Draft2Digital (Part 2)

Great minds think alike. I was planning on posting this later this week, but since Mark has posted about his experiences with Draft2Digital in the post below, I’ll post mine now as a companion piece to his.

Ebook publisher Draft2Digital purchased Smashwords earlier this year. While the merger won’t be completed for something like another year, I was curious to see what D2D was all about, especially their beta program for print on demand books. I’d like to not only change the size of my paperback books, but offer them to selected bookshops. And since I know that bookshops don’t look favorably on Amazon, I’m looking for a (cheap) alternative POD service.

However, before I get to print books, I’ll give you an overview of D2D’s ebook process. They offer a series of videos on how to do things on their platform. I watched most of one, but being an old hand at ebook production, I figured I knew what I was doing. And mostly, I did. If you have set up your book with either Amazon or Smashwords the process will be familiar – up to a point. You start by supplying all the usual information about your book. All that is different here is the graphics, and the fact that they accept a wider variety of formats, including LibreOffice, which is the free program I use to write my books, so that I don’t have to convert them to Word like I do on Smashwords and Amazon.

But when it comes to downloading your manuscript, things change. You should only download the body of your book – chapter one to the end – because D2D will give you the option to add a title page, a copyright page, a dedication page, an “also by” page, an email signup page, a teaser page, and a bio pager and a publisher pages. You choose what extra pages you want, and add the necessary data, like the text of the dedication, your bio, etc. The “also by” page automatically includes the books published by D2D – but not others.

One issue I had was that the copyright page defaults for new books, so that if you bring an older book into the system it will show that it was copyrighted in 2022, with no option to change it. It is my understanding that you cannot copyright a work again unless there are very significant changes to it. While I doubt that the copyright police will pounce on you for this, it is an issue. The work around is fairly simple, do not include a dedicated copyright page, but add the copyright info to the dedication page.

As for the look of ebooks, they offer various artwork for chapter headings, that are related to the type of story the book is, if that’s your jam. The preview showed the text ragged right, but I believe that is handled by the ebook reader software, so it would probably appear justified on the reader.

As for distribution – they offer the usual suspects, plus a German and a French ebook store. They also offer expanded service to libraries. They did not let me price my books for free, at least on pre-order. I only signed up for those two stores that Smashwords doesn’t serve, and have zero expectations. I assume Smashwords titles will just seamlessly merge into D2D’s system when the time comes.

Now, on to paper books. Their system works much the same way as the ebook version. There are two ways to make a paper book; you can download your formatted book as a document or a PDF or you can use your ebook text and cover for the print on demand paper book.

I tried the first way, using both the LibreOffice and PDF versions of a paperback book that I worked up for Amazon in the new size. In both cases, the program messed up the title pages, which in turn, threw off the interior, so that the book started on the left hand page. I could find no way to fix the problem.

Next, I tried their ebook to paperback method. It worked as advertised. The default look is that the spine and back cover are a solid color, with your blurb on the top of the back cover. You can then add more stuff to fill it up. Stuff like your photo, bio, or some other images. You can also arrange the spine as you like; with either your name on the top of the spine or the title of the book, Plus you can add a publisher’s icon to the spine as well. They also allow you to use your own wrap-around cover. I tried this method using the cover I had made according to Amazon’s requirements, and it worked, even though the page count was different.

There are several drawbacks to this method, however. The first is simply a matter of personal preference. Using the ebook version of your story, the title page is page one. I don’t know how this strikes you, but for me it screams self-published/vanity press. A title page should be page 3 or page 5, if you have a frontispiece. The first page should be some type of blurb, the second; a “other books by this author” page, the third page, the title page, the fourth; the copyright page, the fifth; the dedication page, and the sixth, a map or a blank page facing the start of the story. That said, if you don’t mind opening the book to the title page, you’re good to go.

The second issue in using the ebook text for your paper version is that I believe it uses the font size of your ebook text. I use 12 pt text on the screen, and for a 5.25×8” book 12 pt seems a bit large. Because of this, my 2D2 version of my test book came in at 416 pages compared to 362 pages for the one I formatted myself with a slightly smaller font size.

The third concern I had was that D2D’s default price for this book was $19.99 which would pay you a royalty of about $2.35, compared to the book’s current Amazon price of $12.00. You can adjust the price, but cheapest I could price this book at was $14.99, yielding a $.20 royalty. Now, I don’t know how much I would make if my Amazon book was sold elsewhere, probably not much more than that. But I can certainly make a lot more money selling it on Amazon, where it is far more likely to sell. My other concern is how much an author’s copy would cost using this service, and how that system works. I didn’t dare to go that far into the system to find out.

Bottom line; if you are comfortable with a title page on page one, I think you could add enough info on the back cover to make it look halfway decent. Better yet would be creating your own wrap around cover if you’re comfortable doing that. I wonder if using a slightly smaller text for your ebook version would reduce the page count of the paper version. Ebook readers control the type size on their devices, so it shouldn’t matter.

I also explored their audiobook options. Basically, they have partnered with another company that will waive their usual set-up fees. It looks to be a company that will match your book with a narrator, but you can use your own existing audiobook as well. I can’t say too much more about this, as I didn’t go very deeply into it, as I didn’t feel like signing up for yet another service. But it is something I may look into at a later date.

So that’s my experience with D2D. They offer a lot of benefits and tie-ins with other companies that you might find helpful. But all in all, I don’ t think anyone with books on Smashwords is missing anything too important. Everything will come to those who wait.