# Easy Self-Publishing at Draft2Digital.com (aggregator and free ebook conversion)



## Aaron Pogue

*Self-publish with Support*
If you don't already know Draft2Digital, we're a digital publishing and distribution service that:

Offers easy distribution to some of the most important digital stores (even for international users)
Creates beautiful ebooks with our free conversion software
Accepts and distributes user-provided epubs
Provides industry-leading customer service (including free phone support)
Consolidates the sales reporting, accounting, and payments from multiple stores
Protects your privacy through robust support for pen names and publisher imprints
Helps with catalog management (thanks to tools like our New Release Notifications, and store-specific links in our optional Automated End-matter pages)
As a writer, you want to write. When it comes to the publishing part, maybe you could use a little support. We make it easy.

Visit our site now to try out easy self-publishing, or keep reading to learn more.

*Our Background*
Draft2Digital is a KBoards success story. We first launched in December of 2012 with a closed beta and a single post--this post--on the KBoards Writer's Cafe. It quickly became one of the most-viewed threads of all time in the Writer's Cafe, and single-handedly drove the early adoption and growth of our company.

That's been three years ago, now. To celebrate the anniversary, I decided to update the old thread and share some interesting statistics.

First, let me share a little bit of info about me.

*Author on Board*
I'm a self-published author. I started back in 2010 with a sci-fi mystery called Surveillance, and then hit the big time in the summer of 2011 with a fantasy novel called Taming Fire. I later signed a three-book deal with Amazon's imprint 47North, so they published my newest fantasy series, The Godlanders War. Across all three series, I've sold a quarter of a million books.

When I first started considering self-publishing, I kept hearing about the author community at KBoards. I became a regular lurker here, and did my best to assimilate the flood of great industry wisdom that this board has to offer. One conclusion stood out to me above all the rest:



> If I do all of this, if I do it _right_, then I'll never have time to write another word!
> - Me


Lucky for me, I have some programmer friends who are way too generous. I discussed the problem with them, and before too long we were working on a program to convert my documents into ePubs for me.

*Programming the Publishing Process*
The document conversion software worked like a charm, but then I found new problems. I needed to keep track of all the different sales reports from all the different stores, and consolidate them into a consistent format so I could compare and track my books' performance. I needed to learn all the quirks and nuances of each of the different stores. I needed to buy a Mac, apparently....

For two years, we worked on this suite of custom software tools as hobby projects to support my publishing career. Every time I used those tools, I felt greedy for keeping them all to myself. Every time I used those tools, I ended up suggesting to my friends that we turn this whole thing into a service other writers could use.

In December 2012, we did just that. We built a website around the conversion and sales reporting tools and launched the beta of our service at Draft2Digital.com.

*The Announcement*
I sent out an email invitation to a handful of friends and family, and I posted a thread about it at KBoards. That was the full extent of our advertising and promotion efforts, but it worked. The authors here at KBoards loved Draft2Digital right out of the gate (you can read their reactions below), and within a month our catalog increased from ten authors and 30 titles to 332 authors and more than a thousand titles. Combined, those books generated almost $6,000 in royalties for our authors that first month.

Three years later, we now have 70,000 titles from 16,000 authors. Combined, those books now generate nearly a million dollars in royalties for our authors every month. And we're only growing!

*Our Success Is Your Success*
As I said, Draft2Digital is a KBoards success story. In so many different ways, it all started right here.

Thank you for providing a rich, informative community for all authors looking to understand a complicated industry. Thank you for taking a chance on another indie experiment and providing the feedback--both the compliments and the criticism--that we needed to turn Draft2Digital into the company you needed. And thank you for spreading the word.

*Another Invitation*
If you weren't one of those early adopters, there's still time to get in on this at the ground level. We've barely gotten started! (Just wait until you see what we have coming in 2016.)

In the meantime, you can see what got us this far. Sign-up is free, it only takes a few minutes, and there's no commitment. Go to the registration page, provide your email address, and you're in. Easy as that.



> Keep writing. Keep your rights. We'll help with the rest.
> - Draft2Digital


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## B. Justin Shier

Love that you're looking into providing author website integration. That would be a huge help.

B.


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## Aaron Pogue

I can't wait for that one.

I keep thinking about trying to implement it myself (with a little inside information), but I know those guys will do a _much_ better job, and probably get it done faster even after I wait for them to finish getting the core functionality online.


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## Andrew Ashling

I have a beta-account, and I can unequivocally say that uploading is a pleasant experience.
The site is rock-stable and very easy to manage. And fast.
The book I tested it with was published to B&N in about a day.
There were some kinks in the payment form but they've been ironed out.

Response from Kris was fast, and I really got the feeling they're author-centered and prepared to learn and adjust.

I'm going with them for Apple and B&N.


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## Aaron Pogue

Thanks for the endorsement, Andrew! Can we have permission to use it elsewhere?

I'm glad we got some mention here at Kindleboards so the developers could see how strong the demand for international support was. I was shocked how quickly they got it implemented. That's largely thanks to the detailed feedback you provided. So thanks again!


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## Andrew Ashling

Aaron Pogue said:


> Thanks for the endorsement, Andrew! Can we have permission to use it elsewhere?
> 
> I'm glad we got some mention here at Kindleboards so the developers could see how strong the demand for international support was. I was shocked how quickly they got it implemented. That's largely thanks to the detailed feedback you provided. So thanks again!


Of course you can. 

I've had some further email interchanges with Kris and a few other very minor adjustments are going to be made, but for me the site is ready for prime time as is.


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## James Bruno

I just uploaded my three books and it went fairly smoothly. Through this service, I'll now also be in iPad, which just about completes my listings with the major vendors. Only Sony remains. . .


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## Cherise

I put my email address in for a code to join...


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## AmsterdamAssassin

I also uploaded to D2D, right now for B&N only, since I already published myself to Amazon, Kobo, and iTunes, but I enjoyed the simple process of uploading and publishing my work, and my emails with Kris to tweak the requirements and demands for non-US self-publishers. I hope other distributors like Sony and Diesel will be added soon, as these are distributors that are posing major difficulties for non-US authors.

Another experiment is publishing Locked Room and Microchip Murder for free on BN - they are free on Kobo and iTunes, and it took some major wrangling to get Amazon to price-match. I uploaded them to D2D with a 0.00 pricetag and I hope BN accepts them. If they do accept them, that might be a boon to self-publishers seeking to upload loss leaders to the retailers.


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## KellyC

After reading what Andrew said about Draft2Digital uploading to B&N in about a day, I thought it would definitely be worth my while to try D2D out as I've been waiting for SW to upload my 2nd book in the Evolution series for about 2 months. I even had an erotica description on my first (YA) book that took almost a week to fix up & I'm guessing it would have been fixed a lot quicker with D2D.

thanks so much for giving us all another option!


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## Midnight Writer

If I make an account with my real, legal name, then decide to write a book under a super secret pen name that I want to keep completely separate from my real name, can I upload the book to that account and not have my real name associated with that book at the retailers? Or would I have to open a new account under the pen name?

Thanks!


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## Patty Jansen

As international author I have one major question:

What about the US tax shit?


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## Aaron Pogue

Lanette Curington said:


> If I make an account with my real, legal name, then decide to write a book under a super secret pen name that I want to keep completely separate from my real name, can I upload the book to that account and not have my real name associated with that book at the retailers? Or would I have to open a new account under the pen name?
> 
> Thanks!


Lanette, it's really easy to publish a book under a pen name. You'll have to give D2D your real name if you want them to pay you, but you can use a pen name for your primary author name, and every time you set up a new book project, you choose which "Contributors" are associated with that book. The form makes it easy to add new contributors, including (another) pen name to put in the author role. So you can easily publish the book with that pen name, but keep it associated with your main account.

"Publisher" works the same way. You can choose which Publisher name you want associated with each book.


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## Aaron Pogue

Patty Jansen said:


> As international author I have one major question:
> 
> What about the US tax [crap]?


Kris (the CEO) has spent the last week figuring out the answer to that. D2D is required to withhold 30% income tax for all international publishers and pay that to the IRS. They'll do that by default, with no extra effort on your part.

If your country has a tax treaty with the US, you can request a US tax ID and submit an IRS form to D2D stating that you're exempt from US taxes, and then D2D will pay you the full royalties. There'll probably be a step-by-step guide for that process up on the site shortly. It's not exactly easy breezy, but D2D has to follow local laws. Not really any way around that.


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## Andrew Ashling

Aaron Pogue said:


> Kris (the CEO) has spent the last week figuring out the answer to that. D2D is required to withhold 30% income tax for all international publishers and pay that to the IRS. They'll do that by default, with no extra effort on your part.
> 
> If your country has a tax treaty with the US, you can request a US tax ID and submit an IRS form to D2D stating that you're exempt from US taxes, and then D2D will pay you the full royalties. There'll probably be a step-by-step guide for that process up on the site shortly. It's not exactly easy breezy, but D2D has to follow local laws. Not really any way around that.


Yep - this was my gripe as well. I suggested they apply the same rules as Amazon.


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## AmsterdamAssassin

Aaron Pogue said:


> If your country has a tax treaty with the US, *you can request a US tax ID *and submit an IRS form to D2D stating that you're exempt from US taxes, and then D2D will pay you the full royalties. There'll probably be a step-by-step guide for that process up on the site shortly. It's not exactly easy breezy, but D2D has to follow local laws. Not really any way around that.


If you need to know how to get an EIN, go to http://catherineryanhoward.com/2012/02/24/non-us-self-publisher-tax-issues-dont-need-to-be-taxing/ and follow the instructions.


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## KellyC

Aaron Pogue said:


> Kris (the CEO) has spent the last week figuring out the answer to that. D2D is required to withhold 30% income tax for all international publishers and pay that to the IRS. They'll do that by default, with no extra effort on your part.
> 
> If your country has a tax treaty with the US, you can request a US tax ID and submit an IRS form to D2D stating that you're exempt from US taxes, and then D2D will pay you the full royalties. There'll probably be a step-by-step guide for that process up on the site shortly. It's not exactly easy breezy, but D2D has to follow local laws. Not really any way around that.


I was wondering the same thing. I already have my EIN so I'll just wait for D2D to upload their process for submitting it.


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## Hugh Howey

Wow. I wonder if Mark Coker would like to update his "2013 Outlook Blog?"


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## Aaron Pogue

Hugh Howey said:


> Wow. I wonder if Mark Coker would like to update his "2013 Outlook Blog?"


Mr. Howey, you just made my day.


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## Cherise

Hugh Howey said:


> Wow. I wonder if Mark Coker would like to update his "2013 Outlook Blog?"


Yeah, really!

D2D lets you upload a doc formatted however you like it, and they let you use their ePUB version however you want, too.


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## 56139

I'm in Select until March 1, but then I plan on getting out and putting my books everywhere.  Hoping D2D is the answer I'm looking for.  I'll keep my eye on this as you guys move forward.


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## Nope

.


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## Aya Ling

Aaron Pogue said:


> Kris (the CEO) has spent the last week figuring out the answer to that. D2D is required to withhold 30% income tax for all international publishers and pay that to the IRS. They'll do that by default, with no extra effort on your part.
> 
> If your country has a tax treaty with the US, you can request a US tax ID and submit an IRS form to D2D stating that you're exempt from US taxes, and then D2D will pay you the full royalties. There'll probably be a step-by-step guide for that process up on the site shortly. It's not exactly easy breezy, but D2D has to follow local laws. Not really any way around that.


Unfortunately, my country has no tax treaty with the U.S., so I'm bound to have my pint of blood taken


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## Gennita Low

This sounds like what I need. One place to do everything for a not-very-techy person. Smashwords have been that place for me because they take care of what I can't due to time and knowledge constraints. But they're a bit slow and sometimes, when I hit a problem with submission, such as epub code-babble-talk, I've to google like mad to try to find out what I did wrong. I'd like to try D2D to see whether it's as smooth and easy as everyone says.   I don't mind sharing profits when I get good service and it saves me time to write.

Thank you for the info and giving writers another option to upload files!


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## scottnicholson

Hi Aaron,
I welcome the addition of a new service.

Do you anticipate the addition of international markets? There is a huge need for an aggregator to hit all the emerging foreign markets as well as established markets like Flipkart in India. I think the U.S. market is basically settled, and probably UK as well, but the race is on elsewhere and will also be the prime growth markets for indie writers.

Thanks for interacting and best wishes for your success.


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## Kwalker

This sounds really wonderful, and I'm excited to give it a try.

I've just gotten done formatting for Smashwords' Meatgrinder and I really wasn't thrilled with it. The auto paperback formatting sounds wonderful as well.


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## Aaron Pogue

scottnicholson said:


> Hi Aaron,
> I welcome the addition of a new service.
> 
> Do you anticipate the addition of international markets? There is a huge need for an aggregator to hit all the emerging foreign markets as well as established markets like Flipkart in India. I think the U.S. market is basically settled, and probably UK as well, but the race is on elsewhere and will also be the prime growth markets for indie writers.
> 
> Thanks for interacting and best wishes for your success.


They absolutely intend to add as many sales channels as possible (if only to stay competitive with Smashwords). Just putting more vendors in the bulleted list will make them look better.

They're working full-time on core functionality right now, but adding vendors is a high priority. If you hear of any particular sales channel you want to see (such as Flipkart), drop an email to [email protected] (or just use the site's Contact Form), and they'll make sure it's on the list.


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## RuthNestvold

I just applied for a beta key, and this is what I got: 

"Thank you for your interest. We'll contact you when more invitations become available or when the service is publically available."

Any idea when they're going to be opening up for more people again?


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## Aaron Pogue

Should be pretty quick. They don't want to take on so many people that they start giving miserable service, but Kris assured me he could handle whatever Kindleboards threw at him. If you (or anyone else on this thread) don't get a follow-up email within (say) half an hour, message me with the email address you used and I'll tell Kris to go ahead and authorize it.


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## RuthNestvold

Aaron Pogue said:


> Should be pretty quick. They don't want to take on so many people that they start giving miserable service, but Kris assured me he could handle whatever Kindleboards threw at him. If you (or anyone else on this thread) don't get a follow-up email within (say) half an hour, message me with the email address you used and I'll tell Kris to go ahead and authorize it.


Got it! Thanks, Aaron. Going to test it out with the newest book now. 

ETA: Uploaded Epub file without a hitch. The only complaint I have is that when you edit your info, you have to re-upload the cover image. When I noticed something I wanted to change, I *didn't* re-upload the cover, and I ended up coverless. So I had to go through the procedure again.

It would also be nice if the site had more info about the CreateSpace option.


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## Aaron Pogue

In response to requests from another Kindleboards user, they've now implemented the option of publishing your book for free (to vendors that allow that option). Currently, that's Kobo and iTunes. If you've also published the book to B&N and/or Kindle, it will be listed there for $0.99 (and you can hope that they match the Kobo/iTunes price).

After months of listening to me explain what features writers would want, it has been really helpful to the dev team to hear from you guys--whether it's corroborating my recommendations, or bringing up things I never even thought of. Keep the suggestions/requests coming!


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## RuthNestvold

Aaron Pogue said:


> In response to requests from another Kindleboards user, they've now implemented the option of publishing your book for free (to vendors that allow that option). Currently, that's Kobo and iTunes. If you've also published the book to B&N and/or Kindle, it will be listed there for $0.99 (and you can hope that they match the Kobo/iTunes price).


That's excellent news! I'll take advantage of that in the next couple of days.


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## KristenDaRay

I'm hoping to have my first book out here within a week. I will keep this place in consideration.


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## Saul Tanpepper

Requested a spot. Any word on how quickly books get sent to channels?


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## notreallyhere

Got my invite in just a few minutes! I look forward to trying it out tonight - I've been hunting for a distributor for iTunes that wasn't Smashwords. Thanks, Aaron, for introducing this to us!

~Cate


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## Aaron Pogue

RuthNestvold said:


> Got it! Thanks, Aaron. Going to test it out with the newest book now.
> 
> ETA: Uploaded Epub file without a hitch. The only complaint I have is that when you edit your info, you have to re-upload the cover image. When I noticed something I wanted to change, I *didn't* re-upload the cover, and I ended up coverless. So I had to go through the procedure again.
> 
> It would also be nice if the site had more info about the CreateSpace option.


I just saw your update, Ruth. That cover thing is definitely not how it's supposed to work. I've never seen that behavior, so it must be something to do with the epub upload (which I've never tried). I'll make sure the devs are working on a fix, because that sounds like a big hassle.

As far as the CreateSpace information...you're entirely right. Honestly, we expected CreateSpace support to take about six months to a year, but once they got started on it, they knocked out a functional service within a couple weeks. Seems the site documentation hasn't caught up to that functionality yet.

I've also heard it doesn't work for epub uploads yet, and that seems like something worth fixing. I'll put in a couple feature requests for you.


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## Kwalker

I just want to mention that I emailed back and forth with Kris some yesterday. The experience was positively wonderful. They seem so committed and excited.

I have to agree with Hugh. Coker might want to update his outlook, because this site is fabulous.

Kris also passed along a link to me to check your own epub files to make sure they will pass standards tests.
http://validator.idpf.org/

Mine wouldn't have passed itunes epub check because of a faulty link, and this found it.


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## Saul Tanpepper

Kwalker said:


> I just want to mention that I emailed back and forth with Kris some yesterday. The experience was positively wonderful. They seem so committed and excited.
> 
> I have to agree with Hugh. Coker might want to update his outlook, because this site is fabulous.
> 
> Kris also passed along a link to me to check your own epub files to make sure they will pass standards tests.
> http://validator.idpf.org/
> 
> Mine wouldn't have passed itunes epub check because of a faulty link, and this found it.


Kewl! Thx.


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## Aaron Pogue

Saul Tanpepper said:


> Requested a spot. Any word on how quickly books get sent to channels?


The books are usually submitted to the sales channels within about 10 minutes of clicking "Publish."

After that happens, it takes a few hours to a couple days before the book is available for purchase (just like if you uploaded to those sales channels directly).


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## Kwalker

Unbelievable! They got Cornerstone to Itunes in less than 24 hours.


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## 31842

So excited about this!  I have my short stories coming out of Select this month and was starting to succumb to the "Oh god.  There are so many sites to submit to.  Maybe I'll just stay where I am."  This is FANTASTIC.  I've been dying to get into the iTunes market to see what those waters are like, but Smashwords and Lulu were just toooooo haaaaard and broke my brain.  W00t!


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## AmsterdamAssassin

Kwalker said:


> Unbelievable! They got Cornerstone to Itunes in less than 24 hours.


As I understand from Kris, they push the books to the retailers in record time, but retailers take their own sweet time to 'publish' the book. Amazon is the fastest publisher, Kobo and BN are about average, and iTunes is the slowest. I've had some great results direct publishing to iTunes - 12-48 hours, but 24 hours is pretty awesome.


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## ruecole

I just uploaded my first book with them and it went fairly smoothly. I seem to be having some hiccups with the copyright page and table of contents, but Kris has been super, super helpful. 

I'm really excited to get my books onto Nook and iTunes without having to go through the dreaded meatgrinder!

Plus, I have to say, their formatting is beautiful. Much nicer than Kobo's. I'm now planning, since their TOS allows it, to uload all my books through D2D and then take them over to Kobo and upload them there.

Rue


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## James Bruno

I also find D2D's support to be outstanding. They helped me work out some formatting issues in one of my epub files. Very responsive. And my books got into iTunes lickety-split. I'd been wanting to get into iTunes for a long time. This outfit will sink SW.


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## BenEBrewer

AmsterdamAssassin said:


> If you need to know how to get an EIN, go to http://catherineryanhoward.com/2012/02/24/non-us-self-publisher-tax-issues-dont-need-to-be-taxing/ and follow the instructions.


Thanks for that, that tax issue has been bugging me for months - straight on it to stop the US government taking my 30%!!!


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## Andrew Ashling

I can confirm both the outstanding support and the speed (±24 hours) with which my books got published to B&N and iTunes. Not to mention the ease of the whole procedure.


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## ruecole

AmsterdamAssassin said:


> If you need to know how to get an EIN, go to http://catherineryanhoward.com/2012/02/24/non-us-self-publisher-tax-issues-dont-need-to-be-taxing/ and follow the instructions.


Wow! Thanks for posting this! I've been going the ITIN route. This seems SO much easier!

Rue


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## Aaron Pogue

I hope no one minds, but I renamed the thread to include the iTunes/PubIt angle because that (as a topic of discussion) has proven way more popular than the Word .doc conversion service.


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## KellyC

After waiting for almost 2 months for Tormented to be uploaded to B&N through SW, I withdrew it & tried D2D. There was a minor hiccup which Kris sorted out straight away & Tormented was up on B&N in less than 12hrs after uploading! And I already have a sale showing up on D2D!


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## Speaker-To-Animals

I write sleazy smut. (Hey, I do, why am I going to beat around the bush about that.) How are you about dealing with Apple's rejection. They seem to be pretty capricious. What most of us are looking for is better communication so we don't keep sending stuff they won't publish and to correct mistakes if they think something contains something it doesn't.


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## Aaron Pogue

Katie Elle said:


> How are you about dealing with Apple's rejection. They seem to be pretty capricious. What most of us are looking for is better communication so we don't keep sending stuff they won't publish and to correct mistakes if they think something contains something it doesn't.


Draft2Digital is built around sharing as much information as possible with writers. That's one of the things I love about the service.

I just discussed this question with Kris (the CEO), and he said any time they received a rejection from Apple (or anyone else), Draft2Digital would

Remove the title from distribution at that vendor (updating your book list in the process).
Pass along the reason for the rejection to the author/publisher.

That should make it easy to fix the problem. If you disagree with Apple's analysis and want to resubmit the book as-is, Draft2Digital would probably need to do their own analysis. (They are bound by the terms of a distribution agreement with Apple, after all), but if Draft2Digital agreed there was some confusion, they would certainly forward that concern to Apple's customer service.


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## Saul Tanpepper

Aaron Pogue said:


> Draft2Digital is built around sharing as much information as possible with writers. That's one of the things I love about the service.
> 
> I just discussed this question with Kris (the CEO), and he said any time they received a rejection from Apple (or anyone else), Draft2Digital would
> 
> Remove the title from distribution at that vendor (updating your book list in the process).
> Pass along the reason for the rejection to the author/publisher.
> 
> That should make it easy to fix the problem. If you disagree with Apple's analysis and want to resubmit the book as-is, Draft2Digital would probably need to do their own analysis. (They are bound by the terms of a distribution agreement with Apple, after all), but if Draft2Digital agreed there was some confusion, they would certainly forward that concern to Apple's customer service.


Are you reading this, Mark Coker? Well? WELL?

Okay, Aaron, I just have to say this: D2D seems too good to be true (but not too good for me not to give the service a try). Thanks for being so responsive!


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## NRWick

I'm sure this has been asked or mentioned somewhere, but my brain isn't working and I can't find the answer. You can choose which sales channels you want to send to, right? Or opt out of certain channels?


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## KellyC

NRWick said:


> I'm sure this has been asked or mentioned somewhere, but my brain isn't working and I can't find the answer. You can choose which sales channels you want to send to, right? Or opt out of certain channels?


Yes, you can coose which sales channels you want to opt into. From memory, it's one of the last stages of the uploading process.


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## RuthNestvold

NRWick said:


> I'm sure this has been asked or mentioned somewhere, but my brain isn't working and I can't find the answer. You can choose which sales channels you want to send to, right? Or opt out of certain channels?


Yes, you can. As an experiment, I uploaded my most recent short story collection to D2D instead of Smashwords, and I had confirmation of acceptance to the B&N and Kobo stores in less than two days. Here's the Kobo entry for the book:

http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/From-Earth-to-Mars-Beyond/book-v2Z_JopUnUi1-7gGmtVGyA/page1.html?s=AliGp_qSYECblVJUfP_lzw&r=4

It has yet to appear in the iTunes store, however, the main reason I was interested in the service. But on the positive side, each time my book was okayed for a new bookstore, I got a confirmation email. I don't think I ever got that from Smashwords.


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## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

Coming from an academic background, I know the importance of libraries, especially for non-fiction publications. Does DD have any plans to distribute to libraries in the future?


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## katherinef

Sounds interesting. I'd love to get my books faster to B&N and iTunes, but I wish there was more info about royalties. I can see that 15% goes to Draft2Digital, but what about the retailers? I just want to know how much of each sale goes to me in the end.


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## Aaron Pogue

JRHenderson said:


> Totally off-topic, but that's a fantastic cover Ruth!


Seconded. We were all admiring it at the office yesterday.



Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> Coming from an academic background, I know the importance of libraries, especially for non-fiction publications. Does DD have any plans to distribute to libraries in the future?


Absolutely. They're currently looking at Ingram Digital (the same venue Smashwords uses), but from what I've seen, Ingram's terms are kinda terrible. Still, we're committed to getting Draft2Digital books into libraries one way or another.



katherinef said:


> Sounds interesting. I'd love to get my books faster to B&N and iTunes, but I wish there was more info about royalties. I can see that 15% goes to Draft2Digital, but what about the retailers? I just want to know how much of each sale goes to me in the end.


That becomes a really complicated question. Each vendor pays its own amount(s), and most of them have "preferred" price ranges that are narrower than their allowed price ranges.

KDP is famous for paying 35% royalty on books that are too cheap or too expensive, but 70% royalties between $2.99 and $9.99. Kobo does something similar, but their "preferred" range starts at $1.99. Oh, and as a special promotion for November (and December?) they decided to pay 80% instead of 70% for those preferred books.

So the answer to your question depends on the list price of your book, the vendor in question, and maybe the day of the week. I do know Draft2Digital chooses (for a given book at a given vendor) the highest-royalty option available based on the user-selected price.

If I remember the royalty options right off the top of my head, I think the percentages might come out something like this.

For a *$0.99* ebook (which won't meet "preferred status" anywhere that has one):


*Vendor...**Gross Royalty %...**Net Author Royalty...**Author % of List...**D2D % of List...*Amazon35%$0.2930%5%B&N40%$0.3434%6%Kobo45%$0.3838%7%iTunes70%$0.5960%10%

And for a book priced at *$9.99* (which should be "preferred" everywhere):


*Vendor...**Gross Royalty %...**Net Author Royalty...**Author % of List...**D2D % of List...*Amazon70%$5.9460%10%B&N65%$5.5255%10%Kobo70%$5.9460%10%iTunes70%$5.9460%10%
_
(Edited to add extra columns to the table.)_


----------



## cdvsmx5

Aaron Pogue said:


> That becomes a really complicated question. Each vendor pays its own amount(s), and most of them have "preferred" price ranges that narrower than their allowed price ranges.
> ...


Your answer evades the question.
The site claims that D2D's cut is the same as Smashwords, but that is false in some real world cases.
The question isn't complicated, the answer is. The response given isn't a substantive answer.

D2D's cut is the same as Smashwords' when the retailer royalty is also the same.
The difference is greatest for B&N where PubIt rates are 40% or 65% (depending on retail price) which apply to D2D and Smashwords has one rate of 60%.

Editied to clarify. D2D makes more when the royalty rate is more, but so does the publisher. Specifically, if your book sells for less than $2.99 or more than $9.99 on B&N you will make more money with Smashwords. But, if it sells between $2.99 and $9.99 you will make more money with D2D or PubIt.


----------



## katherinef

Aaron Pogue said:


> That becomes a really complicated question. Each vendor pays its own amount(s), and most of them have "preferred" price ranges that narrower than their allowed price ranges.


So basically, if I have a 2.99$ book and want to sell it on B&N, Draft2Digital takes 15%, B&N takes 35%, so I get 50%. If I sell my book through Smashwords, I get 60% because B&N takes 30% and Smashwords 10%. If I go with Draft2Digital, I lose 10%. Looks like I'll be sticking with Smashwords. They might be slow, but I get more money in the end.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

cdvsmx5 said:


> The question isn't complicated, the answer is.


Touché.



katherinef said:


> So basically, if I have a 2.99$ book and want to sell it on B&N, Draft2Digital takes 15%, B&N takes 35%, so I get 50%. If I sell my book through Smashwords, I get 60% because B&N takes 30% and Smashwords 10%. If I go with Draft2Digital, I lose 10%. Looks like I'll be sticking with Smashwords. They might be slow, but I get more money in the end.


I think you're misreading the math. I've updated my chart above in an attempt to clarify.

Draft2Digital doesn't take 15% of the list price (where $10 - (30% + 15%) = *$5.50*). Draft2Digital takes 15% of the net, or the amount paid by Apple _after_ they've taken their 30% (so $10 - 30% = $7 and then $7 - 15% = *$5.94*).

As it happens, 15% of 70% is 10.5%. So 15% of net is _about_ 10% of the gross. All of that is the same math Smashwords uses. From the Smashwords FAQ:



> Our commission is only 15% or less of the net, which works out to slightly under 10% of the retail price when your book sells at our retailers. A $10.00 ebook sold at one of our retail partners earns you $6.00 and earns Smashwords $1.00


Now...there are slight differences between the total you'll bring home from Smashwords and what you'd get from Draft2Digital. For one, Smashwords pays higher royalty for books sold directly through their website. For another, Mark Coker has negotiated different royalty rates with one or two of the vendors. If I recall correctly (and this is off the top of my head), he gets a flat rate from B&N instead of "preferred" and "non-preferred" rates.

Again, depending on your title and the vendor and the day of the week, you might get a slightly better or slightly worse royalty from Smashwords, but it's going to be a matter of pennies per book either way.

That's not a sneaky way of saying "You'll get slightly less from Draft2Digital." I really believe it cuts both ways. But even so, it'll be up to each author/publisher to decide whether those few extra pennies are worth the better formatting, faster reporting, and monthly payments (instead of quarterly) offered by Draft2Digital.

_(Edited to clarify a few things.)_


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

Aaron Pogue said:


> But even so, it'll be up to each author/publisher to decide whether those few extra pennies are worth the better formatting, faster reporting, and monthly payments (instead of quarterly) offered by Draft2Digital.


If the reason to go with SW or D2D is 'service', Draft2Digital wins hands down. Better formatting, faster reporting and monthly payments, yes. But also quick and effective support, no delay in publishing work on the retailers, easy uploading of epubs and word files, no editing of the copyright page necessary, email confirmation per book per retailer of publishing process finalized...

Even if D2D would charge 10% more, which they don't, I'd still prefer their service over that of Smashwords.


----------



## katherinef

Ok, thanks for clarifying that. So I'd lose only 5% in B&N's case because Smashwords has a better deal with them. I hope you'll improve the conversion system. Better formatting would be great, but I'll believe it when I see it. My friend showed me a generated copyright and dedication page, and let's just say that's not how I want it to look. I know that you're just starting the whole thing, so I hope it will be much better in the future.


----------



## 60865

This may be a very naive question but I'm surprised: no one has started a business doing the format conversion and uploading the book to itunes or nook or kobo for a flat fee ?


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

> That should make it easy to fix the problem. If you disagree with Apple's analysis and want to resubmit the book as-is, Draft2Digital would probably need to do their own analysis. (They are bound by the terms of a distribution agreement with Apple, after all), but if Draft2Digital agreed there was some confusion, they would certainly forward that concern to Apple's customer service


That's more than fair. I don't want to submit books to Apple that they don't want, but it's kind of a black box other than no incest/pseudo-incest. All Romance is very restrictive, more so than Apple, but they're also very specific so it's easy to know what to upload or not.

Signing up now.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Lady_O said:


> This may be a very naive question but I'm surprised: no one has started a business doing the format conversion and uploading the book to itunes or nook or kobo for a flat fee ?


Certainly. I've seen several of them, with prices ranging between $150 and $1,500.


----------



## theaatkinson

I only tried 2 books but the process was super easy and very pleasant. the communication is outstanding.

only one small beef and that's that as a Canadian, I can't seem to enter my tax exempt number/status. I hope that gets fixed.

otherwise, a wonderful beginning from my small corner.


----------



## 60865

Aaron Pogue said:


> Certainly. I've seen several of them, with prices ranging between $150 and $1,500.


Thank you, so it's
- 150 upfront at least
or
- 10% of X
and for X to be equal 150 one needs to sell for 1500 worth of books.
So I'll try them and pray I get to pay several times that


----------



## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

From the Smash payments page:

_With few exceptions, you earn 60% of the list price for sales through Smashwords retailers such as Apple, Sony, Diesel, Kobo and Barnes & Noble. _

The exceptions would probably also apply to D2D sales (Apple including VAT in list price and Kobo non-US?Canadian sales).

Way back in the day when Smash first started, Mark would handle many of the support problems personally.

I hope D2D all the best because increased competition is fantastic but it's not fair to compare their customer service during the beta period with that provided by Smashwords that has over 20,000 authors on the books. It will be interesting to see how D2D handle themselves as their service gains traction.


----------



## B. Justin Shier

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> Way back in the day when Smash first started, Mark would handle many of the support problems personally.
> 
> I hope D2D all the best because increased competition is fantastic but it's not fair to compare their customer service during the beta period with that provided by Smashwords that has over 20,000 authors on the books. It will be interesting to see how D2D handle themselves as their service gains traction.


Totally agree. Once a company has established revenue streams, I expect their customer service to improve.

B.


----------



## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

B. Justin Shier said:


> Totally agree. Once a company has established revenue streams, I expect their customer service to improve.
> 
> B.


And yet, the corporate world is littered with companies whose customer service has faltered the bigger they got.

I'm not saying forgive Smash their sins, I'm simply pointing out that (a) Smash pays better royaties, especially in the sub-$2.99 categories, and (b) D2D has yet to even get out of beta.

It may be wiser to reserve judgement until D2D has been in operation a while and we can actually see how they perform. That being said, I'm definitely going to give them a try with some of my longer stuff in the near furure.

Edit: Stupid possessive apostrophes


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> And yet, the corporate world is littered with companies whose customer service has faltered the bigger they got.


So, what are you saying? Go with them while they're still small?


----------



## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

Andrew Ashling said:


> So, what are you saying? Go with them while they're still small?


No, just that it's too early to judge how well they will perform when they are out of beta. How many books will they be able to handle per day without problems? 100? 1000? How will they cope with late paying distributors? Will they themselves pay on time? What happens if iTunes rejects a raft of books with no explanation? They have done it to other distributors, why wouldn't they do it to D2D? What if Amazon sees them as a threat like they do Smash and makes life tough for them? How will they deal with that?

They may handle it all with aplomb and become the gold standard of digital distributors or they may fall in a steaming heap. Only time will tell.

Having said all that, I'm certainly going to give them a try.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> No, just that it's too early to judge how well they will perform when they are out of beta. How many books will they be able to handle per day without problems? 100? 1000? How will they cope with late paying distributors? Will they themselves pay on time? What happens if iTunes rejects a raft of books with no explanation? They have done it to other distributors, why wouldn't they do it to D2D? What if Amazon sees them as a threat like they do Smash and makes life tough for them? How will they deal with that?
> 
> They may handle it all with aplomb and become the gold standard of digital distributors or they may fall in a steaming heap. Only time will tell.
> 
> Having said all that, I'm certainly going to give them a try.


They've taken an excellent start, but for the rest I agree: time will tell. Up until now however, my experiences have been nothing but positive. And that is after waiting for more than a year for SW to follow through on their promise to allow uploading in epub.


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

I don't really require a 21 canon salute from customer service, but when they tell me "yes, we know itunes is giving away your entire book as a sample, but we have no plans to really do anything about it. Perhaps you could tweak your TOC to insert additional points into your 5000 word short story and maybe that will help" which is what Smashwords has done, that's another issue entirely.


----------



## trublue

I had book 4 in "review" Hell for almost a month at Kobo. In less than a day at D2D,
They made it happen. I freaking love them!


----------



## Cover Magic

I'm looking forward to trying this.  To be honest I've neglected my Apple sales at SW.  I just went and took a look, and in addition to finding a few books that were being distributed to B&N and other retailers AGAIN that I'd opted out of (repeatedly), I found that most of my books were being shipped to Apple from 6 days up to 3 months on average after being uploaded, with the worst being two books shipped a month ago that were uploaded 9 months and ELEVEN MONTHS ago!!!

Holy crap!  I had no idea.  These were not "problem" stories.  One needed no changes, one needed a couple of cover revisions, with was completed 9 months ago.  They just sat there for nine months without me realizing it, making me no money at Apple.  And I do pretty well there...over $300 a month.  Imagine how much money I've lost!  OMG

Love Mark Coker, love a lot of things about SW.  But there are problems that authors have been begging for help with:  timely customer service response (or hell, ANY response...I've had two occasions where there were no replies), faster shipping to Apple, and appropriate payment.  (i.e. last quarter Apple sales get reported super-late, and coincidentally right after payment goes out).  None of these things have been fixed and it's been forever.  Someone was bound to come along and improve on what SW is doing, and unfortunately for SW, it's someone ELSE.


----------



## Cover Magic

Oh my goodness!! I just checked, and *only 2/3* of my books are actually _on_ iTunes, despite all but 2 of them being shipped at least 1 month ago, or longer! I am definitely trying D2D.


----------



## Cover Magic

Okay, feedback:

Really HATE HATE HATE that my real name pops up as a contributor. Not cool. I went and edited the name and changed it to my pen name, but that's still not good enough. Whatever you list as your "real" name ends up as a contributor. I do NOT want my pen names linked together in any way, and no matter what I put as my "real" name, it's going to show up as a contributor...there's no way to remove it, that main name seems to be required to be put in.

Also, in the publisher spot, my real name also shows up as a default. In that case, it appears i can choose another name or input another name (hopefully it's only using the one I chose, and not both). But even worse, it's got my actual real name in there even *after *I changed my real name to my pen name in the account settings!

Not acceptable. I'm perfectly capable of typing in the name I choose each time. I don't want auto-fill, or even a drop-down menu. Kobo does auto-fill, and one of these days I'm going to be tired and forget to change it before I publish.

Only other thing I didn't like was when I went back to an earlier step in the publication process, information got lost and I had to re-type it (as sometimes happens when uploading with ARe). Other than that, it all looks good!

I only uploaded the books not on Apple yet. If D2D pays out on time with no problems, I'll probably publish Kobo through them too. It would be worth it, to avoid the every-other-month-if-I'm-lucky Kobo payments!


----------



## Dan Harris

Cool, I just registered. Think I'll use D2D for B&N and iTunes for my next book, and keep going direct to KDP and Kobo. Would be nice to not have to bother creating the Smashwords Word doc.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Cover Magic said:


> Whatever you list as your "real" name ends up as a contributor. I do NOT want my pen names linked together in any way, and no matter what I put as my "real" name, it's going to show up as a contributor...there's no way to remove it, that main name seems to be required to be put in.
> 
> Also, in the publisher spot, my real name also shows up as a default. In that case, it appears i can choose another name or input another name (hopefully it's only using the one I chose, and not both). But even worse, it's got my actual real name in there even *after *I changed my real name to my pen name in the account settings!


Have you submitted that information through the Contact Form? Sounds like a bug and a feature request in one.

The way I understand it, you absolutely should be able to remove yourself as a Contributor once you've added your pen name. If that's not working, they need to get it fixed.

But I can see why you would prefer to be able to set the pen name as the default Contributor. There's already a page for managing the list of Contributors associated with your account. It should be easy enough to add a "Make Default" button on that list. That could also be useful for someone using a Draft2Digital account to publish someone else's work (like Passive Guy, who publishes his wife's romance novels).

As far as the publishers, I _think_ they do have a "Make Default" option. Try visiting the *Account | Manage Publishers* page, and see if that's an option anywhere. If not, that would make sense, too.

I can pass all of that along to the devs. Should be able to get that implemented before the end of Beta.


----------



## NRWick

I can also confirm that on the contributors page, I can add pen names (which are deletable), but my real name shows up and is not deletable. So it is stuck there, which is not good. It's not supposed to be this way?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

It's definitely not supposed to be that way. I'm surprised I never ran into that bug (since I do publish books by other authors). I'll look into it.


----------



## Cover Magic

NRWick: The main name _is_ deletable...sort of. You have to find it in the account section. But it _still _keeps showing up as an option under the publisher drop down menu, keeps defaulting to it, even though I changed my main name to my pen name. On Amazon, you can just type in the author name you want, every time. I prefer it that way. I don't want to be tired and *think* I clicked on my mainstream romance pen name, but instead clicked on my naughty romance pen name...and then I don't discover my mistake until it goes live. 

Otherwise, it's pretty flawless uploading. Just did four titles in record time with no formatting issues. If they can remedy the contributor name issue, it will be perfect. Just leave the field blank, let us type in the contributor name, and select whether it's an author, publisher, illustrator, etc.

All in all, I'm impressed so far. I can't wait to see how fast my titles get up on Apple. One of those books is a pricey one that's doing well elsewhere, so this could really boost my monthly income. Awesome!


----------



## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

Regarding the library distribution, Something like this would be fantastic:

http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/2013/01/06/digital-lending-in-agreement/

The wider we can spread indie distribution, the better off we all shall be.


----------



## 60865

I tried it for one ibook ...


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

Cover Magic said:


> I don't want to be tired and *think* I clicked on my mainstream romance pen name, but instead clicked on my naughty romance pen name...and then I don't discover my mistake until it goes live.


I don't think you want to be tired when uploading any book. Too easy to upload the wrong version or the wrong cover image.

But you're right, I wouldn't want anyone to know I wrote _Captain Smegma and the Tranny from the Sewer of Sorrows_ either.

Oops.


----------



## dalya

AmsterdamAssassin said:


> I don't think you want to be tired when uploading any book. Too easy to upload the wrong version or the wrong cover image.
> 
> But you're right, I wouldn't want anyone to know I wrote _Captain Smegma and the Tranny from the Sewer of Sorrows_ either.
> 
> Oops.


I hate Kobo's autofill.

I also hate GooglePlus, because I set up some websites and they were linked through the [particularly course expletive] Blogger/GPlus account.

I swear these systems are all set up for Suzie-One-Sku and not small publishers, which we are. It's bad enough I have to ruin one of my names with all my dumb opinions, but I don't need to ruin all of them by association.

Thanks, folks, for sharing your experiences. I'll just sit in {expletive} Smashwords limbo-hell for now and hope someone jiggles the handle on my personal toilet of book distribution.


----------



## Aya Ling

Dalya said:


> I hate Kobo's autofill.


Sorry but what is Kobo's autofill?  So far my experience with them has been great--easiest interface I've ever used.


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

Aya Ling said:


> Sorry but what is Kobo's autofill?  So far my experience with them has been great--easiest interface I've ever used.


Autofill is if you hover over a name bracket and the autofill prompts your information. If you write smutporn under an assumed name, it could trip you up when it replaces your pen name with your legal name.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

NRWick said:


> I can also confirm that on the contributors page, I can add pen names (which are deletable), but my real name shows up and is not deletable. So it is stuck there, which is not good. It's not supposed to be this way?


On the topic of undeletable contributor names, I just received this from the lead web developer:



> Aaron,
> 
> I noticed a few people at Kindleboards complained about not being able to remove themselves as a contributor. In the long term (which I really hope to be short term) I'm hoping to add a delete button and refine the edit book page some more. In the short term (which I hope is only the very short term) you might want to tell them they can remove themselves as contributors by clearing out the contributor and role boxes and submitting the form. I always meant to add a delete button as well, it just hasn't happened yet.


I know that you do have to have at least one author set for the form to validate, so make sure to put in your pen name before clearing out your real name. But that should work. If it still doesn't, let them know through the Contact Form. Could be a browser issue or something.

_Edited to Add:_
That's not the end of the solution. The dev team are right now discussing additional options, such as selectable "default" contributor, and the per-user option to clear all defaults so you always have to choose one. It's all sounding pretty promising.


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

I used "edit" to change the real name to the pen name.


----------



## Aya Ling

AmsterdamAssassin said:


> Autofill is if you hover over a name bracket and the autofill prompts your information. If you write smutporn under an assumed name, it could trip you up when it replaces your pen name with your legal name.


Oh I see  Still, I wish Kobo would be a bigger player. It's the only ebook seller I've found that doesn't collect foreign tax--I understand that U.S. companies have to report to the IRS, but it's really annoying to have an additional 30% taken off (my country has no tax treaty ).


----------



## Becca Mills

Okay, I'm just working through the D2D process, which seems awesome, but I have some questions:

1) There's a link to the Kobo for PC app to check out your Kobo book file, but so far as I can tell, there's no way to sideload a file into that app. Beats me if I can figure it out, at any rate. Anyone know how?

2) There's no way to check out what your book will look like on iTunes unless you have a Mac, right? There's no PC version of the ebook app, the way they make iTunes for PC?

3) I was using asterisks to mark scene breaks within chapters, but the conversion from doc to epub stripped them out and replaced them with huge chunks of white space. Is there something I can do to get that not to happen? 

4) I'm not sure my cover image is uploading into D2D. When I browse for the cover image and select it on the "Edit Book Layout" page, nothing shows up in the little gray box to the left of "browse." When I then download the epub and look at it in the Nook PC app, there's no cover image present. The book just has a generic gray "B&N" cover. What am I doing wrong?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Becca Mills said:


> Okay, I'm just working through the D2D process, which seems awesome, but I have some questions:
> 
> 1) There's a link to the Kobo for PC app to check out your Kobo book file, but so far as I can tell, there's no way to sideload a file into that app. Beats me if I can figure it out, at any rate. Anyone know how?
> 
> 2) There's no way to check out what your book will look like on iTunes unless you have a Mac, right? There's no PC version of the ebook app, the way they make iTunes for PC?
> 
> 3) I was using asterisks to mark scene breaks within chapters, but the conversion from doc to epub stripped them out and replaced them with huge chunks of white space. Is there something I can do to get that not to happen?
> 
> 4) I'm not sure my cover image is uploading into D2D. When I browse for the cover image and select it on the "Edit Book Layout" page, nothing shows up in the little gray box to the left of "browse." When I then download the epub and look at it in the Nook PC app, there's no cover image present. The book just has a generic gray "B&N" cover. What am I doing wrong?


