Not thrilled with Amazon’s latest pay-per-page payment system?
If you’re having a hard time making enough royalties with Amazon KDP, then you might need to consider publishing wide to reach the global marketplace.
Undeniably, Amazon is the biggest player in the eBook distribution industry, dominating 80% of the market share.
But, as a self-published author, you don’t want to rely 100% on Amazon marketplace. In other words, if you choose to publish on Amazon only, you just let Amazon owns your business.
Just like other businesses, when it comes to book publishing you won’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. Who knows what will tomorrow bring?
Related reading: What is Draft2Digital? Why all the fuss with publishing wide?
So what are the Kindle Publishing alternatives?
Kobo, iBooks, Google Play and Barnes & Noble are the top 4 eBook retailers that worth checking out.
All these platforms allow you to create an account, upload a file and start selling your book to people all around the world.
But it’s not without its downside.
Every platform has different file formats and guidelines to meet. And it’s very troublesome and time-consuming to manage all these publishing accounts.
That’s why distributing your books through an aggregate publishing platform like Draft2Digital will make things a lot easier.
If you’re new to Draft2Digital (D2D), this article will help you understand the entire self-publishing industry better.
In this article, I’d like to share my review and opinion on Draft2Digital.
Major Pros
1. Draft2Digital made publishing an eBook amazingly simple.
If you think Amazon KDP is easy to use, try Draft2Digital! I bet you’ll be impressed with its clean, modern and user-friendly dashboard.
It took me less than 10 minutes from registering a new account to entering all my account details and tax information.
Only a few important tabs are shown on the menu bar, namely “My Report”, “My Account”, “Support” and “My Books”.
To get started with publishing on D2D, simply click on the red-colored tab “Add New Book” which is clearly visible on your dashboard.
Instead of setting up new accounts, tracking sale reports and learning the quirks of each sales channel.
Draft2Digital provides a platform that allows you to publish, update changes, manage and track your sales all in one single place.
This will save you loads of time and effort.
2. Distribute your books worldwide
If you’ve your manuscript and book cover ready, you’ll need about 10 minutes to submit it to D2D. Once the book is live on your chosen digital stores, you’ll receive an email notification for each individual store. In most cases, it takes less than 48 hours for book to be distributed to all the sales outlets.
With just a click, you can publish your book across the many digital stores in the Internet.
By distributing your books worldwide, you can grow your reader base, increase author exposure and discoverability, and ultimately sell more books.
What makes Draft2Digital different is that they’re constantly improving and working on adding more sales channels to their current list.
Good news: As of March 2019, Draft2Digital just announced that you can choose to distribute your book to Google Play Books. That’s a huge marketplace you can’t afford to miss!
This means that if you’re distributing to Kobo, your eBook will be available for purchase on Walmart.com storefront!
This ever-growing selection of eBook distribution platforms opens up lots of opportunities for self-published authors.
Here’s a list of many different outlets to distribute your eBooks, including eBook retailers, subscription services and libraries:
- Barnes & Noble
- Kobo (including Kobo Plus and Walmart)
- iBooks
- Scribd
- Tolino
24symbolsPlayster- Overdrive
- Amazon kindle
- Bibliotheca
- Baker & Taylor
- Vivlio
Google Play(Effective October 30th 2019, Draft2Digital will no longer offer Google Play distribution)
I’ll update this list if there’s any new addition to the sales channels. Stay tuned!
3. Auto format your book for free
When I first started publishing with Draft2Digital, I can’t believe that they’re actually giving this amazing book formatting software for free.
That’s right.
Draft2Digital will convert your manuscript automatically into beautifully formatted eBook. They will make sure that it meets technical standard for all digital stores.
All you need to do is upload a word file (.doc, .docx), .odf, or .rtf or any other file type Word can read. No special formatting or style guide required.
They’ll also resize any images that you have in the file accordingly to meet the requirements of your chosen digital stores.
Tip: Simply use “Heading 1” style for chapter headings, it will automatically insert a page break and generate a Table of Content.
4. Promote your book with Automated End-Matter
How can Draft2Digital help you to promote your book?
Draft2Digital offers a free promotional tool called Automated End-Matter for you to create custom sale pages with just one click.
To customize your book’s end matter, simply check the box for additional options such as Other Books by this Author, About the Author, Teaser and New Release Email Notifications Signup pages.
You can also add introductory pages like Copyright, Dedication and Title Page.
Make full use of this incredibly powerful promotional tool to grow your readership, cross-promote and sell more books!
5. Create beautiful interior book design with free layout templates
Draft2Digital offers a wide variety of book design templates that you can use for free. From Non-Fiction to Mystery and Thriller, Romance, Science Fiction and Fantasy. If you’re overwhelmed with the selections and not sure what’s the best layout for your book, simply pick one from the dropdown list in All-Purpose.
6. Download and preview your books in various formats
You can make changes and upload a new file as many times as you like until you’re satisfied with the end result.
You also have the option to download your book in different formats such as mobi, ePub and PDF.
What if you don’t want to distribute your book through Draft2Digital?
Not an issue, you still can create an account and use this free conversion tool and professional layout designs for absolutely free!
All you need to do is download the formatted file and submit to any publishing platforms that you prefer. Though, I’d highly recommend you use Draft2Digital as your one-stop eBook distributor.
7. Increase your author discoverability with D2D Author Page
To sell more books, you have to get your books in front of your target audience who want what you’re selling.
