#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.

[marlynnofmany]

I just heard another writer trying to figure out which self-publishing route to take, and all I'll say is that I'm glad I found Draft2Digital. (More accurately, I'm grateful to my more knowledgeable writer friends who told me about it a couple years ago.) I don't even use the free services as much now that I've learned to do fancy formatting etc on my own, but it sure is nice that the option is there.

TL;DR: you upload a manuscript, they make it presentable and available everywhere from Amazon to your local bookstore, and they charge you zero dollars, only taking a cut of the profits they helped you make. A small cut.

They are run by Writer People who want to help other Writer People succeed, and it shows.

[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. 

[physalian]

Indie authors should be aware that Amazon KDP does not charge you for updating your ebook or paperback files, no matter how often you do them.

So....

If you don't mind staggering your release, if you intend to maximize your reach with other platforms like Ingram and Draft2Digital, both of those platforms charge you either $25 per update after 60 days, or $25 per second update every 90 days.

You can burn through all your little mistakes on KDP first before launching on other platforms.

Things like, somebody found a typo 3 months after you publish. You can't help that, and it might be a significant typo, like a character's name. If you're on Ingram, that's $25 you might not have. Or, the bleed on your cover art was fine a while ago, but now you'd really like it fixed. Or, you discovered a plot hole that can be filled by changing just one sentence. Or you forgot a detail on your copyright page, or you're not happy with your 'about the author' page, or you've got multiple fixes that you don't expect to come up, and have to keep shelling out the cash.

Hopefully by your second book you've got things down pat and all organized but for your first go 'round, KDP is the most forgiving platform out there, I think.

If you're down for either just Amazon, or staggered releases, of course. Some things you just won't notice or realize until the book is out, it's in your hands, and people are reading it.

I didn't intend to be working with D2D for my first book, but man am I glad that I had all my stumbles before being able to give D2D a polished version of the files, otherwise I'd be at least $100 out. I absolutely waited until I was certain before giving Ingram my files, beacuse I knew about that fee and still I have to shell out cash to fix mistakes with them.

Being an indie author is expensive, but patching tiny errors doesn't have to be part of your budget.

[laikacore]

Town Ghosts is available in print now!!!!! I can't BELIEVE I'm holding a physical copy of my book (my favorite one I've written so far, too)! This is a childhood dream come true. I've done so much and come so far to get to experience this, and I'm so grateful for the support from everyone that I've gotten along the way. If you want to get to hold your very own copy of Town Ghosts, it is available on Amazon (link on my website), but it would make me much happier if you asked your local bookstores to carry it. The next part of my childhood dream includes going to a bookstore and pointing my book out on a shelf, so, let's get us there!!

[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!!!

[weremoose]

hey y’all, Paranormal Deertective is currently 25% off on Smashwords! If you haven’t the chance yet, now would be a good time to pick it up! This sale lasts from March 2nd to 8th :]

[zackprincebooks]

Itch published Cream and Sugar right away but Draft2Digital is taking its sweet time (sobs)

I know it'll be up and everything will be fine, but I'm so nervous and jittery that I just want it to be done and ready and THERE

I'm going to a nerd convention as well, so I won't be at home until this evening. I was hoping to get this done and leave for the con.

If Cream and Sugar hasn't been uploaded by D2D at the end of the day, I'll provide the Itch link and have D2D available...whenever it's available.

[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.

[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.

[diastrefo]

It's here! The ebook edition of Immolation: Volume I is FREE on Smashwords as part of the 2025 Read an Ebook Week event!

Get your copy HERE. Use the code EW100 at checkout for 100% off. Offer good through March 8th, 2025.

[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.

[nottomissnovels]

[authorksc]

[physalian]

Yet another IngramSpark debacle

Mini rant time. I just found out that I am *stuck* with Ingram, and these smug fuckers probably know it.

So what happened was. Last year, Draft2Digital launched their paperbacks. At the time, I did not use them, because their print quality and whole system was still very much under construction and needed revising. Great. Awesome. Ingram has been, for many years, a necessary evil, for one big reason:

You can use Ingram in tandem with other companies as an indie author. Meaning I can list directly on Amazon and reap those benefits while Ingram handles the distribution to everywhere else.

Amazon will almost always give you the highest royalties for one reason: They are not a third party, so you are not splitting profits between the printer and the vendor, if the printer is the vendor. Their whole UI is also fantastic with an incredibly thorough help database and customer service that trounces Ingram in every possible way.

Unfortunately, Ingram is... awful. On every front. And expensive.

Re-enter D2D.

They have this wonderful feature for their expanded distribution that lets you pick and choose your vendors. So, if I'm listed on Amazon already, to avoid a double listing, I can deselect them on D2D's platform and not sell there.

Problem is.

That option only exists for their ebooks. And nowhere either in the FAQ or during the print set-up process does it warn you that this is not a feature for print (yet?). In fact, it states quite clearly that so long as you're not using Amazon's expanded distribution, you're good to go. Thus, I thought they were now a perfect replacement for Ingram.

It's only after I got to the end of the process, after having to painstakingly resize my cover because D2D's print would be slightly off using their printer, did I find out that all of that work is moot. Turns out, they are not quite ready to compete with Ingram, and it only cost me several hours worth of work to discover this. They are so close and I am so excited to see Ingram crumble. But they're not there yet.

To be clear. I knew well ahead of time, and that's why I chose the KDP and Ingram combo, of the risk of a double listing. These two together cover the most area while KDP's market is cheaper for the buyer (if you choose to list it lower) and has extremely high traffic.

My issue is the lack of clear verbiage that this feature, that already exists for D2D's ebooks, is not available for their print books.

The issue at large then being: Ingram retains their monopoly as the standard for distributors, and I hate them. It's hard enough getting exposure as an indie author and I do appreciate what D2D is doing to shake up the market.

I had to purge my entire author instagram and start completely from scratch due to a scammer infestation and tiktok... is what it is. So to be able to reach as many marketplaces as possible without the backing of a publishing house is huge for finding your audience.

And yet, Ingram is what we have.

My upcoming ebook will have no issues using KDP and D2D and the ebook of Eternal Night should also be fine. By the time ENNS's sequel is ready, they might have the vendor selection feature, who knows?

For now, I am actively reminding myself: No one element is the cure-all for a sudden boom in popularity. I could do absolutely everything right, have my book available in every possible marketplace, and still find that people just don't want to read it.

But having that reach sure would eliminate one thing holding me back.

[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!