Reading · Haunting the Author Trenches

Well last week was a bit of an odd one.

I was hiding from posting here just to take a little bit of time off because my migraines had been getting worse. And while I did get some recovery time in, I also had a bit of a wrench thrown into my publishing plans.

Enter THE email.

For those of you in the publishing world, you probably received it yourselves. But for those who don’t know, I am referring to Draft2Digital (a book distribution platform, frequently used for publishing and distributing eBooks).

Unfortunately, they have decided to go forward with new fee structures. While part of me does think their one-time joining fee will cut down low quality accounts, their second fee announcement is what doesn’t sit right with me.

Basically, if your book makes less than $100 dollars per year, they are going to be charging a maintenance fee of $12 annually.

Yes, it’s a low fee, but as indie authors it means another fee associated to a project that might not even turn a profit even when we are doing much of the work ourselves! In a world where everything is a subscription, we now have to pay just to have our books live.

I removed my book from D2D and officially closed my account.

There were two reasons for this decision.

On principle, I believe this will only harm the little guys (even tough little guys like us!), and that just doesn’t gel with me. I told them as much when I requested my account closure.
They aren’t the only option.

My eBook is now with IngramSpark.

They have the exact same reach and no fees.

Their royalties might be slightly less, but that is fine by me as a price to pay to not think about conditional fee structures.

It actually works a little better too because now I don’t need to have 2 separate accounts to monitor my books publication and distribution.

Plus when I contacted D2D to remove my information they clarified some info to make sure I was leaving with full understanding of the changes. I think their response only strengthened my resolve in leaving. Basically a “if you don’t like it and can’t earn then just delist your book”. Photo below so you can read what they told me for yourself. I am sure I read between the lines a certain way that others may not, but in the end I feel good about my personal choice to leave.

Breaking away from the D2D nitty gritty…

All in all, it did end up being a productive week despite some weird news and hiding from substack.

I even was able to get my cover reveal posted over on insta.

This cover is extremely close to my heart, because not only is it for my favourite short story I have ever written, it is also a cover I created entirely on my own. Of course, with a little help from stock photos and photo editing software.

Hope you all enjoy it as much as I do!

D2D & Cover Reveal !

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