First, let me say that I have no problem whatsoever with critical discussion of the service in this thread. I'm deeply interested in all your experiences, and I'm sure some of the others following this conversation feel the same way.

That said, I'd also encourage you (and everyone else running into technical problems) to use the Contact Form on the website to send this information to the developers. Most of these issues sound like technical problems (especially the cover upload problem), and I'm pretty confident the developers could solve those for you (and improve the service in the process).

I'm doing my best to keep track of everything that gets mentioned here (since they do listen to my recommendations on User Experience), but you'll get faster results contacting them directly, and I've heard a few other users say it's a relatively pleasant experience.

If I'm wrong, definitely let me know.


----------



## Becca Mills

Aaron Pogue said:


> First, let me say that I have no problem whatsoever with critical discussion of the service in this thread. I'm deeply interested in all your experiences, and I'm sure some of the others following this conversation feel the same way.
> 
> That said, I'd also encourage you (and everyone else running into technical problems) to use the Contact Form on the website to send this information to the developers. Most of these issues sound like technical problems (especially the cover upload problem), and I'm pretty confident the developers could solve those for you (and improve the service in the process).
> 
> I'm doing my best to keep track of everything that gets mentioned here (since they do listen to my recommendations on User Experience), but you'll get faster results contacting them directly, and I've heard a few other users say it's a relatively pleasant experience.
> 
> If I'm wrong, definitely let me know.


Hi, Aaron. Yeah, I did send them through the contact form, too. Thought someone else who's gone through the process might be able to answer one or all of these, as others seem to have had no trouble with it. Happy to wait on a response from the developers, though!


----------



## Becca Mills

JRHenderson said:


> Hi Becca. There's actually no Mac version of the iBooks app-you can only preview the ePub you want to upload to the iBookstore on an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. Hence my purchase (yesterday) of an iPad, despite already owning a Mac Mini.


Thanks for clarifying that, JR. I'll just have to wrestle some unfortunate iPhone user to the ground and download my book for a peek.

Oh, wait. Husband has a Touch! And he doesn't even mind being wrestled down.


----------



## jimkukral

Congrats on this. Just signed up for the beta. I love tools that make things easier. That's what we all need! Good for you for developing something better/faster/stronger. Good business!


----------



## Dan Harris

Oh, I meant to mention: some equivalent of the Smashwords coupon function would be great, if that could be implemented. They're very useful for LIbraryThing free giveaways, etc.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Dan Harris said:


> Oh, I meant to mention: some equivalent of the Smashwords coupon function would be great, if that could be implemented. They're very useful for LIbraryThing free giveaways, etc.


How would you like to see that work? I haven't used Smashwords or LibraryThing enough to guess at the necessary mechanics.

Since Draft2Digital doesn't have a storefront (and no immediate plans to implement one), the literal analogy to "coupons" doesn't work as easily as it does at Smashwords.

It would be easy to allow a Draft2Digital publisher to send a free copy of a given book to a given email address. Is that sufficient? Another possibility would be to enable a per-coupon landing page with a book (or set of books) from which the visitor can choose to download one for free. (Anything other than free would be pretty complicated without a store.)


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

Aaron Pogue said:


> How would you like to see that work? I haven't used Smashwords or LibraryThing enough to guess at the necessary mechanics.
> 
> Since Draft2Digital doesn't have a storefront (and no immediate plans to implement one), the literal analogy to "coupons" doesn't work as easily as it does at Smashwords.
> 
> It would be easy to allow a Draft2Digital publisher to send a free copy of a given book to a given email address. Is that sufficient? Another possibility would be to enable a per-coupon landing page with a book (or set of books) from which the visitor can choose to download one for free. (Anything other than free would be pretty complicated without a store.)


A couple of retailers have coupons or promo codes available to authors - if I go to iTunes Connect, I can download the promo codes for my books.


----------



## Dan Harris

Aaron Pogue said:


> Another possibility would be to enable a per-coupon landing page with a book (or set of books) from which the visitor can choose to download one for free.


I was thinking something like this, yeah. One of the nice things about SW is the choice of formats - Kindle users can grab a MOBI copy, Nook users an EPUB, weirdos a PDF 

Does D2D create MOBI files as well as EPUBS? And if the author uploads their own EPUB, would they run it through something like Kindlegen to create the MOBI version too?

Cheers!


----------



## Cover Magic

Holy crap--two of the four books I uploaded are live on iTunes already. ALREADY!!



And they pay monthly.

SW is toast.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Cover Magic said:


> Holy crap--two of the four books I uploaded are live on iTunes already. ALREADY!!
> 
> 
> 
> And they pay monthly.
> 
> SW is toast.


Yep. 



.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Dan Harris said:


> Does D2D create MOBI files as well as EPUBS? And if the author uploads their own EPUB, would they run it through something like Kindlegen to create the MOBI version too?


Draft2Digital provides epub and mobi downloads. For books processed through our conversion software (so, Word .doc uploads as opposed to user-provided epubs), they can also produce PDFs. Including CreateSpace-ready PDFs for paperback publishing.

Anyway! I was thinking Draft2Digital could just send an email with all three formats attached, and recipients could choose the one that best fits their device.


----------



## Amanda Brice

Aaron Pogue said:


> Anyway! Our site is currently in a beta, and we need more test cases. We need more users, and we need more books to put through our conversion process. I've spoken with the development team, and they've agreed to open up the beta to anyone from Kindleboards who wants to sign up. Just go to the registration page, provide your email address, and *you should hear back with an access code almost immediately*.
> 
> Let me know how it goes. I'm their User Experience adviser, so I'd love to hear about your experience. Ask me if you have any questions or recommendations for future features. If you have any actual problems using the site, use the contact page to notify the developers, and chances are good they'll get it fixed in a hurry. That's what the beta is for.
> 
> If you're at all interested, sign up for a beta account and see what you think. There's no cost, no commitment, and the whole thing is really easy to use.


How quickly should we hear back with the access code? Are there still beta invitations available?


----------



## Dan Harris

Aaron Pogue said:


> Anyway! I was thinking Draft2Digital could just send an email with all three formats attached, and recipients could choose the one that best fits their device.


Good news on the formats, thanks.

The main reason I think it would it better to have a page to send the user to (e.g. www.draft2digital.com/coupons/P12345) is that it takes over-zealous email spam filters out of the equation. Some email servers reject emails over 5MB in size, too, and a couple of large MOBI and EPUB files could conceivably hit that.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Dan Harris said:


> The main reason I think it would it better to have a page to send the user to, is that it takes over-zealous email spam filters out of the equation. Some email servers reject emails over 5MB in size, too, and a couple of large MOBI and EPUB files could conceivably hit that.


That's some very solid reasoning. It won't be a trivial addition, but it's definitely doable. I'll discuss it with the dev team next time we meet.


----------



## dalya

AmsterdamAssassin said:


> Autofill is if you hover over a name bracket and the autofill prompts your information. If you write smutporn under an assumed name, it could trip you up when it replaces your pen name with your legal name.


KOBO actually puts my initial account's publisher name and my mortal name into the fields, so I have to delete them and put in my tentacle-unicorn-porn stuff manually.

To further complicate matters, I am always drunk and tired when I upload a new book.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Dalya said:


> To further complicate matters, I am always drunk and tired when I upload a new book.


That's how I write.


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

Dalya said:


> To further complicate matters, I am always drunk and tired when I upload a new book.


I'm not saying you can't upload a book drunk and tired. I just think it would be in your best interest to wait until you're sober and fresh, but perhaps you're always drunk and tired. The banality of life drives many authors to addiction and insomnia. Not me though, I'm always sober and chipper. And just slightly homicidal.


----------



## Cliff Ball

I uploaded all of my titles on Sunday. By Monday afternoon, Kris from customer service e-mailed me corrections that they had to make to my Word docs, and then I re-uploaded the same day. I even asked a couple questions about formatting, and the response was quick, within a few minutes of my asking. By this afternoon, all but 3 of my titles were now available on Apple. So far, I'm impressed, and I don't impress easily.

Now, I've got to figure out when I should stop Smashwords from distributing to Apple.....


----------



## WillemThomas

Quick question: Has D2D done a payment cycle using direct deposits, yet?

Love to make the switch from Smashwords' limited single digital payment option (Paypal - yuck), and getting paid only 4 times per year, as opposed to 12.

Willem Thomas


----------



## Aaron Pogue

WillemThomas said:


> Quick question: Has D2D done a payment cycle using direct deposits, yet?


I have been receiving all my payments from them as direct deposit for several months now. It's gone off without a hitch.


----------



## WillemThomas

Aaron Pogue said:


> I have been receiving all my payments from them as direct deposit for several months now. It's gone off without a hitch.


*BEAUTIFUL*! This would be the single greatest feature that would get me to switch, as I'm not a fan of being locked into receiving payments from Paypal. Unless Smashwords can offer this *immediately*, I'll be moving my titles over to D2D.

12 payments a year beats 4 hands down. 

Willem Thomas


----------



## thaliafrost

Uploaded a book tonight and love this so far! I hate navigating multiple sites, but it was time to do something other than self pubbing all/only with Amazon. Yay! Thanks for telling us about this Draft2Digital. I can't wait till they have distribution to AllRomanceebooks, too. I already sent a suggestion.


----------



## Lady Vine

I just wanted to say a huge thanks for telling us about this program. It's easy, fast and effective. As a test run I uploaded only one of my titles, and it took 3 days for it to appear in B&N! 3 days. It would have appeared on iTunes in a day but there was a problem with my category choice, which I was informed about and rectified promptly. 

I am incredibly impressed with this program. No more waiting 6 weeks for a book to appear on B&N, or waiting a month for changes to take effect. Smashwords is dated, slow and has run its course. Why should we have to wait so long for sales reports or payments? 

I opted out of the major retailers the minute I saw my book in B&N, and uploaded everything to D2D in under 15 minutes. Now the trouble will be how long Smashwords takes to remove the books from those retailers...  

P.S. I second the request for Allromanceebooks. Although I have an account with them, I'm unable to change my publisher name for my... ahem... naughtier titles, so I can't upload those unless I use an intermediary.


----------



## WillemThomas

Lady Vine said:


> P.S. I second the request for Allromanceebooks. Although I have an account with them, I'm unable to change my publisher name for my... ahem... naughtier titles, so I can't upload those unless I use an intermediary.


/third that request!

Willem Thomas


----------



## Victoria Champion

Just submitted my email to get an invite (author @ victoriachampion.com). Hope I get in to the beta asap! I need help uploading to iTunes. This sounds like exactly the service I need.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Aaron Pogue said:


> Just go to the registration page, provide your email address, and you should hear back with an access code almost immediately.


For what it's worth, that statement was completely accurate when I posted it (10 short days ago). The response has been incredible! The developers at Draft2Digital launched the beta hoping to get sample documents (so they could see how other authors formatted their manuscripts), to see what features authors wanted, and to make sure the system worked.

You guys have really come through. I've heard from some of you, and now from the developers as well, that they're no longer immediately accepting new beta users. They've had a ton of great feedback and now they're working as hard as they can to get it all implemented. They want to make sure everyone in the beta has a good experience, and to make sure they've fixed all the known bugs before anyone new runs into them.

That doesn't mean you're out of luck. They're committed to extending the service to as many people as possible. You just might have to wait a few days for your invitation. Even through they're not activating accounts just yet, they are still collecting email addresses and they'll activate them on a first-come, first-served basis. So go ahead and sign up.

In the meantime, whether you're in the beta or not, I'd love for you to comment in this thread and let me know how you _want_ a service like Draft2Digital to work. I've learned a lot from the conversation so far, and I'm sure you guys can come up with even more gems.


----------



## Amanda Brice

Aaron Pogue said:


> In the meantime, whether you're in the beta or not, I'd love for you to comment in this thread and let me know how you _want_ a service like Draft2Digital to work. I've learned a lot from the conversation so far, and I'm sure you guys can come up with even more gems.


I mentioned it on a different thread, but it would be amazing if you could work out a system to split payments amongst co-authors. KDP, PubIt, Kobo, Smashwords, ARe...all of these are set up to work with individual authors (or at least with individual publishers). So if you do an anthology or write with a co-author, then one author uploads the book and receives all the royalties and pays her co-authors and issues 1099s.

Which is fine, of course, but things happen. Death, illness, life gets in the way. I know some authors who have used their literary agency's distribution service to get around this, since the agency has an accountant and a system to split the payments. But lots of indie authors don't have agents.

I know it would take some work to figure it out, but as long as you're asking for input, I figured I should ask.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Amanda Brice said:


> I mentioned it on a different thread, but it would be amazing if you could work out a system to split payments amongst co-authors. KDP, PubIt, Kobo, Smashwords, ARe...all of these are set up to work with individual authors (or at least with individual publishers). So if you do an anthology or write with a co-author, then one author uploads the book and receives all the royalties and pays her co-authors and issues 1099s.
> 
> Which is fine, of course, but things happen. Death, illness, life gets in the way. I know some authors who have used their literary agency's distribution service to get around this, since the agency has an accountant and a system to split the payments. But lots of indie authors don't have agents.
> 
> I know it would take some work to figure it out, but as long as you're asking for input, I figured I should ask.


It will take some time, but I love this suggestion. (I've already seconded it with the developers.) I did a revenue-sharing deal for the cover art on one of my short stories published through Draft2Digital, and it would be awesome if they would handle paying him his monthly portion instead of trying to remember to take care of it myself.

That's the main thing I'm loving about the beta so far. This is something I probably wouldn't have thought of myself, and something I'd have had a hard time convincing the devs there was a broader need for, but when it comes from other KB authors, it carries a lot of extra weight.


----------



## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

Is an ISBN a requirement to publish on D2D or is it just for certain retailers? Writers having to supply their own ISBN could be a major impediment to using the service for everyone but the Canadians.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> Is an ISBN a requirement to publish on D2D or is it just for certain retailers? Writers having to supply their own ISBN could be a major impediment to using the service for everyone but the Canadians.


Currently Draft2Digital does not require an ISBN for anything. If you provide one, they'll attach it to your book, but otherwise they just use the vendor-provided ID.

When they get a distribution deal worked out with Sony (who still require ISBNs), Draft2Digital will require you to provide an ISBN in order to select Sony as a sales channel, but otherwise you'll still be able to publish without one.

That's my understanding, anyway. I've published my last nine books (and a handful of short stories) without touching the ISBNs still available in my block.


----------



## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

Fantastic. Thanks for the quick reply.


----------



## Lady Vine

Just thinking, having an inbox would be very useful. That way you'll be able to view all of your emails from the team without logging in to your email account.


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

Just FYI, I got a notice that several uploads were now published. They aren't. They're erotica, which I understand the Central Scrutinizer at Apple needs to evaluate for whether or not they meet the moral standards of a company that prided itself on using Chinese slave labor. I know that's not your fault, but on some level, it's misleading and could be confusing so you might want to adjust when you send the emails or what you say in them.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Katie Elle said:


> Just FYI, I got a notice that several uploads were now published. They aren't. They're erotica, which I understand the Central Scrutinizer at Apple needs to evaluate for whether or not they meet the moral standards of a company that prided itself on using Chinese slave labor. I know that's not your fault, but on some level, it's misleading and could be confusing so you might want to adjust when you send the emails or what you say in them.


Looks like it may not be just erotica. I uploaded the first episode of my series Monday (a book I've tried for 6 months to get into Apple through SW and have never received an answer from anyone why it's not being published), received notification it was being published Tues. On Wed am, I receive a note from D2D providing the reason Apple rejected it (talk about quick and open!), that is, I had links to other vendors where the book is for sale (a bit confused because that "vendor" was my own website). Last night received another email saying it was live on the Apple site (I hadn't touched the file) and provided a link which didn't seem to work.

I love the speed and responsiveness, as well as the willingness of D2D to provide information SW seems to think isn't important to us. The confusion I'm experiencing now is nothing compared with my frustration with SW. I'm cautiously optimistic that the information accuracy will improve while the flow remains as good as it has been.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Katie Elle said:


> Just FYI, I got a notice that several uploads were now published. They aren't.


Checked with the devs, and apparently Apple made some changes to their search tools yesterday that introduced a bug (on their end) that then introduced a bug (on our end). Kris tells me it's fixed now, but if anyone runs into the problem again, contact Customer Support to let them know.


----------



## Dan Harris

I'm getting a bit peeved with SW's support, so I think I'll move Ascension Point over to D2D now. I'm selling nothing on Diesel or Sony, so I can live without them.

Does anyone know/have suggestions on when I should unpublish on SW? Before I publish on D2D, or wait until confirmation that the D2D versions are published?


----------



## Cege Smith

I've submitted my email to (hopefully) get an invitation to test this service out. I plan to pilot it with the omnibus of my Shadows books- delighted by the idea that I can get into Apple without using SW.


----------



## SBJones

I submitted an email for beta access a couple days ago.  No invitation yet.  Looks like viable alternative to Smashwords.  I'm not keen on some of their interior demands like putting their name in the copyright page as the "Smashwords edition".  They are already taking a cut of the sales and I have to provide free advertising for them.  Then making me wait a week to tell me that I can't have two chapter 8s in my time travel book.  Then approve one book but not the other because my author name is not on the cover.  Name isn't on either cover...


----------



## Dan Harris

Uploaded Ascension Point to D2D at 1PM today, and it was available on iTunes 8 hours later. That's pretty speedy. Still waiting on B&N, but I'm sure it won't be long.

International authors: Kris in D2D customer support happily accepted a signed scanned W8-BEN form for IRS compliance. No need to post a paper copy.


----------



## dalya

Dan Harris said:


> Uploaded Ascension Point to D2D at 1PM today, and it was available on iTunes 8 hours later. That's pretty speedy. Still waiting on B&N, but I'm sure it won't be long.
> 
> International authors: Kris in D2D customer support happily accepted a signed scanned W8-BEN form for IRS compliance. No need to post a paper copy.


WHY AM I STILL ON SMASHWORDS? oh, right, no beta account yet for me.


----------



## 41413

Smashwords is ticking me off, and I don't have a beta key for D2D. 

Who do I have to lick around here to get into the beta??


----------



## Cliff Ball

With D2D, my novels on iTunes are all listed together for once, unlike through Smashwords, which somehow had separate places to find my novels.


----------



## Pnjw

Regarding beta code: Did ya ask for one:

https://www.draft2digital.com/beta

I would do this, except I go direct with everyone already except Sony.


----------



## Pnjw

I also want to say I just looked at this thread for the first time tonight, and this looks freakin' awesome!


----------



## 41413

Deanna Chase said:


> Regarding beta code: Did ya ask for one:
> 
> https://www.draft2digital.com/beta
> 
> I would do this, except I go direct with everyone already except Sony.


I did indeed, but it has been, like, HOURS. Hours, I say! I wilt without instant gratification.


----------



## SBJones

I got my beta invite, Thank you.  
I'll have to play with it some more, but after a trial upload of my word doc for my third book,  I couldn't get the converted file to resemble anything like what I already have up on Amazon.  My title page was chopped in half and everything above my author name was simply missing, my quote page from the previous book was chopped into separate pages and half bold, half not bold text.  None of it should be bold and all on the same page.  An extra table of contents was generated, I assume by word's auto TOC generator (that's what it looks like to me) as it was a couple pages of linked text thrown at the end of the ebook.  I use a custom graphic for my chapter titles.  Some were gone and there were random page breaks tossed in.

I would be nice if I could upload the .prc file that mobi pocket creator makes, because that looks sweet in on the Kindle.


----------



## Pnjw

smreine said:


> I did indeed, but it has been, like, HOURS. Hours, I say! I wilt without instant gratification.


I suspected that was the case. The wilting part.


----------



## AnitaDobs

I've just 'unchannelled' two of my latest on SW for B&N and Apple before they were approved for the premium catalogue and sent through. The way I figure it, as long as I get a beta code before 6 weeks I'm winning... cos' that's usually how long it takes for them to arrive at the two, as oppossed to D2D's 1-2 days from what I'm seeing.

They can have the extra 5% if they are fast and pay by the month. I'll buy that for a dollar... 

Half of my titles aren't even up on B&N yet; one's that are, a few have decided to go commando i.e uncovered. Butt naked. It's indecent.


----------



## Lady Vine

AnitaDobs said:


> I've just 'unchannelled' two of my latest on SW for B&N and Apple before they were approved for the premium catalogue and sent through. The way I figure it, as long as I get a beta code before 6 weeks I'm winning... cos' that's usually how long it takes for them to arrive at the two, as oppossed to D2D's 1-2 days from what I'm seeing.
> 
> They can have the extra 5% if they are fast and pay by the month. I'll buy that for a dollar...
> 
> Half of my titles aren't even up on B&N yet; one's that are, a few have decided to go commando i.e uncovered. Butt naked. It's indecent.


Yep, same here. It took so long to get them up on B&N only to find that they're incomplete. I hope Smashwords is speedier getting things removed than it is putting them up.

I wish D2D had been there 5 months ago when I started out. But it's here now, that's the most important thing.


----------



## Dan Harris

JRHenderson said:


> This is interesting. Anything that assists the "withheld taxes" process will make D2D very attractive to non-Americans...


Absolutely. I asked if it was OK first, using the contact form on the site, and Kris emailed me back within a couple of hours to say it was fine. Nice customer support, too.


----------



## Victoria Champion

I've been waiting for a beta code for days, so you all be patient. Who knows how long this will take.


----------



## Dan Harris

Dan Harris said:


> Uploaded Ascension Point to D2D at 1PM today, and it was available on iTunes 8 hours later. That's pretty speedy. Still waiting on B&N, but I'm sure it won't be long.


(Flagrant self-quoting.)

FYI, my book's now live on B&N as well. Took about a day and a half. Not bad at all.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Dan Harris said:


> (Flagrant self-quoting.)
> 
> FYI, my book's now live on B&N as well. Took about a day and a half. Not bad at all.


Certainly not if you compare it to how long it takes XinXii: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,138919.0.html

ETA

I quoted 36 hours on average, which amounts to&#8230; 1½ days.


----------



## Midnight Writer

You have a book uploaded to Apple via Smashwords. You move it to D2D to upload it to Apple. Will the book lose the review rating, rank, and also-boughts or will that info transfer to the D2D version once the SW version has been removed?

Also, how does this work for B&N and Kobo (info lost or transferred)?

I've never seen a definitive answer on this. Anybody know?


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

Lanette Curington said:


> You have a book uploaded to Apple via Smashwords. You move it to D2D to upload it to Apple. Will the book lose the review rating, rank, and also-boughts or will that info transfer to the D2D version once the SW version has been removed?
> 
> Also, how does this work for B&N and Kobo (info lost or transferred)?
> 
> I've never seen a definitive answer on this. Anybody know?


I think you lose ratings, etcetera, because you effectively re-publish your book.


----------



## Becca Mills

SBJones said:


> I got my beta invite, Thank you.
> I'll have to play with it some more, but after a trial upload of my word doc for my third book, I couldn't get the converted file to resemble anything like what I already have up on Amazon. My title page was chopped in half and everything above my author name was simply missing, my quote page from the previous book was chopped into separate pages and half bold, half not bold text. None of it should be bold and all on the same page. An extra table of contents was generated, I assume by word's auto TOC generator (that's what it looks like to me) as it was a couple pages of linked text thrown at the end of the ebook. I use a custom graphic for my chapter titles. Some were gone and there were random page breaks tossed in.
> 
> I would be nice if I could upload the .prc file that mobi pocket creator makes, because that looks sweet in on the Kindle.


SB, I encourage you to email the D2D support folks abt the above. I did regarding some tech issues, and they were amazingly responsive.

Sent from my LG-VS700 using Tapatalk 2


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Lanette Curington said:


> You have a book uploaded to Apple via Smashwords. You move it to D2D to upload it to Apple. Will the book lose the review rating, rank, and also-boughts or will that info transfer to the D2D version once the SW version has been removed?
> 
> Also, how does this work for B&N and Kobo (info lost or transferred)?
> 
> I've never seen a definitive answer on this. Anybody know?


I don't know about Apple, but I've seen others on this thread say the information disappears and they probably know what they're talking about.

I don't know about Kobo or Kindle, either, but I can answer definitively for B&N, because we went through the process when I transferred all my books from my own PubIt account to Draft2Digital's.

With PubIt, if they recognize the new book as another edition of the old one, they'll attach it to the old database info. So, in order words, when I republished Taming Fire, the book's page at B&N showed 1 paperback edition and 2 Nook editions (my own, and the Draft2Digital one). Then I canceled my old listing, and that edition disappeared but the database info (rank and customer reviews) stayed on the second book.

Just to be safe, I was very careful every time to make sure

Author name was identical
Title was identical
Publisher was identical
And there was some overlap--that is, I waited until the book was all the way up through Draft2Digital before I canceled the one I had through PubIt

I have no idea how many of those criteria are actually necessary, but I repeated that exact process for 20 titles and it went off without a hitch.

If I had to guess, based just on what I've seen of their sales pages, I think Amazon _might_ work the same way, and Kobo probably wouldn't.


----------



## 41413

I know one gent who switched from SW Apple distribution to direct distribution on Apple, and he lost all of his zillions of glowing reviews. He talked with Apple support on the phone and they couldn't do anything about it.

B&N is much better about keeping reviews.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

smreine said:


> I know one gent who switched from SW Apple distribution to direct distribution on Apple, and he lost all of his zillions of glowing reviews. He talked with Apple support on the phone and they couldn't do anything about it.
> 
> B&N is much better about keeping reviews.


Um, yeah. Guess that's not a concern of mine. No reviews!


----------



## Midnight Writer

Thanks for all the answers--AmsterdamAssassin, Aaron, and SMReine. I guess I'll have to do it on a book-by-book basis. I do have a few that have reviews and such on different vendors that I wouldn't want to lose. Others, zilch, so nothing lost if I switch them.


----------



## dalya

One of my pen names got an invite, and the stories were up on B&N SO FAST I almost couldn't believe it was happening.

I FELT LIKE A HUMAN BEING! I FELT LIKE A CUSTOMER!

It was such a nice feeling.

In the meantime, I had a "help me" email in to The Other Place and still haven't heard back.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Dalya said:


> One of my pen names got an invite, and the stories were up on B&N SO FAST I almost couldn't believe it was happening.
> 
> I FELT LIKE A HUMAN BEING! I FELT LIKE A CUSTOMER!
> 
> It was such a nice feeling.
> 
> In the meantime, I had a "help me" email in to The Other Place and still haven't heard back.


I'm so glad to see some of you having a great experience with the service. I love using Draft2Digital, but then, it was sort of tailor-made to me.

Thanks to the huge response to the beta so far, the developers are learning a _lot_ about how to modify the service for something more closely resembling the "general public." One of the big things they discovered is that the conversion process doesn't handle short fiction nearly as well as it does the doorstop fantasy novels I specialize in.

Luckily, the devs now have hundreds of source documents to test against, so it's just a matter of tweaking the process. I'm optimistic that they'll have the whole thing working perfectly for short fiction by mid-week (but then, I do tend to run several degrees too far on the "optimism" scale).

Anyway, for those of you still waiting, I understand a bunch more beta invitations went out Friday, and I believe they're planning to release another batch tomorrow.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Aaron Pogue said:


> I'm so glad to see some of you having a great experience with the service. I love using Draft2Digital, but then, it was sort of tailor-made to me.


And it keeps getting faster. I uploaded the last of my books yesterday and it appeared on B&N within 20 hours. I read in another thread that people seem to think fourteen days quite reasonable.


----------



## Nope

.


----------



## Becca Mills

C.C. Kelly said:


> Am I to understand that writers have to be invited to use D2D?


Yeah, see this thread's OP. D2D has invited KB authors to use the service as testers.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

C.C. Kelly said:


> Am I to understand that writers have to be invited to use D2D?


That's not the long-term plan at all. It's just in a beta phase right now while the developers try to discover and work out any technical problems before the public launch, so they're trying to bring in people a little bit at a time.


----------



## Carl246

I released one yesterday that was on B&N six hours later. Wow, did I really type that. lol

These speeds are unheard of.

Carl


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Aaron Pogue said:


> That's not the long-term plan at all. It's just in a beta phase right now while the developers try to discover and work out any technical problems before the public launch, so they're trying to bring in people a little bit at a time.


Apparently one of my subs broke something in their system. No, really. Disaster clings to me like doo on a shoe.


----------



## David Thayer

I'm waiting for my code. I'd like to use the service to access Apple.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Saul Tanpepper said:


> Apparently one of my subs broke something in their system.


The devs keep reminding me that "breaking their system" is what a beta test is _for_.

I keep wanting them to add more people and just pretend the service is already live, and forgetting that this system could still cause all kinds of formatting problems. (Problems these developers can certainly fix, but it'll take some time.)

Your submissions (and feedback concerning the problems) has been really helpful. We need everything that can break the system to break the system while people are still willing to give them some leeway for being in a beta.


----------



## 41413

The fact that D2D in beta is reportedly better than Smashwords out of beta says a lot, I think.


----------



## Lady Vine

Yeah, the B&N publishing speed is ridiculously quick. I thought it was a joke at first, but now I'm used to seeing things up in 6-8 hours. And to think I used to wait 6-8 weeks through Smashwords. I'm curious; what is Smashwords' excuse for taking so long?

There are a couple of things that I'd like to see added on D2D, if they haven't already been suggested: a) reports that show which retailer the sales originated from, and b) revenue earned so far to be displayed. At the moment the sales are aggregated, so you don't know where they're coming from. 

Aside from that, I'm very happy with the service and have already started making sales.


----------



## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

The hating on Smash is inappropriate, considering they paved the path upon which D2D is currently  walking. It's good to have an alternative, but performance in beta is not a good guide on what it will be like live.

We shouldn't make the mistake of expecting too much and then being disappointed when those expectations are not met. D2D may develop the best distribution system for ebooks, but they are still at the mercy of others and their two major partners, Apple and Amazon, are not known for their mercy.


----------



## 41413

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> The hating on Smash is inappropriate...


Considering what most authors have suffered at the hands of Smashwords, not even including their horrendous, so-called "customer service," I think hating on them is perfectly appropriate.


----------



## Lady Vine

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> The hating on Smash is inappropriate, considering they paved the path upon which D2D is currently walking. It's good to have an alternative, but performance in beta is not a good guide on what it will be like live.
> 
> We shouldn't make the mistake of expecting too much and then being disappointed when those expectations are not met. D2D may develop the best distribution system for ebooks, but they are still at the mercy of others and their two major partners, Apple and Amazon, are not known for their mercy.


No one's hating, we're simply pointing out its flaws. That's how businesses improve and grow, or not.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> The hating on Smash is inappropriate, considering they paved the path upon which D2D is currently walking. It's good to have an alternative, but performance in beta is not a good guide on what it will be like live.
> 
> We shouldn't make the mistake of expecting too much and then being disappointed when those expectations are not met. D2D may develop the best distribution system for ebooks, but they are still at the mercy of others and their two major partners, Apple and Amazon, are not known for their mercy.


The complaints regarding SW aren't anything new. It's just become apparent that the problems SW is experiencing are completely inexcusable. I think everyone here realizes the speed and responsiveness of D2D in this beta phase won't necessarily be matched when they go live (beta testers in KWL witnessed problems when that program went live, but Kobo has since recovered). It may very well be that D2D's system gets bogged down after their live launch. But SW has been live for years and their service has been consistent only in one aspect: inconsistency.

So, yes, the complaints are valid.

We'll have to wait to see what happens to D2D in the coming months. My bet is they'll learn from Mark's mistakes. The question is, will Mark?


----------



## ruecole

Just got my first sale through D2D! Dunno if it was thru Nook or iTunes, but my book's been on both sites for less than a week!!!!

Rue


----------



## dalya

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> The hating on Smash is inappropriate, considering they paved the path upon which D2D is currently walking. It's good to have an alternative, but performance in beta is not a good guide on what it will be like live.


How did SW "pave the path"? Is D2D using their source code?



Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> We shouldn't make the mistake of expecting too much and then being disappointed when those expectations are not met. D2D may develop the best distribution system for ebooks, but they are still at the mercy of others and their two major partners, Apple and Amazon, are not known for their mercy.


AUTHORS? GET DISAPPOINTED?

Hey, it's cool to root for the underdog and stuff, but for some authors, their book income is their livelihood. If a company doesn't deliver on the promises they make and somebody's kids have to go without dinner, that's no joke. It's been several years now of The Vendor Who Shall Not Be Named doing that. I am not just repeating what other people say. I've had personal experiences of being d*cked around. Requests for help/support ignored.


----------



## Betsy the Quilter

GC, you're always so shy and retiring and reticent to voice your feelings.  It's what I like most about you.  

As for the thread, I haven't read every word, but if people have had issues with a business, they're allowed to discuss them here on KB in a civil manner; just as they would be able to post complimentary things about a business here.  I haven't seen anything in this thread that goes over the line.

Betsy


----------



## AnitaDobs

Betsy the Quilter said:


> I haven't seen anything in this thread that goes over the line.
> 
> Betsy


Don't worry. There's still time.


----------



## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

Dalya said:


> How did SW "pave the path"? Is D2D using their source code?


By showing that it is possible for an organisation to make money distributing indie authors to retail channels. As far as I know, Smashwords is the only company to do so successfully.


----------



## Nathan Elliott

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> By showing that it is possible for an organisation to make money distributing indie authors to retail channels. As far as I know, Smashwords is the only company to do so successfully.


I think one could also argue that Mark Coker has set a lot of precedents that will enable D2D and other comers to quickly make deals by contacting folks and saying "Hey, we want to do something similar to what Smashwords already does with you." (libraries, retailers, maybe Bowker, etc) D2D sounds awesome--I don't mean to take anything away from what they have accomplished--but I do think we owe Mark and SW some recognition and credit for what they have done. That is not to say that anyone has to stay with SW if it feels like a bad career move, but whatever choices need to be made, I plan on remaining grateful for the trailblazing that they've done.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Nathan Elliott said:


> I think one could also argue that Mark Coker has set a lot of precedents that will enable D2D and other comers to quickly make deals by contacting folks and saying "Hey, we want to do something similar to what Smashwords already does with you." (libraries, retailers, maybe Bowker, etc) D2D sounds awesome--I don't mean to take anything away from what they have accomplished--but I do think we owe Mark and SW some recognition and credit for what they have done. That is not to say that anyone has to stay with SW if it feels like a bad career move, but whatever choices need to be made, I plan on remaining grateful for the trailblazing that they've done.


I don't think anyone is taking anything away from what SW accomplished. Mark got the ball rolling, but then (to stretch the metaphor) dropped it.


----------



## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

Saul Tanpepper said:


> I don't think anyone is taking anything away from what SW accomplished. Mark got the ball rolling, but then (to stretch the metaphor) dropped it.


We're probably a little OT here, but how has he dropped it?

They are still the only company to have successfully distributed indie books en masse to retailers. D2D is planning to emulate Smashwords but have yet to launch their service, Xinxii feels dead, and All Romance is more a retailer than distributer despite claiming to be able to get books into Apple. There were also reports in the online media/blosphere of a $40,000 distribution by Smash to a library group - something that no other distributor has even thought of.

Smashwords has sent thousands of dollars of royalties my way. Only Amazon matches their contribution to my bottom line. As a business person, I'll take performance to potential every day of the week.

At the moment, Smashwords has no competition. When D2D launches their site and starts paying royalties, then we can start talking about how they are better than Smash. Until then, it's all just baseless speculation.


----------



## MarkCoker

Hey all, my ears have been burning up.  Some of the anger and ill-will expressed here is disheartening, and some of it is simply untrue.  Contemptuous?  Condescending?  It's unfortunate that the vitriol spread here will dissuade some authors from giving Smashwords a chance.  We're not perfect and never will be, but we'll never stop improving our ability to serve our authors and retailers.  It would be disingenuous to say I welcome more competition, because I don't.  We have plenty already.  But I can tell you all competition energizes us and makes us better, and for that I'm grateful.  As much as it can hurt to hear it, I'm grateful for the criticism we receive as well.  Some of it is deserved, and will help light our way forward.  Welcome, D2D, and good luck.

mark


----------



## Aaron Pogue

I know we've got several people in this thread who would like to challenge Mark about some of the more frustrating shortcomings of his service (especially now that he's made an appearance here), but if the thread devolves into a debate over such things, I'm worried it'll get locked and we won't have such a convenient centralized location to discuss beta issues and favorite features of Draft2Digital.

Maybe the forum needs a separate thread to compare and contrast the two services. Maybe (as Herc suggests) we're three months too early to even start that conversation.

Either way, I'd prefer to keep _this_ conversation focused on Draft2Digital.com.

In the interest of that goal I'd like to offer a point of clarification concerning D2D, just because I've seen a lot of confusion on the topic elsewhere:

Draft2Digital *does* offer full support for Amazon distribution.

I realize a lot of people won't want to use them for that, since we're all in the habit of maintaining our own KDP accounts, but it's definitely an option.

They've had a couple requests to support ARe and Omnilit, too, but I have no idea how popular that sales channel would really be. If you're interested, let me know.


----------



## Dan Harris

Aaron Pogue said:


> I know we've got several people in this thread who would like to challenge Mark about some of the more frustrating shortcomings of his service (especially now that he's made an appearance here), but if the thread devolves into a debate over such things, I'm worried it'll get locked and we won't have such a convenient centralized location to discuss beta issues and favorite features of Draft2Digital.
> 
> Maybe the forum needs a separate thread to compare and contrast the two services. Maybe (as Herc suggests) we're three months too early to even start that conversation.
> 
> Either way, I'd prefer to keep _this_ conversation focused on Draft2Digital.com.


I completely agree - I've got this thread bookmarked to keep up to date with how D2D progresses.



MarkCoker said:


> Hey all, my ears have been burning up. Some of the anger and ill-will expressed here is disheartening, and some of it is simply untrue. Contemptuous? Condescending? It's unfortunate that the vitriol spread here will dissuade some authors from giving Smashwords a chance. We're not perfect and never will be, but we'll never stop improving our ability to serve our authors and retailers. It would be disingenuous to say I welcome more competition, because I don't. We have plenty already. But I can tell you all competition energizes us and makes us better, and for that I'm grateful. As much as it can hurt to hear it, I'm grateful for the criticism we receive as well. Some of it is deserved, and will help light our way forward. Welcome, D2D, and good luck.
> 
> mark


Mark: 
Kudos to you for stepping in and politely responding. You've clearly got some fans here, as well as plenty of critics. What I think everyone agrees on - except maybe Aaron and the D2D folks  - is that we want Smashwords to be a great, easy-to-use tool for writers, with the features we need to publish easily, prompt and transparent royalties, and reliable customer support when things go wrong. 
So - rather than derailing this thread, perhaps it would be in everyone's best interests for you to start another thread and ask folks exactly what's gone wrong for them with SW, what works, what doesn't, etc. EPUB uploads with Smashwords Direct is a good start; more changes and improvements like that, please!
Cheers.


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

Mark, I have the utmost respect for what you did for us erotica authors last year and I would love to continue to do business with you. I'd love to discuss what problems I've had with Smash and with your customer service. I really would encourage you to take Dan's suggestion and start a thread to discuss what people feel is lacking.


----------



## TexasGirl

Actually the erotica battle is why I MOVED to Smashwords last year when I had never used them before (I loved my pretty epubs and didn't want meat grinding.) I started getting sales on Kobo and Smash itself, and now I'm getting sales through Blio. All good. I don't think I've experienced any problems, other than distribution and reporting are slow.

But as for D2D, yes, AllRomance is an important channel (as well as a lucrative one for erotica) and not easy to get an account or to upload to. So adding it would be wise.


----------



## AnitaDobs

TexasGirl said:


> But as for D2D, yes, AllRomance is an important channel...


I'll second the ARE vote. You'll save a lot of people a lot of trouble if you can convert their files to at least epub, PDF and mobi, the main selling formats on ARE. Their upload format is quite time consuming for most. If you have one or two titles it's no big deal, but when you get to tens and twenties, what with uploading to the other places as well, it can really take it out of you.

D2D would also being doing themselves and every other romance/erotica/erom author a favor if you became a publisher for Bookstrand too. There be money at the end of the Bookstrand rainbow...


----------



## Aaron Pogue

AnitaDobs said:


> I'll second the ARE vote. You'll save a lot of people a lot of trouble if you can convert their files to at least epub, PDF and mobi, the main selling formats on ARE. Their upload format is quite time consuming for most. If you have one or two titles it's no big deal, but when you get to tens and twenties, what with uploading to the other places as well, it can really take it out of you.


How convenient! Those are the three formats they already produce (and produce well). At least for D2D-converted documents. There are some complications when it comes to converting user-provided epubs, but a fix is in the works, so all of that should be doable.



AnitaDobs said:


> D2D would also being doing themselves and every other romance/erotica/erom author a favor if you became a publisher for Bookstrand too. There be money at the end of the Bookstrand rainbow...


Thanks for the heads-up! I hadn't even heard of Bookstrand, but I'll make sure to submit it as a feature request.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

TexasGirl said:


> But as for D2D, yes, AllRomance is an important channel (as well as a lucrative one for erotica) and not easy to get an account or to upload to. So adding it would be wise.


Huh?

AllRomance was _very_ easy to get an account to. I asked. I got. Uploading files is a breeze. It couldn't be simpler. New uploads are available in the shop _immediately_. Changes you make (price, new book-file) are implemented _immediately_. Immediately as in instantly. As in the moment you click the button.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Victoria Champion said:


> Same for me - but here's my gripe- I also have an affiliate account there and I didn't sell one ebook there during christmas but I had plenty of affiliate click-thru purchases - which all resulted in zero income because all the purchases were for free books (not mine because none of my books are free). So I drove traffic to the site with my marketing efforts but people decided to d/l all the free books rather than buy any of mine. It's a different scenario at Amazon - people click and buy both my books and lots of others too. Not one sale at ARe or OmniLit yet - just those d*mn click-thrus to d/l freebies. Frustrating.


I'm sorry for you. It goes to show that YMMV. And D2D, or SW for that matter, can't remedy this particular problem.

I sold decently from the moment I had uploaded. They put you on a New Releases-shelf and that helps drive initial sales, which I got for all my books. They allow perma-free (which apparently you suffered from). No need to jump through all kinds of hoops.
Granted, sales are few compared to Amazon (I sold 88 books since the fourth week of September 2012), but why leave them on the table?


----------



## Victoria Champion

Andrew Ashling said:


> I'm sorry for you. It goes to show that YMMV. And D2D, or SW for that matter, can't remedy this particular problem.
> 
> I sold decently from the moment I had uploaded. They put you on a New Releases-shelf and that helps drive initial sales, which I got for all my books. They allow perma-free (which apparently you suffered from). No need to jump through all kinds of hoops.
> Granted, sales are few compared to Amazon (I sold 88 books since the fourth week of September 2012), but why leave them on the table?


Oh, I'll continue to upload there simply because it is so easy and there is always a chance a book might sell.


----------



## AnitaDobs

Andrew Ashling said:


> Huh?
> 
> AllRomance was _very_ easy to get an account to. I asked. I got. Uploading files is a breeze. It couldn't be simpler. New uploads are available in the shop _immediately_. Changes you make (price, new book-file) are implemented _immediately_. Immediately as in instantly. As in the moment you click the button.


I also have an account, but the account isn't so much the problem. If you are going from a .doc/.docx file, then you have to first convert it to epub, mobi, PDF with Calibre, or whatever a person uses. I have no idea if you can do a direct epub upload*. I have about 10 titles that haven't gone up there yet... that makes THIRTY different files I have to play with, which I'd rather not (assuming I want a PDF, mobi, epub version available to the customers, which I do.)

My main point is that it really consumes time for me... it doesn't help that each file must be changed so no spaces are present in the file name (which Calibre lovingly seems to give me somehow), and other little details that for me and others can cause some frustration. I've heard a lot of complaints about ARE's interface from erotica authors... _a lot_. That's not to say I dislike them, I just wish the interface could be a bit easier... like converting the one file into all the necessary files.. that is my only issue with ARE in fact.

Yes they are up on the site straight away. I don't know how long it takes to get an account there these days though, or if it's difficult or not. It's just I'd willingly pay 15% for someone else to deal with my ARE stuff personally speaking.

Edit: I just remembered, you can quite obviously do a direct epub upload... you can _only_ do that for the epub file in fact, and the others. So ya, I've got files coming out of my ears what with .doc, .html, .mobi, .PDF, epub... I've probably missed a couple...


----------



## AnitaDobs

Aaron Pogue said:


> How convenient! Those are the three formats they already produce (and produce well). At least for D2D-converted documents. There are some complications when it comes to converting user-provided epubs, but a fix is in the works, so all of that should be doable.
> 
> Thanks for the heads-up! I hadn't even heard of Bookstrand, but I'll make sure to submit it as a feature request.


Sounds great!


----------



## Andrew Ashling

AnitaDobs said:


> I also have an account, but the account isn't so much the problem. If you are going from a .doc/.docx file, then you have to first convert it to epub, mobi, PDF with Calibre, or whatever a person uses. I have no idea if you can do a direct epub upload. I have about 10 titles that haven't gone up there yet... that makes THIRTY different files I have to play with, which I'd rather not (assuming I want a PDF, mobi, epub version available to the customers, which I do.)
> 
> My main point is that it really consumes time for me... it doesn't help that each file must be changed so no spaces are present in the file name (which Calibre lovingly seems to give me somehow), and other little details that for me and others can cause some frustration. I've heard a lot of complaints about ARE's interface from erotica authors... _a lot_. That's not to say I dislike them, I just wish the interface could be a bit easier... like converting the one file into all the necessary files.. that is my only issue with ARE in fact.
> 
> Yes they are up on the site straight away. I don't know how long it takes to get an account there these days though, or if it's difficult or not. It's just I'd willingly pay 15% for someone else to deal with my ARE stuff personally speaking.


