I may not be very active in the author world these days, but I do have books available through a variety of services, Draft2Digital among them. In theory, my books are just sitting there, available for those people who stumble across them to read and if someone checks it out, great! I’m not out there advertising or doing any kind of promotion because of reasons, so this is what I’m managing. I don’t need to make a lot of sales right now, so having all of this set and forgetting about it is great.
But then there was the Draft2Digital update.
The problem
A previously free platform deciding to charge an account activation fee is never going to go over well. $20USD for the ability to publish through a number of channels that you might not be able to otherwise is worth the risk for some people. They let you publish your books to libraries, which was the biggest draw for me. It is where I get the second most sales, after all.
The larger issue was that they were going to start charging $12USD annually if you did not make $100USD in royalties per year. If you’re a new author just getting started or writing in a niche that isn’t terribly popular, that’s a whole lot of sales. Most of us make most of our money via Amazon, with all other sales channels together adding up to a fraction of those Amazon sales.
Add onto that the royalty split with Draft2Digital. They take typically 15% of the royalty of each book already. Not the sale price, the royalty that is being paid out by the sales channel. So if you have to earn at least $100USD after Draft2Digital takes their cut or pay an extra $12USD annually, well, that’s too much for a lot of people, especially given that this seems to be yet another change making it harder to get paid by the platform.
The explanation
The explanation for all of this was ultimately uncovered via a post on Facebook in the 20Booksto50K group. The optics of giving an interview that is published on a Facebook group instead of making a public statement on any of your own public social media platforms, blog, or via email, is not good.
What was stated in the post about this all being to keep AI publishers from taking advantage of the platform is also pretty questionable. The account fee seems reasonable in that regard, but the maintenance fee does not. From what I’ve seen, there was no consideration given to alternatives like checking the tax or banking information is only attached to one account, or even putting limitations on the volume you can publish until you are verified as a non-AI author.
My thoughts
I think that if it were either an account fee or a monthly fee, that would be reasonable. The implementation of both is what makes this look like a cash grab, or that they are hurting for money. Adding in that they are reportedly not paying out authors below the threshold when they close their accounts and this looks a lot like a service that hopes that you forget you have a subscription in order to bolster their finances. Given that you also cannot delete your account on your own, it reminds me of Adobe’s practices.
Looking at this as a business decision that is being framed as an anti-AI strategy, $12USD annually for wide publication, or just a dollar monthly, is a pretty amazing deal! One that is better in the long term for the company than an account activation fee. PublishDrive charges far more, but they do not take anything from your royalties. They also charge per book rather than placing the fee on the whole account, which is a better deterrent for the mass publication of AI slop that Draft2Digital purports to be implementing these fees as a result of.
I’m no expert and have been very out of the loop on many things, but I do think this is a business decision and not something to help authors. Tech companies are running into the need to increase revenue as investment funding becomes unstable or dries up. In the same way the mass layoffs in tech are being blamed on AI, I think AI is providing a convenient excuse for something else happening behind the scenes and is likely only one of several issues, with the larger problems being related to cash flow in some way.
The great migration
Naturally, a lot of authors are now leaving Draft2Digital. This is not the first time authors have made a grand exodus from a platform, nor will it be the last. Whether it’s the mass exit from Amazon in protest, or leaving PublishDrive when they implemented their fees, this is a thing I have seen a lot over the years. The reasons change, but the result is that authors are now going to have to spend a lot of time and efforts moving their books to some new place and hoping that their audience follows them.
Ultimately, this is a lot of time, effort, and energy that could be better spent elsewhere. With the constantly changing landscape of the internet, the wisdom we all got about mailing lists can be echoed here. In the same way that you need a way to own your audience independent of platform, you also need a sales channel that you own independent of platform as well. Hopefully this will be the time authors set up store fronts, or even just an order form, that they can direct their audience to as a first line sales channel so that the next time something like this happens they can take their time dealing with it.
Some authors are already doing this. There’s a list being maintained at Bear Mountain Books of authors you can support at this time!
What I’m doing
I’m also withdrawing my books from Draft2Digital. My books sell almost exclusively through libraries and, after the D2D cut, I’m only making 20-30 cents a sale. I have around $5 sitting in my account that I will never see as a result. It sucks, but ultimately I am not in a position to do what I need to in order to at least ensure I hit $12USD a year to cover the cost, much less the $100USD threshold to not incur the cost at all.
I already sell direct through my own site and, beyond libraries, I only ever really sold through Amazon anyway so that isn’t a big change on my part. If you want one of my books, you can get it directly from Scrap Paper Entertainment.
Lastly, I am getting some rest and getting back to writing. Hopefully everyone else can do the same soon.
