In my book, Format Your Book, I didn’t have a lot to say regarding Draft2Digital. This was because I hadn’t yet used it. I had watched the helpful video walkthrough that they had up on YouTube, but that was all. I had known that you could upload your Word file to the D2D site and convert it into an epub, mobi, or pdf file. I had never used this feature either, of course, since I had downloaded Calibre, which is a free application that you can use to convert files to these formats (along with a whole slew of other file formats). In any case, I was aware of the fact that you can use the conversion system on D2D for free to convert your files, even if you don’t publish through the D2D site. And so that’s pretty much all I had to say about D2D in my book.
Well, I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon using D2D. It is AWESOME! They are an aggregate (I believe that is what it is called) site, meaning that you can publish books to a good many of the platforms out there by just uploading and publishing your book through them. It is true. And what’s more, it is super easy to do!
Before yesterday, I had only used Amazon to publish. Of course, Barnes and Noble can order your book, and libraries can order your book (if you check the wide distribution box), but Amazon makes it extremely difficult for these places to do so. Barnes and Noble won’t usually place the order, because it is not at all profitable for them to do so (Amazon doesn’t give them any sort of discount). And Libraries have to pay a hefty fee, and you (if you are lucky) only make a few cents. At least this is the way it all works to my understanding.
But D2D, WOW! Where do I begin? Through the D2D site, you can upload your book and have it distributed to Barnes and Noble, Baker and Taylor, Apple Ibooks, scribd, Kobo, etc. I forget who all, but it is a wide distribution platform. You can even publish to Amazon through here, provided your book is not already published through Amazon directly. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that you can NOT publish through D2D or any other site if you are published on Amazon and enrolled in Amazon’s Kindle Select program! That is a definite No No. The kindle Select program has it’s advantages, but it is an exclusive program: Your ebook cannot be available anywhere else (even on your own website). Having said that, however, if you are not in the KS program, you are good to go. And I say Go!
The D2D upload/publish was super easy. If you’ve published on Amazon, the D2D publishing process will be a breeze. You do all the same things, of course: Upload a jpg file for the cover, fill in the title, subtitle, author name, select the BISAC categories. All of the usual steps. If you’ve got your Word document file ready, just upload it.
A minor note of caution here: If you have your manuscript all prepared and fancy with Drop Caps, remove the Drop Caps! If you upload the book with the Drop Caps added already, the first letter will be floating above the line of text. It’s okay if this happens, nothing explodes or anything. Just upload a new file without them. This has happened to me with Amazon also, which is why I always just use the Amazon Kindle Create program to upload the ebook file instead of uploading a Word document directly.
Another note of caution: If you have any mention of Amazon in the book, Apple will reject the publication. I just received an email telling me that Apple rejected my book for publication because of mention of a competitor. I had had a request in my end matter for the reader to please leave a review on Amazon if they enjoyed the book. Up until yesterday, I was only published on Amazon. I didn’t even think to change it. I did now. Now I’ve got it reading “. . . please leave a review on whatever platform you use.” I guess that means I won’t be able to publish my book on formatting anyplace except Amazon. :>)
Okay, just one more cautionary note (I swear). This one pertains to D2D itself. If you check the box that says you have public domain content, they will not publish it. It is that simple. This didn’t happen to me, as I had written the whole book so it was all original; but they state this clearly in the YouTube video.
D2D has several style formats to choose from, once your document is uploaded, all of which include Drop Caps (except the basic style, I believe). Once your document is uploaded, you can play around with each of the styles and see immediately what your book will look like. I uploaded three different books yesterday and played around with the styles. One of the books I uploaded was a Mystery, The Children’s Home (might as well plug my book here, or what’s the point of having a website? LOL), and there were a few different styles in the Mystery category of styles. I chose the “classy” Mystery style, which had a cool looking magnifying glass image that appeared at the beginning of each chapter, and again at the beginning of each scene separator within each chapter. It all looked very neat and fit in well with my Sherlock Holmes type mystery. Another one of the books I uploaded was a Sci-Fi book, The Red Kimono. D2D did have a Sci-fi category of styles, but I don’t think I used any of them as none of them really fit with my book. They had a couple of Fantasy leaning styles, which looked cool but didn’t fit either. And so I believe I went with just the corner decoration for this book. I know I went with the Deco style for the other book, Esmirana’s Trunk: Tales of Mystery and Suspense.
After you pick your style, you can download a copy of your book in epub, Mobi, or PDF format. I downloaded all three to have a look. I used my Calibre app to open the epub file, the Mobi file opened with my Kindle app, and then adobe opened the PDF. The only problem I noticed was with the PDF file. In this file, there were page numbers listed on the front matter pages. The title page was page one. This probably would not have happened had I just uploaded the body section of my text. There is the option to just upload the body of the text, after which you then just tick the boxes for D2D to create a title page for you. They will create not only a title page, but also the back matter, a list of “also by,” for any of your other books. And — this is way Cool! — a page for the reader to input their email address to be notified (if they so choose) whenever you come out with a new book. How neat is that? Wild, huh?
So after you check out your book, you give it the okay, by clicking the button to accept how it all looks. And you also, of course get to see all of the places to which your book will be distributed/published. And when you set the price up in the price box (which you can play around with, trying different prices), you get to see how much the royalties will be for each of the places your book will sell.
All of this is free! D2D collects 10% or 15%, depending on whether you are talking about gross or net, only when the book sells. You pay nothing up front. If you publish on Amazon, you know what the difference is, of course. Amazon has the lion’s share of the market, of course. But the others are growing, all around the world. In a couple of instances, in other areas of the world, the other platforms are more popular than Amazon. I’m thinking Kobo or ibooks and Japan (I’ll have to double check this, but I believe that’s correct).
D2D has a very cool and easy to use dashboard set up for authors. You can also set up a UBL, or Universal Booklink. I believe that’s what it is called. In any case, it is a link that the reader can click on to get access to your book at a place and in the format that best suits them and is closest to them. In other words, you don’t simply want a link to Amazon.com, which is for U.S. buyers when the person looking to buy the book is in Europe. Hence the term “universal.” They will need the link to Amazon for the UK or France, or wherever. And you want to have all options or formats available, such as ibooks or Kobo, etc.
D2D has a sister site called Books2Read which is a site for readers to find and access all the latest books. This site is geared to readers, of course, but your books will be listed there. And, another cool thing is that if you are already a member of Books2Read, your username and password will be the same for Draft2Digital, or vice versa, depending on which site you signed up with first.
To sum up, I’ll just say that Draft2Digital has So much to offer, that it is a no brainer to use them. Don’t just restrict yourself to Amazon!
Also, D2D has a beta going for publishing print books. I haven’t had a chance to look into this yet, but I’ll let you know when I do.
If you have purchased my book, Format Your Book, then you are good to go with setting up your Word manuscript. I’ll try to update the book; but if you are reading this, then you are aware of, or have probably read my earlier post regarding changes and updates to the book.
Have fun, write, and Publish!