For people who aren't familiar with the ARe-uploading section, this is it :










As you can see, I only use two formats of all that are available: epub and mobi(kindle-compatible).

Since I produce my epubs with Sigil, it isn't difficult to convert them to mobi with Calibre (3 min. tops).

But I appreciate that you might like to have someone else take care of all that for you. Myself I have more difficulties, as European, to upload to iTunes and B&N, and I just can't be bothered&#8230; So, I'm glad to leave that to D2D for 15% of the take.


----------



## AnitaDobs

Andrew Ashling said:


> This is the ARe-uploading section:


Ya, I've kind of seen it a fair few times before, but thanks for showing me again.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

AnitaDobs said:


> Ya, I've kind of seen it a fair few times before, but thanks for showing me again.


No problem, since it's just us on this board.


----------



## AnitaDobs

Andrew Ashling said:


> No problem, since it's just us on this board.


  No problem at all, since you put it under a quote from me.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

genevieveaclark said:


> How long is D2D's beta period projected to last? Was that the 3 month reference?


As far as I know, they don't have a projected time period. They have a list of core features and bug fixes that they consider necessary before they can call it ready for public release, and once those things are done, they'll make the public launch.

But no, the 3 month reference I made was to some expressed skepticism about Draft2Digital actually paying. Draft2Digital will get paid for the books people are selling _now_ at the end March (just like you would going direct to KDP or iTunes), so the first round of payments to beta users won't go out until then. Some people have suggested we should hold off judging their credibility until they've actually made those payments.

That's not an unreasonable suggestion. Personally, I've been getting regular payments from them since March of last year (by check at first, then I asked them to implement direct deposit and my last five or six payments have gone straight into my company bank account), so I can already attest that they're reliable when it comes to payments. But, then, I know where most of these guys live, so a little skepticism among strangers is still reasonable.


----------



## Steve Vernon

I'm just getting ready to head to the day job - but this definitely sounds like something that would work for my needs. I'll look into it tomorrow.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

genevieveaclark said:


> Ah. Well, the last beta experience was with kobo, which, come to think of it, did have a set expiration date, and turned out to not be quite ready for prime time when that date rolled around. Even after all the uploading issues were resolved (or semi-resolved), there were issues with payments.
> 
> Glad these guys are doing it differently.


Ah! That makes a lot of sense. I didn't get around to the Writing Life until a little while after the beta ended, so I missed that whole conversation. I'm glad to have the context now.


----------



## Josh Kilen

Sent my email and EAGERLY waiting for my response.... 

Sounds like a great set up! Can't wait to try it out. I especially like that they give you the reason that Apple or any vendor rejects the book. Didn't have that with another vendor and it wasn't pretty.


----------



## TexasGirl

The reason I bring up ARe with D2D (and Bookstrand is a great addition) isn't that it is terribly hard (although I had a lot of trouble--when I would forget to fix the file name and it would fail, it "lost" other fields, causing another fail. I think aggregators are great for knowing little quirks like special file names that we forget.

BUT, I bring it up because ARe, like iTunes, won't hide your publisher name, so if you write erotica and nonerotica and the two names should not meet, you have to have two accounts. I prefer my nonerotica to be in my publisher name and my erotica to be under an aggregator to simplify my life. Have two accounts at a half-dozen retailers makes for more time consuming accounting.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Hallelujah I'm in! Hello iTunes! Thank you so much for this service - I could kiss you! Mwah!  

Wow that interface is slick! Great job d2D!


----------



## 41413

Yay, I got a beta code! Looks like they sent out another batch.

I'm trying to upload some stuff, and I love D2D already.


----------



## Victoria Champion

smreine said:


> Yay, I got a beta code! Looks like they sent out another batch.
> 
> I'm trying to upload some stuff, and I love D2D already.


Finally we're in the cool kids club! I knew it would happen for me some day.


----------



## The 13th Doctor

I've got five books up on B&N and iTunes, through D2D, and I'm really happy with how things are going. It only took a matter of days (even less, in some cases) for each of the books to appear on those sites and I'm even making sales. It's so lovely to see the sales report in near-real time as opposed to waiting months via Smashwords (not that I'm knocking Smashwords).

There was a problem with one of the books but the correspondence with D2D was great and they were really helpful.

Going to be publishing another book soon and will be publishing it through D2D.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Man, I really have been out of the conversation for a while. Seems everyone but me knows it's vital for authors to recruit fans to their mailing lists. (I've been seeing this referenced in lots of places yesterday and today.)

Draft2Digital already generates consistent, one-click About the Author pages to insert in your ebooks. A popular request has been to add an author's social media links to that form. (You can already add them in the body text, but if D2D made them a separate list, they could do some much more attractive things with styling.)

The social media links are already on the To Do list. I'm thinking about recommending that they add "Mailing List" to that form, too. That way you could (on a per-pen-name basis) just check a box on the "About the Author" setup page, and D2D could insert a signup link on that page in every book you publish. They could create and manage the list directly in their database (no need to use an external service), and provide you an easy way to send emails to everyone on the list.

Does that sound like a feature you would use, or am I missing some important practical details?

_(I know D2D would have to cross their Ts and dot their Is to deal with CAN-SPAM stuff, but I have every confidence that Kris and David between them can work it out.)_


----------



## 41413

Yup, Aaron. That would be faboo.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Aaron Pogue said:


> Man, I really have been out of the conversation for a while. Seems everyone but me knows it's vital for authors to recruit fans to their mailing lists. (I've been seeing this referenced in lots of places yesterday and today.)
> 
> Draft2Digital already generates consistent, one-click About the Author pages to insert in your ebooks. A popular request has been to add an author's social media links to that form. (You can already add them in the body text, but if D2D made them a separate list, they could do some much more attractive things with styling.)
> 
> The social media links are already on the To Do list. I'm thinking about recommending that they add "Mailing List" to that form, too. That way you could (on a per-pen-name basis) just check a box on the "About the Author" setup page, and D2D could insert a signup link on that page in every book you publish. They could manage the list directly (no need to use an external service), and provide you an easy way to send emails to everyone on the list.
> 
> Does that sound like a feature you would use, or am I missing some important practical details?
> 
> _(I know D2D would have to cross their Ts and dot their Is to deal with regard to CAN-SPAM stuff, but I have every confidence that Kris and David between them can work it out.)_


Just to be sure - if we don't fill out the publisher/author profile stuff there will *not* be anything added to our epubs right? I upload epubs. I don't want any extraneous material added to my books. I did not fill out the author or publisher profiles other than to enable payments for the publishers.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Victoria Champion said:


> Just to be sure - if we don't fill out the publisher/author profile stuff there will *not* be anything added to our epubs right? I upload epubs. I don't want any extraneous material added to my books. I did not fill out the author or publisher profiles other than to enable payments for the publishers.


You're safe. As it stands right now, they basically _can't_ make changes to user-provided epubs (although they're working on it).

But even once that's fixed (or if you upload a Word document), there's a separate "Layout" page with a bunch of checkboxes where you get to choose what endmatter you want them to generate for you (title page, copyright, dedication, also-by, about the author, an ad for another book in your catalog...), and by default they're all unchecked.


----------



## 41413

genevieveaclark said:


> I think the major requirement of CAN-SPAM stuff is that you provide an unsubscribe link in any emails that go out. This is a really interesting idea though. My biggest question would be about how customizable this back matter stuff would be-that would be key, for me. Gotta be able to make your own pitch, and tweak it when necessary, you know?


You can upload epubs directly and it doesn't modify them. You don't have to use their doohickey converter formatter thing.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

genevieveaclark said:


> I think the major requirement of CAN-SPAM stuff is that you provide an unsubscribe link in any emails that go out. This is a really interesting idea though. My biggest question would be about how customizable this back matter stuff would be-that would be key, for me. Gotta be able to make your own pitch, and tweak it when necessary, you know?


So far, the approach has been to make something "good enough" that's one-size-fits-all, and then anyone who has the know-how, the time, and the energy to do (better) custom stuff can just use that instead of the auto-generated documents.

One request I have on the table (and that will be implemented _eventually_) is an expert mode that will allow someone to use D2D's conversion process or generated endmatter or whatever, and then directly modify the end-product (probably in a WYSIWIG/HTML editor). That'd give you the best of both worlds.

There are certainly some technical/database challenges, but the biggest obstacle by far is user interface--it's complicated to add all those different controls and keep D2D's site consistent and functional.

In the meantime, I know they're open to feedback/requests/advice concerning those one-size-fits-all generated pages. They've got some pretty talented HTML/CSS guys on the team, they just need feedback on what the pages _should_ look like. So far it's all built to my requirements, and I usually lean toward a very straightforward and minimalist design.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Aaron Pogue said:


> So far it's all built to my requirements, and I usually lean toward a very straightforward and minimalist design.


*And very large text*


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Andrew Ashling said:


> *And very large text*


Okay, I've checked all the generated endmatter on all the devices I have access to. Which one is it that looks too large to you? Is it the title on one of the pages? Or all of the pages? Or is it body text?

I'm not feeling defensive, I'm just not immediately seeing it and I'd like to recommend a fix if possible.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Aaron Pogue said:


> Okay, I've checked all the generated endmatter on all the devices I have access to. Which one is it that looks too large to you? Is it the title on one of the pages? Or all of the pages? Or is it body text?
> 
> I'm not feeling defensive, I'm just not immediately seeing it and I'd like to recommend a fix if possible.


Lol, I think she's talking about the site design itself. There's some big fonts on the site. Big.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Victoria Champion said:


> Lol, I think she's talking about the site design itself. There's some big fonts on the site. Big.


Oh! Thank you so much for figuring that out for me. It was driving me a little crazy.

Yeah, I had virtually nothing to do with the website design. It's way prettier than anything I would have come up with. But, indeed, there's some huge font.


----------



## Dan Harris

I like the big fonts. It's quite 'if Fisher Price did self-pub'


----------



## katherinef

The fonts on the site are nice, but it's the size in generated dedication page that makes me go   I haven't tried it myself, though, so maybe my friend clicked something wrong because dedication looked big compared with the rest of the book. I'm seriously considering using Draft2Digital now because Smashwords can't seem to get my book to Apple.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Aaron Pogue said:


> Okay, I've checked all the generated endmatter on all the devices I have access to. Which one is it that looks too large to you? Is it the title on one of the pages? Or all of the pages? Or is it body text?
> 
> I'm not feeling defensive, I'm just not immediately seeing it and I'd like to recommend a fix if possible.


Don't worry about it. It seems to be the new trend. Kobo does it too.

It's just in the "My Books" section there is only room for 5 books on one screen. And that's just to tell me the title and whether it is published or not. It seems a bit wasteful of screen real estate. But like I said, it is a design thing. On the other hand: compare to the font size used on the main "My Account" page.

No biggie, though (actually&#8230. The important thing is that the "engine" under the hood runs smoothly.


----------



## Victoria Champion

I joined d2D yesterday, and one of my ebooks is already live on iTunes! Fantastic!


----------



## Victoria Champion

*By the way, for those concerned about pen names:* my ebook is listed on iTunes under my pen name and with my pen name's publishing imprint, and the seller as d2D, and nowhere does my real name or associated imprint show up. Just be very careful when submitting your book to d2D. Once you learn how to switch between pen names/publishers at d2D once, it's super easy.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Andrew Ashling said:


> Don't worry about it. It seems to be the new trend. Kobo does it too.
> 
> It's just in the "My Books" section there is only room for 5 books on one screen. And that's just to tell me the title and whether it is published or not. It seems a bit wasteful of screen real estate. But like I said, it is a design thing. On the other hand: compare to the font size used on the main "My Account" page.
> 
> No biggie, though (actually&#8230. The important thing is that the "engine" under the hood runs smoothly.


I appreciate the feedback. Got the font on the dedication page scaled down to match the body text, too.

As far as the number of books on the main list, there's a trick (a custom URL) that'll show more per page. That should be an option in the UI, but I guess it got left out. Contact Customer Support, and they can give you the link.


----------



## dalya

Aaron Pogue said:


> I appreciate the feedback. Got the font on the dedication page scaled down to match the body text, too.
> 
> As far as the number of books on the main list, there's a trick (a custom URL) that'll show more per page. That should be an option in the UI, but I guess it got left out. Contact Customer Support, and they can give you the link.


As long as it gets the books onto the truck that drives them to the bookstore, I'm happy. It could be eighteen-point Comic Sans, for all I care.


----------



## Becca Mills

Aaron Pogue said:


> Man, I really have been out of the conversation for a while. Seems everyone but me knows it's vital for authors to recruit fans to their mailing lists. (I've been seeing this referenced in lots of places yesterday and today.)
> 
> ...
> 
> The social media links are already on the To Do list. I'm thinking about recommending that they add "Mailing List" to that form, too. That way you could (on a per-pen-name basis) just check a box on the "About the Author" setup page, and D2D could insert a signup link on that page in every book you publish. They could create and manage the list directly in their database (no need to use an external service), and provide you an easy way to send emails to everyone on the list.
> 
> Does that sound like a feature you would use, or am I missing some important practical details?


A mailing list link might be the single best thing you could add, IMO. But I do think you should make sure authors can download the collected addresses. Part of the reason for a mailing list is the ability to contact readers without having to rely on any particular publishing outfit. Thus, I'd never want to put my list entirely in someone else's hands.

I just signed up with Ganxy yesterday, and they have a mailing list signup. They don't actually provide a mailing list service for the author; they just collect the addresses, and the author downloads them in a spreadsheet file. If you added the downloadable spreadsheet feature while also creating a more fully functional mailing list tool, that would be the best of both worlds.


----------



## Becca Mills

Aaron Pogue said:


> You're safe. As it stands right now, they basically _can't_ make changes to user-provided epubs (although they're working on it).


Aha! I've been waiting for the tech folks to implement the possibility of glyphs (instead of just a gap) to mark scene breaks, something they agreed to do after I wrote to them about it. (They really are super.) But if I just upload an epub directly, I don't have to wait!


----------



## 41413

Hmm. D2D says they can't make books free at B&N. This doesn't mean that the behind-the-scenes action is manual, does it?


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

smreine said:


> Hmm. D2D says they can't make books free at B&N. This doesn't mean that the behind-the-scenes action is manual, does it?


I think it's the same with similar outfits like SW - the minimum price at B&N is 99c. If B&N price-matches, like Amazon, you can report the lower price on Kobo.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

smreine said:


> Hmm. D2D says they can't make books free at B&N. This doesn't mean that the behind-the-scenes action is manual, does it?


Nope. It just means they have a different vendor agreement with B&N from the one Mark Coker negotiated five years ago.

I'm guessing B&N (just like Kobo) became a lot less flexible with publishers when they could just point everyone to their one-size-fits-all web portal.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

AmsterdamAssassin said:


> I think it's the same with similar outfits like SW - the minimum price at B&N is 99c. If B&N price-matches, like Amazon, you can report the lower price on Kobo.


Is there a procedure to report lower prices to B&N?

I set one of my books at $0.00 on Kobo, iTunes and Are, and I _do_ know Amazon price matches with B&N.


----------



## ruecole

Amazon will price match Kobo too. They did for me. 

Rue


----------



## Andrew Ashling

ruecole said:


> Amazon will price match Kobo too. They did for me.
> 
> Rue


Yep. They did for me too. Then they took it back to paid once it appeared on B&N at 99¢. 
Hence my question how to set my book free on B&N.
There seems to be some kind of hierarchy involved. _*sigh*_


----------



## ruecole

Oooh! That's no good. 

My free book isn't yet available on B&N. I was planning to upload it in the next couple weeks. Now I want to know if there is a way to set it to free through D2D, too!

Rue


----------



## Shelley K

Put it up free on B&N through Smashwords and free elsewhere through D2D. Amazon will price match Kobo, and when it eventually if ever shows up at B&N it'll be free and won't revert it back.


----------



## Midnight Writer

I put one book up at D2D to upload to Apple. How will I be able to tell when the book is live on the iTunes site? I don't know how to find a book at iTunes except with the ISBN, but this book doesn't have one.


----------



## Lady Vine

Lanette Curington said:


> I put one book up at D2D to upload to Apple. How will I be able to tell when the book is live on the iTunes site? I don't know how to find a book at iTunes except with the ISBN, but this book doesn't have one.


The Apple icon to the right of your title will darken and become clickable.


----------



## Midnight Writer

Lady Vine said:


> The Apple icon to the right of your title will darken and become clickable.


Thank you!


----------



## Cypress Rose

I put a book up on D2D to see if it would be accepted at the itunes bookstore.  It was up within 2 days!  That's a fabulous turn around.    Thank you D2D!!javascript:void(0);


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

They send emails with a link as well. Though it tooks a few more hours after I got those emails for them to be searchable in ibooks.


----------



## TexasGirl

ruecole said:


> Amazon will price match Kobo too. They did for me.


I'll amend it to they "might" match to Kobo and/or iTunes. They never have for me. And I'm sitting on a book right now that has been reported free to Amazon with iTunes and Kobo (Mr. Kent's Wall of Wonders.) And Amazon still has it for 99 cents. My last book was the same--it did not price match until BN had it free--a month after the others.

There is no telling how Amazon makes its choice--I suspect it is by sales. But not being able to go free on BN through D2D is a big bummer. I'll have to stick with Smash for now. The free to BN is the only reason I use an aggregator for my small press, although I am starting to sell to Blio through Smash, which is nice.


----------



## Cherise

Becca Mills said:


> *A mailing list link might be the single best thing you could add*, IMO. But I do think you should make sure authors can download the collected addresses. Part of the reason for a mailing list is the ability to contact readers without having to rely on any particular publishing outfit. Thus, I'd never want to put my list entirely in someone else's hands.
> 
> I just signed up with Ganxy yesterday, and they have a mailing list signup. They don't actually provide a mailing list service for the author; they just collect the addresses, and the author downloads them in a spreadsheet file. If you added the downloadable spreadsheet feature while also creating a more fully functional mailing list tool, that would be the best of both worlds.


This.

Hear, hear!

Perhaps just a place we can put a link to our own mailing list so that it gets included in the end matter would be best.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Becca Mills said:


> A mailing list link might be the single best thing you could add, IMO. But I do think you should make sure authors can download the collected addresses. Part of the reason for a mailing list is the ability to contact readers without having to rely on any particular publishing outfit. Thus, I'd never want to put my list entirely in someone else's hands.
> 
> I just signed up with Ganxy yesterday, and they have a mailing list signup. They don't actually provide a mailing list service for the author; they just collect the addresses, and the author downloads them in a spreadsheet file. If you added the downloadable spreadsheet feature while also creating a more fully functional mailing list tool, that would be the best of both worlds.


That makes a lot of sense. I remember signing up for a mailing list service a lifetime ago (back when I thought I was going to be a problogger), and that service had all kinds of careful rules (mostly because of the then-recently-passed CAN-SPAM act).

One of the rules for that service was that they _could not_, under any circumstances, give you access to the actual mailing list you were paying them to collect for you. Now, I suspect they did that as an effort to make themselves the gold standard in mailing list services, hoping that their reputation would make visitors more likely to sign up for their lists (trusting they wouldn't end up getting spammed). If that was a company choice, it's not one Draft2Digital would need to make. Fans who've just finished reading a book (and have any inclination at all to sign up for a mailing list) seem much more likely to go ahead with it than some random strangers dropping by a blog.

On the other hand, if that was a CAN-SPAM thing, D2D could end up with the same draconian rules. I can see how that would be a big drawback.

I'll have to look into it. Or, better yet, make Kris look into it. He's the one getting paid, after all.



Cherise Kelley said:


> Perhaps just a place we can put a link to our own mailing list so that it gets included in the end matter would be best.


That should be an easy option to include. You could already add the link (as text) to your "About the Author" information, and it should work. But, yeah, once they add a form for social media links, it would make sense to not only have a checkbox for "Mailing List," but also a field where users could provide their own signup link if they had one. That makes a lot of sense.

I'd definitely still like to see D2D offer the management list _too_, mainly because those mailing list services people are using all come with recurring fees. Right? I suspect D2D could provide their management as a free service to users.


----------



## jdrew

All this looks like it would be a good thing to get into.  But, I have only one book so far, second one is coming I hope within the next month, and since the current e-book is on Select, I can't see signing up today.  I'll keep you in mind when I get the second book ready for print and maybe when the first book is off Select.


----------



## Phil Bulman

I just want to point out that Bookbaby, which I use because I saw many complaints about SW here on the boards, distributes to more retailers, including Sony, and charges a flat fee upfront instead of a percentage of sales.


----------



## Terrence OBrien

> "Draft2Digital only makes money when you sell books through their sales channels. "


I read the OP, and confess to not reading the eleven subsequent pages.

Does this mean D2D takes no cut of the B&N royalty payment? D2D passes the full amount B&N pays directly to the author? If B&N pays out $10, the author gets $10, and D2D gets nothing?

Or am I totally off base?


----------



## JRHenderson

D2D doesn't charge an up-front fee nor does it cost anything to use their file conversion software. They take 15% of your royalities when you use them as the middle-man between yourself and the vendor. https://www.draft2digital.com/faq/


----------



## Terrence OBrien

Thanks. My world was temporarily shaken.


----------



## Guest

Phil Bulman said:


> I just want to point out that Bookbaby, which I use because I saw many complaints about SW here on the boards, distributes to more retailers, including Sony, and charges a flat fee upfront instead of a percentage of sales.


At $99 per title plus $19 a year, plus $50 to change metadata (pricing, author bio, book description), plus $50 to make changes to the file (but only up to 10 corrections...if you are making more than that, the cost is more? Not sure how they even police this...) I'd much rather deal with D2D or SW.

I actually prefer the idea of a distributor only getting paid if I sell books. That forces them to look for more distribution opportunities. If a company gets all of their money up front, they have no motivation to seek more distribution channels. There money is tied to how effectively they can actually get results with retailers, not on how well they can blow smoke and convince me to hand over a few hundred dollars up front.


----------



## Terrence OBrien

> "If a company gets all of their money up front, they have no motivation to seek more distribution channels."


The motivation is remaining competitive with other distributors.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Just a quick update from the devs for those of you already in the beta: The sales reports still aren't anywhere near finished, but you can now filter them down by sales channel (so you can see how many books sold at iTunes, how many at Amazon, etc.) 

That's a feature I've been waiting for. Glad to see it working.


----------



## Lady Vine

Aaron Pogue said:


> Just a quick update from the devs for those of you already in the beta: The sales reports still aren't anywhere near finished, but you can now filter them down by sales channel (so you can see how many books sold at iTunes, how many at Amazon, etc.)
> 
> That's a feature I've been waiting for. Glad to see it working.


Oh, great! I too have been waiting for that one. Are we also getting an earnings report?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Lady Vine said:


> Oh, great! I too have been waiting for that one. Are we also getting an earnings report?


It's definitely on the To Do list, but not yet implemented. If I understand correctly, it'll start out as a real-time rough estimate, then get updated to a more accurate estimate once the official statements come out on the 15th of the following month (much like you'd get going direct).


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Aaron Pogue said:


> Just a quick update from the devs for those of you already in the beta: The sales reports still aren't anywhere near finished, but you can now filter them down by sales channel (so you can see how many books sold at iTunes, how many at Amazon, etc.)
> 
> That's a feature I've been waiting for. Glad to see it working.


Yep, I noticed.

Personally I'd rather they call the channels by less "technical" names. "Amazon" instead of "Kindle Direct Publishing," "Barnes & Noble" instead of "Pubit."

The problem with long names of books still exists, but it's a nice development.


----------



## CaedemMarquez

I may have missed if this has already been covered, but with D2D, do we supply ISBNs or does D2D?

Thanks.


----------



## TJHudson

I've just sent off for a beta invitation. This could definitely be the future for me.



CaedemMarquez said:


> I may have missed if this has already been covered, but with D2D, do we supply ISBNs or does D2D?
> 
> Thanks.


I believe you don't need ISBN's. When they distribute to Sony you will need to provide your own ISBN then, I think.

Anywho, fingers crossed.


----------



## CaedemMarquez

TJHudson said:


> I've just sent off for a beta invitation. This could definitely be the future for me.
> 
> I believe you don't need ISBN's. When they distribute to Sony you will need to provide your own ISBN then, I think.
> 
> Anywho, fingers crossed.


I know Apple and Kobo required, ISBN's, no? So it would be Sony, Kobo and Apple - three different ISBNS, I think.

Anybody know the answer?


----------



## Guest

CaedemMarquez said:


> I know Apple and Kobo required, ISBN's, no? So it would be Sony, Kobo and Apple - three different ISBNS, I think.
> 
> Anybody know the answer?


You don't need a different ISBN for each SITE. You need a different ISBN (technically) for each version. If the same version is being distributed to all vendors, you can use the same ISBN. If you have different versions (say, an illustrated version to Apple and a version without illustrations to Sony and Kobo) those versions would need their own ISBN.

An ISBN is an identifier for a book to help differentiate between different versions or books with similar titles.


----------



## CaedemMarquez

Ahhh. Thanks Julie. Those small details obviously through me for a loop.

So does anybody know if we provide an ISBN for D2D?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

CaedemMarquez said:


> I know Apple and Kobo required, ISBN's, no? So it would be Sony, Kobo and Apple - three different ISBNS, I think.
> 
> Anybody know the answer?


Draft2Digital can distribute to both Kobo and Apple without an ISBN. (Apple made that change for all suppliers at the end of 2012, although they haven't updated their documentation yet.)

Sony, as I understand it, isn't responding to any form of contact, so we don't know yet if D2D will be able to negotiate a no-ISBN arrangement with them (or any publishing arrangement at all).



CaedemMarquez said:


> So does anybody know if we provide an ISBN for D2D?


For current sales channels, D2D does not require an ISBN at all. However, if you do have one, you can enter it right on the Edit Book page and D2D will use that when distributing the book.


----------



## nomesque

Hey Aaron, interesting stuff! I'm a bit confused, though, reading some of your posts - what exactly is your involvement with Draft2Digital? Are you one of the founders, an employee, external consultant? I hope that doesn't sound nasty - it's just that sometimes you seem to be talking as a happy customer, others as part of the company.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

nomesque said:


> Hey Aaron, interesting stuff! I'm a bit confused, though, reading some of your posts - what exactly is your involvement with Draft2Digital? Are you one of the founders, an employee, external consultant? I hope that doesn't sound nasty - it's just that sometimes you seem to be talking as a happy customer, others as part of the company.


No, it's a very fair question.

I don't work for Draft2Digital. I _am_ friends with all of the developers, and for most of last year I was their only client, so we have developed the product quite closely up to this point. I've basically been designing it for them, telling them what I wanted it to do, and they've been doing it.

Naturally, I'm heavily invested in this company. You could call me a founder--I was the one who convinced them to build the product and, later, to take it public. But I'm definitely also a happy customer. I've published all my books through Draft2Digital (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iPad, and paperback) since last January 2012, and they get the full 15% fee for every sale.

Now that they've released the product for an open beta, I've become just one of their (rapidly) increasing number of user accounts. I do know the software (and how a writer/publisher would want to use it) better than anyone else, so I'm acting as an expert user here as well as a liaison between the KB writers and the D2D developers (who are way too busy right now to follow forum threads).

Does that make sense?


----------



## dalya

I've sold 6 titles through D2D now. I noticed today they tweaked the reports so the titles with zero sales aren't on the chart. It's pretty cool to see things being tweaked as we go.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Dalya said:


> I've sold 6 titles through D2D now. I noticed today they tweaked the reports so the titles with zero sales aren't on the chart. It's pretty cool to see things being tweaked as we go.


The reports still have a long way to go. I want to be able to slice and dice by author, title, vendor, series, publisher, whatever. I want to see a trend chart of recent sales by (estimated) royalty, along with a projection of total royalties for the month. I'd like to switch between a table full of hard numbers and line graph showing my how my sci-fi is performing compared to my fantasy.

All that information is in the database, and I've already discussed the implementation for _most_ of it with the developers. It's just a matter of time and manpower to get the data on the screen (and in a clean enough way that it's readable).


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Aaron Pogue said:


> The reports still have a long way to go. I want to be able to slice and dice by author, title, vendor, series, publisher, whatever. I want to see a trend chart of recent sales by (estimated) royalty, along with a projection of total royalties for the month. I'd like to switch between a table full of hard numbers and line graph showing my how my sci-fi is performing compared to my fantasy.
> 
> All that information is in the database, and I've already discussed the implementation for _most_ of it with the developers. It's just a matter of time and manpower to get the data on the screen (and in a clean enough way that it's readable).


Suh-weet! Finally, an ebook distributor that gets authors. And OCD.


----------



## Nathan Elliott

Lanette Curington said:


> I put one book up at D2D to upload to Apple. How will I be able to tell when the book is live on the iTunes site? I don't know how to find a book at iTunes except with the ISBN, but this book doesn't have one.


You can use their linkmaker to search:


----------



## nomesque

Aaron Pogue said:


> Naturally, I'm heavily invested in this company. You could call me a founder--I was the one who convinced them to build the product and, later, to take it public. But I'm definitely also a happy customer. I've published all my books through Draft2Digital (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iPad, and paperback) since last January 2012, and they get the full 15% fee for every sale.
> 
> Now that they've released the product for an open beta, I've become just one of their (rapidly) increasing number of user accounts. I do know the software (and how a writer/publisher would want to use it) better than anyone else, so I'm acting as an expert user here as well as a liaison between the KB writers and the D2D developers (who are way too busy right now to follow forum threads).
> 
> Does that make sense?


I think so!  If I understand correctly - you don't have any financial stake in the company, you're not a partner or shareholder, and you don't receive financial compensation for the promotional work you do for them. Cool.

I got a little more confused after I posted, because I was googling 'Draft2Digital' and your name was popping up everywhere.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

nomesque said:


> If I understand correctly - you don't have any financial stake in the company, you're not a partner or shareholder, and you don't receive financial compensation for the promotional work you do for them.


Well, as I said, I'm financially invested, so I do have some stake.

I've never really tried to hide that. As you pointed out, I'm a big part of the Draft2Digital story everywhere it's been told (including my original post here).

I do apologize if the disclosure didn't seem explicit enough. I have no interest in misleading anyone.


----------



## WillemThomas

Aaron Pogue said:


> Well, as I said, I'm financially invested, so I do have some stake.
> 
> I've never really tried to hide that. As you pointed out, I'm a big part of the Draft2Digital story everywhere it's been told (including my original post here).
> 
> I do apologize if the disclosure didn't seem explicit enough. I have no interest in misleading anyone.


I already thought this this from the outset, so I certainly do not feel misled at all - no worries there. 

Willem Thomas


----------



## Midnight Writer

Nathan Elliott said:


> You can use their linkmaker to search:


Thanks for that link!

My book has shown up at Apple now. Yay! Looks great. Apple via SW never updated the title, the part in parentheses, from (A Short Story) to (Two Short Stories) that I had changed six months ago. (OTOH, maybe they couldn't because it actually changed the title as a whole.) And Apple had never updated to the latest description change I put up at SW a few months ago.


----------



## nomesque

Aaron Pogue said:


> Well, as I said, I'm financially invested, so I do have some stake.
> 
> I've never really tried to hide that. As you pointed out, I'm a big part of the Draft2Digital story everywhere it's been told (including my original post here).
> 
> I do apologize if the disclosure didn't seem explicit enough. I have no interest in misleading anyone.


Gotcha. Thanks for the clarification. I read 'heavily invested' more in a non-financial sense. Guess coffee is more essential to my reading comprehension skills than I realised.


----------



## nomesque

OK, here's my personal opinion on Draft2Digital. Most of y'all probably know (if you've been around here for a while) that I'm a firm believer in Smashwords. Not because I think they have everything down pat, but because I have faith in their business management skills and their commitment to their authors.

First - I go to the D2D website, and I see *no* information on the people running this company. Who are they? What experience do they have running a company, let alone a company that's going to have to be making changes to their business practices on the fly for years to come, while staying financially viable and keeping faith with the authors who are trusting them with their careers? Maybe the info's there, but I can't find it. In contrast, this straight from Smashwords:



> With Mark's previous startup, BestCalls.com, which he launched in 1999, he helped level the playing field for small stock market investors, who at the time were denied access to the earnings conference calls of publicly traded companies. His work with BestCalls, as a champion for fair disclosure, was a catalyst for the SEC's ground breaking Regulation FD. BestCalls was acquired in 2002 by Shareholder.com and was owned and operated by the Nasdaq Stock Exchange up until 2010.
> In 1993, Mark founded Dovetail Public Relations, an award-winning Silicon Valley PR firm that specializes in representing technology startups. Mark continues to own the business but is no longer involved in the day-to-day.
> Mark is a long time angel investor and advisor to technology and media startups. He currently serves on the advisory board of GetQuik, a provider of restaurant order automation technology and services. Mark is an investor in - and previously served on the advisory board for - Flat World Knowledge, the leading publisher of open source textbooks.


That's the sort of business management - and investment - experience that made me sign up with Smashwords all those years ago.

I'm not doubting the intentions or the enthusiasm of Aaron or the people - whoever the hell they are - running Draft2Digital. I highly doubt that they're out to fleece anyone, or do anything wrong. However, startup companies are a very dangerous investment. No way in _hell_ would I be trusting my career and income to a startup that I haven't investigated in-depth, just for some lovely-sounding promises about epub uploads and better throughput.

Aaron, good luck with your project - I hope it goes well for you. And I hope the feedback above is useful to you.


----------



## Shelley K

nomesque said:


> OK, here's my personal opinion on Draft2Digital. Most of y'all probably know (if you've been around here for a while) that I'm a firm believer in Smashwords. Not because I think they have everything down pat, but because I have faith in their business management skills and their commitment to their authors.


You make some excellent points about knowing whom you're in business with, and I hope Aaron and D2D take that in stride and use it to their benefit.

I've completely lost faith in Smashwords' business management skills. I think Mark is committed to authors--don't get me wrong. But the service and distribution has become so poor at Smashwords with lots of excuses about Apple and other retailers causing the slowness, taking weeks--yet D2D gets things up at Apple and B&N in a few days to a few _hours_. That begs the question about why Smashwords keeps blaming the retailers for the slowness, doesn't it? That isn't a faith-builder. Customer service at D2D actually bothers to respond, too. Smashwords is hit and miss.

It's a beta site/system, I know. Things could change. I understand this. But I'm certainly willing to give it a try in the hopes of actually getting something _done_ for a change. I haven't pulled anything from Smash distribution, at least nothing that's actually up, and frankly I'm not likely to pull what's already in Apple through them. But I think the hope of customer service, reasonable reporting times, reasonable distribution times and monthly payment is worth putting a title or two up through them experimentally.


----------



## 41413

Agreed. I'd like to see a lot more disclosure about the company. But I don't really have anything important distributing through Smash anyway, and I had a bunch of things locked in "pending review," so it doesn't hurt me to play around for now. I'd expect to see a lot more info before it leaves beta.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

nomesque said:


> OK, here's my personal opinion on Draft2Digital. Most of y'all probably know (if you've been around here for a while) that I'm a firm believer in Smashwords. Not because I think they have everything down pat, but because I have faith in their business management skills and their commitment to their authors.
> 
> First - I go to the D2D website, and I see *no* information on the people running this company. Who are they? What experience do they have running a company, let alone a company that's going to have to be making changes to their business practices on the fly for years to come, while staying financially viable and keeping faith with the authors who are trusting them with their careers? Maybe the info's there, but I can't find it. In contrast, this straight from Smashwords:
> 
> That's the sort of business management - and investment - experience that made me sign up with Smashwords all those years ago.
> 
> I'm not doubting the intentions or the enthusiasm of Aaron or the people - whoever the hell they are - running Draft2Digital. I highly doubt that they're out to fleece anyone, or do anything wrong. However, startup companies are a very dangerous investment. No way in _hell_ would I be trusting my career and income to a startup that I haven't investigated in-depth, just for some lovely-sounding promises about epub uploads and better throughput.
> 
> Aaron, good luck with your project - I hope it goes well for you. And I hope the feedback above is useful to you.


Okay. Very interesting, and believe me, I was planning on going with SW too. I was just waiting for them to implement epub-uploading which was promised for 2012. In September I caught Mark Coker online on twitter and sent him an @-tweet asking when epub-uploading would become a reality as the year was more than half gone by then. No response. Imagine how flattered I was. How valued as a possible customer I felt.

At the last possible moment, by the end of the year around the holidays, they start tests. At first the link on their own site didn't work. Professionalism? They repaired that, and I sent them, like they asked, an epub file to test. Got a nice thank you mail. Did I get a follow-up mail of how my file was doing? Nope. Did I get a mail saying, "Your file is fine, you could become a SW-author?" Nope.

I hear it takes Xinxii two weeks to upload to B&N. I hear it takes SW several weeks. D2D does it in less than 36 hours.

Yes, I think I'll give them a chance to prove themselves.

ETA:

And they reply to bloody customer questions. Quaint, I know.


----------



## nomesque

shelleyo1 said:


> I've completely lost faith in Smashwords' business management skills. I think Mark is committed to authors--don't get me wrong. But the service and distribution has become so poor at Smashwords with lots of excuses about Apple and other retailers causing the slowness, taking weeks--yet D2D gets things up at Apple and B&N in a few days to a few _hours_. That begs the question about why Smashwords keeps blaming the retailers for the slowness, doesn't it? That isn't a faith-builder. Customer service at D2D actually bothers to respond, too. Smashwords is hit and miss.


See, I work in IT, and I know a bit about how bulk updates can stress a data-input process far more than individual updates, especially between two disparate systems. It doesn't surprise me that D2D can get a small number of uploads done quickly now - it would, however, surprise and impress me if they were managing the sort of numbers that Smashwords is uploading to the retailers, and not have the same sort of problems.

A month or two delay getting into retailers isn't a big deal, to me. I like the fact that Smashwords aren't growing too fast... in my opinion they're managing service vs. spending too much on staff quite well. I know that at the end of each quarter, I'll receive the money that's due to me. Gold. You don't appreciate financial stability in a company until you see one go under, leaving a crowd of ordinary people broke. Not that losing my writing income would send me broke right now, but one day I hope to be relying on that income alone, and then it would be a HUGE deal.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Another worrying thing about SW is the kind of responses you get _if_ you get a response.
There has been a consistent, long-term demand for epub-uploading. The answer was invariably that the Meatgrinder was "good enough."
No.
Good enough is by definition _not_ good enough. Excellence is.
Look at their website. It is good enough. Personally I don't mind it looks more 2003 than 2013, but maybe customers do. How difficult can it be to skin the thing into the current decade? But no, it is probably "good enough."
Which makes you wonder what else is "good enough."


----------



## Shelley K

nomesque said:


> See, I work in IT, and I know a bit about how bulk updates can stress a data-input process far more than individual updates, especially between two disparate systems. It doesn't surprise me that D2D can get a small number of uploads done quickly now - it would, however, surprise and impress me if they were managing the sort of numbers that Smashwords is uploading to the retailers, and not have the same sort of problems.


Some of us have kicked this idea around--maybe it's simply a volume issue. I don't know that much about IT, but it did occur to me that D2D would slow down as volume increased. Yet some things are still noteworthy about the way they handle things, such as Apple rejections by forwarding them to you so you're aware of the problem and can fix it. There's at least the hope right now that changes made will actually go through--sometimes that never happens through Smash. And actually replying to customer service requests quickly--instead of a few weeks or never, as has often happened at Smash.

Again, I'm aware that could be volume. But if Smashwords has that much volume that requests are backlogged three weeks, I don't think they're managing service vs. spending very well at all right now, for reasons I'm unclear about.



> Not that losing my writing income would send me broke right now, but one day I hope to be relying on that income alone, and then it would be a HUGE deal.


I agree with you in that I wouldn't recommend anyone to put all their apples in this basket and distribute everywhere through D2D with no other streams. But in my case, what I make at Apple right now is a little extra added onto the bulk of my income which comes through direct publishing everywhere else. Trying to supplement that by putting a few new titles and the ones that haven't gone through at Smashwords in 9 months isn't going to take any food out of our mouths.

Kobo is an established company, and they still owe people money from months ago. I wouldn't put all my eggs, apples or oranges in any one basket, period. It is another way to diversify, though, and testing the waters certainly shouldn't hurt anyone.

Smashwords needs this competition, as well, IMO. They need to improve some things, and I hope an upstart gaining ground spurs them on to do so.


----------



## dalya




----------



## Shelley K

Dalya! That halo--it's _drawn_ on, isn't it!


----------



## nomesque

Dalya said:


>


LOL! Of course - Stockholm Syndrome! But I'll have you know, Mark's basement is quite cosy. Hardly any rats.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

nomesque said:


> LOL! Of course - Stockholm Syndrome! But I'll have you know, Mark's basement is quite cosy. Hardly any rats.


But then again, you _would_ say that, being all stockholmy and such.


----------



## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

Aaron has made it clear that D2D is still in its beta and that all participating from Kindleboards are helping test a new product, which is all well and good. My major concern has been the uncritical way in which people have embraced an untested product, while simultaneously slagging off the one and only existing service. 

D2D is still untested. They may be doing great guns uploading a dozen files at a time, but how will they fare when they have to upload a thousand? And what about the distributors. Both Amazon and Apple are notoriously fickle and self interested. I remember a time not long ago when Mark would sing the praises of Amazon to all who would listen. That was when Smash and Amazon were on the brink of signing a deal. His singing stopped when Amazon reneged on their commitment without explanation. Apple has been known to pull books for no reason and stonewall all requests for explanation. Why would books from D2D be any different? To complicate matters further, B&N seems to run on Greek time when it comes to making payments. Why would they sharpen up their act for D2D?

Yes, D2D is a good thing for indie authors because it provides an alternative to what already exists, but expecting it to solve all the problems associated with the already existing system is being unrealistic.


----------



## dalya

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> Aaron has made it clear that D2D is still in its beta and that all participating from Kindleboards are helping test a new product, which is all well and good. My major concern has been the uncritical way in which people have embraced an untested product, while simultaneously slagging off the one and only existing service. ...


Yes, I think it says a LOT about our DESPERATION.

I'm Canadian, so I can't Pubit. Other authors writing similar things to what I write can finish a story and upload, be selling on B&N in a matter of days. Not me. It's a month. And then something's buggy and my covers aren't showing. I'm losing TENS of SALES! Tens! Maybe eleven! It's horrible.


----------



## Shelley K

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> My major concern has been the uncritical way in which people have embraced an untested product, while simultaneously slagging off the one and only existing service.


Legitimate complaints and concerns are what I'm hearing and voicing, not slagging off.

And Dalya's hit the nail--that fact that people are making grabby fingers at D2D isn't just _ooh, shiny!_, it's that people are a little bit desperate for an alternative at the moment. That's telling without anyone saying a word.


----------



## MarkCoker

Andrew Ashling said:


> Okay. Very interesting, and believe me, I was planning on going with SW too. I was just waiting for them to implement epub-uploading which was promised for 2012. In September I caught Mark Coker online on twitter and sent him an @-tweet asking when epub-uploading would become a reality as the year was more than half gone by then. No response. Imagine how flattered I was. How valued as a possible customer I felt.


I see the Smashwords bashing continues on this thread since I last posted. Thanks, Naomi, for your kind and reasoned words of support. Thanks, Herc, for your level-headed posts as well.

I would ask people reading this thread, especially those who have never personally used Smashwords, to consume what you read here with a grain of salt. Some of the commenters here have valid, first-hand reasons to feel like we let them down. There's also a lot of unfair innuendo, unsubstantiated hearsay and flat-out mistruths. This thread has become a honeypot for authors who feel dissatisfied with Smashwords, and a marketing vehicle for a new startup. The opening post of this thread started by calling out Smashwords, so maybe it's not a surprise that it would attract some disaffected Smashwords authors.

Although we aim to provide excellent, reliable service 100% of the time, we will fall short at times. I promise you that. I can also promise everyone that we'll never stop improving, and we'll never stop working in partnership with our retailers to improve every aspect of our service.

Andrew, in my 2011 year-in-review at http://blog.smashwords.com/2011/12/smashwords-year-in-review-2011.html I stated we'd launch Smashwords Direct in the second half of 2012. We delivered on the promise.

We made significant progress in 2012 on every objective I outlined at the end of 2011 - faster support responses, faster Premium Catalog approvals, faster distributions, faster sales reporting, Smashwords Direct, etc. Am I satisfied with where we are? Definitely not. We still have much room for improvement in each of these categories.

A few weeks ago, I outlined our objectives for 2013 at http://blog.smashwords.com/2012/12/smashwords-year-in-review-2012-power-in.html I also expect to deliver on these as well. In just the last five days, for example, we made some big changes that will improve the reliability of our shipments. We're making improvements every day. Smashwords is now 19 people, and every one of us is 100% committed to improving our ability to serve our authors. Now that we're serving 50,000 authors and handling nearly 200,000 books, it's inevitable that we will disappoint some authors.

I don't use my personal @markcoker Twitter account to answer support inquiries. We've got a full time staff who answers support inquiries, reachable over our "Comments/questions" link. Even though I'm not a good support contact, I make myself incredibly accessible to all our authors. My email address is below in my KB signature. I try to respond to every person who emails me, Smashwords author or not.


----------



## lorelei

I'm not a Smashwords author, Mark, but I really appreciate that you stood up to the censors. (I know others have mentioned this, but I wanted to mention it again.)


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

> No way in hell would I be trusting my career and income to a startup that I haven't investigated in-depth


I am not trusting my writing career or income to anyone. I'm trusting one month's worth of my Apple income to D2D. If I don't get paid, particularly by a startup without any track record, trust me, I'll be finding other options ASAP. This is part of the whole indie writer thing. Our arrangements aren't permanent. We don't send off a manuscript, sign a contract, and wave goodbye to our control.

I will say that at this point, plan B is really to get my act together and go direct with Apple, something that people I know were slowly doing because of Smashwords poor service. That's kind of a blunt reality check for their business: that people were willing to cough up $300-1000 for an overpriced Mac and get a government approved DBA and tax number just because Smashwords wasn't cutting it.

