My first experience with Draft 2 Digital #indie #publishing

After a long stint in Kindle Unlimited, I've decided to do a wide release for Big Blue Valentine. I've been wanting to try out Draft 2 Digital to distribute to B&N, iTunes, and Kobo, so I used Big Blue Valentine as my test book. I was surprised by how easy and fast D2D was. It was nice to only have to upload a Word file onto their site and have them do all the rest. They convert your Word file into all the book formats you need, which you can then preview. All my conversions turned out perfect. Big Blue Valentine appeared on Kobo within hours, iTunes the next day, and B&N two days later.


In addition to Kobo, iTunes, and B&N, D2D also publishes to Oyster, Page Foundry, Scribd, and Tolino. My book wasn't accepted on Oyster since they don't publish erotic books, but Big Blue Valentine published quickly on Page Foundry and Tolino. Still waiting on Scribd though, four days after hitting publish. Now, I'll admit I don't know much about these additional sites, and I have no idea if I'll sell many books through them, but it'll be interesting to watch.

D2D takes 15% off the top of your royalties, so you have to decide if you're willing to part with that money. One of things I really like about D2D is that you can do preorders without uploading your final book right away.

Also, keep in mind to publish directly to iTunes (iBooks) you need to use a program called iProducer that can only be installed on a Mac, so if you don't have a Mac you could just use D2D to publish on iTunes and opt out of all the other venues.

I'm not sure if I'd use D2D every time I do a wide release, since I've uploaded directly to B&N, Kobo, and iTunes before and I already have publisher accounts set up with all three, but if I'm in a time crunch I might, and I would certainly recommend it to indie authors who don't want to go through the hassle of setting up publisher accounts on that many sites.


Big Blue Valentine Links:

Amazon US
Amazon UK
All Romance
Smashwords
Barnes and Noble
Page Foundry (Inktera)
Kobo
iBooks