, Finnick's a single sheep dad trying to take care of his son, Finley, and Liam's a young rooster who's the new kid in town. When Elmer's elderly neighbour starts speaking of a ghost haunting the apartment's laundry room, the four of them work to solve this paranormal case, all with the help of an authorless book specialized in contacting the dead.

Paranormal Deertective is a paranormal middle grade fiction featuring anthropomorphic animals, written and illustrated by Kira Alston. Along with being a ghost hunting story, it is a comedy, a tragedy, and above all, is about family, friendship and compassion. Each chapter also contains pictures, providing lovely and fun visuals to go along with the story. Recommended for ages 12+"

If you're interested, please check it out!

[starspanner]

Some good news today:

This is the blog post, but I think everyone and their mom is reading it right now, and it goes down sometimes.

I am very happy that Draft2Digital is listening to their community. I'm glad I'm not the only one who was extremely troubled at the prospect of selling the work of my heart to those who would abuse it.

[sweetfirebird]

Draft 2 Digital asking people to consider the financial benefits of giving licensing rights of their work for AI training gives me the vibe of oil and gas companies asking poor people who own a little bit of land for the rights to frack on it. And yeah you do get paid for a bit... and then it destroys your land and once they've gotten everything they want, they leave and you don't even get pennies anymore.

[rubyjones]

Tumblr is less of a prude than Smashwords

Today, I am really rather miffed.

After being berated by people on Mastodon for not having Ruinous Attraction available anywhere but Amazon, I finally found the spoons to upload it to Draft2Digital this week, so it can be published by Smashwords. You know, the people who publish my tentacle erotica that Amazon banned.

Well, guess what? Smashwords will not have it!

I expected to only be able to sell to a limited number of venues because Ruinous Attraction is dubcon. Like, both characters enthusiastically consent before the enchantment takes full effect, and they don't regret their decision, but there is an enchantment; so, as a conscientious author, I flagged the work as dubcon and included a content note.

Too Hot to Handle is more dubious than Ruinous Attraction, and that went through fine to Smashwords, Apple, and Amazon. I'm also expecting it to be approved by Kobo, but that's still publishing.

So I assume the issue is the cover, which was also flagged.

This is the cover:

Admittedly, those two dudes are naked, and they're cuddling, but they're not having sex and you can't see any peens. This is an artistic nude.

Dutifully, I spent all day yesterday revising the cover. I don't think it's as good, but it's OK and I think it should sufficiently obscure enough vaguely naughty bits to pass muster.

I submitted it to D2D again today and... they won't let me progress it to be resubmitted to Smashwords. It's just labelled as 'blocked'.

I don't get it. Why tell me what's wrong and let me submit a new cover if you won't even fucking reconsider?

Suffice to say that I have sent them a polite email and asked for manual review. I even offered to completely obscure the figures and just have fucking runes.

I assume this is just computers being silly, but I'm hacked off.

I'm hacked off with all of it. People should be able to sell smutty literature. People should be able to sell smutty art. Artistic nudes should not be censored just because a computer detects a butt.

The current state of the world is UTTERLY RIDICULOUS and I hate it.

Anyway, if you'd like to purchase the uncensored version, it's available from Amazon

Or buy the print from my Redbubble shop (RB agree it's an artistic nude!)

I did not have the spoons for all this.

[razzvernicus]

Woes of Lavender has officially released!

A fantasy adventure novel with a splash of romance, this story features catlike characters called Celegons!

You can order a copy of the book here:

[j-mcguirebooks]

Writing Progress Update

Had an excellent 4 days attending the Storygarden Summit. Lots of great information on plotting, editing and marketing by Plottr, Draft2Digital, Fictionary and so many others! It really inspired me to get back behind the (writing) desk. Currently in the process of a rough outline of my series before I do a more detailed outline of my first book in it, following the advice from Lisa Cron’s ‘Story Genius’ (such great advice!!!). I will share some updates on my Plotting process when I get to the individual book outlining.

[authorkarajorgensen]

Why My Books Aren't in KU

In this week's post, I wanted to talk about why I decided to ditch KU in 2018 and why going wide has been a good choice for me.

Because someone on the internet will willfully misinterpret this, this isn’t bashing authors who use Kindle Unlimited, but with everything, it is a business decision. I’m writing this post because I feel bad for my friends who have gone all in on Amazon and feel like their world has been upended. It especially sucks because having been publishing since 2014, this has happened before. Full…

[lahilden]

WLW-https://a.co/d/amUoFup

[junipercalle]

Okay

we're goin'

So what with one thing and another: ISMENE AND THE VOICE will start running on Royal Road this week. Not next week; this. There'll be an update on Wednesday and they just go on from there.

If you're interested in an arc, I would appreciate a review or two on the eBook posting on Dec. 1st-- maybe drop me a note? I think I might do a giveaway, also. More on that in the next day or so.