As to growth slowing down how quickly items are sent, I would think that's the part of the business that is least subject to problems with increasing volume because it's the part that should be automated. I just want to upload a perfectly formulated epub and have it go live on Apple correctly or get a reason why it's been rejected. If that isn't automated, then yes, D2D is doomed. Hopefully it is. I'd expect customer service issues where you need a reaction from a human being to be the problem with growth.

Frankly both of these businesses are on shaky ground because they are bottom feeders subsisting on the stupidity of Apple and Barnes and Noble. Apple's already removed the ISBN requirement, if they were to go further and put out Itunes producer for Windows and started to let you use a pseudonym as publisher then probably 90% of serious US based authors would pull out of Smash and D2D. The same for non-US based authors if B&N allowed non-US residents to upload directly.


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## 41413

Katie, check out macincloud.com before spending too much money on a new computer.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

MarkCoker said:


> I see the Smashwords bashing continues on this thread since I last posted. Thanks, Naomi, for your kind and reasoned words of support. Thanks, Herc, for your level-headed posts as well.
> 
> Andrew, in my 2011 year-in-review at http://blog.smashwords.com/2011/12/smashwords-year-in-review-2011.html I stated we'd launch Smashwords Direct in the second half of 2012. We delivered on the promise.
> 
> I don't use my personal @markcoker Twitter account to answer support inquiries. We've got a full time staff who answers support inquiries, reachable over our "Comments/questions" link. Even though I'm not a good support contact, I make myself incredibly accessible to all our authors. My email address is below in my KB signature. I try to respond to every person who emails me, Smashwords author or not.


You delivered at the last possible moment in what is a hectic time for everyone. But okay&#8230; sort of.

Like I said: I tried to help as much as I could. I sent in a file to help you with testing your system. This was almost a month ago. Except for a thank you note I never heard from SW again. I have no idea whether my file is up to par. Since I'd done my part, I waited for SW to contact me whether it was good enough and to tell me when your system would go live. I'm still waiting. But, actually, I _do_ know there is some trifling thing wrong with the file I sent you. Because D2D let me know exactly what the problem was within hours of delivering the same file to them. I repaired it within minutes, uploaded it again within ten and it was for sale on the virtual shelves within 36 hours.

Fair enough that you don't use your personal Twitter account for support questions. You could have answered anyway. That _would_ have flattered me. It would probably have gained you a new customer, and, if I may add, a rather loyal one. You could have at least given me a link or an email-address and told me to ask my question there. You did the worst thing you could do: you completely ignored me. Can't you see how this kind of offhand treatment would erode my trust in you and SW? This is a factual statement, not "bashing."

Neither is my appraisal of your website. In my eyes there is nothing wrong with it, but I read that some customers think it's old fashioned. That's a cosmetic problem and it should be easy to repair. Except, it hasn't been in the three years I know (of) SW.

IMHO deriding valid customer complaints as mere SW-bashing doesn't help your case.

That said, I do appreciate your pioneering efforts for independent authors. I admire how you stood up against the censors. I sincerely wish you and SW all the best. I also hope you realize that what you call "bashing" were just customer complaints that should have been addressed a long time ago.


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

I actually have a MacBook Air now, but I know people going through MacIncloud. Mostly I've seen people picking up used Mac Minis from craig's list or deciding their next computer will be a Mac instead of a PC. Either way though, I've never heard of anyone switching to direct because of the royalty, not even people who are making serious money. It's the service.

I too am very grateful to Mark for standing up for freedom of speech issues, particularly as it impacted my pocketbook. I'm really a fan of his activism and his views. I have no desire to bash Smashwords or switch from their service. I just felt like when the Smash/Apple combination resulted in Apple essentially *giving my books away for free* and Smashwords telling me tough luck that I had no choice, but to look at other options.


----------



## Becca Mills

MarkCoker said:


> This thread has become a honeypot for authors who feel dissatisfied with Smashwords, and a marketing vehicle for a new startup.


Mark, this thread is (explicitly) a marketing vehicle for Draft2Digital. Vendors of all sorts are allowed one marketing thread on KB. If it doesn't already have one, Smashwords can start a thread of its own. In fact, doing so would be a great way to keep tabs on the attitudes of hundreds of the more savvy and professionalized authors in your customer pool.


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## Marti talbott

I'll be interested to see how this goes. I prefer to upload directly to the bookseller, but that doesn't seem possible for Apple and Sony at this time. However, getting paid monthly and with a good reports system is tempting. Being able to see quick results from promotions is important to me.


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## 41413

I would be thrilled if Smashwords representatives started a thread to hang out with us, address our concerns, and let us know why we shouldn't feel hopelessly frustrated with SW.

SW has been able to rest on its laurels because it's the only game in town, and now Mark Coker is complaining that we're talking about the competition in a thread that is specifically meant to advertise the competitor.

Dude, if you want to compete? Compete.


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## Sara Fawkes

I never put any of my stories on Smashwords for the same reasons here: you have no control over the distribution, and more often than not you DIDN'T get onto Apple within any reasonable time frame (which is the only reason to go onto SW in my opinion).

I've signed up for a D2D beta code, which I hope to get this week. Everything I've heard and read says its much more efficient and user-friendly than SW's clunky, antiquated system. Most folks are notified in a matter of DAYS (versus *months* with SW) whether they've been accepted for distribution and what, if anything, is wrong with their files. Plus, it sounds like customer service is much faster, at least for now. Hopefully they'll continue to expand their business as they get more clients and books in their system.

*pokes Smashwords* Why haven't you expanded your work force or updated your website to keep up with technology? Your presentation and lack of customer service doesn't inspire much confidence...


----------



## WillemThomas

It might be too soon, as they are so new, but has anyone other than Aaron experienced a payment cycle via direct deposit, yet? I'm curious how D2D can manage a monthly direct deposit feature and Smashwords can't (or won't).

Willem Thomas


----------



## Aaron Pogue

WillemThomas said:


> It might be too soon, as they are so new, but has anyone other than Aaron experienced a payment cycle via direct deposit, yet? I'm curious how D2D can manage a monthly direct deposit feature and Smashwords can't (or won't).


They only launched the beta at the very end of December, so payments for those sales won't come in until the end of February. The vast majority of the new beta testers joined in January, though, so it'll be the end of March before we have an answer to that question.


----------



## MarkCoker

Sara Fawkes said:


> Everything I've heard and read says its much more efficient and user-friendly than SW's clunky, antiquated system. Most folks are notified in a matter of DAYS (versus *months* with SW) whether they've been accepted for distribution and what, if anything, is wrong with their files.


Hi Sara. I'll have to disagree here with the "clunky" statement. Yes, our web site is in need of user interface refresh, but the publishing platform functionality we offer - upload one file and have it converted instantly into multiple ebook formats for free - remains unmatched. Our AutoVetter system instantly alerts you via on-screen updates and email to common formatting problems. Our Dashboard clearly tells you the status of whether your book has been accepted to the Premium Catalog or not. If the book needs work, our vetting team provides Dashboard-accessible suggestions. If there's ever a glitch or a question, our service team is standing by to help. You can monitor shipping status from the Dashboard's Channel Manager. It's simply *not* true that "most folks are notified in a matter of months with SW." Most authors get rapid distribution, especially to Apple where we're shipping multiple times a day, or to Kobo where we ship daily, or B&N where it's twice-weekly. For the inevitable instances where a book or metadata update doesn't flow through, our support team works directly with our technical team and content team counterparts at retailers to identify and resolve the problem. Although our systems are not perfect, for most authors, our systems work extremely well. We're always working to improve them, which means in 2013 they'll get even better.



Sara Fawkes said:


> *pokes Smashwords* Why haven't you expanded your work force or updated your website to keep up with technology? Your presentation and lack of customer service doesn't inspire much confidence...


We *have* expanded our work force, and quite dramatically. As I mentioned in my 2012 year-in-review at http://blog.smashwords.com/2012/12/smashwords-year-in-review-2012-power-in.html we grew to 19 employees in 2012, up from 12 in 2011 and 3 in 2010. The growth has been divided among customer service and engineering. There's the user interface of the Smashwords web site, and then there's the technology that drives the underlying platform. The technology underlying the platform and distribution systems has received heavy investment, and will continue to receive heavy investment. In 2013, the UI for the website and Smashwords store will receive long-overdue investment as well. We've also got many fun surprises planned for the year ahead touching multiple aspects of our service. Some are major and some minor, and all will help us fulfill our mission of connecting our authors' books with readers. One of those such surprises may come next week, and will give advantage to authors who are working with us.

thanks


----------



## Betsy the Quilter

Mark,

I think it's great that you come here to talk directly to our members.  I'd like to invite you to start a dedicated Smashwords thread here (in much the same way Draft2Digital has done) for conversing with your customers and prospective customers. It would allow people to have a central point to discuss issues with you here; people could sign up to be notified when you post to the thread.

Thanks, 

Betsy
KB Moderator


----------



## Aaron Pogue

genevieveaclark said:


> That said, I've seen it mentioned elsewhere that people have questions about the direct deposit options with D2D. Direct deposit would be fantastic (not a PayPal fan, and being dependent on them is...not awesome). Is it feasible to offer this internationally? Kobo seems to have had some issues with this, though they have it working now...


I've been discussing that with the devs, and it should certainly be possible.

There are some technical challenges, but the biggest problem is fees. In order for Draft2Digital to make direct deposit (or EFT) payments to _anyone_, they have to go through a bank, and every bank is going to charge some kind of (significant) fee for international payments. If D2D paid a $25 fee to send someone $10 in accrued royalties, they'd go out of business in a hurry.

The obvious solution is to raise the minimum payment threshold. So international users will be able to choose direct deposit, but they'll have to make more money before it's sent. That's probably the same reason Kobo has a threshold of $100 where most of the other distributors settle somewhere between $10 and $25.

So...yes, definitely possible. And the best news, it's an issue the devs are aware of and pursuing solutions for. But there are some real-world issues that have to get resolved first.


----------



## dalya

Given that Smashwords is named in this thread's subject line, I think it's totally fair to have Mark Coker be on here.

If you know how search engines work, his company's name is all over this thread.

We could start a new thread about "Beta Development at Draft2Digital - news and discussion here"

And then another thread for Smashwords, or revive one of the older ones, like the New Year's Day epub party thread.


----------



## lorelei

Thanks for pointing that out, Dalya. Smashwords _is_ mentioned in the subject line. 
Why shouldn't Mark join in a discussion about his own company?


----------



## Betsy the Quilter

I'm not suggesting that Mark's responses be purged from this thread.  But there have been ongoing questions to Mark in this thread that don't have anything to do with D2D but with specific Smashwords issues. Those kinds of dialogues would be more appropriate in a separate, dedicated, thread.  At any rate, this IS the Draft2Digital developer thread; I see no reason to start a new one.  There is much information in this thread that is useful to people considering this option.

Betsy


----------



## Betsy the Quilter

Let's not derail the thread arguing the point; the invitation has been made; it will either happen or it won't.  People will either agree or they won't.  Please continue discussing the merits of Draft2Digital, thanks.

EDIT: To address the thread's title: this thread was begun, I believe, on January 1; the title wasn't changed to include Smashwords until January 19th, and people seemed to be able to understand what services were being offered.  

Betsy


----------



## MarkCoker

genevieveaclark said:


> ...And I *absolutely* think Mark Coker should respond to criticisms, but the appropriate place to do that is in his own thread - which he has repeatedly refused to start. Honestly, his behavior here - dismissing criticisms by saying they're "not true" (seriously, how childlike is that?), insisting that some of the comments come from people who aren't SW customers (has he not heard of pen names?), just in general whining...
> 
> Look. If you can't face criticisms of discontented customers head on, from a place that presumes that there's a reason they're discontented and it's your job to fix it, whatever it is, rather than try to argue them out of their own experience, _you have no place running a service business._


Genevieve, if someone states a blatant mistruth or misrepresentation in this thread, this is where I'll respond. I've already stated here that there are authors with valid reasons for discontent. But if someone's going to spread falsehoods, I'll call them on it.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Betsy the Quilter said:


> To address the thread's title: this thread was begun, I believe, on January 1; the title wasn't changed to include Smashwords until January 19th, and people seemed to be able to understand what services were being offered.


I made that change for the same reasons Genevieve posted above: There is no better way, in the current market, to describe what Draft2Digital is.

I've removed all reference to Smashwords from the title now. I really have no interest in stirring up controversy, and I would absolutely prefer to keep the conversation in this thread productive. We will all gain a lot more from discussing potential improvements to D2D.


----------



## 41413

Thanks for being professional and responsive, Aaron.


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## Betsy the Quilter

Thanks, Aaron.

Betsy


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## dalya

I think we can all agree that we're passionate about our books! While we might shrug and say, "Hey, it's just a hobby, I don't cry if it doesn't work out," we all know that's a fib. 

A single sale of an unloved title or a single great review can make the day for so many of us. It's natural that we all get a little emotional about algorithms, distribution wait times, and our beloved numbers and charts.

These books are our hopes and dreams. And for some people, a few weeks' delay can mean no rent money. I wouldn't say we're "entitled" to any particular level of service, and I'm grateful to be able to publish at all, but when so many marketplace factors are out of our control, a little stability from a retailer or distributor goes a long way.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Thanks to a recent user request, the devs have started looking into Google Books/Google Play as a potential sales channel.

I know from personal experience that the Google Books publishing dashboard is a royal pain, so it would be nice to let Draft2Digital manage that mess.

I've also heard that there's a danger of Google spontaneously discounting books which leads to problems with the other vendors. Kris thinks he can solve that problem, too.

That still leaves a below-average royalty rate for premium-priced books, but it's _something_, and it gives us one more place for our books to be discovered.

So, out of curiosity, who would be at all interested in Google Play distribution? It can be done, but the devs need to know how high of a priority it should be.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

One more outlet: Plus
Smaller royalties: mmm...maybe a plus.
The hassle of not having to deal with subbing there myself: Priceless.


----------



## Dan Harris

Aaron Pogue said:


> Thanks to a recent user request, the devs have started looking into Google Books/Google Play as a potential sales channel.
> 
> I know from personal experience that the Google Books publishing dashboard is a royal pain, so it would be nice to let Draft2Digital manage that mess.
> 
> I've also heard that there's a danger of Google spontaneously discounting books which leads to problems with the other vendors. Kris thinks he can solve that problem, too.
> 
> That still leaves a below-average royalty rate for premium-priced books, but it's _something_, and it gives us one more place for our books to be discovered.
> 
> So, out of curiosity, who would be at all interested in Google Play distribution? It can be done, but the devs need to know how high of a priority it should be.


I have the impression that the Sony and Diesel stores get more business than Google Play, but I've never sold a book at either so I'm not sure  But if that's true, those channels would be best to prioritize I think.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Dan Harris said:


> I have the impression that the Sony and Diesel stores get more business than Google Play, but I've never sold a book at either so I'm not sure  But if that's true, those channels would be best to prioritize I think.


Those are both high priority. They're also both proving difficult. Getting into Diesel would apparently require going through Ingram Digital (which offers lousy royalty rates), and Sony's completely unresponsive. D2D probably needs to get more buzz in the community before Sony or Diesel will talk with them directly.

Meanwhile, anyone can publish with Google Books as long as they're willing to deal with the arcane interface.

So Sony and Diesel are definitely higher priority, but I wouldn't be surprised if Google Books support still comes through first. ARe, too, for that matter.


----------



## Cliff Ball

I just started using Booktango to get into Google Play, because I hated Google's own dashboard, but BT's way of doing it is kind of clunky, since the formatting is still screwy. If D2D can get us into Google Play, then that's another channel I can add. Diesel would be good too, I once had 2 whole sales from there


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Cliff Ball said:


> I just started using Booktango to get into Google Play, because I hated Google's own dashboard, but BT's way of doing it is kind of clunky, since the formatting is still screwy.


Oof. I'd forgotten just _how_ bad it is. I spent a lot of the afternoon messing around in the Google Books dashboard just to see what all Draft2Digital would need to do, and it's _awful_. Some folks have said Google Play isn't a channel worth getting into because it's such a low percentage of the market, but maybe that's because Google has made it so difficult to put compelling content up for sale!

It sure would be nice if we could do something to open up another distribution option.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Aaron Pogue said:


> Oof. I'd forgotten just _how_ bad it is. I spent a lot of the afternoon messing around in the Google Books dashboard just to see what all Draft2Digital would need to do, and it's _awful_. Some folks have said Google Play isn't a channel worth getting into because it's such a low percentage of the market, but maybe that's because Google has made it so difficult to put compelling content up for sale!
> 
> It sure would be nice if we could do something to open up another distribution option.


Libraries would be nice. Though I think the forces against us in that regard are greater than simply being able to distribute to them.


----------



## Casper Parks

At this time, I keep away from companies like Smashwords and Draft2Digital. 

“Change of terms and conditions” is wide open. 

Claiming to advise of changes does not equate the customer is informed. E-book distribution decides they want a piece or all of the pie on copyrights, they send out an email change of terms and author misses that notice.

I tired SW in 2011, found it difficult to work with and lacked customer support. Things may have changed, but difficult to say as I do no use them.

Sadly, a growing number of online e-book retailers are requiring third party distribution. 

Again, biggest concern is “Copyrights”. Claiming copyrights remain the author’s is not assuring. Subject to change in terms and conditions leaves that wide-open.

Be it SW or D2D, should either agree “Copyright remains the author” and is not subject to change – I will reconsider my current stance.


----------



## Casper Parks

Aaron Pogue said:


> Oof. I'd forgotten just _how_ bad it is. I spent a lot of the afternoon messing around in the Google Books dashboard just to see what all Draft2Digital would need to do, and it's _awful_. Some folks have said Google Play isn't a channel worth getting into because it's such a low percentage of the market, but maybe that's because Google has made it so difficult to put compelling content up for sale!
> 
> It sure would be nice if we could do something to open up another distribution option.


Agree, getting e-books uploaded for Google Play is not easy.

It is a headache that Google Play will have to workout.

I suspect Google Play will become a large player in the near future for e-books.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Casper Parks said:


> At this time, I keep away from companies like Smashwords and Draft2Digital.
> 
> "Change of terms and conditions" is wide open.
> 
> Claiming to advise of changes does not equate the customer is informed. E-book distribution decides they want a piece or all of the pie on copyrights, they send out an email change of terms and author misses that notice.
> 
> I tired SW in 2011, found it difficult to work with and lacked customer support. Things may have changed, but difficult to say as I do no use them.
> 
> Sadly, a growing number of online e-book retailers are requiring third party distribution.
> 
> Again, biggest concern is "Copyrights". Claiming copyrights remain the author's is not assuring. Subject to change in terms and conditions leaves that wide-open.
> 
> Be it SW or D2D, should either agree "Copyright remains the author" and is not subject to change - I will reconsider my current stance.


Um, okaaaay....


----------



## RM Prioleau

So I assume that D2D is SW's new competitor. Will D2D eventually offer the same (and/or more) distribution channels as SW? Including libraries? It took me forever to figure out Meatgrinder (which I still hate), so I need several good reasons why D2D is the better option before I consider converting after all those long, frustrating hours of hair-pulling, trying to master the art of Meatgrinder.


----------



## sgroyle

Looking forward to getting a sign up from D2D - no word yet; despite a couple of emails....


----------



## AnitaDobs

RM Prioleau said:


> I need several good reasons why D2D is the better option before I consider converting after all those long, frustrating hours of hair-pulling, trying to master the art of Meatgrinder.


I think I can answer to this to a degree after being in their beta phase. Here are my experiences of D2D so far in comparison to Smashwords:

1. The upload is relatively easy. The interface is easier to use than Smash and is in general, more straight forward without all the formatting bunk Smash gives you. Case in point, I recently uploaded a title to smash and the auto-idiot-vettor told me I needed my copyright info in there... it's there, it's always there. No matter what I did, no joy (a title I published later on Smash, exactly the same copyright info, went through though!?!). D2D still has some tweaking in regard to the files and making them convert in the way they want... but I'm talking small things, not big things. Kris was easily contacted and explained stuff. They are in beta. I only had an issue with a couple of files mind you.

2. My first batch through d2d hit B&N 12 hours later after upload.

3. Apple has been slower, with maybe just 2 hitting Apple so far. But compare that to Smash where (as d2d gives you a link to see your book on ibooks after its published) *HALF* of my titles are not even there. I only found this out because of the d2d link... I'm useless navigatting Apple. (one of my titles that smash didn't put through from 3 months ago is now up at Apple)

3. My second batch hit B&N about 48 hours later. I had found four of my titles (from 3-4 months ago) hadn't even arrived at B&N (through smash), and four other titles had absolutely no blurb (through smash.) The first four titles that never even arrived through Smash, were the ones that d2d put up 48 hours later on B&N... and I made sales (proving my theory that smashwords loses me money, and themselves for that matter.)

4. You can put a full description blurb for your book through d2d, smash is that... what is it... 400 words or characters?

5. D2D: Nice sales bar graph. Needs some improvement with the book title display, but it's a small thing. You can change the graph and see slaes depending on whichever one you want, pubiit, B&N whatever; or specific book if you choose.

6. As already stated, d2d tells you when and where your book has been published via email, they give a link so you can see it for yourself, unlike smash where you just kind of wonder and never really know, leaving you losing money because it may have been rejected/didn't go through-technical hitch... or whatever. The main point: they tell you. I haven't had any experience of the rejection email as of yet, but others on the thread have and so could then change it, they weren't left hanging.

I could go on, but I think those are the broad strokes.

As a result of smashwords and general ridiculousness, I've unchanneled and upoladed more titles to D2D than I had ever initially intended to. I feel I have no choice but to do that really. Another case in point:

I had a title (erotica of course) where it was rejected by smashwords for the 'premium' as I was suppossed to make it clear the main female character in the story was over 18. She's a college student about to graduate! Simply reading it makes it obvious. They didn't care in part 1, they didn't care in part 2... part 3, oh no, she must have suddenly regressed in age after the last two episodes. In anycase... I gave up bothering, and uploaded it to D2D and it was up on B&N a day later.

Just for the record, I would never write anything underage. I personally think the person who 'vetted' it was worried the menage shower scene sex would rub off on them or something, and averted their eyes. I could send an email off to them, but we all know how that goes. I think next time I'll have to write it like this in the very first sentence:

'Tracy was over eighteen, she was so over eighteen she was about to graduate, and there's not many under eighteen childhood genius' that graduate before eighteen years of age, which only goes to show how over eighteen she really was. She wouldn't even have dreamt about sex before that age. One day Tracy was getting it hard... '

Anyway, I'm rambling now. I should point out I didn't post this on the D2D thread over the weekend because I was absolutely livid with Smashwords when I found out the true extent of their 'service', and my words would not have been as measured as they are now (yes, this is me 'measured').

I hope D2D does well. It'll certainly help.


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

I currently manage my own publications at Amazon, Kobo, and iTunes. D2D publishes me at B&N. XinXii gets me a load of German and Spanish sites that might or might not be profitable.

My aim is to be as widely distributed as possible without losing my rights. If D2D adds Google Play to the equation, I don't care if the royalties suck, because the exposure is more important. I'd rather spend my time writing than figuring out another retailer. So any extra retailer D2D finds to flog my books, the more the merrier.

Aaron, put me down as 'interested to get on Google Play' or any other future retailer that's difficult/unavailable for non-US-residents.

Thanks.


----------



## WillemThomas

Two other good reasons to consider D2D over Smashwords are monthly payments and direct deposit. (I don't think Smashwords is even considering these as neither are even mentioned as a 2013 coming-soon feature. 2014 maybe?)

Willem Thomas


----------



## AnitaDobs

WillemThomas said:


> Two other good reasons to consider D2D over Smashwords are monthly payments and direct deposit. (I don't think Smashwords is even considering these as neither are even mentioned as a 2013 coming-soon feature. 2014 maybe?)
> 
> Willem Thomas


Ya. Good point.

Another thing is your own option to choose between paypal/bank deposit or check. Most just give one of those options, or two at most. It's nice to be able to choose yourself, that's for sure.


----------



## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

RM Prioleau said:


> So I assume that D2D is SW's new competitor. Will D2D eventually offer the same (and/or more) distribution channels as SW? Including libraries? It took me forever to figure out Meatgrinder (which I still hate), so I need several good reasons why D2D is the better option before I consider converting after all those long, frustrating hours of hair-pulling, trying to master the art of Meatgrinder.


Remember that D2D is still in beta and all they are currently offering is a chance to test their service. They have yet to pay anyone, nor have they opened their service to the general public.

_If _ they can deliver half of what they are promising, then they will be fantastic for the indie community.


----------



## TJHudson

Any word on how long the wait is for beta approval at the moment?

I'm near completion on a new title. If the wait is a few days I'll go with D2D. If we're talking weeks then I'll have to stick it out with Smashwords for a little while longer. Though with the slowness that Smashwords operates at maybe I should just wait for D2D approval.


----------



## Dan Harris

AnitaDobs said:


> 'Tracy was over eighteen, she was so over eighteen she was about to graduate, and there's not many under eighteen childhood genius' that graduate before eighteen years of age, which only goes to show how over eighteen she really was. She wouldn't even have dreamt about sex before that age. One day Tracy was getting it hard... '


Genuinely laughed out loud.


----------



## RM Prioleau

AnitaDobs said:


> I think I can answer to this to a degree after being in their beta phase. Here are my experiences of D2D so far in comparison to Smashwords:
> 
> 1. The upload is relatively easy. The interface is easier to use than Smash and is in general, more straight forward without all the formatting bunk Smash gives you. Case in point, I recently uploaded a title to smash and the auto-idiot-vettor told me I needed my copyright info in there... it's there, it's always there. No matter what I did, no joy (a title I published later on Smash, exactly the same copyright info, went through though!?!). D2D still has some tweaking in regard to the files and making them convert in the way they want... but I'm talking small things, not big things. Kris was easily contacted and explained stuff. They are in beta. I only had an issue with a couple of files mind you.
> 
> 2. My first batch through d2d hit B&N 12 hours later after upload.
> 
> 3. Apple has been slower, with maybe just 2 hitting Apple so far. But compare that to Smash where (as d2d gives you a link to see your book on ibooks after its published) *HALF* of my titles are not even there. I only found this out because of the d2d link... I'm useless navigatting Apple. (one of my titles that smash didn't put through from 3 months ago is now up at Apple)
> 
> 3. My second batch hit B&N about 48 hours later. I had found four of my titles (from 3-4 months ago) hadn't even arrived at B&N (through smash), and four other titles had absolutely no blurb (through smash.) The first four titles that never even arrived through Smash, were the ones that d2d put up 48 hours later on B&N... and I made sales (proving my theory that smashwords loses me money, and themselves for that matter.)
> 
> 4. You can put a full description blurb for your book through d2d, smash is that... what is it... 400 words or characters?
> 
> 5. D2D: Nice sales bar graph. Needs some improvement with the book title display, but it's a small thing. You can change the graph and see slaes depending on whichever one you want, pubiit, B&N whatever; or specific book if you choose.
> 
> 6. As already stated, d2d tells you when and where your book has been published via email, they give a link so you can see it for yourself, unlike smash where you just kind of wonder and never really know, leaving you losing money because it may have been rejected/didn't go through-technical hitch... or whatever. The main point: they tell you. I haven't had any experience of the rejection email as of yet, but others on the thread have and so could then change it, they weren't left hanging.
> 
> I could go on, but I think those are the broad strokes.
> 
> As a result of smashwords and general ridiculousness, I've unchanneled and upoladed more titles to D2D than I had ever initially intended to. I feel I have no choice but to do that really. Another case in point:
> 
> I had a title (erotica of course) where it was rejected by smashwords for the 'premium' as I was suppossed to make it clear the main female character in the story was over 18. She's a college student about to graduate! Simply reading it makes it obvious. They didn't care in part 1, they didn't care in part 2... part 3, oh no, she must have suddenly regressed in age after the last two episodes. In anycase... I gave up bothering, and uploaded it to D2D and it was up on B&N a day later.
> 
> Just for the record, I would never write anything underage. I personally think the person who 'vetted' it was worried the menage shower scene sex would rub off on them or something, and averted their eyes. I could send an email off to them, but we all know how that goes. I think next time I'll have to write it like this in the very first sentence:
> 
> 'Tracy was over eighteen, she was so over eighteen she was about to graduate, and there's not many under eighteen childhood genius' that graduate before eighteen years of age, which only goes to show how over eighteen she really was. She wouldn't even have dreamt about sex before that age. One day Tracy was getting it hard... '
> 
> Anyway, I'm rambling now. I should point out I didn't post this on the D2D thread over the weekend because I was absolutely livid with Smashwords when I found out the true extent of their 'service', and my words would not have been as measured as they are now (yes, this is me 'measured').
> 
> I hope D2D does well. It'll certainly help.


Thanks for the detailed review. Yes, I agree that it takes forever to get stuff published in the premium distribution @ Smashwords. I will keep an eye on D2D before I make any further considerations. I would like to see if they are going to be offering more distribution places besides Amazon, B&N, Kobo, and Apple. Except for Apple, I manage my own accounts at the other 3. I like using places like these to distribute my books at the more 'obscure' channels like Diesel, Sony, and the libraries as Smashwords offers. If D2D can match (and beat) the # of distribution places that Smashwords offers, then perhaps I will be sold


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Chrystalla said:


> Since I've just hit a wall with Smashwords regarding serials, and this site was brought to my attention, I must ask: does Draft2Digital accept serials? (not series - different)


As far as I know, they have no policy about serials. The only legitimate reason I can imagine for them to reject serials would be if they violated the terms of one of their sales channels. If Amazon or B&N explicitly forbid publishing serials through them, it could be a problem.

But that would be no reason for D2D to forbid them completely. They could just make that particular sales channel unavailable. Shouldn't be too hard.

I'll discuss it with the devs, but until you hear otherwise, you should be safe uploading to Draft2Digital. As I said, they have no policy on the matter yet.


----------



## Kwalker

I would definitely take advantage of the opportunity to get into the Google Play store.


----------



## Guest

Casper Parks said:


> At this time, I keep away from companies like Smashwords and Draft2Digital.
> 
> "Change of terms and conditions" is wide open.


I guess you haven't actually read the Amazon TOS recently?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Casper Parks said:


> "Change of terms and conditions" is wide open.
> 
> Claiming to advise of changes does not equate the customer is informed. E-book distribution decides they want a piece or all of the pie on copyrights, they send out an email change of terms and author misses that notice.
> 
> ...
> 
> Again, biggest concern is "Copyrights". Claiming copyrights remain the author's is not assuring. Subject to change in terms and conditions leaves that wide-open.
> 
> Be it SW or D2D, should either agree "Copyright remains the author" and is not subject to change - I will reconsider my current stance.


It doesn't seem like this is a concern to many here, but just for the record D2D has extremely author-friendly Terms of Service, especially when it comes to the "changes" clause:



> 2. *Amendments to the Agreement.* The Program will change over time and the terms of this Agreement will need to change over time as well. We reserve the right to change the terms of this Agreement at any time in our sole discretion. We will give you notice of the changes by posting new terms in place of the old and by sending an email to the email address then registered for your Program account. Changes to this Agreement will be effective 30 days after we give you notice. If you do not like any Amendment, you are free to terminate the Agreement at any time.


One of my top priorities was getting author-friendly Terms of Service. I've read the blog posts slamming other service providers for all their vague terms and irresponsible rights grabs, and I hate the idea of losing control of my work just as much as any of you do. So I told the devs, "No arguing, we're going to make something that's author friendly."

They looked at me like I was a buffoon for being so concerned, because that was already their plan. In fact, it was Kris (the CEO) who dreamed up this little gem and insisted on including it:



> 10. e. You are the owner of the Ebook files that we create.


I understand being cautious about a new business and their (mostly unproven) ability to fulfill all their promises, but when it comes to their contractual commitments, you won't find anything better.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Well, since no one else is going to say it, I will: As the copyright owner, your rights cannot be legally taken from you. You must assign them, either by license or transfer. No entity may legally strip those rights from you or restrict them without your prior acknowledgement. There are no provisions for retroactive assumption of those rights. In other words, works you submit under a non-exclusive license cannot be restricted (made exclusive) without your acceptance of the new terms. If the terms change and you then submit, then it is up to you to understand the terms. But this is always the case, each and every time you publish a new book.

Finally, any business that tried to change the terms in such a way would immediately find itself on the wrong side of an outcry.

I think you're tilting at windmills, Casper.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

TJHudson said:


> Any word on how long the wait is for beta approval at the moment?


The wait has been running right around 1 week, but I think they're starting to catch up now. If I had to guess, I'd say someone signing up now would probably get in before the end of the week.


----------



## Casper Parks

Aaron Pogue said:


> It doesn't seem like this is a concern to many here, but just for the record D2D has extremely author-friendly Terms of Service, especially when it comes to the "changes" clause:
> 
> One of my top priorities was getting author-friendly Terms of Service. I've read the blog posts slamming other service providers for all their vague terms and irresponsible rights grabs, and I hate the idea of losing control of my work just as much as any of you do. So I told the devs, "No arguing, we're going to make something that's author friendly."
> 
> They looked at me like I was a buffoon for being so concerned, because that was already their plan. In fact, it was Kris (the CEO) who dreamed up this little gem and insisted on including it:
> 
> I understand being cautious about a new business and their (mostly unproven) ability to fulfill all their promises, but when it comes to their contractual commitments, you won't find anything better.


Thanks for answering my questions.

Many Indies are not aware of "Boilerplate Rights". In the past, distribution companies never asked for Boilerplate Rights because of publishing houses (gate keepers). We have entered a new era in distribution, where Indies are wide-open for giving "Boilerplate Rights" without understanding what it means.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Just sold my first ebook on iTunes! I submitted it on Jan 15th, it went live on Jan 16th, now sold a copy on Jan 23! Suffice it to say I am super happy with d2D!


----------



## Casper Parks

Victoria Champion said:


> Just sold my first ebook on iTunes! I submitted it on Jan 15th, it went live on Jan 16th, now sold a copy on Jan 23! Suffice it to say I am super happy with d2D!


Job well done!


----------



## The 13th Doctor

Congratulations, Victoria!


----------



## Aaron Pogue

shelleyo1 said:


> Put it up free on B&N through Smashwords and free elsewhere through D2D. Amazon will price match Kobo, and when it eventually if ever shows up at B&N it'll be free and won't revert it back.


I've been following some of the discussion about getting Amazon to price-match books to permafree, and the conventional wisdom is that they will preferentially match to B&N, and only match free stuff at iTunes or Kobo if it's also free at B&N, or not for sale at B&N. That's what led to the suggestion I just quoted.

Just as a test, I listed my friend Courtney's (already published) book for $0.00 through all vendors at Draft2Digital. That means it went free at Kobo and iTunes, and remained $0.99 at B&N and Amazon. I then posted that book (with the free links) in our local reporting thread.

That was nearly two weeks ago, but early this morning it got price-matched at Amazon. I've confirmed that the B&N copy is still $0.99.


Amazon





B&N
Kobo

I realize all these vendors tend to be pretty erratic in their policies and enforcement, so I'm not going to claim I can absolutely disprove the conventional wisdom, but I do have a data point that says it's wrong. If it works this way for everyone, it could be very handy.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Victoria Champion said:


> Just sold my first ebook on iTunes! I submitted it on Jan 15th, it went live on Jan 16th, now sold a copy on Jan 23! Suffice it to say I am super happy with d2D!


Congratz.

I had a little head start on you, but I sold three books on iTunes and B&N, vendors that would have been difficult for me to reach from Europe.

Yep, happy.


----------



## TJHudson

Aaron Pogue said:


> The wait has been running right around 1 week, but I think they're starting to catch up now. If I had to guess, I'd say someone signing up now would probably get in before the end of the week.


Thanks for the heads up.


----------



## 56139

Aaron Pogue said:


> I've been following some of the discussion about getting Amazon to price-match books to permafree, and the conventional wisdom is that they will preferentially match to B&N, and only match free stuff at iTunes or Kobo if it's also free at B&N, or not for sale at B&N. That's what led to the suggestion I just quoted.
> 
> Just as a test, I listed my friend Courtney's (already published) book for $0.00 through all vendors at Draft2Digital. That means it went free at Kobo and iTunes, and remained $0.99 at B&N and Amazon. I then posted that book (with the free links) in our local reporting thread.
> 
> That was nearly two weeks ago, but early this morning it got price-matched at Amazon. I've confirmed that the B&N copy is still $0.99.
> 
> 
> Amazon
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> B&N
> Kobo
> 
> I realize all these vendors tend to be pretty erratic in their policies and enforcement, so I'm not going to claim I can absolutely disprove the conventional wisdom, but I do have a data point that says it's wrong. If it works this way for everyone, it could be very handy.


Good to know. I'm getting ready to publish several books so this is all very helpful in making my decision on how to go about it.


----------



## Casper Parks

Any chance D2D will be doing Sony?


----------



## Shelley K

Aaron Pogue said:


> I've been following some of the discussion about getting Amazon to price-match books to permafree, and the conventional wisdom is that they will preferentially match to B&N, and only match free stuff at iTunes or Kobo if it's also free at B&N, or not for sale at B&N. That's what led to the suggestion I just quoted.
> 
> Just as a test, I listed my friend Courtney's (already published) book for $0.00 through all vendors at Draft2Digital. That means it went free at Kobo and iTunes, and remained $0.99 at B&N and Amazon. I then posted that book (with the free links) in our local reporting thread.
> 
> That was nearly two weeks ago, but early this morning it got price-matched at Amazon. I've confirmed that the B&N copy is still $0.99.
> 
> 
> Amazon
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> B&N
> Kobo
> 
> I realize all these vendors tend to be pretty erratic in their policies and enforcement, so I'm not going to claim I can absolutely disprove the conventional wisdom, but I do have a data point that says it's wrong. If it works this way for everyone, it could be very handy.


My worry is that a bot will pick up the 99 cents at B&N and bounce it back to that price at Amazon.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

I uploaded my new release a few hours ago, and it is already on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id596129419

I even haven't got time yet to put it in my sig.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

shelleyo1 said:


> My worry is that a bot will pick up the 99 cents at B&N and bounce it back to that price at Amazon.


That makes sense. I've barely dipped my toes in the "permafree" game at all, and this book has barely been free for 24 hours. I have no idea what will happen.

If it arbitrarily jumps back to $0.99, I'll be sure to post here and let everyone know.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Aaron Pogue said:


> That makes sense. I've barely dipped my toes in the "permafree" game at all, and this book has barely been free for 24 hours. I have no idea what will happen.
> 
> If it arbitrarily jumps back to $0.99, I'll be sure to post here and let everyone know.


Mine did the moment it became live on B&N. I'm considering withdrawing it there.
But I'll wait to see how yours fares.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Casper Parks said:


> Any chance D2D will be doing Sony?


Yep. They're planning to add as many sales channels as possible.

These are the ones I know they're currently pursuing:

Sony
Diesel
Ingram
Google Play
ARe and Omnilit


----------



## RM Prioleau

Aaron Pogue said:


> Yep. They're planning to add as many sales channels as possible.
> 
> These are the ones I know they're currently pursuing:
> 
> Sony
> Diesel
> Ingram
> Google Play
> ARe and Omnilit


Awesome. If they manage to acquire these distribution channels, I will definitely be sold


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Andrew Ashling said:


> Mine did the moment it became live on B&N. I'm considering withdrawing it there.
> But I'll wait to see how yours fares.


I did have to solicit an army of price-matching requesters through the thread here (rather than just waiting for Amazon to notice it), so it's certainly possible the bots only watch B&N.


----------



## jdrew

So is this still in beta test?  If not, when will it move to a full blown live version?  And what about those using it?  So far it seems like those that have posted have had a mostly positive experience and from it suggested improvements which seem to have been heard.  I'm about to publish a new book in an e-version soon and just want to get an easy to use vehicle, shared revenues are fine, as long as I don't have to spend lots of time doing the publishing.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Just sold another book (different title) at iTunes via d2D! Here's my question:

I don't understand the sales graph? I understand the big fat Total Sales number at the top, but what the heck is going on with the graph? Can someone explain what it means?
It says:

1,1.0    2,1.0
and then these giant blue bars that fill up the graph like water in a bathtub


----------



## The 13th Doctor

Yeah, I don't quite understand those "1,1"s myself. But I assume it means 1 sold (I've a few like that, myself).

Congrats on the sale!


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Victoria Champion said:


> Just sold another book (different title) at iTunes via d2D! Here's my question:
> 
> I don't understand the sales graph? I understand the big fat Total Sales number at the top, but what the heck is going on with the graph? Can someone explain what it means?
> It says:
> 
> 1,1.0 2,1.0
> and then these giant blue bars that fill up the graph like water in a bathtub


The reporting definitely still needs a lot of work (and the devs know it).

What you're seeing now is probably raw database numbers pumped into an off-the-shelf javascript graphing plugin. So "1,1.0" probably means "Book 1 (on this chart), 1.0 sales to report."

It definitely looks weird when it just draws on a vertical axis from 0 to 1. It'll do a little better once it has more data to work with. Here's an example of what it's _trying_ to accomplish:


----------



## Victoria Champion

garam81 said:


> Yeah, I don't quite understand those "1,1"s myself. But I assume it means 1 sold (I've a few like that, myself).
> 
> Congrats on the sale!


Thanks  Two sales of two different titles one week after going live at iTunes -- went live one day after joining/submitting to d2D. Pretty happy! Now I need to look into if we get rankings at iTunes based on sales.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Aaron Pogue said:


> The reporting definitely still needs a lot of work (and the devs know it).
> 
> What you're seeing now is probably raw database numbers pumped into an off-the-shelf javascript graphing plugin. So "1,1.0" probably means "Book 1 (on this chart), 1.0 sales to report."
> 
> It definitely looks weird when it just draws on a vertical axis from 0 to 1. It'll do a little better once it has more data to work with. Here's an example of what it's _trying_ to accomplish:


First, those are some awesome sales numbers, congrats.

Second, what are the numbers on the vertical side of the graph related to? What does 20 signify?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Victoria Champion said:


> First, those are some awesome sales numbers, congrats.
> 
> Second, what are the numbers on the vertical side of the graph related to? What does 20 signify?


Oh! Yeah, I guess that's not clearly labeled on this graph. It's total sales for the month (or, in this case, month-to-date). I've used the dropdown box to change it to "Barnes & Noble," so 20 would be 20 sales in January 2013 at B&N. You can tell from the tooltip that the one I've highlighted has 18 sales (but the "4" in the tooltip is essentially useless--it's just telling me I hovered over the fourth bar from the left).


----------



## The 13th Doctor

Wow, Aaron! Impressive sales numbers, and here I thought I was doing well with 20 sales (though half are freebies).


----------



## Aaron Pogue

garam81 said:


> Wow, Aaron! Impressive sales numbers, and here I thought I was doing well with 20 sales (though half are freebies).


Thanks! My "Total Sales" are pretty inflated (probably should have cropped them out of the image) because I've been using Draft2Digital for almost a year now for every sales channel (including Kindle, which is where 99% of those sales happened).


----------



## Victoria Champion

Aaron Pogue said:


> Oh! Yeah, I guess that's not clearly labeled on this graph. It's total sales for the month (or, in this case, month-to-date). I've used the dropdown box to change it to "Barnes & Noble," so 20 would be 20 sales in January 2013 at B&N. You can tell from the tooltip that the one I've highlighted has 18 sales (but the "4" in the tooltip is essentially useless--it's just telling me I hovered over the fourth bar from the left).


Well, I have now 2 total sales at iTunes and it shows 1 as the top number on the vertical. Maybe it hasn't updated? It should say 2 if your theory is correct.

Also, I wonder why sales would be listed as 1.0? How would we have partial sales such as 1.3? The decimal is extraneous clutter, is my point. (pun!)

I tried checking both 'all channels' and 'iTunes channel' yet both both show 1 on the vertical.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

I dug up one of the old design files to show you where they _want_ to get the charts. There's just a lot of core publishing stuff that has to be completed before they turn their full attention to reporting.


_(Click to embiggen.)_


----------



## dalya

I have something free at iTunes and the "freebie" sales seem to be showing up on my chart as one tall building towering over the others. 

It's going to throw off the scale of everything if freebies don't get put somewhere else.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Dalya said:


> I have something free at iTunes and the "freebie" sales seem to be showing up on my chart as one tall building towering over the others.
> 
> It's going to throw off the scale of everything if freebies don't get put somewhere else.


Yep. That's a pretty high-priority fix. Should be significantly easier than styling that interactive tooltip.


----------



## Richardcrasta

Thanks for having me. I just uploaded a book, and it was published to Kobo and BN the next day. Quite impressed.

QUESTION TO FELLOW AUTHORS: Are there many of you who find direct uploading to Apple difficult (I have an Apple publisher account, but because all the problems about having a Mac, and processing it on a Mac, etc., my direct uploading has been difficult) and plan to use D2D to go to Apple?

What are the pluses and minuses of this?

SECOND QUESTION:
Let's say you also have a Smashwords version of that book up at Itunes or Kobo. How do these channels handle it when they get the same title from 2 distributors??

(Why would one want not to take a book off from the other channel right away? 1. Possibly reviews/history 2. Waiting to get the first payment from D2D, perhaps?)

Thanks.


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

Richardcrasta said:


> QUESTION TO FELLOW AUTHORS: Are there many of you who find direct uploading to Apple difficult (I have an Apple publisher account, but because all the problems about having a Mac, and processing it on a Mac, etc., my direct uploading has been difficult) and plan to use D2D to go to Apple?
> 
> What are the pluses and minuses of this?


