In Response To Draft2Digital's New Fees

For those unaware, Draft2Digital is a platform that helps indies publish their books on different platforms (Amazon, Apple, Kobo, etc). I use it for several vendors and libraries aside from Overdrive. However, they sent out an email this week, imposing new fees on authors. A $20 fee for new authors, and a $12 fee for those who make less than $100 a year. They claim this is to slow down the deluge of AI slop, but I and others have serious doubts. Some have suggested they may be going bankrupt.

Regardless, these new fees won't stop sloperators who can and will continue flooding the market with low quality books. It will primarily hurt small indie authors who make well below the minimum amount. I myself made just over $100 in 2023 and 2024, but only $50 last year, and less than $5 so far this year. Sales are diminishing across the board, but this new fee will wipe out my meager earnings come July.

I'd consider staying if I was confident I could beat the minimum, but it's not looking great, folks. The most frustrating part about this is losing access to Bookshop.org. I still have another way of getting my books on that platform, but I don't know if they would still be DRM free. I want to give readers the opportunity to read on their own devices and actually own their books, which is I don't enable DRM on my books. My paperbacks are unaffected, at least.

Other markets affected are Apple, BorrowBox, CloudLibrary, Everand, Fable, Hoopla, Tolino, Smashwords, and Vivlio. I'm direct with Kobo, Barnes & Noble, DriveThruFiction, Google Play, Itch.io, and Payhip. I actually made more on Amazon, Kobo, Payhip, and Itch last year than I did with D2D, so the books themselves are selling. They're just doing far better elsewhere, while taking fewer royalties from me.

This whole situation still sucks, but I will survive. I will close my account by June or sooner, depending on when I meet the $10 threshold for cashing out.