With most of my writing time going towards that novel I keep promising, I realize the blog posts have become a bit scarce. So I figured I’d drop in few words about my favorite self-publishing service and their latest announcement.
All you self-publishing author out there, let me recommend Draft2Digital, an eBook publishing and distribution service. Having personally used both Amazon and Draft2Digital, I’m thrilled about Draft2Digital’s latest announcement: Draft2Digital is beta testing their new Print on Demand service.
Currently, Draft2Digital lets authors distribute their eBooks through a dozen different channels, including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, OverDrive, and Google Play Books. Authors can set their book to any price, including $0 if they want to give their readers a freebie. Draft2Digital takes their cut as a percentage of your sales, which means no upfront cost for you.
Their partner site Books2Read allows authors to display their books alongside an author page. (Here’s mine.) Books2Read provides each book a “UBL”, or Universal Book Link, which links readers to their favorite eBook provider when purchasing your book. Draft2Digital and Books2Read turn both self-publishing and self-marketing into a seamless process.
Up until now, I’ve stuck with Amazon because it filled an important niche–inexpensive, wide-audience distribution of Print on Demand books. But from their recent announcement, it looks like Draft2Digital is ready to compete. Draft2Digital says they’ll offer cover converters and templates, options for everything from trim sizes to paper types, an auto-generating interior to avoid odd line breaks, and the ability for brick and mortar stores to order copies of your books. What’s this all cost? Just the price of any inexpensive author copies you want to order. Couple this with Draft2Digital’s extensive distribution channels and author services, and I think they’ve got Amazon beat.
Keep up the great work Draft2Digital!
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Esther Davis writes family-friendly science fiction and fantasy. She has a novel in the works and dozens of short stories in her book A Dog, 3 Cats, and a Dragon , on online magazines, and on her blog.