I have a MacBook with iTunesProducer on it, and I upload my books without any problem to iTunes. The only difficulty I had was a persistent error about images in my book being bigger than 2 million pixels. I sent my files to the iTunesConnect helpdesk and they explained that my 'embedded cover' was regarded as an image in the book. So I went back to Scrivener, compiled for epub and selected 'no cover', saving the file as 'Reprobate (no cover)', and the epub went through without any problem. You upload the cover separately.
So, I convert any bookfile three times:
-Reprobate (mobi) for the Kindle
-Reprobate (epub) for Nook, Kobo and the like.
-Reprobate (epub, no cover) for the iBookstore.

Once you figure out how something works, repeating the process is a breeze.

There is no downside to managing your own uploads - you get all the royalties, you can change files straightaway, you can monitor sales.

However, I can understand people going with D2D for iTunes if they have no Mac, no familiarity with iTunesProducer, and no inclination to take the hurdle. D2D takes all the pain out of the uploading process.

As to your other question, I have no answer. I uploaded everything myself when I could (Kobo, Amazon, iTunes) and use D2D for retailers that refuse to deal with non-US publishers, like B&N. I'd suggest you leave a book on B&N with loads of reviews alone if it's published through SW, because the reviews will vanish if you change from SW to D2D. At least, that's what I read on this forum, but I might be wrong.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

AmsterdamAssassin said:


> However, I can understand people going with D2D for iTunes if they have no Mac, no familiarity with iTunesProducer, and no inclination to take the hurdle. D2D takes all the pain out of the uploading process.
> 
> As to your other question, I have no answer. I uploaded everything myself when I could (Kobo, Amazon, iTunes) and use D2D for retailers that refuse to deal with non-US publishers, like B&N. I'd suggest you leave a book on B&N with loads of reviews alone if it's published through SW, because the reviews will vanish if you change from SW to D2D. At least, that's what I read on this forum, but I might be wrong.


Actually, B&N is the one where we know for sure you won't lose your reviews. All the reviews here survived a transition from my personal PubIt account to D2D publication.

And D2D automatically fixed the 2M pixel problem for iTunes books by automatically resizing any internal images over the limit down to fix Apple's requirements. They'll also resize your cover art to meet the different (conflicting) size requirements for all the different vendors, and upload your rich-text description to any of the vendors that allow rich-text, and convert it into plaintext for the others. It's that kind of thing that makes the service seem worthwhile to me.

As to the other question, Richard, there is virtually no drawback to having your book double-listed for a little while. None of the vendors will complain, and it's actually one of the things I do to make sure I don't lose my B&N reviews. They'll just show up as two different digital editions of the ebook on the same product page (which is really common for public domain works anyway).


----------



## DRMarvello

I was recently accepted into the beta program at D2D and wanted to report my experience.

IT WAS AWESOME!

So much better than Smashwords.

My wife and I run a small publishing company that publishes non-fiction and fiction works, mostly for just us, but we do have a non-fiction series that includes books by other authors. I mention this because the way D2D deals with multiple imprints, multiple authors, and the potential for multiple payment channels is fantastic. You can even associate different author profiles with different books, so if one author writes in two genres, you can attach a relevant biography to each book. The way Smashwords deals with publishers is a total hack.

I already have accounts at KDP, PubIt!, KWL, and CS, so I'm only using D2D for distribution to the iBookstore. I uploaded a couple of books on Thursday, and I was astounded to discover that they were both up on iTunes _the next day_.

The only hiccup I ran into is that D2D uses the latest version of EPUBCheck (3.0), which reveals more errors than the older version I was using to validate my files on my local machine. When I originally uploaded one of my EPUB files earlier in the week, they kicked it back with a very helpful message that showed the two errors EPUBCheck complained about. I updated my local EPUBCheck, fixed the errors, and the second time the file went through perfectly.

BTW, one of the errors was that my EPUB file had no TOC. EPUBCheck 3.0 requires a TOC. I found this rather annoying until I read the EPUB 2.0 specification and discovered (to my surprise) that a TOC actually IS considered mandatory. I'm surprised no one has mentioned this fact in all of the TOC threads I've participated in on this forum (and there have been a few).


----------



## RuthNestvold

If you upload a book for CreateSpace, do you have to enter a price right away? It was my understanding that there are minimum prices for certain page counts, and you'd need to know that first, wouldn't you?


----------



## Victoria Champion

RuthNestvold said:


> If you upload a book for CreateSpace, do you have to enter a price right away? It was my understanding that there are minimum prices for certain page counts, and you'd need to know that first, wouldn't you?


Also, KDP I believe requires that the print price is at least 20% more than the ebook price. Or is it the other way around?


----------



## DRMarvello

Victoria Champion said:


> Also, KDP I believe requires that the print price is at least 20% more than the ebook price. Or is it the other way around?


From the KDP Pricing Page


> 4. Setting Your List Price
> 
> You must set your Digital Book's List Price (and change it from time-to-time if necessary) so that it is no higher than the list price in any sales channel for any digital or physical edition of the Digital Book.
> 
> But if you choose the 70% Royalty Option, you must further set and adjust your List Price so that it is at least 20% below the list price in any sales channel for any physical edition of the Digital Book.
> 
> By "list price in any sales channel," we mean the suggested or recommended retail price or, if you sell your book directly to end users, your own sales price, for an edition of the book available outside of our Program.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

RuthNestvold said:


> If you upload a book for CreateSpace, do you have to enter a price right away? It was my understanding that there are minimum prices for certain page counts, and you'd need to know that first, wouldn't you?


The way it's currently implemented, after you check the CreateSpace checkbox, the D2D devs get a notification. They grab the generated CreateSpace PDF, check the page count to figure out the minimum print price and the proper cover art template, and then email you about them.

You send them back the properly-formatted cover PDF and let them know what price you want for the paperback, and they handle the rest.

Naturally, that's all going to have to get automated and built into the web interface, but that's the process for now.


----------



## Hildred

Okay, I started tinkering with my beta account tonight in the hopes of uploading my latest novel this weekend. Mostly I am looking to use D2D as an epub maker (for kobo and ARe), as I currently, for super annoying reasons, cannot create my own working epubs. (I'll also probably use the iBookstore feature, but that's irrelevant here, kinda.) What sold me was when I read the FAQ and they said they would accept HTML (and RTF) on top of docs and epubs. I can do HTML. In fact my HTML files are almost better than my mobi files. I use HTML to upload to Pubit and have never had a problem. 

Then  I started uploading my book. I got to the actual content uploader and was told....no HTML.

So is this a bug, or is the FAQ page incorrect? If it's in the works, any idea when HTML will be accepted?  

(Also sorry if this was covered already, wasn't in the mood to re-read 16 pages, haha.)


----------



## RuthNestvold

Aaron Pogue said:


> The way it's currently implemented, after you check the CreateSpace checkbox, the D2D devs get a notification. They grab the generated CreateSpace PDF, check the page count to figure out the minimum print price and the proper cover art template, and then email you about them.
> 
> You send them back the properly-formatted cover PDF and let them know what price you want for the paperback, and they handle the rest.
> 
> Naturally, that's all going to have to get automated and built into the web interface, but that's the process for now.


That sounds wonderful, I think I'm going to give it a whirl. I've been intending to get my Pendragon novels into CreateSpace forever and just keep putting it off!

Do the Draft2Digital folks want any blog publicity yet, or should we wait until they're out of beta?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Hildred said:


> Okay, I started tinkering with my beta account tonight in the hopes of uploading my latest novel this weekend. Mostly I am looking to use D2D as an epub maker (for kobo and ARe), as I currently, for super annoying reasons, cannot create my own working epubs. (I'll also probably use the iBookstore feature, but that's irrelevant here, kinda.) What sold me was when I read the FAQ and they said they would accept HTML (and RTF) on top of docs and epubs. I can do HTML. In fact my HTML files are almost better than my mobi files. I use HTML to upload to Pubit and have never had a problem.
> 
> Then I started uploading my book. I got to the actual content uploader and was told....no HTML.
> 
> So is this a bug, or is the FAQ page incorrect? If it's in the works, any idea when HTML will be accepted?


Maybe the FAQ page is visiting us from the future? I know that HTML is in the works, and it _shouldn't_ be too much of technical challenge to implement, but apparently the FAQ jumped the gun. I'll be sure to let the devs know.

In the meantime, if you want to see HTML supported sooner, you could email them a copy of your manuscript at [email protected] and let them know it didn't work when you tried to upload it through the web form. Having a "real world" sample to work with will definitely make it easier for them.



RuthNestvold said:


> Do the Draft2Digital folks want any blog publicity yet, or should we wait until they're out of beta?


Last I heard, they're about to activate the last of the people waiting in line for the beta, so some new publicity would probably be welcome.

That said, if it's either/or, I'm sure they would prefer post-launch buzz to beta buzz.


----------



## RuthNestvold

Oh, definitely not either or! I haven't put much up yet (so many other things going on), but I'm impressed with the service and plan to use it a lot more.


----------



## RM Prioleau

I had signed up for beta earlier this week but hadn't received any emails. I assume that the deadline has passed to participate in it?


----------



## Hildred

RM Prioleau said:


> I had signed up for beta earlier this week but hadn't received any emails. I assume that the deadline has passed to participate in it?


I signed up and got my email a couple days ago. I don't think the deadline has passed.

Also thanks for the reply Aaron. I may do that.


----------



## Shelley K

RM Prioleau said:


> I had signed up for beta earlier this week but hadn't received any emails. I assume that the deadline has passed to participate in it?


He said earlier in the thread that they're about to invite the last of the people waiting for beta invites, so your email will probably come soon.


----------



## dalya

Aaron, are people having issues with iTunes giving away the whole book in the preview? I create my own epubs with Sigil and have no problems elsewhere. They have TOCs and pass the pubcheck, but iTunes is displaying the entire thing as preview.   Do I have to shake a chickenfoot somewhere inside the file?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Dalya said:


> Aaron, are people having issues with iTunes giving away the whole book in the preview? I create my own epubs with Sigil and have no problems elsewhere. They have TOCs and pass the pubcheck, but iTunes is displaying the entire thing as preview.  Do I have to shake a chickenfoot somewhere inside the file?


Send an email to Customer Support ([email protected]) and let them know you're having a problem. I know this issue was cropping up with Apple previews sometime last week, and I'm almost certain they have it resolved now, but it's possible you published your book during the time they were having problems.

I suspect they'll just ask you to go back through the dashboard and republish it, but it might require an email to Apple support. Either way, if you let them know, I'm sure they'll jump on it. Whole-book previews is a big problem, and they definitely take it seriously.


----------



## Richardcrasta

Regarding html,

my documents are entirely doc, but when I downloaded an image from an image service for my cover, they require me to give them credit in an html format: I am supposed to just paste it in the book.

Here is what this section of my copyright page looks like in my Word document view--I have replaced the image number with xxxx.

This book may not be reproduced or resold in any form, including electronic, mechanical, or otherwise.

Image credit: cascoly2 / 123RF Stock Photo

Originally published by

Is that okay to have in the Word file I submit to D2D?

Thanks!


----------



## Midnight Writer

Dalya said:


> Aaron, are people having issues with iTunes giving away the whole book in the preview? I create my own epubs with Sigil and have no problems elsewhere. They have TOCs and pass the pubcheck, but iTunes is displaying the entire thing as preview.  Do I have to shake a chickenfoot somewhere inside the file?


Anybody know if there is some way to see the preview for a book at iTunes without using an Apple product? I don't own any Apple products, but would like to check my books' previews there.


----------



## Shelley K

Lanette Curington said:


> Anybody know if there is some way to see the preview for a book at iTunes without using an Apple product? I don't own any Apple products, but would like to check my books' previews there.


I don't think there is a way. I'm considering hijacking a teen's iPod Touch and downloading the iBook thing just to check my samples. Stuff's still selling, so it's probably not giving everything away, though.


----------



## Lady Vine

Really not happy right now.  

For over 2 weeks one of my books has been basically free on iTunes because the sample shows the whole book. I'm glad I just (after a lot of trouble) viewed my samples, because I never would have known. It is only one title, and it happens to be the one I let D2D convert from a .doc file. The books I converted myself are fine. 

So, word of caution: create your epubs yourself, and make sure you check your samples on the iTunes store the minute they go live. Who knows how many lost sales you'll suffer if you don't? No one will buy your book if they can read it for free.


----------



## RM Prioleau

Lady Vine said:


> Really not happy right now.
> 
> For over 2 weeks one of my books has been basically free on iTunes because the sample shows the whole book. I'm glad I just (after a lot of trouble) viewed my samples, because I never would have known. It is only one title, and it happens to be the one I let D2D convert from a .doc file. The books I converted myself are fine.
> 
> So, word of caution: create your epubs yourself, and make sure you check your samples on the iTunes store the minute they go live. Who knows how many lost sales you'll suffer if you don't? No one will buy your book if they can read it for free.


Is the iTunes preview/free book problem only happening to books that were submitted via D2D? Or is this happening to ALL books in the iTunes store?


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

> Is the iTunes preview/free book problem only happening to books that were submitted via D2D? Or is this happening to ALL books in the iTunes store?


It's been happening since this summer on Smashwords and they're reaction has been too bad so sad. It seems to be something about the table of contents.

If we just go through the "publish" thing again will that push the book out with a new version? Smashwords had a lot of "issues" with getting Apple to actually update files.


----------



## Shelley K

JRHenderson said:


> Hi Lanette. If it's just a regular ePub, couldn't you check it over using preview software on your computer?


The issue isn't the quality of the ePub, it's how much of it Apple is showing in the samples it lets people download from the iBookstore. In some cases, Apple is giving them the entire ebook in the sample.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Katie Elle said:


> It's been happening since this summer on Smashwords and they're reaction has been too bad so sad. It seems to be something about the table of contents.
> 
> If we just go through the "publish" thing again will that push the book out with a new version? Smashwords had a lot of "issues" with getting Apple to actually update files.


I haven't experienced the issue myself (it's not a common problem, it's just a really bad one when it does show up), but I contacted the devs to get a technical answer and a timeline on a fix, and got this back from Kris:



> Aaron,
> 
> We've discovered an issue with a small percentage of books submitted to Apple for iTunes distribution. Any time a publisher submits a book to Apple without providing a custom-generated sample, Apple automatically generates a sample from the manuscript. Under some circumstances, this automated sample may contain the entire contents of the book.
> 
> We are aware of the severity of this issue and are working with Apple and our development team to find a permanent solution. We have resolved the problem for our converted Word docs by generating and submitting our own custom sample for every book. We implemented that fix about a week and a half ago. If your document was submitted before then and it has an oversized sample, you can fix it by re-publishing the book through our dashboard.
> 
> Until now, we've avoided manipulating user-provided ePubs, so they may still encounter this problem when Apple generates their samples. In order to protect our users from this issue, we will release an update today or tomorrow to generate our own samples from user-provided ePubs as well.
> 
> Until our update is in place, we have to contact Apple directly and ask them to resolve this issue for authors who have submitted their own ePubs. If you would like us to do this on your behalf, let us know at [email protected].
> 
> Please note that, in both cases, when we update samples Apple requires the book to go through their internal review process again _before_ the change takes effect. As many authors are probably aware, this can take an unpredictable amount of time (from a couple of hours to a couple of weeks). During that time, the extended sample will still be available for download.
> 
> If you want us to, we can delist any books that have the sample issue (removing them from sale and removing the extended sample from download). When the book is approved by Apple, it will automatically show back up for sale. If you want to do this, email support at [email protected] and we'll immediately delist the book with Apple. (We do not recommend that you delist the book through your dashboard for this purpose, as we would not know you actually want the book to be published there once the sample problem is fixed.)
> 
> Thank you for your patience.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Kris


I'll keep in touch and let you know as soon as I hear more.


----------



## Lady Vine

RM Prioleau said:


> Is the iTunes preview/free book problem only happening to books that were submitted via D2D? Or is this happening to ALL books in the iTunes store?


I believe people had similar problems with Smashwords, but I never did, and it wasn't a problem I'd encountered with D2D UNTIL I let them convert the epub from my .doc file. If it makes any difference, I follow Meatgrinder to the letter (it was annoying in the beginning, but now it's very straightforward and I never deviate from it) so my epubs are pretty spot on when I make them. I didn't use Meatgrinder on that one book, and that's the one that's causing all the problems.

The good thing is the D2D team have responded promptly to my email and I don't doubt they'll get the problem sorted equally as promptly. And make no mistake, this is Apple's fault mainly, because they seem to be the only retailer with this issue. To add insult to injury, it was a serious headache getting this book up with them, as they kept reporting "problems", which forced me to submit the bare .doc file in the first place. Now I find out they've been giving it away for free! Typical.

Boy am I glad this happened early on in my career. And who knows, as it's the first in a series, maybe those free-readers will come back and buy the second book (that will definitely NOT be free).


----------



## Betsy the Quilter

Be of good cheer.  Not everyone samples....  (I don't.)

Betsy


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

One of my books (directly uploaded epubs) had the problem. I reported it at 8:30. I had a response at 8:50. (On Monday bleeping morning!) and I just got a notice at 10:40 that the book had been republished to Apple and the problem was fixed.

All my books on Smashwords published since July have the problem. I wrote to them. Two weeks later they sent back a message that it was my tough luck and I should monkey around with the TOC capabilities of the meatgrinder. I submitted epubs on January 1 when they first accepted them and asked that they be republished. A week later they told me they had been, but that was not correct. I've moved almost all of them to D2D, but the ones that haven't been still haven't been updated on the Apple site.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Richardcrasta said:


> my documents are entirely doc, but when I downloaded an image from an image service for my cover, they require me to give them credit in an html format: I am supposed to just paste it in the book.
> 
> Here is what this section of my copyright page looks like in my Word document view--I have replaced the image number with xxxx.
> 
> This book may not be reproduced or resold in any form, including electronic, mechanical, or otherwise.
> 
> Image credit: cascoly2 / 123RF Stock Photo
> 
> Originally published by
> 
> Is that okay to have in the Word file I submit to D2D?


It's certainly okay to put it in there. It will probably even work (automatically) through the converter. If it doesn't, contact Customer Support and let them know what happened.


----------



## Midnight Writer

shelleyo1 said:


> I don't think there is a way. I'm considering hijacking a teen's iPod Touch and downloading the iBook thing just to check my samples. Stuff's still selling, so it's probably not giving everything away, though.


Your teen? Or some random teen off the street?  

This morning I remembered that my co-publisher's son has an iPad! She'll be checking them on that when she gets a chance.

Thanks!


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Lanette Curington said:


> Your teen? Or some random teen off the street?


I like to think she meant some random teen off the street. That's certainly the most entertaining version.

Maybe I've been watching too much _Burn Notice_.


----------



## NS

Maybe this question was answered already, but what languages do you support? Thank you.


----------



## Shelley K

Aaron Pogue said:


> I like to think she meant some random teen off the street. That's certainly the most entertaining version.


I agree. Let's go with that one.


----------



## DRMarvello

I just had a great conversation with Kris at D2D about the iBookstore sample size problem. I contacted them because I wanted to know if they are going to automatically generate samples for all of the books in their catalog, or if we have to do something to make that happen. After a few back and forth emails, I learned a lot more about the problem...

* I didn't have a way to check my books, so Kris offered to check them for me. Both books were fine. I mention it because I'm amazed with the level of service I've gotten from D2D.

* D2D does NOT plan to resubmit all existing books with D2D-generated samples because only a small percentage of books are affected.

* If your book *is* one of the ones affected, let them know. They will be able to resolve the problem quickly after they start generating samples. (They already generate samples for the EPUB files that they convert from DOC files.)

* When the issue occurs, Apple says it's because there are not enough items in the ToC. D2D has found that this is usually true, but they've found times when that is not the case. Bottom line: there isn't much we can do as e-book formatters to avoid the problem reliably.

* D2D currently uses 20% of the body text for samples (the same as Apple). They plan to make that figure user-customizable in the near future.  

* In the near future, ALL titles submitted to Apple will include a D2D-generated sample. They are already doing it for the DOC conversions, and will be doing it for the user-generated EPUB books soon. The sample size problem should be a thing of the past for D2D customers at that point.

I'm really impressed with these guys.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Natasha A. Salnikova said:


> Maybe this question was answered already, but what languages do you support? Thank you.


They support whatever languages the individual sales channel support. Apparently that's "basically all of them" for Apple and Kobo, and a subset of 8-10 languages at B&N and Amazon.

Kris did say that their system is Unicode end-to-end, so non-English alphabets are fully supported.


----------



## NS

Thank you Aaron.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Everyone who was waiting for a beta code should have one now. 

New signups should get approved very quickly again, at least until they get hit with a new flood of users.

In the meantime, go try it out and feel free to spread the word.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Aaron I already mentioned this to Kris at d2D but can you suggest that they send us an email when it is safe to upload to d2D for distribution to iTunes again (when the fix is in for the self submitted epubs/sample size error)?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

I showed up at the office and found Draft2Digital's CEO and chief software architect gathered in front of an oversized monitor, staring perplexed at some bit of technical code they were working on. I waited for them to notice me, and when they did, Kris cleared his throat and asked, "What's the opposite of 'improve'?"

I frowned, considering how they might be trying to use it. I said, "Degrade?"

And they both lit up. "Perfect! 'Worsened' just didn't sound right."



Victoria Champion said:


> Aaron I already mentioned this to Kris at d2D but can you suggest that they send us an email when it is safe to upload to d2D for distribution to iTunes again (when the fix is in for the self submitted epubs/sample size error)?


Anyway! I asked them about the sample issue, and Kris said they fixed the problem earlier today. They now generate custom samples for all uploads (Word or ePub), so it's perfectly safe for everyone to use them for iTunes distribution again.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Aaron Pogue said:


> I showed up at the office and found Draft2Digital's CEO and chief software architect gathered in front of an oversized monitor, staring perplexed at some bit of technical code they were working on. I waited for them to notice me, and when they did, Kris cleared his throat and asked, "What's the opposite of 'improve'?"
> 
> I frowned, considering how they might be trying to use it. I said, "Degrade?"
> 
> And they both lit up. "Perfect! 'Worsened' just didn't sound right."
> 
> Anyway! I asked them about the sample issue, and Kris said they fixed the problem earlier today. They now generate custom samples for all uploads (Word or ePub), so it's perfectly safe for everyone to use them for iTunes distribution again.


Fantastic, thank you.


----------



## 56139

Aaron Pogue said:


> Everyone who was waiting for a beta code should have one now.
> 
> New signups should get approved very quickly again, at least until they get hit with a new flood of users.
> 
> In the meantime, go try it out and feel free to spread the word.


I didn't get mine and I sorta need it quick...maybe I will submit again.


----------



## Victoria Champion

JanneCO said:


> I didn't get mine and I sorta need it quick...maybe I will submit again.


Checked your spam folder?


----------



## 56139

Victoria Champion said:


> Checked your spam folder?


found it!  duh


----------



## Jnassise

Aaron - Any idea if they've made any progress on being able to upload free books to B&N?  (I suspect its not a high priority, but figured I'd ask while the asking was good. 

-Joe


----------



## Becca Mills

Just sharing a D2D experience:

I'm using D2D to sell my book on iTunes. I wanted to put my book on sale all over, so I went to the D2D dashboard this afternoon and updated the price. The new price showed up on iTunes within three hours.

That is faster than the new price showed up on Amazon after I updated it directly through KDP. Just wanted to report that little big of awesomeness.

The rest of the D2D-->iTunes awesomeness is that I don't need a Mac; don't need to worry about proving to Apple that I am Becca Mills; don't need to worry about proving that my publishing company is legit; and don't need to wait weeks for the book to actually appear in the iTunes store. I am one happy D2D camper right now!

Er ... now we'll see if I can actually sell any books on iTunes.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Jnassise said:


> Aaron - Any idea if they've made any progress on being able to upload free books to B&N? (I suspect its not a high priority, but figured I'd ask while the asking was good.


I haven't heard anything about B&N, but I think their sole focus for the last week has been getting everyone on the waiting list brought into the beta (at a rate that didn't crush the system--there was a _lot_ of interest). But I'll keep you posted on any development.

Actually...if they can get easy free distribution to B&N, you can rest assured you'll hear about it. That's one of very few advantage Smashwords still holds, so I'm sure it'll make a lot of noise.


----------



## DRMarvello

Becca Mills said:


> The rest of the D2D-->iTunes awesomeness is that I don't need a Mac; don't need to worry about proving to Apple that I am Becca Mills; don't need to worry about proving that my publishing company is legit; and don't need to wait weeks for the book to actually appear in the iTunes store. I am one happy D2D camper right now!


YES! I gave up on the iBookstore because I refused to buy a Mac or to use Smashwords until they started accepting EPUB files. Then I heard about D2D at about the same time Smashwords Direct finally came along, so I decided to give D2D a try. It has been an awesome experience.

The D2D customer service has been superb. I assume that the service level will drop once they go out of beta, but for now I'm happy too.


----------



## Jnassise

Thanks for the response, Aaron!


----------



## RM Prioleau

Hey, does anyone have a link to their book on Amazon where I can check out the sample of what it looks like after it's been formatted by D2D?


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Mickief said:


> Are we going to see an update for iBookstore sales numbers soon at D2D? It's been a while....


  Reminds me of an old business aphorism: "Never meet others' expectations of you. They'll only raise them."


----------



## DRMarvello

RM Prioleau said:


> Hey, does anyone have a link to their book on Amazon where I can check out the sample of what it looks like after it's been formatted by D2D?


I'm curious as to why you (or anyone) would prefer to distribute to Amazon through D2D rather than go direct through KDP. Is it because of the convenience of "one stop" distribution to all channels? I'm not criticizing, just genuinely curious if there are reasons I'm missing.


----------



## RM Prioleau

DRMarvello said:


> I'm curious as to why you (or anyone) would prefer to distribute to Amazon through D2D rather than go direct through KDP. Is it because of the convenience of "one stop" distribution to all channels? I'm not criticizing, just genuinely curious if there are reasons I'm missing.


I'm not. I plan to keep going through KDP. I just wanted to see what the formatting looked like. I assumed it would be the same formatting for all the channels submitted. I would like to use D2D if they start distributing to other places like libraries, Sony, etc., so I wanted to get an idea of what the formatting will look like should I use them. I'm very particular about how I format my books and would rather just do it myself and simply submit it to be distributed, but I understand that D2D has their way of doing things, so that was why I wanted to see how it looked for other books.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

RM Prioleau said:


> Hey, does anyone have a link to their book on Amazon where I can check out the sample of what it looks like after it's been formatted by D2D?


We used Draft2Digital to generate and publish _Rethana's Surrender_:


It's free at Amazon, so you can grab the whole book and see the formatting on the backmatter, too (teaser, about the author, etc.). Those are all auto-generated by Draft2Digital.

I'm pretty particular about my formatting, too, so I'd love to hear what you think.


----------



## DRMarvello

RM Prioleau said:


> I'm not. I plan to keep going through KDP. I just wanted to see what the formatting looked like. I assumed it would be the same formatting for all the channels submitted. I would like to use D2D if they start distributing to other places like libraries, Sony, etc., so I wanted to get an idea of what the formatting will look like should I use them. I'm very particular about how I format my books and would rather just do it myself and simply submit it to be distributed, but I understand that D2D has their way of doing things, so that was why I wanted to see how it looked for other books.


Gotcha. I'm the same way about formatting. I chose to submit a pre-formatted EPUB because of that.


----------



## RM Prioleau

Aaron Pogue said:


> We used Draft2Digital to generate and publish _Rethana's Surrender_:
> 
> 
> It's free at Amazon, so you can grab the whole book and see the formatting on the backmatter, too (teaser, about the author, etc.). Those are all auto-generated by Draft2Digital.
> 
> I'm pretty particular about my formatting, too, so I'd love to hear what you think.


Thanks for the link! I checked it out. The one thing that I would be particular about for my book are the quotation marks. I like to use the curly quotes (smart quotes) rather than the straight quotes for my books. Other than that, the formatting looks great.

Is there some sort of 'properly-formatted' standard (similar to how Smashwords has a Style Guide) that D2D uses for their books? Would I be able to submit a formatted ebook through D2D without them having to do anything to it (other than submit it to the distribution channels?). I like doing my own formatting and would like to give them as less work as possible, but if it's mandatory that they have to do something to it, then I understand.


----------



## RM Prioleau

DRMarvello said:


> Gotcha. I'm the same way about formatting. I chose to submit a pre-formatted EPUB because of that.


Oh? They don't mess with it if you submit it as an epub?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

RM Prioleau said:


> Thanks for the link! I checked it out. The one thing that I would be particular about for my book are the quotation marks. I like to use the curly quotes (smart quotes) rather than the straight quotes for my books. Other than that, the formatting looks great.
> 
> Is there some sort of 'properly-formatted' standard (similar to how Smashwords has a Style Guide) that D2D uses for their books? Would I be able to submit a formatted ebook through D2D without them having to do anything to it (other than submit it to the distribution channels?). I like doing my own formatting and would like to give them as less work as possible, but if it's mandatory that they have to do something to it, then I understand.


I've been working up a blog post on Draft2Digital that happens to discuss the style guide, so I'm just going to copy and paste that in here.



> The guys at Draft2Digital like to claim they don't have a style guide. They say, "Give us whatever you've got, just use _your_ style guide, and we'll teach our system to work with it." That's a pretty generous attitude (and they're surprisingly good at coming through), but for writers who don't want to wait for the system to learn, the developers have prepared an (unofficial) style guide.
> 
> Brace yourself, because things are about to get technical. Sorry, that's just the nature of the game. If you want to get the best possible results out of Draft2Digital's conversion process, you should really do all of the following things:
> 
> Make your chapter titles bold.
> Use a larger font for them than you use for the body text.
> That's&#8230;that's basically it. You can make blockquotes by setting narrower left and right margins. You can save yourself a lot of time (and get a much cleaner document) by leaving off the title page, copyright page, and other endmatter, and just letting Draft2Digital build those for you. You can&#8230;.
> 
> Nope. I don't really have any more tips. The Draft2Digital conversion process is really good. Try it out and see for yourself.


But DRMarvello is right. If you want to keep your formatting as-is, upload an ePub. They'll fix some minor technical issues (like forbidden HTML attributes that would make it fail epubcheck) and downscale internal images for iTunes (because iTunes won't allow you to publish with any internal images over two million pixels), but they won't touch the text or formatting.

I'm right there with you on smart quotes, though. I have a request in to the development team, and I know it's on the To Do list, but it'll take a little while to implement.


----------



## RM Prioleau

Aaron Pogue said:


> I've been working up a blog post on Draft2Digital that happens to discuss the style guide, so I'm just going to copy and paste that in here.
> 
> But DRMarvello is right. If you want to keep your formatting as-is, upload an ePub. They'll fix some minor technical issues (like forbidden HTML attributes that would make it fail epubcheck) and downscale internal images for iTunes (because iTunes won't allow you to publish with any internal images over two million pixels), but they won't touch the text or formatting.
> 
> I'm right there with you on smart quotes, though. I have a request in to the development team, and I know it's on the To Do list, but it'll take a little while to implement.


Awesome! Thanks! It sounds good! The 'Style guide' sounds soooooo much easier than Smashwords. LOL
And I use multiple epub checkers to ensure validity of epub files.


----------



## DRMarvello

RM Prioleau said:


> Awesome! Thanks! It sounds good! The 'Style guide' sounds soooooo much easier than Smashwords. LOL
> And I use multiple epub checkers to ensure validity of epub files.


Be sure one of those tools is EPUBCheck 3.0. That's appears to be what D2D is using right now. I EPUBCheck all my books on my local system too, but my book failed the first time around at D2D because my local version was older (I've since upgraded it).


----------



## DRMarvello

BTW, I got a publication notice from D2D today saying that my book was successfully published to Apple. This was a surprise because the book had already successfully published to Apple and I haven't done anything recently to change it.

I guessed that D2D was testing out their EPUB sample process and had resubmitted my book with a new sample for me. I contacted them and heard back right away that I was correct. Kris said they are resubmitting the books that might have had the sample size issue just to be sure there are no problems. My books weren't affected, but I got the new samples anyway.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Mickief said:


> Are we going to see an update for iBookstore sales numbers soon at D2D? It's been a while....


I saw this post earlier and checked with the devs, but then I got distracted by all the formatting talk and never gave you your answer.

Something went wonky in the reporting software for a few days (I swear that's the programming term for it), so the new daily sales numbers are not getting added into the monthly and yearly. If you're looking at the total month-to-date sales by title chart (which is the default sales chart), you're seeing the monthly one...which isn't updating.

The devs are definitely aware of the issue, and they're hoping to have it fixed tomorrow or Friday. In the meantime, the numbers _are_ getting recorded into the database, and you can even see them. You just have to look at the daily trend chart (combined sales across all titles) instead of the month-to-date chart. (The daily chart is really the one I use most, anyway.)

You can find the daily chart here:
https://www.draft2digital.com/reports/sales_charts/total_sales/?channel=all&interval=Days

If you want to see the Apple-specific sales, there's a drop-down on that chart that will let you view the numbers by sales channel.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Aaron Pogue said:


> I saw this post earlier and checked with the devs, but then I got distracted by all the formatting talk and never gave you your answer.
> 
> Something went wonky in the reporting software for a few days (I swear that's the programming term for it), so the new daily sales numbers are not getting added into the monthly and yearly. If you're looking at the total month-to-date sales by title chart (which is the default sales chart), you're seeing the monthly one...which isn't updating.
> 
> The devs are definitely aware of the issue, and they're hoping to have it fixed tomorrow or Friday. In the meantime, the numbers _are_ getting recorded into the database, and you can even see them. You just have to look at the daily trend chart (combined sales across all titles) instead of the month-to-date chart. (The daily chart is really the one I use most, anyway.)
> 
> You can find the daily chart here:
> https://www.draft2digital.com/reports/sales_charts/total_sales/?channel=all&interval=Days
> 
> If you want to see the Apple-specific sales, there's a drop-down on that chart that will let you view the numbers by sales channel.


Ohmygosh I had a sale I didn't know about!


----------



## Selina Fenech

DRMarvello said:


> I'm curious as to why you (or anyone) would prefer to distribute to Amazon through D2D rather than go direct through KDP. Is it because of the convenience of "one stop" distribution to all channels? I'm not criticizing, just genuinely curious if there are reasons I'm missing.


I've been toying with the idea of going through D2D for Amazon. The main reason being I'm Aussie so the zon will only pay me by cheque and my bank takes as much of a cut from that as what I might lose in the royalty drop by not going direct. And I wouldn't have to wait months and months to get paid.

But the issue is reviews. I've got 38 on the book I want to move to D2D and I sure don't want to lose them. I've got a paperback version of the book as well, so I figure the reviews will stay with the paperback version, right? Then the D2D ebook will hopefully get synched up with that version? Anyone had any experience with that?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Selina Fenech said:


> But the issue is reviews. I've got 38 on the book I want to move to D2D and I sure don't want to lose them. I've got a paperback version of the book as well, so I figure the reviews will stay with the paperback version, right? Then the D2D ebook will hopefully get synched up with that version? Anyone had any experience with that?


That's something we're all very curious about. We know Barnes & Noble will preserve your review from one version to another (if you jump through some hoops that may or may not be necessary), and just based on the way the display pages work, we think there's a chance Amazon works the same way. But I don't have any books to test it with, so I just don't know.

If you do try (or if anyone else on this thread does), please let me know. Or send an email to Customer Support telling them what happened. It would be incredibly valuable information.

My best guess (which is just idle speculation) is that the reviews would be saved, but the new edition would get its own salesrank, so you'd lose any rank history.


----------



## jdrew

I'm still sitting in the wings waiting for D2D to go live and based on all the glowing reports here it just seems to make sense to me for lots of reasons, not the least of which is I really want to write books and have someone (D2D) get all the distribution stuff right.
What about getting paid?  I certainly don't expect D2D or anyone else to do all that work for free but I do want to get my cut when the time comes.  How does D2D plan to pay authors?  And what about security of personal information?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

jdrew said:


> What about getting paid? I certainly don't expect D2D or anyone else to do all that work for free but I do want to get my cut when the time comes. How does D2D plan to pay authors? And what about security of personal information?


They offer payment via Paypal, check by mail, or direct deposit for anyone with a US bank account. Last I heard, they're checking into EFT to non-US bank accounts.

As far as security of information, it's something the devs take very seriously. The network architect has a strong professional background in enterprise network security, so they use industry-standard best practices to protect personal information.


----------



## A. S. Warwick

Just joined up after getting my beta invite.

2 books all ready added and out there.  Sent them off last night before bed and when I got up they were already on Kobo.

Something odd I noticed was that the table of contents is being added at the end of the book, not the start.  Is that happening just for me?


----------



## Midnight Writer

*deleted*


----------



## Aaron Pogue

I'm pretty sure they've made the official choice to move the TOC to the front of the book now. It was originally done as a convenience for readers (who wouldn't have to flip past extra pages, but could still access it from the "Go To" menu), but it weirds a lot of people out. It also sets the "Last Page Read" on Kindle Keyboards to the very of the book any time someone uses it. That's a definite drawback.

Anyway, now it's just a matter of changing the way the ebook is generated to put the TOC closer to the front. Shouldn't take long, but they'll need to do some testing so it might be a few days.

I'm also thinking about brushing up on my CSS selectors and seeing if it would be possible to include the TOC page in the ebook, but make it so it only shows up for the devices that need an HTML TOC (and stays invisible for everything else). I remember seeing something in the KDP publishing manual that makes me feel optimistic. If I can convince myself it's possible, I'll suggest that to the devs.


----------



## sgroyle

Not sure if this is possible.

Is it possible to upload different ePubs (same book) to different sites? i.e. one for B&N, one for iTunes?

The only reason for this is the: Thanks for reading and it would be great if you left a review (link).


----------



## Selina Fenech

Aaron Pogue said:


> That's something we're all very curious about. We know Barnes & Noble will preserve your review from one version to another (if you jump through some hoops that may or may not be necessary), and just based on the way the display pages work, we think there's a chance Amazon works the same way. But I don't have any books to test it with, so I just don't know.
> 
> If you do try (or if anyone else on this thread does), please let me know. Or send an email to Customer Support telling them what happened. It would be incredibly valuable information.
> 
> My best guess (which is just idle speculation) is that the reviews would be saved, but the new edition would get its own salesrank, so you'd lose any rank history.


I may have to be a brave little guinea pig. Gulp. I'll share results if I go ahead. Still thinking through implications.


----------



## Lady Vine

sgroyle said:


> Not sure if this is possible.
> 
> Is it possible to upload different ePubs (same book) to different sites? i.e. one for B&N, one for iTunes?
> 
> The only reason for this is the: Thanks for reading and it would be great if you left a review (link).


Indeed, this would be most helpful. iTunes is pretty picky with things like TOCs, yet B&N and Amazon will let you publish short books (erotica) without them. This is ideal when you want people to see a sample of the actual story as opposed to the table of contents and rights info.


----------



## DRMarvello

sgroyle said:


> Not sure if this is possible.
> 
> Is it possible to upload different ePubs (same book) to different sites? i.e. one for B&N, one for iTunes?
> 
> The only reason for this is the: Thanks for reading and it would be great if you left a review (link).


That would be a killer feature. One of the advantages of going to the separate vendor portals is explicit control over the EPUB file that is published to the vendor's site. If D2D made it possible to upload a different file for each vendor, that would remove one more objection potential users might have regarding going through them as a distributor. Technically speaking, it would not be a difficult thing to do. They would have to start storing multiple EPUB files for each book and associate each channel with a specific file. The trick is in making the feature easy to use without being confusing.

If it were my problem to solve, I'd change the last page of the "add a book" flow. Right now it shows the sales channels and lets you check the ones you want to enable. I'd arrange them in a list with the check boxes on the left and a file upload option on the right. If you do nothing, the channel uses the EPUB file you uploaded in the earlier step. If you want to override what EPUB file gets used for a particular channel, you upload a new file using the input control associated with that channel.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

DRMarvello said:


> That would be a killer feature. One of the advantages of going to the separate vendor portals is explicit control over the EPUB file that is published to the vendor's site. If D2D made it possible to upload a different file for each vendor, that would remove one more objection potential users might have regarding going through them as a distributor. Technically speaking, it would not be a difficult thing to do. They would have to start storing multiple EPUB files for each book and associate each channel with a specific file. The trick is in making the feature easy to use without being confusing.
> 
> If it were my problem to solve, I'd change the last page of the "add a book" flow. Right now it shows the sales channels and lets you check the ones you want to enable. I'd arrange them in a list with the check boxes on the left and a file upload option on the right. If you do nothing, the channel uses the EPUB file you uploaded in the earlier step. If you want to override what EPUB file gets used for a particular channel, you upload a new file using the input control associated with that channel.


Seems like it would be easier (for the writer) if Draft2Digital just used the same EPUB, but dynamically swapped out the vendor-specific information (whether it's links for the Also By page or requests for reviews). I hadn't really heard of the review request pages before, but I can see the appeal.

I know for sure that Draft2Digital _does_ have a system that will allow them to modify the source document in different ways to submit to different vendors, they'd just need to know what modifications to make.

Anyone want to share me some sample books that use different versions for different vendors? That way I can see what's important to people and how you prefer to format it.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

sgroyle said:


> Not sure if this is possible.
> 
> Is it possible to upload different ePubs (same book) to different sites? i.e. one for B&N, one for iTunes?
> 
> The only reason for this is the: Thanks for reading and it would be great if you left a review (link).


I suppose if the technical issues are too burdensome, a rather inelegant way to do this would be to create different books in your dashboard and mark each one to be uploaded only to a specific vendor. It would certainly clutter up your dashboard, though.


----------



## Sapphire

I prefer having my own TOC included in my upload rather than using one generated by D2D.  I feel the TOC is important for a reader to see at the BEGINNING of my book in alll versions.  What good does it do at the end?  For those who gripe about sample size: all they have to do is make their TOC ultra short.  As for page turning: I've never heard anyone say they didn't read a book because they had to turn an extra page or two.


----------



## jdrew

This still looks pretty good to me.  I will continue to follow this thread and wait for D2D to open up.


----------



## Marti talbott

Will the TOC be optional? I don't use them and many readers don't like them in a novel. It makes sense for cookbooks, etc., but not in novels. Just my opinion.


----------



## DRMarvello

Martitalbott said:


> Will the TOC be optional? I don't use them and many readers don't like them in a novel. It makes sense for cookbooks, etc., but not in novels. Just my opinion.


When you talk about ebook TOCs it can get a bit confusing because there are actually two separate tables of contents. When you submit a Word document to D2D, they are actually generating both for you.

One is the "linked TOC" that readers see embedded in the book. That TOC is essentially an HTML page with hyperlinks to the corresponding locations in the ebook. It is the TOC you see in the front matter by convention. You can leave that TOC out of your book, although Amazon strongly recommends you have one. Also, if a customer complains about your book not having a TOC, Amazon has been known to tell you that it must be added (we had that happen to one of our KB authors.)

The second TOC is the "NCX", which is an XML file that is embedded within your EPUB/MobiPocket file. Some ebook reading devices/applications use it and some don't. My old Kindle 2 does not use it, but the version of KindlePC I'm running does. Adobe Digital Editions uses it too. This TOC is technically required, according to the EPUB 2 specification (and presumably the EPUB 3 spec--I haven't checked). We used to get away with leaving it out because older versions of EPUBCheck didn't enforce the requirement, but the latest version does. It might be possible to "fake it out" by providing an empty NCX, but I've never tried that.

I've gotten into several discussions on this forum with other members who have very strong opinions about TOC. Here's what I concluded:
* Some readers like to have a TOC, even if we authors think it is useless (e.g. Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc)
* Some readers like having the little tick marks that go across the bottom of their viewer, and you have to create an NCX for that to happen.
* If you have a linked TOC, readers expect it to be at the front of the book.
* If you put the linked TOC at the back of the book, it can mess up the "last position read" marker.
* Amazon and the EPUB standard really want you to include a TOC.

Bottom line? Put a TOC in your front matter and save yourself some grief.


----------



## Marti talbott

DRMarvello said:


> When you talk about ebook TOCs it can get a bit confusing because there are actually two separate tables of contents. When you submit a Word document to D2D, they are actually generating both for you.
> 
> One is the "linked TOC" that readers see embedded in the book. That TOC is essentially an HTML page with hyperlinks to the corresponding locations in the ebook. It is the TOC you see in the front matter by convention. You can leave that TOC out of your book, although Amazon strongly recommends you have one. Also, if a customer complains about your book not having a TOC, Amazon has been known to tell you that it must be added (we had that happen to one of our KB authors.)
> 
> The second TOC is the "NCX", which is an XML file that is embedded within your EPUB/MobiPocket file. Some ebook reading devices/applications use it and some don't. My old Kindle 2 does not use it, but the version of KindlePC I'm running does. Adobe Digital Editions uses it too. This TOC is technically required, according to the EPUB 2 specification (and presumably the EPUB 3 spec--I haven't checked). We used to get away with leaving it out because older versions of EPUBCheck didn't enforce the requirement, but the latest version does. It might be possible to "fake it out" by providing an empty NCX, but I've never tried that.
> 
> I've gotten into several discussions on this forum with other members who have very strong opinions about TOC. Here's what I concluded:
> * Some readers like to have a TOC, even if we authors think it is useless (e.g. Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc)
> * Some readers like having the little tick marks that go across the bottom of their viewer, and you have to create an NCX for that to happen.
> * If you have a linked TOC, readers expect it to be at the front of the book.
> * If you put the linked TOC at the back of the book, it can mess up the "last position read" marker.
> * Amazon and the EPUB standard really want you to include a TOC.
> 
> Bottom line? Put a TOC in your front matter and save yourself some grief.


Thanks for explaining. My opposition to using them is the space they take up in the sample. Otherwise, I don't care. I started publishing in 2010 and so far it has not been a problem. No Amazon or reader complaints.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Martitalbott said:


> My opposition to using them is the space they take up in the sample.


If the NCX is properly designed and the distributor is smart enough, the TOC doesn't have to take up any space in the sample. The NCX can label that section of the document as endmatter (not body text) and a distributor can take their 10% or 20% or whatever out of just the body text (then slap the frontmatter back onto the sample).