[hereiamatthedge]

How do you write a Sequel for a book that never sold?

The title may appear as impossible, yet, I was asked to write two sequels to short stories I wrote that according to my records never sold, how? I puzzled over the request for years, why would I write a sequel for a story which had not sold? The answer is eBook piracy disguised under the title of Lending Libraries. The theory behind LL is that the reader pays the library for the story, the…

[starspanner]

I don't know if I can even explain how I feel, why I bluescreened out last week. It all started with a survey I received from Draft2Digital, who distributes my ebook.

I don't know why, but this just…broke my brain. It made me cry. I don't even know why.

All I have ever wanted to do was write. I write for me. I write to keep my brain quiet and my feet on the ground. I write for the same reason I breathe.

I'm horrible at marketing. I have that fear of being seen, and I don't care about fame and fortune anyway. Most of the things I write I'd rather not share. But there are a few I am proud of, and I published my first book to prove to everyone that I could. Look. I finished. I edited. I hit "publish".

I think it's a good story. I love the characters, I feel their sorrows and triumphs like they are my own. It's not Shakespeare, but it's mine. And I dared to put it out there because I thought maybe somebody would like it too.

But it (like me) doesn't really get seen, and no one picks it up. And I don't care. I don't. I wrote it for me. I published it for me. The next book I publish will be for me too.

But I'll be damned. I WILL BE DAMNED if I let any goddamn bot scrape my works to train their wretched AI. I don't care if they offer to pay me. They could never pay me enough. There is nothing they could offer me to whore the work of my heart. It is my story. It is a living thing. It isn't a jumble of words to be pulled apart like a vivisection so someone else can put it back together without any effort. Without any love or care.

"You'll be left behind," the (AI written?) articles say. "Why loose out on revenue when other authors will opt in?"

BECAUSE THEY AREN'T REVENUE, YOU VULTURES! They're my stories. They're my friends and my creations. How dare you? How dare you?

And just when I was starting to feel better, just when I was thinking that I was overreacting, Nanowrimo came out with their bullshit.

What the shit? I mean actually what the shit?

I have done NaNoWriMo for twenty years. I have made friends I still have at NaNo writing groups. My collective word count was over 900,000. And I deleted my account. It broke my heart, but I had to delete my account.

And...I just don't know how I can go on the way I have. I've spent my whole life writing, confident that following my heart would lead me to good things, and now...the whole industry is sliding along with everything else into the black hole of enshittification via late stage capitalism and it just...makes it so hard to do anything.

Maybe this isn't the right attitude for someone who wants to be a published author in this day and age. Maybe I'm just not neurotypical enough to understand how hustle works. Maybe this end of the whole writing thing isn't for me.

Some days I consider giving it all up, and just...I dunno. I don't know what else I would do. Go live in a hole somewhere.

NaNo is deleted, and if Draft2Digital doesn't protect my right to opt out of this AI bullshit, I will pull my story from all the distributors, and...I don't know. I don't know! Maybe I should offer my stories for free or sell cheap EPUB files on Kofi or something. Do people do that? Is that a thing?

Maybe that would be a better way for me to do it anyway, because it would force me to engage more on this end. I don't know. I really don't. I don't know anything anymore.

[thebibliosphere]

For authors who don't know how to access other distributors, draft2digital.com is a retail distributor that gives you access to a global market, including places like Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and many other international retailers. If you do opt to use Amazon, you're better off uploading directly through KDP because you'll get more royalties. (It's like a 5-10% difference iirc, which for me is about 20 cents. Which isn't much, but when some of your royalty checks are literally a penny, that 20 cents matters.)

They recently acquired Smashwords as well and are constantly expanding their global market and library distributors.

(If you want to see how many retailers you can reach with them, this is where you can get my books. I'm in over 20 global stores and need to actually update the listings to include more. Unfortunately, I can't afford to avoid Amazon because, as @derinthescarletpescatarian pointed out, it's really hard to get people to change their buying habits, and I like being able to afford food.)

It used to just be for ebooks, but they now do their own paperbacks that give you the same access as the Ingram Spark market and, unlike Ingram Spark, haven't completely trashed their customer service.

The only downside to avoiding Ingram is that it limits your market for hardbacks unless you're willing to use Amazon, though hopefully, D2D will start doing hardbacks soon. (There are a few other places, but they don't have the same market reach as Ingram, sadly. Yay... monopolies...)

They also partner with FindAwayVoices for audiobooks, which gives you access to a wide global market as well. Like D2D you can access Audible through Findaway, but like Kindle, you'll earn more if you upload directly to Audible.

So, yeah, you want and can afford to avoid Amazon as an author? Draft2digital is the place to go.

As a reader, check the links authors post.

Usually, you'll see Amazon listed, but a lot of us are really doing all we can to be available in as many stores as possible and would LOVE for you to use them.

Please. We're begging at this point.