To take things to the next level, Draft2Digital recently released this awesome tool “Author Page”– a central place to showcase all your books. This is where readers can learn more about you and find all your books.
You can send your Author Page link in an email to your mailing list, share it on social media, include it on your email signature or business cards, literally anywhere you can think of. Be creative!
Here’s some of the features included in your author page:
- Your author bio
- Your author photo
- Links to your social media accounts: Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and more!
- Customizable page elements to help promote your book to readers
- A button that readers will be itching to click, to follow you for new release notifications or to join your mailing list, pointing to the list signup tool of your choice
- Carousels of your books and series, so readers can easily find your work!
8. Use Universal Book Links to sell more books
You will be given a free Universal Book Buy Link for each of your books published on Draft2Digital.
Rather than managing different buy links to each digital store, you can gather all retailers links down to one unique link.
To understand it better, here’s the universal book link (UBL) to one of my book : https://www.books2read.com/u/3yZQv6
It’s much easier to promote your book with one single link. You can share your universal book link on social media, newsletter and blog post. You can even give it to book reviewers, influencers and bloggers to share with their followers.
If there are any old or expired links, Universal Book Link lets you update all your links in one single place- best of all you can use this tool for free!
9. Turn your book into an Audiobook
You’ve put lots of hard work into writing your best copy, now let’s turn it into an audiobook and distribute it to worldwide.
Audiobooks are a great way to find new raving fans for your work. And thus, create an extra stream of income while establishing you author’s brand and credibility.
To simplify the process, you can use Draft2Digital’s partner, Findaway Voice to create and distribute your audiobooks globally, even to Apple iTunes and Audible in few simple steps.
By using Findaway Voices, you’ll be able to find a narrator who is most suitable for your book according to your budget, genre, style and quality. Then, they’ll take care of the rest and publish your audiobooks internationally.
Usually, the setup fee for Findaway Voice is $49. If you distribute your book through D2D, then this admin fee is waived! It’s exclusive for Draft2Digital authors.
Simply log in to your D2D dashboard, click on the selected book, you’ll see this option “Audiobook”, then you’ll be taken to Findaway Voices page and start your audiobook project.
I’m looking forward to sharing my journey and result with you. If you’ve any knowledge and experience on this, share it with us, perhaps there’s something I can learn from you.
10. 1-Step easy price change with “Quick Price Change” feature
It’s an easy way to change your ebook’s price for promotion or experiment with different prices.
To change your price, login to your D2D dashboard, click “My book” and select your book and you’ll be taken to the View Book page.
Enter a new price for your book, and it will show you projected royalties instantly!
To proceed with the new price, click “Change Price” and the price change will reflect on those digital stores about 1-3 business days later.
However, this price change won’t affect your library pricing.
11. No (or Low) Minimum Payment
If you’re using Paypal and US Direct Deposits, there’s no minimum threshold.
If you choose to pay via checks, they’ll hold your earnings till you reach $25, $20 for Payoneer before releasing your payment.
It’s FREE!
The best part- You can use all the tools and features for FREE!
That’s right. There are no fees for book conversion, formatting, publishing, promotional and sales tracking tools.
D2D only keep 10% of retail price, technically 15% of net royalties. They won’t charge you till you make a sale.
Considering their top-notch services and exemplary customer support, it’s totally worth it.
Is Draft2Digital really so perfect?
If you ask me, the only con of publishing via Draft2Digital would be its lack of paperback distribution.
As of I’m writing now, Draft2Digital doesn’t help you to distribute paperbacks. To make things up, they offer you a formatting tool to generate PDF file for your book.
You can use this book conversion software for free, download the formatted paperback file and then upload it to Createspace.
I really hope Draft2Digital will add paperback distribution channels to its platform soon.
While using D2D Print, for each sale you will be paid 40% of the list price of your book minus the cost to print for content published through Print on Demand.
What’s next?
I’ve shared some self-publishing tips and guides on my 12-Day Self-Publishing mini-series to help you master self-publishing and sell more books. Have you checked them out?
Day 1: 5 Things Beginners Need to Know About Kindle Publishing
Day 2: 7 Reasons Why You Should Create an eBook for Your Business
Day 3: How to Write and Publish an eBook
Day 4: How To Find Profitable Niches To Publish Online
Day 5: The Biggest Mistake I Made In Self-Publishing and How You Can Avoid It
Day 6: 6 Steps To Sell More Books on Amazon
Day 7: Designing Book Covers That Sell
Day 8: 7 Most Common Self-Publishing Mistakes You Should Avoid
Day 9: 40 Ways to Promote and Market Your Book
Day 10: 49 Inspirational Marketing Tips From Top Authors
Day 11: Top 10 Best Tools for Self-Publishing Authors
Day 12: 12 Best Platforms to Self-Publish Your eBook and Make Money
Bonus: 9 best free tools for creating your 3D book cover mockups
Conclusion
In short, Draft2Digital truly has self-published authors’ interest at heart. Considering all the free awesome features and tools, I really can’t fault with Draft2Digital.
What do you think of Draft2Digital?
Do you have any self-publishing tips to share?
Are you using Draft2Digital to publish your book internationally? Share your thoughts and experience. We’ll like to hear from you and perhaps learn something new from you.
I live and breath making an income online.
I’ll be sharing more of ideas and guides soon. Stay tuned.
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