I know Apple does this when they're generating TOCs, and I know Amazon's Kindles will skip frontmatter in the reading process (just like Apple devices do), so they might be smart enough to manage samples the same way, too. And, of course, that's how Draft2Digital generates the samples _they_ submit to Apple.

Edit: That's not supposed to be reason enough to include one or not (since it's entirely dependent on the distributors' sample creation process). It's just a technical aspect of the conversation that I found interesting.


----------



## lazyjayn

I have a question.

Has anyone tried sending through a picture book? I know an illustrator who wants to collaborate on a kids picture book, but the thought of formatting it gives me hives, so we haven't moved forward on it yet. I'll admit it, I'm not into the fiddly little formatting stuff. Give me a screwdriver and a pile of parts and I'm happy, but a similar sized heap of code and I'm huddled whimpering in a corner somewhere.

Otherwise, I think I'm in love with both the service and the product. It's pretty to look at, gives me the information I want, and they're listening to what we want re: distro and converter features. Which reminds me, I wanted to send them a thank you note...


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

> My old Kindle 2 does not use it, but the version of KindlePC I'm running does.


I never knew this until I had replaced it with my PaperWhite, but the old Kindle 2 used the NCX for a sort of fast forward. If you push the four way control stick to the right or left, it will advance to the next or previous chapter start.


----------



## DRMarvello

lazyjayn said:


> Has anyone tried sending through a picture book? I know an illustrator who wants to collaborate on a kids picture book, but the thought of formatting it gives me hives, so we haven't moved forward on it yet. I'll admit it, I'm not into the fiddly little formatting stuff. Give me a screwdriver and a pile of parts and I'm happy, but a similar sized heap of code and I'm huddled whimpering in a corner somewhere.


I recently uploaded an image-intensive book, but it hasn't gone live yet. It has been in "publishing" status since Jan 18, and I'm not sure if the images have something to do with the delay (other books went up the next day). On the other hand, I've uploaded two other books since then and they are all still stuck in publishing too, so maybe Apple is just being slow.

Managing page breaks seems to be the biggest challenge with image-intensive books. If the device can't fit the entire image on the page, it will break to a new page. That can cause some unfortunate widow/orphan situations and large swaths of unexpected white space. All that is complicated by the fact that the user can change the text size.

My images were pretty easy to incorporate because they were screen shots. They worked well in black-and-white and they mostly had a 1:1 (square) aspect ratio, which meant I almost always had text above and/or below them. In other words, the images didn't end up on a page by themselves with no text "context." I'm not sure how your book will be arranged, but if you have an illustration per scene, I'd probably put the image right at the beginning so it appears right below the chapter heading/scene break and have the associated text follow. That approach would minimize the odds of an orphaned image, but it might not fit within your creative vision.


----------



## Adriane Leigh

Trying D2D for the first time with Book #3! I'm using it primarily to get into iTunes. So far the upload process was wildly easy! Crossing my fingers things continue to go smoothly


----------



## Aaron Pogue

A couple people have asked for a sample book prepared through Draft2Digital's automated conversion (including all the endmatter), so they could evaluate the quality of their formatting.

I'm putting something together and should have it available within the next day or two. I guess I could provide the Word document I used, too, so people could see the before and after....


----------



## Shelley K

DRMarvello said:


> I recently uploaded an image-intensive book, but it hasn't gone live yet. It has been in "publishing" status since Jan 18, and I'm not sure if the images have something to do with the delay (other books went up the next day). On the other hand, I've uploaded two other books since then and they are all still stuck in publishing too, so maybe Apple is just being slow.


I'm still waiting for word on a couple that I uploaded to D2D a day or two after yours. The only image in them is the cover. I think it's just Apple being pokey.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Selina Fenech said:


> I may have to be a brave little guinea pig. Gulp. I'll share results if I go ahead. Still thinking through implications.


I'm going to try to test this out with the D2D publishing/style guide I'll be releasing this week. I already know how to get optimum results with B&N, but I'll see if I can set up something clever for KDP, Kobo, and iTunes, just to see what happens.

I _think_ I still have those login credentials around here somewhere....


----------



## A. S. Warwick

About 4 days into the experiment and already got a couple of sales.  Huzzah!

I think I'll have to migrate more books over when I have a moment.


----------



## 41419

I was following this thread in the early stages with interest, having become increasingly frustrated with Smashwords. If you don't mind, rather than going through 19 pages of comments, I have a few questions about the current level of service on Draft2Digital, that will help me decide whether to start testing (with an eye to switching all Smashwords stuff over).

1. How long does it take between uploading to D2D and appearing at B&N/Apple?

2. Can you make a book free on B&N via D2D?

3. How long does it take for price changes to take effect?

4. What do blurbs look like on the partner sites (they look awful via SW)?

5. (This is a big one for me) How is the mapping of categories/genres between what you select at D2D and where you appear on the partner sites? Currently, this is awful via SW and doesn't seem to be a priority to fix. I don't think they understand how crucial it is to be in the right category...

6. How good are reporting delays? I.e. if I sell a book on Apple or B&N at 6pm EST, when will it be reported to D2D?


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Like David, I'm not a fan of Smashwords at all.

The only thing that I want to see out of D2D is the missing channels (Diesel/Sony) from SW. Get those going and I'd happily come publish on D2D (for those channels . . . all the other ones I already do myself.)

Smashwords is ugly and unwieldy. I'd love to not have to touch them for distribution, but at this point they offer two channels I can't access, and want to.


----------



## 41419

I can understand wanting the widest possible distribution, but in nearly two years on Smashwords, I've sold *one* book at Sony and zero at Diesel. I think _part_ of the problem lies in the way books are categorized in partner stores (and that blurbs look like dog-food), but, realistically, this are tiny markets anyway.

I would be much, much more keen to see dev resources go into making sure books were in the right categories, reporting was quick, and price changes were as fast as possible on the markets that really matter (B&N, Apple, Kobo - the latter not as important to me now I can upload direct).


----------



## Mathew Reuther

dgaughran said:


> I can understand wanting the widest possible distribution, but in nearly two years on Smashwords, I've sold *one* book at Sony and zero at Diesel. I think _part_ of the problem lies in the way books are categorized in partner stores (and that blurbs look like dog-food), but, realistically, this are tiny markets anyway.
> 
> I would be much, much more keen to see dev resources go into making sure books were in the right categories, reporting was quick, and price changes were as fast as possible on the markets that really matter (B&N, Apple, Kobo - the latter not as important to me now I can upload direct).


I know some Sony employees. They like their readers.  As a result I will be putting my stuff up there, and I'd prefer to do it via some kind of reasonable interface.

I agree with you 100% on all counts otherwise.


----------



## Mel Comley

I uploaded 12 titles yesterday and within 12-14 hours they were showing on Kobo and B&N. They would take at least three weeks or more to show up on these sites via SW!


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

Any word on when the sales totals will be sorted out? For me, days and months totals aren't the same and it won't show a MTD for February.


----------



## David J Normoyle

I was wondering what's the thinking on ISBNs. Do you require one for each edition (Epub, mobi, createspace etc.)? Do the vendors you upload to require ISBNs?


----------



## DRMarvello

I answered a few based on my experiences so far with Apple...



dgaughran said:


> 1. How long does it take between uploading to D2D and appearing at B&N/Apple?


I'm not distributing to B&N through them, but the D2D interface to Apple is SPEEDY. I've had books go live on Apple within hours of being submitted to D2D. On the other hand, I've got three books stuck now in "Publishing" status. One has been that way since Jan 28. It appears that the books were submitted to Apple, but Apple is being slow to pull the trigger. I don't think this is an issue with D2D.



dgaughran said:


> 3. How long does it take for price changes to take effect?


It seems that every time a book is sent to Apple, it goes through review again. So, just like the initial upload, your changes could go through immediately or they might be delayed for days.



dgaughran said:


> 5. (This is a big one for me) How is the mapping of categories/genres between what you select at D2D and where you appear on the partner sites? Currently, this is awful via SW and doesn't seem to be a priority to fix. I don't think they understand how crucial it is to be in the right category...


Apple seems to only show one category on the book detail page, so it's hard to tell how well things get matched up. However, that one Apple category did match one of the high-level BISAC categories I put into D2D.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

I really hope more of the beta users will answer based on their experiences, like DRMarvello did, but I'll go ahead and answer on behalf of the devs with how it's expected to work.



dgaughran said:


> I was following this thread in the early stages with interest, having become increasingly frustrated with Smashwords. If you don't mind, rather than going through 19 pages of comments, I have a few questions about the current level of service on Draft2Digital, that will help me decide whether to start testing (with an eye to switching all Smashwords stuff over).
> 
> 1. How long does it take between uploading to D2D and appearing at B&N/Apple?


Generally, 12-36 hours, although if something gets stuck in the "review" queue at Apple, it could be days. If it runs more than a week and you're feeling anxious about it, feel free to contact Draft2Digital's Customer Support. If it's languishing in review, all they can tell you is, "It's submitted and waiting for review."

If it's been waiting for more than two weeks, they'll automatically contact Apple about it (but mostly Apple will respond saying, "It's submitted and waiting for review." Basically, Apple just runs slow sometimes...



> 2. Can you make a book free on B&N via D2D?


Not at this time, no. It's something they want to offer, but it'll take some time.



> 3. How long does it take for price changes to take effect?


B&N, and Kobo, it's nearly instantaneous. KDP might take 12-24 hours. Apple can be very fast, but (as Marvello pointed out), it might also send your book back into review. There's a way around that (I think), and that should make Apple as fast as B&N and Kobo, but there are some technical challenges the devs have to overcome first.



> 4. What do blurbs look like on the partner sites (they look awful via SW)?


They should look really good. Obviously, D2D is limited in terms of what the retailers themselves will allow when it comes to formatting, but D2D allows you to put in your blurb with a rich-text editor (paragraph breaks, italics, bold, maybe even underline), and they'll pass that rich formatting on to all the retailers that accept it (and strip it out gracefully for the ones that don't).



> 5. (This is a big one for me) How is the mapping of categories/genres between what you select at D2D and where you appear on the partner sites? Currently, this is awful via SW and doesn't seem to be a priority to fix. I don't think they understand how crucial it is to be in the right category...


I want to say "It's perfect," but it gets back to the retailers again. Basically, even if you go direct, all the retailers ask you to select your category out of the BISAC list, and then all of them (except Apple) take those BISAC selections and match them up to a _different_ proprietary category list. Well...except for Kobo, who ask you to choose from one proprietary list and then map that to a different proprietary list....

It's aggravating no matter where you go, and the devs at D2D feel the same frustration. They will take the BISAC selections you make and pass those along to the retailers, and (like the retailers) they'll take your BISAC selections and make a best-guess effort at mapping them to Kobo's list.

D2D allows you to choose up to 5 categories because B&N (the most generous) allows you to choose 5. It's important to put those 5 in priority order (with the most important one first), because D2D will use the top 2 for Amazon (who only allow 2), and the top 3 for Kobo (who only allow 3), and so on.



> 6. How good are reporting delays? I.e. if I sell a book on Apple or B&N at 6pm EST, when will it be reported to D2D?


Apple reports once daily, so you'll get those reports once daily. Everywhere else, the maximum delay is about an hour.

There is a bug in the reporting right now that's preventing some hourly reports from getting added into the monthly totals properly, but it's a known issue and it's completely fixable, so it should be sorted out soon.


----------



## 41419

Thank you for that Aaron, that all sounds good to me. This in particular:



Aaron Pogue said:


> I want to say "It's perfect," but it gets back to the retailers again. Basically, even if you go direct, all the retailers ask you to select your category out of the BISAC list, and then all of them (except Apple) take those BISAC selections and match them up to a _different_ proprietary category list. Well...except for Kobo, who ask you to choose from one proprietary list and then map that to a different proprietary list....
> 
> It's aggravating no matter where you go, and the devs at D2D feel the same frustration. They will take the BISAC selections you make and pass those along to the retailers, and (like the retailers) they'll take your BISAC selections and make a best-guess effort at mapping them to Kobo's list.
> 
> D2D allows you to choose up to 5 categories because B&N (the most generous) allows you to choose 5. It's important to put those 5 in priority order (with the most important one first), because D2D will use the top 2 for Amazon (who only allow 2), and the top 3 for Kobo (who only allow 3), and so on.


...is refreshing to hear. I'm happy to hear that D2D are aware of the mapping issue. I've tried to explain this to SW and they don't seem to understand the problem, let alone try to address it.


----------



## DRMarvello

I recently learned that D2D submits your books to Amazon with the same ISBN they are using for the EPUB vendors. For those of us who follow "the world according to Bowker" with regards to ISBNs, this is disappointing news. Fortunately, I'm not currently using D2D for Amazon distribution, and now I never will. 

  EPUB != MobiPocket

Just ask any Kindle or Nook user who gets the wrong file format.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

DRMarvello said:


> I recently learned that D2D submits your books to Amazon with the same ISBN they are using for the EPUB vendors. For those of us who follow "the world according to Bowker" with regards to ISBNs, this is disappointing news. Fortunately, I'm not currently using D2D for Amazon distribution, and now I never will.
> 
> EPUB != MobiPocket
> 
> Just ask any Kindle or Nook user who gets the wrong file format.


Is that really Bowker's claim? I know a book needs a separate ISBN for every edition or format, but everything I've read indicated that "ebook" qualified as a format (not "mobi" or "epub"). But I'll admit I checked out of that conversation more than a year ago, when I decided ISBNs were altogether overrated.

That said, Draft2Digital could easily fix the problem. It's only an issue for books with user-provided ISBNs (which aren't required at all), and it would be easy enough for D2D to allow users to enter multiple ISBNs per book. Submit it as a feature request, and they'd probably have the Edit Book page updated within a week.

Anyway, thanks for pointing that out. It's an issue I wouldn't even have considered.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Aaron Pogue said:


> Is that really Bowker's claim?


It is. The two formats are different. Bowker (who sells ISBNs) claims that you need a new ISBN as a result.

My solution? ASIN on Amazon, ISBN for EPUB. I don't pay twice, and I'm following the rules.


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

> Just ask any Kindle or Nook user who gets the wrong file format.


And how exactly would that happen? Would they go into their local bookshop and order by ISBN? The entire ISBN concept in ebooks is ridiculous. You buy at the store that supports your device and you essentially have a seamless (and captive) supply chain. Since there is no distribution chain, ISBN's serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever in ebooks other than as rent collection by Bowker.

It's not as if you can go to Amazon and choose between an epub with Adobe DRM, an epub with Nook DRM (yes, according to the rules, a different I$BN is required for the Nook and Kobo editions if they have DRM because it's a different scheme), a mobi or a lit file. Each store is a locked format and everyone seems to understand how it works. And if they're not smart enough to figure out you shop for kindle books in the kindle bookshop, they're definitely not splitting hairs over the proper use of ISBNs.


----------



## Midnight Writer

*deleted*


----------



## 41419

Aaron Pogue said:


> Is that really Bowker's claim? I know a book needs a separate ISBN for every edition or format, but everything I've read indicated that "ebook" qualified as a format (not "mobi" or "epub"). But I'll admit I checked out of that conversation more than a year ago, when I decided ISBNs were altogether overrated.


There had never been absolute agreement, but from what I remember, many agreed it was pointless to have a separate ISBN for mobi and epub. More recently however, Bowker pronounced that separate ISBNs for epub and mobi were strongly recommended.

Would I be cynical to point out that doubled their sales with the stroke of a pen?

P.S. Thanks to everyone else for pitching in with answers to my questions. I'm got a beta code and I'm going to upload and test some stuff.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Heard from the devs this morning, and they're prepared to support Bowker's recommendation if there are any users who want it. Kris asked:



> "For those who want to use their own ISBNs and wish to use us to publish to Amazon, would they prefer the option to give us two ISBNs (one for ePub and one for Mobi) or just give us one ISBN that we won't send to Amazon (using the ASIN there instead)?"


What do you guys think? Do we have anyone here who actually falls into that category? I do use D2D to publish to Amazon, but I don't use my own ISBNs anymore.


----------



## DRMarvello

Katie Elle said:


> And how exactly would that happen? Would they go into their local bookshop and order by ISBN? The entire ISBN concept in ebooks is ridiculous. You buy at the store that supports your device and you essentially have a seamless (and captive) supply chain. Since there is no distribution chain, ISBN's serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever in ebooks other than as rent collection by Bowker.


I agree that the current state of the ebook sales channels makes the need for a separate ISBN unclear. Right now, it is hard to accidentally get the wrong format because of the captive supply chain you mentioned.

But times are changing. Just because we don't generally have vendors selling MobiPocket and EPUB editions (or tomorrow's Format X) side-by-side at the moment doesn't mean it will never happen. Many authors are already getting worn out by the proliferation of vendor portals and looking to distributors for central distribution (e.g. D2D and Smashwords.) All it will take is for one successful independent ebook vendor to start selling all available digital editions using ebook distribution catalog feeds, and the need for an ISBN will be reborn. This isn't as far-fetched as you might think because markets with explosive growth tend to expand inefficiently and then contract into more convenient supply channels.

There's no way that having a globally unique identifier for a specific edition (format & content) of your book can be a bad thing. I have not yet seen one coherent argument against it. I understand that a lot of authors don't want to invest money in ISBNs, but that alone doesn't make ISBNs a bad idea. Sure, we could say that a single ISBN represents all digital editions, but then every order would have to include the ISBN plus the format. Why would we do that when we have a perfectly good unique number that is already capable of including the format and has for decades (e.g. paperback vs hardback vs large print vs whatever).


----------



## DRMarvello

Aaron Pogue said:


> Heard from the devs this morning, and they're prepared to support Bowker's recommendation if there are any users who want it. Kris asked:
> 
> What do you guys think? Do we have anyone here who actually falls into that category? I do use D2D to publish to Amazon, but I don't use my own ISBNs anymore.


My recommendation would be to mirror what Amazon offers right now. An ISBN is optional, and if you don't provide one, you get an ASIN (my guess is that you get an ASIN regardless). So, give users a way to optionally provide an ISBN for the MobiPocket format of their book. If they provide one, pass it along in the record to Amazon. I would say it is better to pass no ISBN to Amazon than to pass the EPUB ISBN.

The CreateSpace (paperback) edition obviously needs a separate ISBN as well. I assume D2D is handling that as part of their manual process, or they are just using the free ISBN from CS.


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

> There's no way that having a globally unique identifier for a specific edition (format & content) of your book can be a bad thing. I have not yet seen one coherent argument against it. I understand that a lot of authors don't want to invest money in ISBNs


It's the expense. My partner and I have 24 titles. That would have required 3 ISBNs per item (PDF is the big seller at All Romance), so 72 ISBNs which at 100 ISBN/$575 is a tax to Bowker of $414, which would have been about 15% of our profits. That's absurd for something that basically serves no purpose. It would have been a significant enough expense that we probably would never have gotten into it in the first place.


----------



## DRMarvello

Katie Elle said:


> It's the expense. My partner and I have 24 titles. That would have required 3 ISBNs per item (PDF is the big seller at All Romance), so 72 ISBNs which at 100 ISBN/$575 is a tax to Bowker of $414, which would have been about 15% of our profits. That's absurd for something that basically serves no purpose. It would have been a significant enough expense that we probably would never have gotten into it in the first place.


Having purchased 1,000 ISBNs myself, I completely understand where you are coming from. As you said elsewhere, we all have to do what we feel is right and suffer/enjoy the consequences of our decisions. Realistically, I doubt your decision will hurt you in the future. You can always buy ISBNs later when/if they become necessary, and you'll have the money from all those sales in the meantime to pay for them.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Aaron Pogue said:


> I'm going to try to test this out with the D2D publishing/style guide I'll be releasing this week. I already know how to get optimum results with B&N, but I'll see if I can set up something clever for KDP, Kobo, and iTunes, just to see what happens.


I now have a demo book for anyone who wants to see the quality and formatting of D2D's conversion process (and automated endmatter).

You can download it as:

ePub
mobi
Source (.docx)

But I wanted to ask a favor. I released the book through my old direct accounts on KDP and Kobo. I would appreciate it if someone would leave a (perfectly honest) review of the product on each of those product pages, so I can then move the book from my direct account to D2D and see whether the reviews are preserved or lost.


KDP
Kobo

I appreciate the help. I'll let you know what I find out.


----------



## Isabella Cummins

Aaron Pogue said:


> I now have a demo book for anyone who wants to see the quality and formatting of D2D's conversion process (and automated endmatter).
> 
> You can download it as:
> 
> ePub
> mobi
> Source (.docx)
> 
> But I wanted to ask a favor. I released the book through my old direct accounts on KDP and Kobo. I would appreciate it if someone would leave a (perfectly honest) review of the product on each of those product pages, so I can then move the book from my direct account to D2D and see whether the reviews are preserved or lost.
> 
> 
> KDP
> Kobo
> 
> I appreciate the help. I'll let you know what I find out.


I posted a review, I hope it sticks!


----------



## RuthNestvold

I have another question regarding the CreateSpace option -- how is the TOC handled? For Yseult (which has something like 35 chapters) I created a custom TOC which only links to the 4 books, Two Women, A Man and a Woman, Two Men and a Woman, and Two Women and a Man, as well as the Glossary and the List of Characters and Places. Would that be taken over and given page numbers? Even though it's a novel, I'd like to keep the TOC, since some of the Celtic and Roman terminology is unfamiliar, and I want the reader to be able the find the info right away. 

Also, I have a color map, just because that's what was available. Should I convert that to B&W before uploading the doc file for CreateSpace?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Isabella Cummins said:


> I posted a review, I hope it sticks!


Thanks, Isabella! I've started publishing it through Draft2Digital, so we'll see what happens.



RuthNestvold said:


> I have another question regarding the CreateSpace option -- how is the TOC handled? For Yseult (which has something like 35 chapters) I created a custom TOC which only links to the 4 books, Two Women, A Man and a Woman, Two Men and a Woman, and Two Women and a Man, as well as the Glossary and the List of Characters and Places. Would that be taken over and given page numbers? Even though it's a novel, I'd like to keep the TOC, since some of the Celtic and Roman terminology is unfamiliar, and I want the reader to be able the find the info right away.
> 
> Also, I have a color map, just because that's what was available. Should I convert that to B&W before uploading the doc file for CreateSpace?


As far as CreateSpace goes, that's still very much in flux, but I'll answer based on how it's expected to work right now.

*Table of Contents*
Draft2Digital isn't generating Tables of Contents for paperbacks. I don't think it had even come up. Everything published prior to the beta had been novels, and none of those authors saw a use for them. It seems like ToC support would be pretty complicated (just considering the handful of issues you raised), so I'm sure the devs will need to put a lot of thought into the user interface to support all that.

For now, as I said, they just don't exist at all.

*Embedded Color Images*
I can confirm from experience that CreateSpace will automatically turn color images into black-and-white images, so you should be fine. The most important thing there is just making sure it's 300 dpi.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Aaron Pogue said:


> I can confirm from experience that CreateSpace will automatically turn color images into black-and-white images, so you should be fine. The most important thing there is just making sure it's 300 dpi.


I have color images in my B&W CS books. In addition to being 300dpi, I'd also make sure they look good in greyscale.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Saul Tanpepper said:


> I have color images in my B&W CS books. In addition to being 300dpi, I'd also make sure they look good in greyscale.


That makes sense. When I first started publishing my stuff on Kindle I worried about the covers going to grayscale, and I was so consistently impressed with them that I kind of stopped worrying about color-to-b&w altogether.


----------



## Cherise

Having the same ISBN for all versions of your ebook is a good idea if you advertise on Goodreads, which uses the ISBN to connect vendors to your book's Goodreads page.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Cherise Kelley said:


> Having the same ISBN for all versions of your ebook is a good idea if you advertise on Goodreads, which uses the ISBN to connect vendors to your book's Goodreads page.


Yes, but you can add as many versions as you want with as many ISBNs as they have.


----------



## Richardcrasta

Aaron Pogue said:


> I now have a demo book for anyone who wants to see the quality and formatting of D2D's conversion process (and automated endmatter).
> 
> You can download it as:
> 
> ePub
> mobi
> Source (.docx)
> 
> But I wanted to ask a favor. I released the book through my old direct accounts on KDP and Kobo. I would appreciate it if someone would leave a (perfectly honest) review of the product on each of those product pages, so I can then move the book from my direct account to D2D and see whether the reviews are preserved or lost.
> 
> 
> KDP
> Kobo
> 
> I appreciate the help. I'll let you know what I find out.


I'm impressed with your demo book. Especially by the "Also by xxx" page that is inserted right on Page 3. I assume that this is just a list, and that Apple will not let you have links, but will allow a link to your website. Is this correct?

Especially also by the end matter. That's a great photograph.

So the teaser: would it be the same for every book?

A BIG QUESTION: I don't know if you've answered this. 1. Do you use "normal" and "headings" style in Word for your normal text and heading text? 2. Do you use any font other than Times New Roman, or does it not matter once D2D is done with it? For some reason, my World changes the font to Cambria for headings.

So if I get what you are saying, it's any font for the normal text and bold for the heading . . . and that is it!

Thanks . . .


----------



## Midnight Writer

Richardcrasta said:


> For some reason, my World changes the font to Cambria for headings.


Cambria is the default. You can modify the Heading style, just like you do Normal, to change the font.


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

For the most part, fonts don't matter in ebooks. Best practice is to strip out all fonts to allow the device to use the defaults, which appears to be what D2D is doing. The exception would be foreign language fonts and you need to embed the font into the epub or mobi which is kind of above the 101 level of things.


----------



## RuthNestvold

Aaron Pogue said:


> *Table of Contents*
> Draft2Digital isn't generating Tables of Contents for paperbacks. I don't think it had even come up. Everything published prior to the beta had been novels, and none of those authors saw a use for them. It seems like ToC support would be pretty complicated (just considering the handful of issues you raised), so I'm sure the devs will need to put a lot of thought into the user interface to support all that.
> 
> For now, as I said, they just don't exist at all.


Ok, good to know. Maybe for the paperback I should just move the Glossary to the front to make sure readers notice that it's there. I'll probably do the same thing with the map.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Richardcrasta said:


> I'm impressed with your demo book. Especially by the "Also by xxx" page that is inserted right on Page 3. I assume that this is just a list, and that Apple will not let you have links, but will allow a link to your website. Is this correct?
> 
> Especially also by the end matter. That's a great photograph.
> 
> So the teaser: would it be the same for every book?
> 
> A BIG QUESTION: I don't know if you've answered this. 1. Do you use "normal" and "headings" style in Word for your normal text and heading text? 2. Do you use any font other than Times New Roman, or does it not matter once D2D is done with it? For some reason, my World changes the font to Cambria for headings.
> 
> So if I get what you are saying, it's any font for the normal text and bold for the heading . . . and that is it!


Thanks, Richard! The "Also By" page is currently plain text, because they're still trying to sort out the very questions you were asking about. "Author website integration" is a wishlist item on the devs' list, so once that's available, I'm sure all those titles will be links to the book page on the author's website. In the meantime, the plan is to put in retailer-specific links (so the one delivered to Apple will have links to the Apple store, etc.).

The teaser is selectable from a dropdown on the Layout page. You can choose any book that's currently in your dashboard, and it'll embed the cover image you've provided for that book and the description you entered for that book.

As far as your big question, I _do_ use normal text and heading text, but only out of long-ingrained habit. I don't think the D2D conversion process even takes that into account, it's _just_ looking for relative styling, so a larger font or a bold font or a centered font...as long as it's consistent (and different enough from the "base" text), they have a pretty good chance of recognizing it.


----------



## Lynn Mixon

This looks very promising. I'll be signing up tonight. Thanks for starting the thread and being so responsive, Aaron.

As for Smashwords having a similar thread to talk about the user experience (like people are doing here), you do realize that you don't have to wait for Mark to start one, right? Anyone could open a thread like this. People could talk about their user experience there and Mark would have the same opertunity to respond to what he labels vitriol and untruth. If he does, everyone wins. If not, well, that says something, too.

If anyone does start a thread, please do post the link here. I'm sure we'd all like to be involved with getting our feedback to Mark.


----------



## Kwalker

I've been so pleased with Draft2Digital so far. Their support truly does seem to be top notch. 

Currently, I have 2 titles out. I've sent both to Itunes through D2D, but I'd already gone direct with Amazon, Pubit and Kobo prior to learning about them. 

I am about to release my next title. At this point, I know I'm going to use them for Itunes and that I want to stay direct through amazon.

Since I've already got my own accounts with pubit and kobo, I'm wondering if I should go direct again, just uploading the file their conversion process creates, or if I should go ahead and just have them push the file to those 2 sites for me.

Can anyone else comment on their upload times to B&N for both title creation and price changes? I know that financially speaking, most people say to go direct wherever you can. But since I've never sold a single title on Kobo, I'm not terribly concerned over that. 

Is there any point to stopping going through the direct channels with the titles already released and putting them through D2D? Is it complicated to make sure you don't end up with duplicate titles?


----------



## Lynn Mixon

Author Dean Wesley Smith commented about Draft2Digital on his blog today. He had some pro, cons, and thoughts I thought I'd repost here so they can be discussed, since I think they are very good points worth talking about.

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=8548

_[text of DWS blog removed; DWS is not a member here and has not, as far as I know, given permission for the blog entry to be copied directly. Those interested, please go to the blog at the above link to read. Thanks for understanding, Betsy]_

Thoughts?


----------



## Shelley K

Kwalker said:


> Since I've already got my own accounts with pubit and kobo, I'm wondering if I should go direct again, just uploading the file their conversion process creates, or if I should go ahead and just have them push the file to those 2 sites for me.
> 
> Is there any point to stopping going through the direct channels with the titles already released and putting them through D2D? Is it complicated to make sure you don't end up with duplicate titles?


If you can go direct, why would you give up some of your royalties to not go direct?


----------



## Not Here Anymore

Newbie question: if I've already published a book through SW to itunes, do I need to opt out of SW distribution to Apple before I go through d2d? 

I tried out the conversion process earlier today on a draft. Amazingly easy.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

shelleyo1 said:


> If you can go direct, why would you give up some of your royalties to not go direct?


Time, basically. That's why people use aggregators when they can otherwise go direct.

Anyone can layout a book, print or e . . . but people still pay others to do that for them.

It's just a matter of how much time you have, and what it's worth to you to have someone handling your books on various sites.


----------



## Kwalker

Exactly. And because 15% of zero (on kobo) is um...zero. So unless I actually start selling on that platform, they are costing me nothing, but saving me time.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

I do more myself than most people because I have more time than most people. Also, I am a control freak.

But for people with a day job (that doesn't involve wrangling their own offspring anyway) time gets a lot more scarce than money at times.


----------



## Shelley K

Mathew Reuther said:


> Time, basically. That's why people use aggregators when they can otherwise go direct.
> 
> Anyone can layout a book, print or e . . . but people still pay others to do that for them.
> 
> It's just a matter of how much time you have, and what it's worth to you to have someone handling your books on various sites.


Formatting and such is typically a one-time fee. This is an ongoing cost, for as long as the title is for sale.

Paying D2D 15% of everything that could be published directly is like giving up almost two whole months of royalties per year to save a few hours of time. Time is precious, but it's not that much time for a whole lot of cash. Sometimes it really pays to do something yourself, or take the time to learn it, or even pay someone to do it for you _once_.


----------



## CoraBuhlert

I uploaded a couple of my books in the past few days to Draft2Digital and have been rather impressed with the dashboard and uploading ease.

However, I have a minor niggle. In the contributor dropdown menu, there is no tab for translator. Now I am my own translator, so it's not that much of an issue for me. But it does seem rather disrespectful not to credit translators when everybody else can be credited.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

shelleyo1 said:


> Formatting and such is typically a one-time fee. This is an ongoing cost, for as long as the title is for sale.
> 
> Paying D2D 15% of everything that could be published directly is like giving up almost two whole months of royalties per year to save a few hours of time. Time is precious, but it's not that much time for a whole lot of cash. Sometimes it really pays to do something yourself, or take the time to learn it, or even pay someone to do it for you _once_.


I don't do it if I can go myself. You don't need to convince me. Time and money have very different values to people based on what their schedules and finances are like.


----------



## Shelley K

Mathew Reuther said:


> I don't do it if I can go myself. You don't need to convince me. Time and money have very different values to people based on what their schedules and finances are like.


I know this, Matthew. She's asking about benefits of pulling stuff that's up direct and putting it into D2D. The time has already been invested in uploading them. More time will be taken pulling them down and reuploading them, so it's more time and 15% more royalties gone. I think it's a bad financial decision, as is not going direct when you (general you) can.

I'm using them for Apple because at the moment it's not financially beneficial to go direct. As soon as it's a good business decision to invest in what's needed to go direct, I'll do so.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

shelleyo1 said:


> I'm using them for Apple because at the moment it's not financially beneficial to go direct. As soon as it's a good business decision to invest in what's needed to go direct, I'll do so.


You talking the expense of buying a used mac or a mac mini? Or of a virtual machine?

http://www.ehow.com/how_7653919_run-os-windows-virtual-machine.html


----------



## Kwalker

Actually, for me it is not a one time thing. Generally each time I am releasing a title I am updating previous titles back matter with links to the new book's page on my website.

Also, checking for sales (or lack there of) on several sites each day is a bigger procrastination time sink than checking one or two sites.  Every time I want to change the price it means going through multiple dashboards. I can definitely see temptation in consolidating.


----------



## Shelley K

Mathew Reuther said:


> You talking the expense of buying a used mac or a mac mini? Or of a virtual machine?
> 
> http://www.ehow.com/how_7653919_run-os-windows-virtual-machine.html


Actually, it's the expense of forming an LLC, and the time it would take to determine whether I can incorporate instead, which is cheaper, all for less than $40 a month in Apple sales. Not yet. Bookmarked the link, though, thanks!


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Kwalker said:


> Actually, for me it is not a one time thing. Generally each time I am releasing a title I am updating previous titles back matter with links to the new book's page on my website.


I do something similar. I use D2D for two outlets that are bothersome to handle myself from Europe.

I also could imagine that if D2D manages to get writers on the lesser known e-shops like ARe it would become even more expedient to use them. More shops appear regularly. Now imagine that with one upload D2D could guarantee you that you will be in 20+ shops within the week, with no hassle. Now further imagine that they would lower their cut to 8-10% if you go exclusive with them&#8230; I'm not saying I would do it. Like Matthew, I'm a control freak and I don't mind the uploading, but maybe other writers would be very happy with such an offer. I know I would at least be tempted.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

shelleyo1 said:


> Actually, it's the expense of forming an LLC, and the time it would take to determine whether I can incorporate instead, which is cheaper, all for less than $40 a month in Apple sales. Not yet. Bookmarked the link, though, thanks!


Why do you need an LLC?

You can publish as an individual, you just have to use your real name. (Annoying, but not $800/year annoying. I live in CA.)


----------



## Gennita Low

> How long does it take for price changes to take effect?


Frustrating experience for me so far. I'm using D2D to distribute to Kobo and Apple. I have a sale tomorrow and have been having all kinds of trouble trying to change the price to .99cts.

So far, I've republished three times, with no changes. D2D has been extremely helpful but they haven't been able to get both Kobo and Apple (which is still not showing my book after days) to change my price. I paid for an expensive ad at Book Bub for this weekend's promo and now I won't be able to offer my books at two of the promised platforms. Wahhhhhhh.


----------



## Shelley K

Mathew Reuther said:


> Why do you need an LLC?
> 
> You can publish as an individual, *you just have to use your real name*.


Which is why I need one.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

shelleyo1 said:


> Which is why I need one.


If you're deeply trying to hide your real name, then yes.


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

I think you can do an unincorporated sole proprietor DBA. You might need an EIN and a bank account in the name of it though.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Katie Elle said:


> I think you can do an unincorporated sole proprietor DBA. You might need an EIN and a bank account in the name of it though.


As far as I know this is possible, and the cheapest option to publish under a pseudonym or publisher name.

But again, a DBA does cost. (Not as much as other things, which is a plus.)

Probably just comes down to how much you sell at Apple if it's worth it.


----------



## Lefty

I set up a DBA for around $30, notary fee included.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

CB Edwards said:


> I set up a DBA for around $30, notary fee included.


$35 for me, plus the $17 newspaper ad.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Hey! It looks like Konrath is blogging again, and in his post today he strongly advocated that everyone get their books in Overdrive (while admitting that it isn't terribly easy to do).

As it happens, Draft2Digital is pursuing a distribution agreement with Overdrive. The devs have always wanted to offer access to public libraries, and Overdrive is the leading provider there.


----------



## Y. K. Greene

Sounds good, great actually, but there's one thing I'd really like to see that I haven't already. What does the book look like after being uploaded in .doc (or whatever upload format is most popular) and the format translated to the various ebook formats?

One reason I stopped publishing my new novels on Smashwords was that I really hated both the hoops you had to jump through to get your book to pass through their meat grinder *and* I didn't like what all of that hard work looked like when it came back out again.

Is there a previewer for the various formats or something similar? Since I don't own an Apple anything (not even the fruit, don't judge me  ) some kind of preview function would be an invaluable tool to allow myself and other authors to see potentially devastating errors in the conversion and give us a chance to try and fix them before hitting publish.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Y. K. Greene said:


> Sounds good, great actually, but there's one thing I'd really like to see that I haven't already. What does the book look like after being uploaded in .doc (or whatever upload format is most popular) and the format translated to the various ebook formats?
> 
> One reason I stopped publishing my new novels on Smashwords was that I really hated both the hoops you had to jump through to get your book to pass through their meat grinder *and* I didn't like what all of that hard work looked like when it came back out again.
> 
> Is there a previewer for the various formats or something similar? Since I don't own an Apple anything (not even the fruit, don't judge me  ) some kind of preview function would be an invaluable tool to allow myself and other authors to see potentially devastating errors in the conversion and give us a chance to try and fix them before hitting publish.


There's a "proof review" page during the publishing process (between Layout and Publishing) that includes links to download proofs and links to download the vendor-specific viewers. (The ones that exist anyway; Apple's just a pain). I use the Kindle Previewer and the Nook App and occasionally spot-check a book on an actual Kobo or a friend's iPad.

If you want to see an _example_ document, I've prepared one that you can download from my website:


Source document (Word)
Draft2Digital conversion (ePub)
Draft2Digital conversion (mobi)

Or get the (official) free copy from Kobo.


----------



## Kwalker

Aaron the Overdrive thing is AWESOME. I would so LOVE to be a part of that. I love libraries and I hate that they have such hoops to go through to get ahold of books.


----------



## Y. K. Greene

Thanks Aaron, that's very helpful! You might want to put some kind of comparison image in the FAQs as well, just a couple expandable jpegs would do, for people hesitating for the same reasons as me and not fortunate enough to luck upon this thread before they try it out.


----------



## Cliff Ball

That would be cool being able to distribute through Overdrive. I was working in a library as they were about to begin using Overdrive for ebooks, but I never got to see how it was implemented. I want to use Overdrive myself, but I think I'd rather have D2D distribute my novels when they can.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Saul Tanpepper said:


> $35 for me, plus the $17 newspaper ad.


Varies by state. CA is much more expensive.

But as stated, way less than the $800/year for an LLC/Corp.


----------



## Lisa J. Yarde

While there isn't a style guide for D2D yet, anyone who's had a Word document successfully converted care to share any best practice tips on preserving scene breaks and italics? All of mine disappear in the epub and it looks clumsy.


----------



## Kwalker

My italics don't disapear, but my scene breaks do become blank spaces, which is their current default. If you email the developers, they will add you to the list to be notified when they implement the ability to customize the way scene breaks are handled (which is on their to-do list I've been told.)


----------



## Lisa J. Yarde

Thanks, I'll do that. Figured the missing breaks resulted from something stupid that I'd done with the Word doc - it's been known to happen.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

CoraBuhlert said:


> However, I have a minor niggle. In the contributor dropdown menu, there is no tab for translator. Now I am my own translator, so it's not that much of an issue for me. But it does seem rather disrespectful not to credit translators when everybody else can be credited.


If I recall correctly, the list D2D used was copied directly from those Amazon was willing to accept. Still, I passed your comment along to the devs today, and they have now added "Translator" (and a more general "Editor") to the available Contributor roles.


----------



## Mel Comley

It's been six days since I uploaded some of my books with D2D and I have to say I've received more sales in that time than I've *ever* had through Smashwords. Hmm...I wonder why that is?

Totally impressed by things so far Aaron. Can't wait for my Select period to end so I can upload my best-sellers to the site.


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

Oooh, Overdrive would be excellent! I'd love to get my e-books in libraries.


----------



## Michael Kingswood

Mathew Reuther said:


> Varies by state. CA is much more expensive.
> 
> But as stated, way less than the $800/year for an LLC/Corp.


It cost me $52 in San Diego.


----------



## CoraBuhlert

Aaron Pogue said:


> If I recall correctly, the list D2D used was copied directly from those Amazon was willing to accept. Still, I passed your comment along to the devs today, and they have now added "Translator" (and a more general "Editor") to the available Contributor roles.


Amazon actually does have "translator" as a contributor option. Maybe it's a new thing. Anyway, that's great news, because translators and editors deserve credit.


----------



## AnitaDobs

Just figured I'd put one of my republishing from Smash to D2D on B&N experiences in the info pool here...

Reviews...

I unchanneled one of my titles from Smash planning to upload it at D2D so two would appear on B&N at the same time (after months at Smash it still hadn't appeared on Apple anyway) and I wouldn't lose its review (as per Aaron's advice.)

Unfortunately/fortunately I forgot I had dechanneled and hadn't uploaded it to D2D, and only remembered when I saw it disappear from B&N. The original had no blurb whatsoever (care of Smash.)

In anycase, I put it through D2D, with the blurb it was originally suppossed to have and it appeared again at B&N within 12 hours (approx) minus the review. I just put it down to one of those 'oh well, it was my own fault' moments, and figured the review was gone forever.

But the review has shown up again. So, to anyone worrying about losing reviews, it may not be the case (I have no idea for Apple.) The book was absent from B&N for about 2 - 3 days. Hope that helps.

ps/Edit: Just a heads up I just remembered I should also mention: The ranking _did_ disappear though.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Michael Kingswood said:


> It cost me $52 in San Diego.


Funny. Last I checked in SD it was closer to $100. Maybe it's because I'm in North County. I also pay an extra $100 vehicle licensing every year for the "pleasure" . . .


----------



## Hildred

(For the record, it's $50 here in Oregon.)

I have a question that may have been covered in some manner recently (so apologies.) Right now I use D2D exclusively for iTunes and have been pretty happy with the services. If nothing else, I can see how many freebies Im giving out! Now I have a question. Next week I'll be launching a new pen name I don't want associated with my real name. If I use D2D and have this pen name listed under all the contributor areas (minus ones that really are other people) will there be no way to trace back to my real name? Or would I have to open a new D2D account under a DBA? (Would rather just forfeit the itunes sales atm. I've never sold anything through there anyway.) I know that if you upload direct your real name gets listed as the publisher unless you use a DBA. This is a privacy issue so that's why I'm wondering.


----------



## 41419

Aaron Pogue said:


> Hey! It looks like Konrath is blogging again, and in his post today he strongly advocated that everyone get their books in Overdrive (while admitting that it isn't terribly easy to do).
> 
> As it happens, Draft2Digital is pursuing a distribution agreement with Overdrive. The devs have always wanted to offer access to public libraries, and Overdrive is the leading provider there.


That would be amazing.


----------



## Becca Mills

dgaughran said:


> That would be amazing.


+1 on Overdrive!

FYI, yesterday I used D2D to change my book's iTunes price, and it again went through in a matter of hours -- batting three for three on that front.


----------



## Lady Vine

Hildred said:


> (For the record, it's $50 here in Oregon.)
> 
> I have a question that may have been covered in some manner recently (so apologies.) Right now I use D2D exclusively for iTunes and have been pretty happy with the services. If nothing else, I can see how many freebies Im giving out! Now I have a question. Next week I'll be launching a new pen name I don't want associated with my real name. If I use D2D and have this pen name listed under all the contributor areas (minus ones that really are other people) will there be no way to trace back to my real name? Or would I have to open a new D2D account under a DBA? (Would rather just forfeit the itunes sales atm. I've never sold anything through there anyway.) I know that if you upload direct your real name gets listed as the publisher unless you use a DBA. This is a privacy issue so that's why I'm wondering.


As far as I can see, you can have as many pen names and publishers as you like through D2D. iTunes doesn't have access to your real name if you don't disclose it when you're uploading, they only have the info D2D gives them. So you should be fine.


----------



## 41419

Becca Mills said:


> +1 on Overdrive!
> 
> FYI, yesterday I used D2D to change my book's iTunes price, and it again went through in a matter of hours -- batting three for three on that front.


Impressive.

I uploaded my first two today, which might test the system a little. The first is my self-publishing guidebook which got delayed repeatedly at SW because it was auto-flagged for mentioning Amazon and the Kindle (Apple like to pretend they don't exist). We'll see if it goes straight through or not.

The second is the French edition of the same book. I could pick the language in the D2D interface, but we'll see how quickly it gets distributed compared to SW (around a week to B&N, still waiting on Apple five weeks later...).

I'll report back but I can already say that I really like the interface and the uploading process was 100% painless (I uploaded my own EPUBs).


----------



## Victoria Champion

Hildred said:


> (For the record, it's $50 here in Oregon.)
> 
> I have a question that may have been covered in some manner recently (so apologies.) Right now I use D2D exclusively for iTunes and have been pretty happy with the services. If nothing else, I can see how many freebies Im giving out! Now I have a question. Next week I'll be launching a new pen name I don't want associated with my real name. If I use D2D and have this pen name listed under all the contributor areas (minus ones that really are other people) will there be no way to trace back to my real name? Or would I have to open a new D2D account under a DBA? (Would rather just forfeit the itunes sales atm. I've never sold anything through there anyway.) I know that if you upload direct your real name gets listed as the publisher unless you use a DBA. This is a privacy issue so that's why I'm wondering.


I have uploaded to iTunes via d2D, using both my real name and my pen name with one account, and at the iTunes product page, my real name does not show up on my pen name products. It shows my pen name, my pen name's imprint as the publisher, and the seller as d2D.


----------



## Hildred

Victoria Champion said:


> I have uploaded to iTunes via d2D, using both my real name and my pen name with one account, and at the iTunes product page, my real name does not show up on my pen name products. It shows my pen name, my pen name's imprint as the publisher, and the seller as d2D.


Thanks! Right now I'm having problems getting iTunes to show my (registered as a DBA) publishing title instead of my author name, so I wanted to make sure.


----------



## Griffin Hayes

Uploaded four books yesterday. Very easy and painless compared to SW. As long as they can do the following three things really well, I'll be a happy to stick with them:

1) Keep the upload process easy and intuitive. 
2) Get new books and price/cover/blurb changes onto vendor websites fast (24-48 hours).
3) Pay me once a month. 

Time will tell how #2 will go once they grow the business, but that one is probably the most important, at least for me. As we all know, being a self-pubbed author means keeping as nimble as possible. Having to wait months for a book to show up or be taken down just doesn't cut it. 

So far I'm a big fan!


----------



## David Alastair Hayden

Did my first upload yesterday. It was easy and I was impressed.


----------



## Griffin Hayes

It's barely been 24 hours and everything I uploaded is already on B&N. That's at least sooner than their biggest competitor. So far so good.


----------



## 41419

Griffin Hayes said:


> It's barely been 24 hours and everything I uploaded is already on B&N. That's at least sooner than their biggest competitor. So far so good.


Kobo was about 12 hours, and Barnes & Noble was about 18 hours. Still waiting on Apple, but I expected that (I think they manually review everything and I doubt that's how they spend their Sunday).


----------



## Jnassise

Apple is definitely slower.  I've been waiting almost four days now.

-Joe


----------



## MJWare

Becca Mills said:


> +1 on Overdrive!


Same here, they keep rejecting my application. I'd love to be able to distribute to Overdrive!


----------



## Midnight Writer

*deleted*


----------



## Shelley K

Jnassise said:


> Apple is definitely slower. I've been waiting almost four days now.
> 
> -Joe


Mine's said "Publishing" for about 3 weeks or so. Apple's really dragging tail at the moment. Before that, it took about 4 days for them to reject a title of mine. I hope that's not the result after this length of time.


----------



## phildukephd

Your employee Kris is very pleasant and very helpful. I have just now published my ebook "KARMA" with you, just for iTunes, and will see what happens.

Phil Duke Ph.D.


----------



## Victoria Champion

When I uploaded to iTunes via d2D, my books went live the next day. I uploaded my own epubs. Not sure if that made a difference.


----------



## 41419

Pah! Both books rejected by Apple.

My EPUBS failed the validation check. I found three minor mistakes in the HTML, fixed them, and recompiled the e-book, but the EPUB still fails the check. Hrm... not sure what to do next. Don't really feel like combing 1600 lines of code again... I wish the report from the validator actually told you where the errors were...


----------



## JRHenderson

dgaughran said:


> Pah! Both books rejected by Apple.
> 
> My EPUBS failed the validation check. I found three minor mistakes in the HTML, fixed them, and recompiled the e-book, but the EPUB still fails the check. Hrm... not sure what to do next.


Option 1. Have you heard about the online ePub Validator? http://validator.idpf.org/

Option 2. Apple's word processor, Pages '09, outputs the kind of ePubs that Apple likes. You can pick the iWorks suite up from eBay for about £25-£30 and an eMac to run it on from about £30-£40. 4 years ago, I wrote a little post about how Windows users could cheaply dip their toe into the Mac world by buying a used eMac. They're even cheaper now. http://www.warriorforum.com/off-topic-forum/56437-cheap-way-dip-your-toe-into-mac-world.html



dgaughran said:


> I wish the report from the validator actually told you where the errors were...


Ahhh, but that would take all of the _fun_ out of the process...


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Just as another voice, what I am interested in from D2D are new channels that I CANNOT get into direct. I'm probably more interested in Overdrive than anything else, but pretty much anywhere that I'd have to otherwise use SW for, I'd rather go through D2D.

Because I'd rather cut myself than upload a word file.


----------



## 41419

JRHenderson said:


> Option 1. Have you heard about the online ePub Validator? http://validator.idpf.org/
> 
> Option 2. Apple's word processor, Pages '09, outputs the kind of ePubs that Apple likes. You can pick the iWorks suite up from eBay for about £25-£30 and an eMac to run it on from about £30-£40. 4 years ago, I wrote a little post about how Windows users could cheaply dip their toe into the Mac world by buying a used eMac. They're even cheaper now. http://www.warriorforum.com/off-topic-forum/56437-cheap-way-dip-your-toe-into-mac-world.html


Yeah the Validator is what I was using, but I couldn't locate the issue they had flagged. Option 2 wouldn't be practical because this is a complex formatting job (non-fiction, lots of subheadings, links, special characters) and I hate hate hate Macs. *ducks rotten eggs*

It's okay though. I did one last combover (that doesn't sound right) of my HTML and found the three errors. I've reformatted and reuploaded. Hopefully this will work.


----------



## Jnassise

Have to say I'm relatively unimpressed with Overdrive as a sales outlet. I've been in their system for just over a year now, with a three book series that was a former bestseller in three countries. I've sold a total of 47 books out of the three combined. That's about on par with my Sony sales. Given the hoops that had to be jumped through to get the material approved in the first place, it quite simply hasn't been worth it.

If D2D makes things easier that' great, but I'm still not expecting to see a huge rash of sales from Overdrive.

-J


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

That's not surprising. There are a quarter of a million people served by our local system. So you have 250,000 potential customers through Amazon and 1 potential purchase from the library.


----------



## JRHenderson

dgaughran said:


> ...and I hate hate hate Macs. *ducks rotten eggs*


Don't worry about rotten eggs, David. Mac owners are more likely to throw herbal tea-bags and organic tofu... 



dgaughran said:


> It's okay though. I did one last combover (that doesn't sound right) of my HTML and found the three errors. I've reformatted and reuploaded. Hopefully this will work.


Sounds like you've solved it.


----------



## Cherise

Mathew Reuther said:


> Just as another voice, what I am interested in from D2D are new channels that I CANNOT get into direct. I'm probably more interested in Overdrive than anything else, but pretty much anywhere that I'd have to otherwise use SW for, I'd rather go through D2D.


This is my position, too.
Just letting D2D know we exist.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Cherise Kelley said:


> This is my position, too.
> Just letting D2D know we exist.


Does Word make you want to self harm too? 

I just work so hard on my own EPUB files I want to be able to distribute them and not have to make yet another file (Word) every time I want to upload. Saves me time, and gives me the right amount of control.


----------



## Cherise

Mathew Reuther said:


> Does Word make you want to self harm too?
> 
> I just work so hard on my own EPUB files I want to be able to distribute them and not have to make yet another file (Word) every time I want to upload. Saves me time, and gives me the right amount of control.


Actually, I LOVE being able to upload a doc file and let someone else format it to ePUB for me. But I use Open Office, not Word.


----------



## Lady Vine

Cherise Kelley said:


> Actually, I LOVE being able to upload a doc file and let someone else format it to ePUB for me. But I use Open Office, not Word.


Same. I love Open Office. That said, inserting the Smashwords Edition thing into every book is annoying. It also looks really daft and kind of unprofessional if you're selling it through one of the distribution channels. I've always hated that.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Lady Vine said:


> Same. I love Open Office. That said, inserting the Smashwords Edition thing into every book is annoying. It also looks really daft and kind of unprofessional if you're selling it through one of the distribution channels. I've always hated that.


Which is another reason I want to avoid them.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Cherise Kelley said:


> Actually, I LOVE being able to upload a doc file and let someone else format it to ePUB for me. But I use Open Office, not Word.


Have you tried publishing the Open Office files through D2D? That should be supported. (I'm not saying it _is_, but it absolutely should be.)

If you try it, let me know how it goes. They might need a couple sample .odt files to nail everything down, but I can't imagine it would take them long.


----------



## Vivi_Anna

Um, signing up, I see in their terms of service it says 15% commission, yet in the pricing, it says they take 10%

Do they take 10% AND a 15% commission?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Vivi_Anna said:


> Um, signing up, I see in their terms of service it says 15% commission, yet in the pricing, it says they take 10%
> 
> Do they take 10% AND a 15% commission?


Nope. Same numbers, different accounting. 15% is the percent of net (royalties), which is the more useful and precise value to calculate a commission on, whereas 10% is the percent of gross (retail list price), which seems to be the value most authors are concerned with. You'll notice the terms of service says "15%" and the pricing page says, "approximately 10% at most channels."

This is the detailed answer from the FAQ:



> *How much does Draft2Digital cost?*
> 
> There's no up-front cost to use our service. Our fee at most sales channels is approximately 10% of the retail price (it's technically 15% of the net royalties). View our pricing page for more information.


----------



## Vivi_Anna

Awesome. thank you Aaron.  I guess I should be more investigative before jumping to conclusions. *shame face*


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Vivi_Anna said:


> Awesome. thank you Aaron. I guess I should be more investigative before jumping to conclusions. *shame face*


No, it's definitely a confusing issue. They originally listed the "15% of net" value everywhere on the site, but it was creating a lot of confusion because _other_ services tend to talk in terms of percent of list price. The devs are looking for some way to make it completely clear without making it intimidating or misleading.

So questions like yours are helpful to see what's working and what isn't.


----------



## DRMarvello

Victoria Champion said:


> When I uploaded to iTunes via d2D, my books went live the next day. I uploaded my own epubs. Not sure if that made a difference.


I've uploaded nothing but EPUBs for 4 books. The first one went through and was "published" the next day (<24 hours). Others have taken over a week. I get the impression that acceptance testing is performed in batches, and the timing is a matter of getting into the queue at the right moment.

I've also noticed that the books sometimes go live for a while before Apple gets persnickety about something. In one case, the book was live for a couple of days before they pushed it book back at me and bumped it off the iTunes site. I fixed the issue and republished within a couple hours of the notice, but it still took a few days before the book went live again.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Aaron Pogue said:


> No, it's definitely a confusing issue. They originally listed the "15% of net" value everywhere on the site, but it was creating a lot of confusion because _other_ services tend to talk in terms of percent of list price. The devs are looking for some way to make it completely clear without making it intimidating or misleading.
> 
> So questions like yours are helpful to see what's working and what isn't.


Basically, for a $2.99 book authors get $1.78.


----------



## CoraBuhlert

The first few books I uploaded via Draft2Digital have gone live on Apple iTunes after approx. a week and my latest book was live at B&N after 24 hours, whereas XinXii normally needs a month or so to get a book up on B&N.


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

dgaughran said:


> Pah! Both books rejected by Apple.
> 
> My EPUBS failed the validation check. I found three minor mistakes in the HTML, fixed them, and recompiled the e-book, but the EPUB still fails the check. Hrm... not sure what to do next. Don't really feel like combing 1600 lines of code again... I wish the report from the validator actually told you where the errors were...


David, if I can help you in any way, let me know. I have a MacBook with Scrivener and Pages '09, and iTunesProducer. I upload my own epubs, generated by Scrivener, into iTunes, using iTunesProducer. The only difference between the ePubs I upload to Kobo is that the Kobo version has the cover image embedded, and for iTunes I format the epub without the cover, because it would be considered an 'in-book image'.


----------



## Hudson Owen

I've had a book of poems with prose with D2D for several weeks now.  They say they are trying to format it.  I may have to supply the EPUB file to them, which I will gladly do to obtain for their services, for at least one book.  Poetry is nortoriously difficult to format for ebooks, and of course, there are very few poets who submit e-books.  This is just a caution.


----------



## merryxmas

I'm going to apologize in advance for not reading the 24 pages of the thread where I'm sure this question has been answered but it says you can upload a doc and get a good epub but can I upload an epub and get a good doc?  This is the problem I have with Smashwords and creating a clean doc that works for them and their meatgrinding.  I can compile professional looking epubs from Scrivener but not such good luck with docs.  So can D2D do this and if so is it the general consensus that you get a quality formatted doc from epubs?  

Other question is do you provide free ISBNs for itunes or do we pay for that dissemination?


----------



## AnitaDobs

Victoria Champion said:


> Basically, for a $2.99 book authors get $1.78.


That's one thingy less than ARE AT 1.79.

You do realize that now I'm gonna' have change my spreadsheet prices don't you? I'd put it in as a 1.60 approx because I couldn't be bothered with being confused as to what it actually was.

At least it's going up as oppossed to down though 

Thanks


----------



## Victoria Champion

AnitaDobs said:


> That's one thingy less than ARE AT 1.79.
> 
> You do realize that now I'm gonna' have change my spreadsheet prices don't you? I'd put it in as a 1.60 approx because I couldn't be bothered with being confused as to what it actually was.
> 
> At least it's going up as oppossed to down though
> 
> Thanks


Not only that, when d2D sent me my monthly profit notice, they rounded up the total by a penny! I noticed the other distributors round down every chance they get.


----------



## AnitaDobs

Victoria Champion said:


> Not only that, when d2D sent me my monthly profit notice, they rounded up the total by a penny! I noticed the other distributors round down every chance they get.


That one penny is going to drive me insane...

My spreadsheets can't handle it.


----------



## Andre Jute

With apologies for not reading the entire 24 pages... I absolutely applaud every marketing channel that gives writers another marketing channel. I've been trying out the service.

A. A few questions:

1. Does D2D demand exclusivity on any book?

2. Does Smashwords demand exclusivity on any book?

3. We have a couple of dozen books already out there, and a dozen a year following. Arranging exclusivity for any aggregator would be a pain, and probably cause him to be struck off our list as impossible to satisfy.

4. It seems to me clear that the vendors can't object; they already have many sellers flogging the books of any writer with a trad backlist. But does anyone have hard information to the contrary?

5. Will D2D offer a selection among their channels or do you have to take the package deal? Where is the page on which you can choose which of the channels you want any book to go into?

6. Who is financing D2D and what is their capital? What I have in mind is that D2D will be doing expensive handwork for a while yet. One needs deep pockets to stay the course until profitability arrives. If D2D goes out of business soon, or sells out to one of the major vendors, possibly even to the worst scenario, Amazon or Google, indies will have done the work of transferring books for no gain, however marginal, in additional security over the present oligopoly, in which they are dangerously exposed.

B. Here are some observations about trying the service with the sort of clean DOC from which Amazon makes a great AZW/MOBI file and Smashwords makes an acceptably clean if aesthetically unexciting EPUB file:

1. The Digital2Draft system cannot handle multiple authors. The last author's name is printed larger than the others. This applies whether you supply formatted front and rear matter or whether you leave them to D2D to insert.

2. If the body text is clean, D2D renders it well. It messes up front and rear matter by boosting up the font sizes and weights unpredictably. That's not the way to a clean layout. Why should he rights warning (not the far more important legal copyright date) be larger than any other text on the title verso?

3. If you have illustrations, say your other book covers or author photos, in the rear matter, D2D loses all but one.

4. D2D on several tries didn't manage to place a cover, whether it was supplied loose or included in the manuscript file.

5. The ToC is placed right at the end of the book and includes all the wrong things while missing out the right ones.

C. So far on the DOC files. Having checked what D2D made with them, and finding the glitches unacceptable, I'm about to delete that book and start again with a working EPUB of my own, utterly complete with cover and TOC, on the principle that D2D can't screw that up if it's just a passthrough operation to the channels. The effort and extra work might be worth it to support a very necessary alternative marketing channel.

D. I understand this is a beta, but unless it is improved, and assuming that the EPUB when we've prepared it is not screwed up as my DOC files were (and don't bother to question our DOCs -- they're nuked and reformatted as a matter of course), writers innocent of design and code skills will be in a _worse_ position than with Smashwords, in that for consistency they will have to make EPUB files complete with NCX indexes, whereas now they can hand over a DOC file to Smashwords and, if they followed the rules, be assured of getting a clean (if unimaginative) EPUB out the other end. That D2D beta is a fair way from primetime.

E. Sorry, if what I've seen so far are the "great" files D2D creates, printed books made from them at best will look like amateur hour. I know standards have been lowered since the arrival of ebooks and indies, but do those who pay $15 and up for a paperback book know _and accept_ that?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Andre Jute said:


> With apologies for not reading the entire 24 pages... I absolutely applaud every marketing channel that gives writers another marketing channel. I've been trying out the service.
> 
> A. A few questions:
> 
> 1. Does D2D demand exclusivity on any book?
> 
> 2. Does Smashwords demand exclusivity on any book?
> 
> 3. We have a couple of dozen books already out there, and a dozen a year following. Arranging exclusivity for any aggregator would be a pain, and probably cause him to be struck off our list as impossible to satisfy.
> 
> 4. It seems to me clear that the vendors can't object; they already have many sellers flogging the books of any writer with a trad backlist. But does anyone have hard information to the contrary?
> 
> 5. Will D2D offer a selection among their channels or do you have to take the package deal? Where is the page on which you can choose which of the channels you want any book to go into?
> 
> 6. Who is financing D2D and what is their capital? What I have in mind is that D2D will be doing expensive handwork for a while yet. One needs deep pockets to stay the course until profitability arrives. If D2D goes out of business soon, or sells out to one of the major vendors, possibly even to the worst scenario, Amazon or Google, indies will have done the work of transferring books for no gain, however marginal, in additional security over the present oligopoly, in which they are dangerously exposed.


I'll answer the questions I can, and leave it to other (less biased) users to compare their experiences.

1. D2D does not require any form of exclusivity.

2. To my knowledge, neither does Smashwords.

3. [Not a question.]

4. The devs at Draft2Digital scoured their distribution agreements with each of the vendors searching for any snags _before_ adding any of them to their list, so there's no (formal) reason for any of the vendors to object.

5. Definitely optional. On the "Publish" page, you'll choose which of the available sales channels you wish to publish through.

6. [Private financial data.]

As far as your issues with the conversion and formatting, I would recommend reporting them to Customer Service (if you haven't already). I know the developers would appreciate any and all user experience feedback while they're still in a beta and able to quickly fix such things.


----------



## DRMarvello

Andre Jute said:


> C. So far on the DOC files. Having checked what D2D made with them, and finding the glitches unacceptable, I'm about to delete that book and start again with a working EPUB of my own, utterly complete with cover and TOC, on the principle that D2D can't screw that up if it's just a passthrough operation to the channels. The effort and extra work might be worth it to support a very necessary alternative marketing channel.
> 
> D. I understand this is a beta, but unless it is improved, and assuming that the EPUB when we've prepared it is not screwed up as my DOC files were (and don't bother to question our DOCs -- they're nuked and reformatted as a matter of course), writers innocent of design and code skills will be in a _worse_ position than with Smashwords, in that for consistency they will have to make EPUB files complete with NCX indexes, whereas now they can hand over a DOC file to Smashwords and, if they followed the rules, be assured of getting a clean (if unimaginative) EPUB out the other end. That D2D beta is a fair way from primetime.
> 
> E. Sorry, if what I've seen so far are the "great" files D2D creates, printed books made from them at best will look like amateur hour. I know standards have been lowered since the arrival of ebooks and indies, but do those who pay $15 and up for a paperback book know _and accept_ that?


I think you are wise to view D2D as a distributor only and create your own EPUB files. The kind of problems you describe with D2D's automated conversion system are typical of all such conversion systems, including the Smashwords Meatgrinder. However, everyone seems to have a different level of tolerance for glitches, so some authors will be perfectly happy with the output while others will be horrified.

I have four books with D2D right now, and all of them were uploaded as finished EPUB files. As a distributor, D2D has been an excellent publishing partner. That said, I would never consider uploading a DOC file to them and putting the resulting output into the market. The very idea of using them to generate a print book through CreateSpace makes me shudder, but that process is more "hands on," so I'd defer to the opinion of someone who has actually tried it.


----------



## Andre Jute

Aaron Pogue said:


> 6. [Private financial data.]
> 
> As far as your issues with the conversion and formatting, I would recommend reporting them to Customer Service (if you haven't already). I know the developers would appreciate any and all user experience feedback while they're still in a beta and able to quickly fix such things.


Thanks for the info, Aaron. Actually, I'm still investigating whether the "issues with the conversion and formatting" are worth reporting; I imagine they're already on what I'm seeing. See my update of experience.

It's a pity that we don't know who's financing D2D and to what extent. It will be a waste of our time to discover, after we do all this work, that D2D has run out of money and sold out to Amazon.


----------



## Andre Jute

The test continues. The book I am using as a test, GAUNTLET RUN, has appeared on Kobo at http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/GAUNTLET-RUN-Birth-Superhero-HENTYS/book-V17LZ3dFoUaTFVkN2Cgd3g/page1.html You can download it (it's free) and see the remaining small glitches, which number four:

1. On the title page, one of the author names, Andrew McCoy, is set larger than all the other text and bold. Why?

2. On the title verso, the text "No part of this publication may be reproduced or performed by
any means without the written permission of the publisher." is set larger than the rest and bold. It isn't the most important text on the page, which is "Copyright © 2012 André Jute, Dakota Franklin, Andrew McCoy
The authors have asserted their moral right"

3. On the next to last page another random sentence has been set larger than the rest and bold.

4. The ToC is at the back of the book. This may be not be a glitch but an attempt to establish a new format.

In the scope of the atrocities that even distinguished publishing houses have been perpertrating in ebook settings, never mind the innocent taste-crimes of ignorant indies, these are such small matters, many indies may decide to overlook them. I think it extremely unlikely that D2D haven't yet noticed these matters, so for the time being I shan't even botther contacting them about them. Once they fix them, their DOC option may become as viable and easy as they promise.

NEXT: We'll see whether by making our own perfect EPUB file it translates whole, and, in particular, whether it is recycled by Amazon into a goodlooking MOBI.


----------



## AdriannaWhite

Hey all, I'm thinking about switching to D2D over smashwords, but I have many books on smashwords and it will be a nightmare to change. Does D2D allow me to overlap my books while they come down from smashwords or do I need to wait for them to disappear from Smashwords first? That could take months .

Also, if I keep some books on Smashwords for free purposes and put the rest on D2D, will I still be under the same name on sites like Apple or will my books be split into two different authors with the same name?

Thanks for everyone for your help. I just learned the d2d was open to non-US residents (I'm from Canada) and I couldn't be happier!


----------



## Andre Jute

DRMarvello said:


> I think you are wise to view D2D as a distributor only and create your own EPUB files. The kind of problems you describe with D2D's automated conversion system are typical of all such conversion systems, including the Smashwords Meatgrinder. However, everyone seems to have a different level of tolerance for glitches, so some authors will be perfectly happy with the output while others will be horrified.


Well, Smashwords' Meatgrinder is a deliberately lowest common denominator translator, and as such a success. It just turns out ugly files. D2D seems, from the outside (I haven't spoken to anyone at D2D or to Mark Coker of Smashwords either; I judge people by their results, not their promises), to have a higher level of ambition and possibly taste. Except for the four instances of random font resizing and emphasizing, the D2D translator transliterated my DOC perfectly.



DRMarvello said:


> I have four books with D2D right now, and all of them were uploaded as finished EPUB files. As a distributor, D2D has been an excellent publishing partner. That said, I would never consider uploading a DOC file to them and putting the resulting output into the market. The very idea of using them to generate a print book through CreateSpace makes me shudder, but that process is more "hands on," so I'd defer to the opinion of someone who has actually tried it.


I don't quite see how they can make a better than merely acceptable CreateSpace book without going to expense, especially for skilled labour, that they would be hard put to recover on most, probably all of the books they publish to CreateSpace. We still make our paperback books in the normal way, in QuarkXPress, expensive professional software with an extremely steep learning curve, with two boss designers on the job -- and so far we've found time to make paperback editions of two out eighteen volumes CoolMain published in its first two years. Those designs were good enough to be applauded but nothing really special, because we just ran out of time, and even with two bestsellers, those paperback editions will be a fair while repaying so many man-hours. (The publishing house with which we're connected is financed by merchant bankers as a hobby; that's the only reason I can authorise such extravagance.) No one doing it for free, as D2D intends, will be able to give a hundredth of the time we gave... It'll have to be automated, with the likely results you describe.


----------



## Casper Parks

Giving D2D a shot. First book was listed at Kobo withing 24 hours. Waiting on Itunes, likely takes longer to show up there.

If this works-out, I hope it is the start of long-term business relationship. I am looking forward to D2D adding Google Books and Sony to their list.


----------



## Richardcrasta

Had my first two sales from D2D, both from Apple.
Impressed, thank you.


----------



## Jay Walken

I wonder if anyone here has had success selling erotica through D2D.
Thank you.


----------



## Andre Jute

A. TESTS OF D2D with Word DOC files.

1. In my post above http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,137808.msg2083688.html#msg2083688 I identified four remaining glitches in the Draft2Digital file made from a guaranteed clean Word DOC file (3 occasions of text in a larger font than the rest, and emphasized in bold, plus a Table of Contents (ToC) at the back rather than the front, besides indexing useless items and not indexing what it should.) You can still get the file containing these glitches at http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/GAUNTLET-RUN-Birth-Superhero-HENTYS/book-V17LZ3dFoUaTFVkN2Cgd3g/page1.html but be quick, as I have already sent up an EPUB file which will presumably replace it.

2. I nuked the file again back into TXT, the lowest possible common denominator, and tried again. The glitches are still there. They look like artefacts left by a programmer trying something and then deciding he was being too clever for his own good, a feeling we all know.

3. I concluded that in the eyes of most indies these will be mickey mouse quibbles, much as they may irritate those of us who take pride in our books, and that sooner rather than later D2D will be on top of them, at which time I assume the D2D service will be overrun with indies thrusting manuscripts at them.

4. It is therefore a good service, to be heartily welcomed.

5. However, you will get out of it only what you put in. If your file is clean, you'll get a clean result, nothing more. If your layout is well designed, you may or may not get a well-designed book back, but in any conceivable case you will not get more back than you put in. On the other hand, Smashwords, until now the major aggregator, and Amazon's AZW translator to a lesser extent, knock even beautiful DOC files back to a lower common denominator, a very low one in the Smashwords case. (I know several writers who won't do their books in Smashwords because the lack of aesthetic punctilio of those books hurt them physically.) D2D appears on this acquaintance to have more class.

6. The rest of this post is for those of you who want perfectly set books and are willing to do a very little work to arrive there.

B. FINAL TEST with perfect EPUB file

1. It is said in this thread as if it is some kind of a revelation on the road to Damascus that D2D takes EPUB files. So has Smashwords since last year. We should give credit where it is due, and not rush like lemmings after every itinerant flautist to pass through town. I haven't tried the Smashwords EPUB capability, but the assumption is, as with D2D, that if you make your own EPUB file, you are in control, and as long as it is properly made, Smashwords and D2D won't mess with it; in particular, they won't knock it back to some lowest common denominator aggregator house style. You can therefore achieve the same results with Smashwords as with D2D, as long as you have a good EPUB file. Amazon will also now take EPUB files; I haven't tried it yet.

2. I made a simple EPUB file in about four hours, including some improvements that I didn't put in the DOC file I was working with earlier because I knew they would be knocked down. (In particular, getting flush first pars and maintaining them is hard work in MOBI/AZW and virtually impossible in Meatgrinder. Indented initial pars look amateurish, so that's my test of a system with class, that you can get good looking initial pars in chapters without a tremendous amount of work, and without further maintenance and upset every time you change some small thing.) I tested this file in an iPad and an Android tablet, and on the smartphones of my family lying around (it's the middle of the night here), and on all the relevant applications. It worked on all, as expected; I've done this before, and I have expert help because my designer is sitting here drinking my single malt.

3. Delivering an EPUB to D2D is as simple a matter as delivering a DOC file, and the system automatically distinguishes between them, a nice touch. Custom EPUBs are not yet possible, but I don't like them anyway; you can count on professionals like Apple to honor the standards they've agreed to while those standards are extant, but you can't count on Amazon not to get a bee up its backside next Tuesday and suddenly invent a "standard" of its own, and try to enforce it . For portability you really don't want to go outside the standard. D2D is about having options, and custom code limits your options.

4. The EPUB as processed by D2D was put through the same battery of devices plus a Kindle and Kindle readers on the iPad and Android devices for the MOBI output. All appeared perfect, as expected.

5. EPUBs can be very easily exported from Pages (the Apple word processor), Scrivener (a wordprocessor for magpie minds, very nice too for cleaning up old film scripts) and no doubt half a dozen other applications sitting on my computer, and dozens of free applications for Windows computers. I use Pages because it interfaces seamless with my wordprocessor of choice, Word, across all the devices I want to use on my exercise machines and while I'm taking steam. Pages is cheap, eight or ten bucks, I seem to remember my assistant saying.

6. There is nothing special about an EPUB.

7. What is very slightly special is *Apple's demand that any file it accepts must have an NCX index.* If you deliver a DOC file to D2D, they make this NCX for you, and place it at the back. If you make an EPUB, you must make it. If you've published books on Smashwords' premium list you have already made such an NCX index (or Smashwords made a simple one for you). It's not difficult at all. You place bookmarks, which you name, at the places in the manuscript you want to refer to, then you hyperlink entries in your index to these bookmarks. You can do it in Word or Pages or any other word processor. Once you understand the principle and the steps in any application, it is boring scutwork, but less than than ten minutes of scutwork to set up a minimum NCX to satisfy Apple and test it thoroughly. TIP: Apple is satisfied with an NCX with only four items, though to newbies it will look like only three items. Three good bookmarks are (all lowrcase, my caps are only for ease of reading) Blurb or Title, Chapter One or StartReading, MoreBooksByMe, plus the Index or Contents which is itself a bookmark referred to by the last entry in the book, BackToTheTop or Contents or Index. You should place the contents list at or near the front of your back.

8. If you mark your EPUB file "use first page as cover", include two cover pages or the book when open will not have a cover.

C. CONCLUSION

1. Draft2Digital is to be welcomed for diversifying the risk of writers.

2. Draft2Digital's translator of ebooks may in time, perhaps shortly, from Word DOCs make glitch free ebooks; it's pretty good already. If your DOC is superior D2D will give you a superior ebook; if it is rubbish, you will get a rubbish ebook. Smashwords by contrast, improves the manuscripts of the ignorant and the careless to a certain minimum standard, but in the process knocks back the books of everyone already above this standard to the common denominator.

3. Those who can make their own EPUBs, including NCX ToC entries, can control the content of their ebooks regardless of whether they use Smashwords or Draft2Digital, and can choose on other factors, or can choose to use both. I shall be trying both at the same time for at least one book to see how it works out.

D. CHECK MY WORK

1. Be quick if you want the first file at Kobo of the book I uploaded as a DOC, so you can check the four glitches. http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/GAUNTLET-RUN-Birth-Superhero-HENTYS/book-V17LZ3dFoUaTFVkN2Cgd3g/page1.html

2. Presumably the replacement, which I uploaded as an EPUB, will be on the same page and have the same URL; I expect the exchange to happen in 24-48 hours from about now (around 0700 GMT on 16 February). You'll need to return to http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/GAUNTLET-RUN-Birth-Superhero-HENTYS/book-V17LZ3dFoUaTFVkN2Cgd3g/page1.html to get the glitch free sample.


----------



## 41419

Andre Jute said:


> 2. I made a simple EPUB file in about four hours, including some improvements that I didn't put in the DOC file I was working with earlier because I knew they would be knocked down. (In particular, getting flush first pars and maintaining them is hard work in MOBI/AZW and virtually impossible in Meatgrinder. Indented initial pars look amateurish, so that's my test of a system with class, that you can get good looking initial pars in chapters without a tremendous amount of work, and without further maintenance and upset every time you change some small thing.) I tested this file in an iPad and an Android tablet, and on the smartphones of my family lying around (it's the middle of the night here), and on all the relevant applications. It worked on all, as expected; I've done this before, and I have expert help because my designer is sitting here drinking my single malt.


Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but I'm not sure where the difficulty lies with achieving flush first paragraphs. It's simply a case of defining a non-indented paragraph style:



> p.noindent
> {
> text-indent: 0em;
> margin-bottom: 0.2em;
> }


And then implementing it like this:



> FIRST PARAGRAPH TEXT


That renders properly on all devices.


----------



## AnitaDobs

Jay Walken said:


> I wonder if anyone here has had success selling erotica through D2D.
> Thank you.


Yes. Although I'm not sure of your definition of success, it fits my definition: It's goes up quick, and people buy it.


----------



## DRMarvello

Andre Jute said:


> 7. What is very slightly special is *Apple's demand that any file it accepts must have an NCX index.*


That one got me too, but it isn't actually "special." The EPUB standard (since version 2) states that an NCX is required.



> *2.4.1.2: Key NCX Requirements*
> 
> OPS Publications *must* include an NCX.
> 
> http://idpf.org/epub/20/spec/OPF_2.0.1_draft.htm#Section2.4.1


Older versions of EPUBCheck did not enforce this requirement, but Apple uses the latest version (version 3), and it does enforce the requirement.


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

When I had a Kindle2 I could have cared less about the NCX, but with the PaperWhite, that's the TOC, not whatever HTML linked thing you put in. As a reader, it's really not optional.

You can make one very easily automatically with Word and Calibre, so it's not exactly a harsh requirement.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

In his latest blog post, J. A. Konrath is encouraging indie authors to include a bunch of specific endmatter elements in their books--bibliography, ad for another book, bio, copyright page, etc.

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2013/02/ebook-parts.html

Reading through his list, almost everything he recommends can be auto-generated by Draft2Digital. There are only two exceptions:


He recommends putting the Copyright page in the back of the book instead of the front. D2D definitely builds copyright pages for you, but they stick them in the traditional position.
He also recommends starting every book with its product description, so readers who picked it up a while back and then forgot about it will have an easy reminder why they were excited about the book when they finally dive in.

Both of those could be implemented (easily) by Draft2Digital. They would, of course, be entirely optional. I'm just curious if anyone here would be interested in using the options if they were available. Let me know!


----------



## Betsy the Quilter

As a reader, I don't want too much stuff at the end of the book.  It makes me think the book is longer than it is.  2-3 pages is okay.  I just read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and it had about a twenty page interview with the author at the end....very annoying.  So consider carefully how much end matter you add.

I do like the idea of a book description at the beginning.

Betsy


----------



## Kwalker

I think the bolded text you are seeing is where it has marked for the TOC.

I worked around that in my own file by making sure that the things I wanted marked differently for TOC were already marked differently =)


----------



## Andre Jute

dgaughran said:


> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but I'm not sure where the difficulty lies with achieving flush first paragraphs. It's simply a case of defining a non-indented paragraph style.


David, you're not misunderstanding me. But you're just showing off with the code. Amazon's KDP AZW translator handles flush initial paragraphs in the opposite manner to the established MS Word way, which I find infuriating, though the solution is simple: set up a wrong dummy style, define the wanted style by exception to the wrong dummy. But go ask how many indies are confident of their abilities in Word's style panel, never mind your flashy code. Here I'm not interested in what a few people with the education, connections to specialists, and a taste for technology can do. The question we're discussing here is in the title: what is the easy way to self-publishing for someone who doesn't want to become an IT specialist.



Aaron Pogue said:


> In his latest blog post, J. A. Konrath is encouraging indie authors to include a bunch of specific endmatter elements in their books--bibliography, ad for another book, bio, copyright page, etc.


In six months Konrath will change his minds. He's just saying something, anything, to stir the pot, keep up the controversy, to raise his name recognition. To address some of his specific points:

Anyone who comes from traditional publishing as a matter of course and courtesy to readers puts a blurb up the front of any book.

I wouldn't put copyright notice and publication details at the back. Konrath hasn't thought this through While in law not seeing the copyright notice is no defence (the copyright exists by the acts of creation _and of publication_; most places, the notice itself is a CYA warning, and the copyright symbol © has no force in law, so that you should always use the word "Copyright"), there are so many now in "publishing" who are totally ignorant of these matters that it is as well to tell them up front that the book is property. If the courts ever start accepting "I didn't know it was copyright" as a valid defence, copyright notices at the back won't save your property but right up front they will.

A biosketch of the author was on the back flap of the dustjacket in hardcovers and either at the front or the back of the book in paperbacks for a reason: in pre-internet times readers could otherwise be put to considerable effort to discover who the writer is. Today, everyone with a Kindle or an iPad or a smartphone is already connected somehow to the internet; all you need at the back of the book is a reference to a page on which the reader can discover more about the writer and his books. It is indicative to me that there are _any readers whatsoever_, on a forum like this, where surely everyone is a keen reader, who object to no-cost space being taken at the back of ebooks for additional information. Twenty years ago those same readers would have considered that information, or samples from other books, a boon, and pored over it. It's just another of those shifts we're seeing in the market.

Kwalker: Nah, those weren't stray TOC markings. That was the first thing we checked. That file was nuked back to plaintext, and among the things on our list ticked off was that there were no bookmarks remaining. It was also put through Pages and exported to Word to nuke any hidden trash Microsoft writes on your files. I'm a professional paranoid (I've been hunted by the assassins of sovereign nations for my books, and I'm here and they aren't, so paranoia pays!) and Bill Gates is very high up on my list of people not to trust, above Jeff Bezos even. But, yeah, thanks for pointing out that if you have unexplained emphasis, the first thing to do is check that it isn't marked for ToC.


----------



## Shelley K

> 1. It is said in this thread as if it is some kind of a revelation on the road to Damascus that D2D takes EPUB files. So has Smashwords since last year. We should give credit where it is due, and not rush like lemmings after every itinerant flautist to pass through town. I haven't tried the Smashwords EPUB capability, but the assumption is, as with D2D, that if you make your own EPUB file, you are in control, and as long as it is properly made, Smashwords and D2D won't mess with it; in particular, they won't knock it back to some lowest common denominator aggregator house style. You can therefore achieve the same results with Smashwords as with D2D, as long as you have a good EPUB file. Amazon will also now take EPUB files; I haven't tried it yet.


Smashwords has accepted ePubs since December 31st or so for the ePub output. Other formats still require a doc put through the meatgrinder. You can't just upload the ePub and be done. That might or might not matter to some people, especially after having ePub acceptance promised for a such a long time.

Personally, I'm hoping for D2D to get an agreement with B&N to allow free titles. After waiting about 3 weeks, a freebie I put up on B&N through Smashwords showed up yesterday. Without a single word of description. Just a title, a cover and a download button. Perfect.


----------



## Jay Walken

Betsy the Quilter said:


> As a reader, I don't want too much stuff at the end of the book. It makes me think the book is longer than it is. 2-3 pages is okay. I just read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and it had about a twenty page interview with the author at the end....very annoying. So consider carefully how much end matter you add.
> 
> I do like the idea of a book description at the beginning.
> 
> Betsy


I find it interesting that you don't like additional matter at the end of the book. But supposing it were excerpts from other books, and it was a free addition by the author, would you mind it then?

As for book description in the beginning, yes, that's nice; I wonder how D2D would format it, and how for Createspace. It would be nice to have it look elegant. Smashwords does not provide much of a choice, because their Meatgrinder requires the title, author name, copyright and "Smashwords edition" to be the first, second, third, and fourth elements in the book.


----------



## Hildred

shelleyo1 said:


> Smashwords has accepted ePubs since December 31st or so for the ePub output. Other formats still require a doc put through the meatgrinder. You can't just upload the ePub and be done. That might or might not matter to some people, especially after having ePub acceptance promised for a such a long time.
> 
> Personally, I'm hoping for D2D to get an agreement with B&N to allow free titles. After waiting about 3 weeks, a freebie I put up on B&N through Smashwords showed up yesterday. Without a single word of description. Just a title, a cover and a download button. Perfect.


Yours got a cover. 

I'm pretty sure my freebie's dismal rating at B&N isn't helped by the fact there's NO blurb (and I can't get one to go up.) Kinda hard for people to know it's something they don't want to read without a blurb.

I would love if D2D allowed B&N freebies, but I understand that was a special deal struck with SW?


----------



## djnash

Forgive the ignorance, but is going via Smashwords the only current way to get a book priced to free on B&N?


----------



## The 13th Doctor

djnash said:


> Forgive the ignorance, but is going via Smashwords the only current way to get a book priced to free on B&N?


Yes, although I'm not sure if you can make a book free if you publish directly with PubIt.


----------



## djnash

That's the thing with being in the UK, I can't use Pubit. D2D is a very viable solution, but I need to consider my perma-free options, should I choose to try it.


----------



## 41413

Andre Jute said:


> David, you're not misunderstanding me. But you're just showing off with the code. Amazon's KDP AZW translator handles flush initial paragraphs in the opposite manner to the established MS Word way, which I find infuriating, though the solution is simple: set up a wrong dummy style, define the wanted style by exception to the wrong dummy. But go ask how many indies are confident of their abilities in Word's style panel, never mind your flashy code. Here I'm not interested in what a few people with the education, connections to specialists, and a taste for technology can do. The question we're discussing here is in the title: what is the easy way to self-publishing for someone who doesn't want to become an IT specialist.


If I were a fast food line cook and I got angry at my coworkers for showing off their flashy burger flipping skills, what would that make me? Very bad at my job.

Formatting your ebook is part of the job. And the information is hardly privileged. There are step by step guides on formatting online, totally for free. Word is not the best way to format an ebook anyway, and there are easier methods to getting paragraphs indented properly.

Take some pride in your craft and learn to flip the damn burgers.


----------



## DRMarvello

smreine said:


> Formatting your ebook is part of the job. And the information is hardly privileged. There are step by step guides on formatting online, totally for free. Word is not the best way to format an ebook anyway, and there are easier methods to getting paragraphs indented properly.


Word. 



dgaughran said:


> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but I'm not sure where the difficulty lies with achieving flush first paragraphs. It's simply a case of defining a non-indented paragraph style:
> ...


+1. Some of us appreciate a sincere attempt to help.


----------



## KOwrites

Jay Walken said:


> I find it interesting that you don't like additional matter at the end of the book. But supposing it were excerpts from other books, and it was a free addition by the author, would you mind it then?


With Betsy on this...I like to know that the ending is coming. I don't like it when I get to the end of the story with an ebook that's indicating 10% is left and being taken by surprise when the books ends. #hatethat! Links are more than enough as Andre said in his response.

TOC at the front = Yes
Book description at the front = Yes
Copyright & rights statement at the front = Yes
Links to social media at the back is enough = Fine
Draft2Digital looks awesome.
Andre Jute thanks for doing the heavy-lifting with testing. And, Aaron Pogue ~thanks for providing all the Q & A here. I'll be looking into it for my 4th novel soon.


----------



## Midnight Writer

*deleted*


----------



## MQ

Can anyone tell me how long it takes for D2D to place books in Pubit?  I have books waiting more than a week to be approved on SW and after that it may take another couple of weeks to show up on BN. So I would be interested in going another route that may be faster.


----------



## Cherise

I would definitely use the product description adder, and thanks for the idea!


----------



## Sapphire

Aaron Pogue said:


> He also recommends starting every book with its product description, so readers who picked it up a while back and then forgot about it will have an easy reminder why they were excited about the book when they finally dive in.
> 
> Both of those could be implemented (easily) by Draft2Digital. They would, of course, be entirely optional. I'm just curious if anyone here would be interested in using the options if they were available. Let me know!


I would love the book to open at the product description. It's also extremely important to me that the ToC be at the beginning of the book (as readers have always expected) and not at the end.


----------



## CoraBuhlert

Mobashar Qureshi said:


> Can anyone tell me how long it takes for D2D to place books in Pubit? I have books waiting more than a week to be approved on SW and after that it may take another couple of weeks to show up on BN. So I would be interested in going another route that may be faster.


One or two days, i.e. much faster than Smashwords or XinXii. Apple takes about a week.


----------



## MQ

CoraBuhlert said:


> One or two days, i.e. much faster than Smashwords or XinXii. Apple takes about a week.


Thanks, Cora! I'll go check out D2D


----------



## Betsy the Quilter

Jay Walken said:


> I find it interesting that you don't like additional matter at the end of the book. But supposing it were excerpts from other books, and it was a free addition by the author, would you mind it then?


Yes, I would mind. If it makes me think the book is longer than it is, I mind. Also, an excerpt from another book isn't necessary with Kindle books.

Here's my thinking about excerpts. In the olden, paper days, you took a paper book home. Excerpts added to the back of the book made some sense then, to get you hooked on the next story until you could get to the store to buy the next one. Or until it came out. Although I never liked them much, because when I went to the store and looked at the books, typically looking at the start of the book, sometimes I would think I'd already read the book.

But now, let's say I finish an author's book on my Kindle. Liked it. Think I might want more by that author. Amazon will pretty much send me right to the author's page at the store, or I can get there by myself if I want to, and read samples of the other books. I don't need an excerpt padding the book I'm reading now. If the author has written a good book, I'm gonna want more and can get excerpts very easily because of the way Amazon or Smashwords is set up.

The best thing any author can do to induce me to buy more of her or his books is to write a good book. Easy peazy, right? 

My .02 worth as a reader. Other readers clearly will feel differently.

Betsy


----------



## Victoria Champion

I moved the description matter to the back because it was eating up my sample size. I left the TOC and copyright at the front. The TOC has an entry that is titled About this Book, so I figure the reader can get to that information simply by clicking that link. I also include a link to my website/social media/'subscribe to new releases by email' as the end matter. (Although for my erotica titles I put that in front because it's only two lines.)

Placement of end and front matter for me is determined by sample size (Amazon Look Inside, etc...).


----------



## Kwalker

I personally like a sample of the next book in a series if it is a series. I however became quite irate when I finished the last book in the maximum ride series and the last 20% of the book was a sneak peak at a different series.

also #hatethat


----------



## Andre Jute

Katherine Owen said:


> Andre Jute thanks for doing the heavy-lifting with testing. And, Aaron Pogue ~thanks for providing all the Q & A here. I'll be looking into it for my 4th novel soon.


I did it just for you, Katherine! +1 to Aaron for explaining so patiently; a fab job, Master Pogue.

It's coming as a revelation how little backmatter even booklovers will tolerate.


----------



## Andre Jute

smreine said:


> Take some pride in your craft and learn to flip the d*mn burgers.


Thank you so much for sharing your great experience and expertise in burger-flipping with us, S. M. Reine.

A question. Do you take notes of special requests, or do you remember all the special requests, for instance who wants ketchup rather than fresh tomato on his/her/its burger?

Click the pic for more.


----------



## KOwrites

Andre Jute said:


> I did it just for you, Katherine! +1 to Aaron for explaining so patiently; a fab job, Master Pogue.
> 
> It's coming as a revelation how little backmatter even booklovers will tolerate.


Andre Jute ~ you're such a charmer. I ♥ you!!!

I used to do the backmatter stuff - pics of the books OMG. As a reader, I found I hated it!! So, I took most of that stuff out of my own novels. (I even took out the book club Q & A's and provide a link to my website, instead, at the back, where readers can find them.) It's true. Too much space taken up in the back with ancillary stuff screws with where the ending actually is and readers, like me, hate that.

FTR: I read 50 to 70 novels a year, either on a Kindle or iPad Mini. I also like TOCs and I use them all the time to see where I'm at. So, for those writers that think those aren't necessary...NOT true.

As Betsy so wisely said, it's completely annoying. If I like your writing, I'll track down your next book. Just the links, please.

Frankly, I hate reading the first part of the next novel in the back of the one I just finished. I like to string my favorite novels/authors out a while...(along?) I don't read one after the other. If there's a series, I like to know when the whole set is available and buy them all at once. I like to savor that stuff like a box of chocolate truffles, baby maybe. I like to be surprised in my fictional world, but rarely anywhere else. KO

P.S. On the description point...think of your reader, here. I would hazard a guess that less than half of your readers reading the samples are buying your stuff....Whereas a description in the front helps out all your readers, who "did buy" your stuff. I do tend to forget what a book is about and I like to know before I choose what I'm reading next. I end up going back to Amazon most of the time to refresh my memory and make my choice there or buy someone else's book. How nice is it when I see a description in the front of the ebook? Nice! "Rare." I'm looking into this one.

I like the acknowledgement and dedication stuff there, too, just make it short and sweet. Am I the only one? I think not.


----------



## Jnassise

10 days and still no sign of the two books I published for Apple.  At this point it would have been faster to push them up by renting a Mac and doing it myself.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Jnassise said:


> 10 days and still no sign of the two books I published for Apple. At this point it would have been faster to push them up by renting a Mac and doing it myself.


Or not. I've had a few books get hung up. The ones that went through went quickly. The ones that got held up seem to fall into two camps: those that were rejected quickly (reasons why sent to me in a timely fashion), and those that seem to have entered the Bermuda Triangle. I suspect the hold up on these is on Apple's end. If so, then pushing a defective file through yourself won't make the process any speedier. The caveat of this, of course, is that D2D is doing something to your files to cause them to be rejected. I sent through ePubs, so this would rule that explanation out for me.


----------



## KevinMcLaughlin

I have so far uploaded three epub files to D2D. No issues with the final files on the websites; the versions available there (originals generated by Jutoh) are fine. The books appear on B&N within 24 hours, and on Apple about seven days after uploading. Haven't tried Kobo and Amazon, as I've continued going direct to those sites.

I have to confess that I'm wondering about my decision to use D2D for B&N, however, as I've suddenly started making a LOT of B&N sales. About 40% of my sales for the new Starship series (the ones I used D2D for) have been for Nook - way higher than anything I've published previously. Which leaves me wondering if the books are somehow reaching people better *because* they came via D2D (don't know how that could happen, but anything is possible), or if they've just found a nice audience there and I'm leaving a lot of money on the table by using D2D for B&N instead of Pubit or Smashwords...


----------



## Lynn Mixon

Aaron Pogue said:


> In his latest blog post, J. A. Konrath is encouraging indie authors to include a bunch of specific endmatter elements in their books--bibliography, ad for another book, bio, copyright page, etc.
> 
> http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2013/02/ebook-parts.html
> 
> Reading through his list, almost everything he recommends can be auto-generated by Draft2Digital. There are only two exceptions:
> 
> 
> He recommends putting the Copyright page in the back of the book instead of the front. D2D definitely builds copyright pages for you, but they stick them in the traditional position.
> He also recommends starting every book with its product description, so readers who picked it up a while back and then forgot about it will have an easy reminder why they were excited about the book when they finally dive in.
> 
> Both of those could be implemented (easily) by Draft2Digital. They would, of course, be entirely optional. I'm just curious if anyone here would be interested in using the options if they were available. Let me know!


I would use both of those options.


----------



## David Alastair Hayden

Jnassise said:


> 10 days and still no sign of the two books I published for Apple. At this point it would have been faster to push them up by renting a Mac and doing it myself.


That doesn't make it faster from everything I've heard. Apple takes up to two weeks no matter the source because they manually check each book. Looking for Samsung spies, maybe, I dunno ;-)


----------



## Jnassise

The last four books I put up directly to Apple went live in 72 hours. Guess I just got lucky.


----------



## David Alastair Hayden

I'm one of those put samples in the back writers. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe just blurbs and covers would be more effective. Sadly the book industry has never done much research to know what works so we have no data to lead us. As a reader I sometimes like samples and their presence has never bothered me when I'm not interested.

I've been following Konrath's advice about the blurb on the first page and acknowledgements in the back ever since he first mentioned it back in 2011. I think that's brilliant. I do leave copyright info at the front so it's part of samples that get downloaded. Not afraid of someone stealing my rights without it, because they can't, but that is where I name my cover artist.


----------



## DRMarvello

Jnassise said:


> The last four books I put up directly to Apple went live in 72 hours. Guess I just got lucky.


I'd call that medium luck. 

I've put 4 books onto Apple via D2D, and the delay has varied between about 10 hours and nearly two weeks.

I just asked D2D about the delay. I've been under the impression that their system is mostly automated because the books seem to get submitted to the Apple "review queue" almost as soon as you publish them.

Here's what Kris said in response:


> Thanks for contacting us concerning our Apple publishing process. While our specific system is proprietary, I can tell you that books are generally submitted to Apple within an hour of submission to us. Naturally, if problems arise, we must intervene manually, and notify the user appropriately.
> 
> You are correct that the significant delays (days or weeks) have nothing to do with us and are generally caused by Apple's review system.
> 
> With that said, we do spend a great deal of time making sure books that are delayed in Apple's review queue are brought to their attention on a regular basis. We believe this is effective at moving the "skipped" books through their system faster.


----------



## Jnassise

Good to know!

-Joe


----------



## Richardcrasta

Glad to hear people's views about front matter (the necessity of) and back matter (only links--but I suppose, only to one's website and to Createspace, and not to competitor's platforms). This means, Aaron, that I'll have to format my title page and copyright page (is that where you put the "About the book" blurb, or on the title page) rather than have D2D supply it for me. 

Any suggestions on how to format these 2 pages in a way that results in a pleasing appearance in the resulting D2D output? Font size, font suggestions?

Thanks.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Katherine Owen said:


> P.S. On the description point...think of your reader, here. I would hazard a guess that less than half of your readers reading the samples are buying your stuff....Whereas a description in the front helps out all your readers, who "did buy" your stuff. I do tend to forget what a book is about and I like to know before I choose what I'm reading next. I end up going back to Amazon most of the time to refresh my memory and make my choice there or buy someone else's book. How nice is it when I see a description in the front of the ebook? Nice! "Rare." I'm looking into this one.


Actually, there is a dedicated meta field in epub for the description of the book. The Kobo Glo will show it. There's a menu item when you're browsing your books or your shelves. This information is retained when converted to mobi/azw, but the Kindle hasn't implemented it yet, AFAIK.

ETA:

This field also shows up in Calibre, under the cover.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Andrew Ashling said:


> Actually, there is a dedicated meta field in epub for the description of the book. The Kobo Glo will show it. There's a menu item when your browsing your books or your shelves. This information is retained when converted to mobi/azw, but the Kindle hasn't implemented it yet, AFAIK.


I've checked with the developers, and the product description definitely does get embedded in the epub/mobi. Kris even confirmed that it shows up on the office Kobo.

Unfortunately, Kindles don't provide any easy way to access a book's embedded metadata yet. If they ever do, the whole blurb-as-frontmatter option might be come obsolete. Until then, I'm going to encourage them to implement it.


----------



## 41419

My book finally went live on Apple (love the way Draft2Digital include a direct link in the email when it goes live) and I have to say I'm very impressed.

The delay wasn't their fault, my file (I generate my own EPUBs) was failing EPUBCHECK. After a bit of hair-pulling, I discovered the cause: the name of my *source* HTML file - Apple seems to prefer files with one word titles (or at least, no spaces). 

So make sure that filename is one word (and, I suppose, the EPUB file too).

Once I had that all set, it took about a week (Apple manually review everything, so I expected that).

As for the results, I'm very impressed. I've been on Apple via Smashwords for nearly two years. In all that time, I never had a proper blurb, just a short snippet, or nothing at all. I'm sure that didn't help sales.

With D2D, I not only have a blurb, but I also have bold, indents, and paragraph returns. What luxury!


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

Aaron, did you see the thread on the Pubit US-only/Worldwide rights? As I publish through D2D, I have no idea what B&N says.


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

> Apple seems to prefer files with one word titles (or at least, no spaces)


Let me guess. Calibre?

That one drove me insane.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

AmsterdamAssassin said:


> Aaron, did you see the thread on the Pubit US-only/Worldwide rights? As I publish through D2D, I have no idea what B&N says.


I brought that thread to the developers attention, and they've verified it's not an issue for any of the books published through D2D.


----------



## 41419

Katie Elle said:


> Let me guess. Calibre?
> 
> That one drove me insane.


Totes.


----------



## gregm

dgaughran said:


> My book finally went live on Apple (love the way Draft2Digital include a direct link in the email when it goes live) and I have to say I'm very impressed.
> 
> The delay wasn't their fault, my file (I generate my own EPUBs) was failing EPUBCHECK. After a bit of hair-pulling, I discovered the cause: the name of my *source* HTML file - Apple seems to prefer files with one word titles (or at least, no spaces).
> 
> So make sure that filename is one word (and, I suppose, the EPUB file too).


Twenty years plus with dealing with web servers has tough me that lesson. If a file is leaving your computer try to eliminate any spaces. Just like url's. The Linux based OS's don't like spaces. Good habit to get into when creating anything that will be going out.


----------



## 41419

gregm said:


> Twenty years plus with dealing with web servers has tough me that lesson. If a file is leaving your computer try to eliminate any spaces. Just like url's. The Linux based OS's don't like spaces. Good habit to get into when creating anything that will be going out.


After going through 1600 lines of code eleventy times, lesson learned!


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Huh. This may be why I am currently hung with a file...


----------



## CoraBuhlert

AmsterdamAssassin said:


> Aaron, did you see the thread on the Pubit US-only/Worldwide rights? As I publish through D2D, I have no idea what B&N says.


I found my two books distributed to B&N via D2D on the Nook UK site (still waiting for my XinXii books to show up there), so it's obviously not an issue.

What would be really nice is if we could individually set prices at least for major currencies like Euro or Pound Sterling at D2D. I always individually set my prices at other retailers and since D2D calculates international prices automatically based on the US-dollar price, this might trigger pricematching (not necessarily bad) and annoy other retailers (bad).


----------



## 41413

I was just thinking it would be nice to be able to set different prices per retailer. Free on iBookstore, but 2.99 to B&N, for instance.


----------



## Andre Jute

smreine said:


> I was just thinking it would be nice to be able to set different prices per retailer. Free on iBookstore, but 2.99 to B&N, for instance.


Good news! You _can_ set two prices. D2D lets you choose FREE and sets that price all the vendors who permit it, and 99c at those who don't permit FREE.

I've done it, to see how it works with Amazon and B&N, who won't accept FREE from D2D.


----------



## Mel Comley

Thanks Andre, that's good to know.

I can't seem to find a royalties earned report anywhere, am I missing it?


----------



## Andre Jute

Mel Comley said:


> Thanks Andre, that's good to know.
> 
> I can't seem to find a royalties earned report anywhere, am I missing it?


You're right, Mel, I don't see it either. All I see is 'Last two weeks [sic] sales' via 'My books' in the menubar and then clicking on the book name. Nothing in 'My account', though, to be fair, I haven't set up accounting details, leaving that for Bill to handle when there's enough money to collect to make the work worthwhile. Aaron, do you know the path to 'royalties earned'?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Andre Jute said:


> You're right, Mel, I don't see it either. All I see is 'Last two weeks [sic] sales' via 'My books' in the menubar and then clicking on the book name. Nothing in 'My account', though, to be fair, I haven't set up accounting details, leaving that for Bill to handle when there's enough money to collect to make the work worthwhile. Aaron, do you know the path to 'royalties earned'?


The reporting pages are still under heavy development, and unless I'm mistaken, royalties don't yet appear anywhere on them. They _will_--it would be ridiculous not to include that information--but it's a complicated calculation across vendors, currencies, price changes, and reporting period (and not a trivial UI design).

I do think you could find a more useful chart than you mentioned above by going to "My Sales" (it's a link from anywhere on the site, assuming you're logged in), which will show you the month-to-date sales for all titles that have them, and then you could estimate your current royalties by multiplying those against your best-guess author share of the requested list price.

Obviously that's a lot of work that Draft2Digital should really be doing for you. As I said, it's on the To Do list, and it'll certainly be done before the site gets a formal public launch. In the meantime, there's still some need for those miserable spreadsheets we've all been keeping.


----------



## Andre Jute

Details always take more time than the grand conceptions.


----------



## AnitaDobs

Sexy new sales bar graph now on D2D. Lovin' the D2D hot action! 

What a joy it is to have serials actually go up in a timely fashion on B&N. At least you can know what you should be writting more of in double quick time, and not just have to take Amazons word for what's popular... which doesn't always gel with the other sites anyway.


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

Aaron Pogue said:


> I brought that thread to the developers attention, and they've verified it's not an issue for any of the books published through D2D.


That's good to know, Aaron, thanks!

By the way, I went to Nook UK, the English B&N site, and I found Reprobate, with a surprising text:

Reprobate - A Katla Novel (Amsterdam Assassin Series, #1)
by Martyn V. Halm
NOOK Book (eBook - *Digitized from 1975 volume*)


----------



## theaatkinson

I didn't even Know there was a Nook UK site. sheesh.


----------



## Nikki Pink

Aaron Pogue said:


> The reporting pages are still under heavy development, and unless I'm mistaken, royalties don't yet appear anywhere on them. They _will_--it would be ridiculous not to include that information--but it's a complicated calculation across vendors, currencies, price changes, and reporting period (and not a trivial UI design).
> 
> I do think you could find a more useful chart than you mentioned above by going to "My Sales" (it's a link from anywhere on the site, assuming you're logged in), which will show you the month-to-date sales for all titles that have them, and then you could estimate your current royalties by multiplying those against your best-guess author share of the requested list price.
> 
> Obviously that's a lot of work that Draft2Digital should really be doing for you. As I said, it's on the To Do list, and it'll certainly be done before the site gets a formal public launch. In the meantime, there's still some need for those miserable spreadsheets we've all been keeping.


I have about 20 titles with D2D. I update my sales everyday in my Excel spreadsheet.

The sales in D2D are not in alphabetical order. I think they are in the order in which the titles sold. This is a completely useless order. While the bar graph is pretty, I'd love the option of a straight up list, in alphabetical order, with sales by retailer. Something which allows me to read: Book 1 Apple: 23 Barnes and Noble 29 Kobo 1 etc.

A nice, simple list. Not pretty, just the raw numbers in alphabetical order. Amazon have the best reporting in this regard; it's in alphabetical order and I can just look at the Net Sales list and get my numbers. Smashwords is the worst, but 'luckily' their sales numbers are low enough it's not an issue. With D2D it's all so pretty... and I guess I'd like it if I only looked at my figures once a month... but I look at them every day and I get annoyed. Alphabetical order at the least please. Preferably a list. I'll look at the bar chart once a month, but a nicely formatted list I'd use every day.

Oh and the other thing, why are there only 5 books a page on the books pages? I'm honestly asking, WHY? WHY WHY WHY? Why not put them all on one page? Is it so that people on 14.4baud modems who are time traveling from 1993 don't get overwhelmed? I can't even begin to conceive of a reason for having only 5 books per page. It's crazy annoying. Put them all on one page, please.

As an author, what I want is the MOST information in the SIMPLEST format.

Oh and one more thing; the bar graph sales thing doesn't list the whole title; it cuts them off. Some of my titles have the same entire beginning (because they're a series) but they don't have the same 'end'. So on the bar graph I can't tell which is which. If there was a nice little list/table with the whole title and the number of sales per retailer I'd explode with joy.

Sorry if I sound negative. I love D2D. Up to date sales reporting, and, more importantly, actually distributing my books in a timely manner, is killer. I left Smashwords after they failed to distribute my books to B&N, and when they finally did (after 2 months), there were no descriptions / product details. I LOVE the fact D2D can actually distribute the books, with descriptions, in a timely manner. Love it love it love it.


----------



## DRMarvello

Aaron Pogue said:


> I do think you could find a more useful chart than you mentioned above by going to "My Sales" (it's a link from anywhere on the site, assuming you're logged in), which will show you the month-to-date sales for all titles that have them, and then you could estimate your current royalties by multiplying those against your best-guess author share of the requested list price.


As Aaron said, D2D will be adding royalty reports to the site, but they'll be sending out reports via email until that happens. Here's what Kris had to say on the subject (emphasis mine)...



> The [reporting] process is being worked out, but this is what happens currently. As each distributor gives us their official monthly sales numbers, you will be sent an email with a CSV containing all that information. Then, at the end of each month, you will be sent a royalty statement that will contain the information that we use to actually pay you for royalties we've received. *This last one is the one we'd recommend you use to pay your authors as it will contain the exact dollar figure for each book that you are being paid*.
> 
> The real-time numbers are not official numbers. The official numbers that the distributors send us are still estimates when it comes to dollars as there are currency conversions to work with. Once we receive payments from them, we convert that information into royalty statements.
> 
> We've sent out Apple and B&N sales reports for January. Amazon, CreateSpace, and Kobo reports will go out Monday for January. *On Friday [March 1], we'll be sending out the February Royalty report* which will include payments from Apple and CreateSpace January sales and Kobo, B&N, Amazon December sales.
> 
> As for future plans, all of this information will be retrievable on the website. It's just not complete yet. You could always ask us directly what you need and we can compile it for you rather quickly as we have all the data.


If you have questions, you should contact D2D. Kris has been extremely responsive and helpful.


----------



## P.C. (Peter) Anders

gregm said:


> Twenty years plus with dealing with web servers has tough me that lesson. If a file is leaving your computer try to eliminate any spaces. Just like url's. The Linux based OS's don't like spaces. Good habit to get into when creating anything that will be going out.


So if I upload a Word file named: 
MyNovel D2d.doc 
to D2D, Apple might have trouble with it?

That's the way I have been doing it: MyNovel Kindle.doc , MyNovel Smashwords.doc and so far, have not noticed a problem.

But perhaps Apple does, and perhaps it delays the publication of my books there . . .?


----------



## Lady Vine

CoraBuhlert said:


> I found my two books distributed to B&N via D2D on the Nook UK site (still waiting for my XinXii books to show up there), so it's obviously not an issue.
> 
> What would be really nice is if we could individually set prices at least for major currencies like Euro or Pound Sterling at D2D. I always individually set my prices at other retailers and since D2D calculates international prices automatically based on the US-dollar price, this might trigger pricematching (not necessarily bad) and annoy other retailers (bad).


This all the way. It now has become a problem for me. Amazon has price matched one of my titles (and eventually the rest will follow) simply because Apple set the UK price to a clean 99p. On Smashwords those same titles were priced at £1.49.

There really should be separate boxes for EUR, GBP and USD, or at the very least the option to set them individually, because right now, as I don't sell nearly enough on Apple to justify the lower price point on Amazon, I'll just have to remove them from Apple altogether, or let Smashwords distribute them.

Also, I have the same problem as Nikki, with regards to my titles being cut off on the reporting screen. I think, right now, reporting is not as easy as it could be, and I agree that it should look simple like Amazon's screen. Simple, yet effective. That's all we need, really.

Apart from that stuff, I'm loving D2D. I don't regret my decision to use them, and my sales are really starting to pick up on B&N and Apple. Question, though: is it just me or are others having difficulty getting title/description updates to appear on Apple?


----------



## djnash

Lady Vine said:


> This all the way. It now has become a problem for me. Amazon has price matched one of my titles (and eventually the rest will follow) simply because Apple set the UK price to a clean 99p. On Smashwords those same titles were priced at £1.49.
> 
> There really should be separate boxes for EUR, GBP and USD, or at the very least the option to set them individually, because right now, as I don't sell nearly enough on Apple to justify the lower price point on Amazon, I'll just have to remove them from Apple altogether, or let Smashwords distribute them.


+1 from me too, being in the UK.


----------



## JRHenderson

P.C. (Peter) Anders said:


> So if I upload a Word file named:
> MyNovel D2d.doc
> to D2D, Apple might have trouble with it?
> 
> That's the way I have been doing it: MyNovel Kindle.doc , MyNovel Smashwords.doc and so far, have not noticed a problem.
> 
> But perhaps Apple does, and perhaps it delays the publication of my books there . . .?


If you want your filenames to make sense without using spaces, you could replace them with dashes or underscores.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

P.C. (Peter) Anders said:


> So if I upload a Word file named:
> MyNovel D2d.doc
> to D2D, Apple might have trouble with it?
> 
> That's the way I have been doing it: MyNovel Kindle.doc , MyNovel Smashwords.doc and so far, have not noticed a problem.
> 
> But perhaps Apple does, and perhaps it delays the publication of my books there . . .?


If you're uploading a Word document to Draft2Digital, you can name it absolutely anything you want. (Anything your OS will allow, anyway.) The files they generate from your Word document will be perfectly compliant.

The problem referenced above belonged to someone who had uploaded his own EPUB file. They don't tamper with user-provided EPUBs, so dgaughran had to track down his own problem (one that was apparently caused by a Calibre conversion, if I read the conversation correctly).



Lady Vine said:


> This all the way. It now has become a problem for me. Amazon has price matched one of my titles (and eventually the rest will follow) simply because Apple set the UK price to a clean 99p. On Smashwords those same titles were priced at £1.49.
> 
> There really should be separate boxes for EUR, GBP and USD, or at the very least the option to set them individually, because right now, as I don't sell nearly enough on Apple to justify the lower price point on Amazon, I'll just have to remove them from Apple altogether, or let Smashwords distribute them.
> 
> Also, I have the same problem as Nikki, with regards to my titles being cut off on the reporting screen. I think, right now, reporting is not as easy as it could be, and I agree that it should look simple like Amazon's screen. Simple, yet effective. That's all we need, really.
> 
> Apart from that stuff, I'm loving D2D. I don't regret my decision to use them, and my sales are really starting to pick up on B&N and Apple. Question, though: is it just me or are others having difficulty getting title/description updates to appear on Apple?


As far as the custom pricing goes, I'll definitely forward the request to the developers. The real challenge there is maintaining a simple user interface while adding all these additional options--many of them options that most users will never touch.

The general approach we've been pursuing is a quick, clean, easy form with lots of default settings for the average user, and then eventually an "Advanced Mode" that adds a ton of extra control (maybe on a per-page basis) for all the hardcore users.


----------



## djnash

Aaron Pogue said:


> As far as the custom pricing goes, I'll definitely forward the request to the developers. The real challenge there is maintaining a simple user interface while adding all these additional options--many of them options that most users will never touch.
> 
> The general approach we've been pursuing is a quick, clean, easy form with lots of default settings for the average user, and then eventually an "Advanced Mode" that adds a ton of extra control (maybe on a per-page basis) for all the hardcore users.


Ability to set price is a fundamental thing and shouldn't be part of any "advanced mode". It's very easy to say that most customers are in America, so let's keep it simple and just use USD. Amazon's KDP interface is also very simple and my own personal opinion is that having the ability to choose what price point I want to have in various major territories and not be at the mercy of exchange rates that result in dirty pricing (e.g. £1.17) or be rounded up or down at the vendor's discretion. The very core of being Indie is we have control over these things.

I humbly request international pricing options is put forward as a priority, at least available when it comes out of beta.

Please (stunning job so far though, keep it up).


----------



## gregm

P.C. (Peter) Anders said:


> So if I upload a Word file named:
> MyNovel D2d.doc
> to D2D, Apple might have trouble with it?
> 
> That's the way I have been doing it: MyNovel Kindle.doc , MyNovel Smashwords.doc and so far, have not noticed a problem.
> 
> But perhaps Apple does, and perhaps it delays the publication of my books there . . .?


I don't know how apple does things. But it is Unix based code.

All I was suggesting is a guaranteed way for the file not to fail.(for having spaces in the file name)

Not everyone add's the % in place of the blank. I would have named your file *mynovel_smashwords.doc* note all lower case. That is just old-style formatting, and will always work. While some software will handle spaces and upper case, don't you really want to be sure it won't fail just because you have a space in the file name?


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

djnash said:


> Ability to set price is a fundamental thing and shouldn't be part of any "advanced mode". It's very easy to say that most customers are in America, so let's keep it simple and just use USD. Amazon's KDP interface is also very simple and my own personal opinion is that having the ability to choose what price point I want to have in various major territories and not be at the mercy of exchange rates that result in dirty pricing (e.g. £1.17) or be rounded up or down at the vendor's discretion. The very core of being Indie is we have control over these things.
> 
> I humbly request international pricing options is put forward as a priority, at least available when it comes out of beta.
> 
> Please (stunning job so far though, keep it up).


Just want to remind folks that Smashwords doesn't allow vendor-specific pricing. There is more flexibility with regard to libraries and Smashwords' own store (as far as "Reader sets own price"), but when it comes to the different vendors, you set a single price for all, which the retailers then use to generate list price based on whatever mechanism they have in place; you don't control the listed price going through SW any more than you do with D2D's current process. If D2D is able to provide this sort of control, it would be over and beyond the sort of control SW has offered indies.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Nikki Pink said:


> I have about 20 titles with D2D. I update my sales everyday in my Excel spreadsheet.
> 
> The sales in D2D are not in alphabetical order. I think they are in the order in which the titles sold. This is a completely useless order. While the bar graph is pretty, I'd love the option of a straight up list, in alphabetical order, with sales by retailer. Something which allows me to read: Book 1 Apple: 23 Barnes and Noble 29 Kobo 1 etc.
> 
> A nice, simple list. Not pretty, just the raw numbers in alphabetical order. Amazon have the best reporting in this regard; it's in alphabetical order and I can just look at the Net Sales list and get my numbers. Smashwords is the worst, but 'luckily' their sales numbers are low enough it's not an issue. With D2D it's all so pretty... and I guess I'd like it if I only looked at my figures once a month... but I look at them every day and I get annoyed. Alphabetical order at the least please. Preferably a list. I'll look at the bar chart once a month, but a nicely formatted list I'd use every day.


For what it's worth, the default sort order is not by sale date, but by release date. That said, the design has always been to allow users to choose sort method for every one of these tables/charts.

I absolutely agree with the need for a straightforward table in addition to the graphs. That, too, is in the design. There's an extraordinary amount of development work going on behind the scenes and so much still to do, but I can assure you this one won't be forgotten.


----------



## CoraBuhlert

djnash said:


> Ability to set price is a fundamental thing and shouldn't be part of any "advanced mode". It's very easy to say that most customers are in America, so let's keep it simple and just use USD. Amazon's KDP interface is also very simple and my own personal opinion is that having the ability to choose what price point I want to have in various major territories and not be at the mercy of exchange rates that result in dirty pricing (e.g. £1.17) or be rounded up or down at the vendor's discretion. The very core of being Indie is we have control over these things.
> 
> I humbly request international pricing options is put forward as a priority, at least available when it comes out of beta.
> 
> Please (stunning job so far though, keep it up).


I second this. Setting international prices is a standard function for many of us. Plus, there are authors using D2D who publish books in languages other than English (e.g. I have a couple of German language books distributed via D2D), where the primary market is outside the US.

Otherwise, good job. I'm very statisfied with D2D so far.


----------



## Kwalker

Did anyone else figure out a good way to get the other retailers to actually update their price when going through D2D?

Apple is doing great, but Kobo is being a pain. Sure when I lowered my price, they changed it within hours. But now that I am trying to raise it again, Kobo stubbornly won't raise it. 

And so of course, Amazon is price matching. 

I remember someone else was having issues with this, despite publishing a few times. I've tried delisting one of the titles they are doing this on, but Kobo doesn't seem to want to delist it, either.


----------



## Lisa J. Yarde

Does anyone know if D2D has changed something with the ToC? I generate my own so everything is hyperlinked. In previous versions, that ToC always appeared at the end of the D2D epub. Now when I upload my Word doc, there are two copies of the ToC being generated; at least they appear where they should at the front of the epub, but I don't need two copies.


----------



## Fictionista

I'm in the process of creating my account with D2D and am wondering if signing up using my real name (which I have) will conflict with the fact that my books will be under my pen name?


----------



## Lady Vine

Fictionista said:


> I'm in the process of creating my account with D2D and am wondering if signing up using my real name (which I have) will conflict with the fact that my books will be under my pen name?


No, it won't. You set whatever pen name and publishing house you want on each book, so you can have and use as many as you want.


----------



## Fictionista

Great. Thanks!


----------



## Jonathan C. Gillespie

Signed up. I could really use an easier way to get onboard iBooks, so this is a no-brainer. Hopefully, you'll let me in


----------



## Not Here Anymore

Checking in with my D2D experience: love it! I uploaded my second book, Secretive, as a word doc and it was went on sale at iTunes the next week. I had a few questions/problems, which were answered and solved quickly.

A few things I've noticed mentioned in this thread: 

Smart quotes: my converted epub had smart quotes. 

Section breaks:  I used asterisks to mark my section breaks in my word doc, but the conversion removes them and there is only white space. To make the break a little more obvious, I put the first word of each new section in all caps, then made the first letter of that word a step up in font size. There is a technical term for this, but can't remember it at the moment.  Really like how it turned out.


----------



## DRMarvello

Sara Rosett said:


> To make the break a little more obvious, I put the first word of each new section in all caps, then made the first letter of that word a step up in font size. There is a technical term for this, but can't remember it at the moment.


They are called "raised caps," as opposed to "drop caps" (aka "dropped caps") which extend down into the paragraph, or "adjacent caps" which are offset from the paragraph (similar to a drop cap but the paragraph text doesn't wrap around below the initial cap).


----------



## Not Here Anymore

DRMarvello said:


> They are called "raised caps,"


I knew someone would know the answer!


----------



## Aaron Pogue

DRMarvello said:


> They are called "raised caps," as opposed to "drop caps" (aka "dropped caps") which extend down into the paragraph, or "adjacent caps" which are offset from the paragraph (similar to a drop cap but the paragraph text doesn't wrap around below the initial cap).


The generic name for all three types is "Initials."

I only know this because I was doing the research for Draft2Digital yesterday. Automatic drop caps will probably be a supported option soon, but in the meantime Sara's solution sounds great!


----------



## DRMarvello

Aaron Pogue said:


> Automatic drop caps will probably be a supported option soon, but in the meantime Sara's solution sounds great!


*I* actually like raised caps better than drop caps, although you rarely see them in print. Drop caps are visually confusing to me for some reason, particularly when they extend farther than two lines into the paragraph. In my book, I used raised caps like Sara, but I didn't capitalized the entire first word. I might experiment with that on the next release.

I haven't tried this, but one suggestion I've seen for handling drop caps is to create a graphic of the letter and then "float" it into the paragraph (e.g. style="float:left"). I wouldn't do that myself because I don't trust that the various devices would implement the float reliably and the images would not scale with the text when the reader changes font size. The images would make your file bigger too, although probably not much.

It will be interesting to see how D2D decides to handle them. Darn. Now I'm thinking about it and will probably waste an hour this afternoon playing with ways to make it work.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

DRMarvello said:


> *I* actually like raised caps better than drop caps, although you rarely see them in print. Drop caps are visually confusing to me for some reason, particularly when they extend farther than two lines into the paragraph. In my book, I used raised caps like Sara, but I didn't capitalized the entire first word. I might experiment with that on the next release.
> 
> I haven't tried this, but one suggestion I've seen for handling drop caps is to create a graphic of the letter and then "float" it into the paragraph (e.g. style="float:left"). I wouldn't do that myself because I don't trust that the various devices would implement the float reliably and the images would not scale with the text when the reader changes font size. The images would make your file bigger too, although probably not much.
> 
> It will be interesting to see how D2D decides to handle them. Darn. Now I'm thinking about it and will probably waste an hour this afternoon playing with ways to make it work.


That's very useful feedback. If they're offering drop caps, they can definitely offer raised caps, too. (It's a trivial addition at that point.)

I personally prefer that look for the same reasons you mentioned, but I'd never heard anyone discussing it.


----------



## Andre Jute

Drop caps, raised caps, illustrated caps (I designed the Enivirex set), illuminated caps, all of these are very nice, and different, and no doubt makes the writers feel special. But I wouldn't advise any writer to do them unless he intends having only only or two books, ever, and spending his life maintaining the code.

I view books as permanent artifacts. ebooks are already a computerite mess of competing formats. None of these formats are in the slightest stable over time. For writers to add to the mess with unnecessary flourishes like special caps that at every small change of the standard, or its implementation by yet another willful vendor going his own way, will have to be "fixed", simply enslaves that writer as unpaid labour to every tomdick&harry vendor with dreams of cornering a market.

We're sitting right on top of an example. Amazon actually owns the open MOBI standard for ebooks, which is excellent. But for their own ebook, the Kindle, in pursuit of their (now failed) dream to corner the ebook market, Amazon created the proprietory format AZW. That it's a subset of MOBI and that there is interchangability to a considerable extent is irrelevant; it probably just happened because Amazon lacked the skill or more likely the time to do a thorough job of separating the two, not because the intention wasn't there.

There is nothing to stop anyone with the clout creating a proprietary format, or using their influence to change a standard format, or simply, as Apple has been doing consistently, progressively tightening up demands for compliance with the standard, which may also cause mainenance issues. Example, Apple has a much-trumpeted policy of working, except for its OS (which is its real asset), with open standards. In EPUB their enforcement was at first loose, then tighter, then Apple went over to a newer standard with more onerous demands, though they still permitted Smashwords, for instance, to subvert the demand for an NCX linked index for authors wanting entry to the premium program with a beginning-middle-end approximation, three links. Currently Apple is demanding, according to a letter I have from D2D, in conformity with the latest standard, that "all EPUB spines must contain a complete listing of all chapters or book sections". This on a novel with over 80 sections, which will make an index of dull "Chapter 37" items for pages on end! Imagine the work in redoing that if some point of NCX coding changes!

Before I actually comply with this mechanically stupid demand, I'll see if I can't fake out the system by removing the word "Chapter" and just leaving the number -- only inserted as an aid for Dakota to keep track in posting the serial of the co-written book to Wattpad http://www.wattpad.com/story/3220999). It seems to me likely that an unlinked "chapter" is the trigger word the bot searches for to draw manual attention to your book.

Full disclosure. As you can see in the samples, we did drop caps in the paperback version of STIEG LARSSON Man, Myth & Mistress [Paperback] but that was made from PDF's made by us out of proper setting in QuarkXPress, not from an EPUB, so we have permanent (1) control. We also had a good design for IDITAROD a novel of The Greatest Race on Earth [Paperback]. The AZW/MOBI/EPUB formats just lost all that work in both books. That taught me a lesson about wasting expensive design time on vendors and formats that don't deserve it or appreciate it.

D2D. Smashwords, Apple, Amazon, the lot of them, should print a warning on all these formats: "Your hard work isn't safe, or fixed for long." That incidentally, applies even in PDF, which has had several "upgrades" of dubious utility since it first saw the light of day. Apple and Adobe, the graphic designers' favorites, do make strenuous efforts to remain backwards compatible, but eventually they run out of road, and it remains to be seen whether the new Apple management will be as committed to protecting the earlier output of loyal customers as Steve Jobs was, as all this effort costs. In this regard, I wouldn't count on Amazon even to know what I'm talking about, never mind do anything about it if cost them a single cent. To Amazon a writer is a disposable commodity, same as someone selling a packet of slightly tissues.

(1) Sure, I know, even a PDF can be opened and messed with -- I patch up PDFs all the time without returning to the source material -- but it requires expensive software and a steep learning curve, making PDF the least vulnerable of all the ebook formats.


----------



## Casper Parks

Thus far one of my titles has posted at Kobo and iTunes. 

Second title is posted at Kobo and pending iTunes.

Customer service was good. 

D2D is working on Google Play and Sony, hope that comes along in the near future. 

As more Indies use D2D for distribution, in time those numbers could provide leverage with major online retailers. Better exposure. For example a banner like “Indie Authors, new releases.”   Maybe that is wishful thinking...


----------



## DRMarvello

Andre Jute said:


> Drop caps, raised caps, illustrated caps (I designed the Enivirex set), illuminated caps, all of these are very nice, and different, and no doubt makes the writers feel special. But I wouldn't advise any writer to do them unless he intends having only only or two books, ever, and spending his life maintaining the code.
> ...


I agree with the gist of your argument, but as designers, we have to consider the cost versus benefit of adding those nice little embellishments. To me, they are sometimes worth the risk of having to maintain them for a new format.

At the risk of "showing off," I'd like to point out that putting a raised cap on one paragraph at the beginning of each chapter is a trivial exercise, _if you are able to tweak the HTML_ (yes, I know that's a big caveat.)

I mentioned that I used raised caps in my book. Here's what the code looks like for the first paragraph of the first chapter:


> The folded piece of parchment...


The style sheet defines DropCap like this:


> span.DropCap {
> font-size:3em;
> font-weight:bold;
> }


So, all I have to do is put the span tag around the first letter of each chapter. I had 25 chapters, so it took maybe five minutes to do the whole book. The raised cap scales with the body text if the reader changes the font size.

Although book formats will undoubtedly change over time, I believe XHTML will continue to be the base document tagging language even as new standards evolve. I don't think my investment in improving the appearance of my books is wasted.


----------



## Andre Jute

DRMarvello said:


> I agree with the gist of your argument, but as designers, we have to consider the cost versus benefit of adding those nice little embellishments. To me, they are sometimes worth the risk of having to maintain them for a new format.


I certainly wish you sales to cover the cost and more. I do however think that this nonsense of "standards" as ever-moving targets wastes time that those who can actually write should spend writing. (A tangential argument that no doubt we shall pick up elsewhere. I put i in here only so we don't forget it when the opportunity offers perhaps in a less vibrant thread than this one by Aaron.)



DRMarvello said:


> At the risk of "showing off," I'd like to point out that putting a raised cap on one paragraph at the beginning of each chapter is a trivial exercise, _if you are able to tweak the HTML_ (yes, I know that's a big caveat.)


Showing off is flashing your skills at inappropriate moments. I made that remark when someone interjected his high level coding skills into a part of the thread where I was addressing the problems of writers with zero coding ability and zero intention of learning. Here your code is not only appropriate but welcome -- I bet it was copied by at least half the people reading this thread!



DRMarvello said:


> Although book formats will undoubtedly change over time, I believe XHTML will continue to be the base document tagging language even as new standards evolve. I don't think my investment in improving the appearance of my books is wasted.


Against the wall eight feet from my left hand stands a bookcase twelve feetwide and twelve feet tall. It doesn't contain books but software, mostly long out of the boxes to save space. Even from where I sit I can read the names on the remaining boxes of a dozen "standards" people expected to last forever, or at least their lifetimes.

See also my thread elsewhere, where your input would be valued, on the wider implications of standards shifting: On print as a luxury, and ebooks as ephemera http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,143679.0.html


----------



## Lloyd MacRae

One of my books came out of select and I published to D2D and today it said it was published to Kobo. I took a look at it and then browsed through the new releases in the different genres and I was shocked at the pricing. One...1...uno...was priced at .99 and I only saw a couple at 1.99 and that was basically it. I started low at Amazon but actually started making more sales @ 3.99. then 5.99 so I set my book at 5.99 through D2D. Now I'm HALF of the pricing on most of the books on Kobo. They seem to all run from 11.99 to 14.99. Now I know I'm still an unknown and it was a quick, random look but it's such a difference from what I'm always hearing around Amazon. I browsed through the Nook new releases and I see 2.99, 3.99 and a lot that are higher than that and no free or .99 new releases. Not really asking a question I guess as much as flappig my gums in amazement at the quick look.


----------



## DRMarvello

Andre Jute said:


> Against the wall eight feet from my left hand stands a bookcase twelve feetwide and twelve feet tall. It doesn't contain books but software, mostly long out of the boxes to save space. Even from where I sit I can read the names on the remaining boxes of a dozen "standards" people expected to last forever, or at least their lifetimes.


I completely understand where you are coming from. I've been developing database applications for almost 30 years now, and on the web for almost 20. There's really no such thing as a "standard" when it comes to technology. Most of the tools I used five years ago are obsolete today. I try to do the best job I can with the tools I have, but you are absolutely right that there's a trade-off between effort expended and value received.

On the other hand, you could be right that my raised caps are just for my personal enjoyment. That's reason enough for me!


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Just to add in my raised caps code:



Code:


span.drop { 
    font-size: 180%; 
}

p.initial {
  text-indent: 0;
}

Applied like so:



Code:


<p class="initial"><span class="drop">D</span>ETECTIVE CHIC IS—AS always in Homicide Unit—the uniform of the day, so showing up in the bull pen wearing a freshly pressed set of grays is like rolling in honey and expecting flies to leave you alone.</p>

Roughly appears so:

DETECTIVE CHIC IS-AS always in Homicide Unit-the uniform of the day, so showing up in the bull pen wearing a freshly pressed set of grays is like rolling in honey and expecting flies to leave you alone.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Aaron Pogue said:


> I've been discussing that with the devs, and it should certainly be possible.
> 
> There are some technical challenges, but the biggest problem is fees. In order for Draft2Digital to make direct deposit (or EFT) payments to _anyone_, they have to go through a bank, and every bank is going to charge some kind of (significant) fee for international payments. If D2D paid a $25 fee to send someone $10 in accrued royalties, they'd go out of business in a hurry.
> 
> The obvious solution is to raise the minimum payment threshold. So international users will be able to choose direct deposit, but they'll have to make more money before it's sent. That's probably the same reason Kobo has a threshold of $100 where most of the other distributors settle somewhere between $10 and $25.
> 
> So...yes, definitely possible. And the best news, it's an issue the devs are aware of and pursuing solutions for. But there are some real-world issues that have to get resolved first.


I wanted to post a quick update on the international direct deposit option. The Draft2Digital devs have told me they've found an option that _should_ work out. It looks like it'll be pretty reasonable, too. The minimum payment should be considerably lower than Kobo's $100.

Obviously, this is something they've discussed, investigated, and are hoping to implement over the course of about a month. So there could be unforeseen issues. I'm pretty excited they found something, though.

(This doesn't change anything for users with a US bank account who can get direct deposit for anything over $10. And we know that works, because I've been getting paid that way for months.)

Oh! Speaking of that (and in answer to Genevieve's question), the first round of beta tester payments should be going out no later than March 15, so I'm anxious to see how that goes. Post here if you get a payment (or have any problems), because I can't be the only one curious how that turns out.


----------



## Victoria Champion

My erotica ebook (epub) was submitted on the 19th and still hasn't gone live at iTunes. If there was a problem, d2D would email me, yes? (My other erotica ebooks/epubs have gone through fine and were live at iTunes in one day.)


----------



## Shelley K

Victoria Champion said:


> My erotica ebook (epub) was submitted on the 19th and still hasn't gone live at iTunes. If there was a problem, d2D would email me, yes? (My other erotica ebooks/epubs have gone through fine and were live at iTunes in one day.)


My first attempt at going to iTunes through D2D was rejected, and I did get an email stating that in about 4 days. So yeah, they do contact you.

I have a few titles I put up January 21/22/25 that are still in "publishing," so I think Apple's just in no hurry.


----------



## Kwalker

Just an update to my price matching troubles.

Kris with D2D was very apologetic, even though it was out of their control, and the issue was on Kobo's end. Kris continually sought resolution for me though, and managed to get kobo to finally process my titles. They constantly make me feel very valued as a client, and I'm still extremely happy with them.


----------



## 41413

I just ran through one of my books that has more complex formatting, and was quite satisfied with the outcome of the auto-generated TOC. Better than Calibre does for me, that's for sure (even with lots of elbow grease).

Is there some way to stop it from indenting my non-indented paragraphs at the beginning of each scene, though? It's not a big deal, but it's so much prettier to have the beginning of each scene and new chapter to be indent-less.


----------



## sgroyle

A few notes about my happy experiences with D2D.

Have now uploaded two books with them. First book up on itunes, kobo and B&N within three days or so. Second book took a little longer for itunes but other sites were within a couple of days.

I use Jutoh for formatting the ebooks because it is simple fast and looks good - zero issues with any of the sites. I don't put the copyright stuff at the front nor do I put a TOC there (hate them in a novel); again I had no issues with any of the sites.

Oh yes a few weeks back there was a bug in the reports; notified D2D and received an email back within a couple of hours saying they were aware of it and fixing it - said bug now squashed. If they keep up this performance and the money side is handled smoothly then they will have a (very) strong supporter in me - impressed - hats off to the D2D crew - doing everything right.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

As a note, as a result of the big Smashwords thread currently going on, I just wanted to say that anything I can do to help D2D in any way, just ask.

We need an outlet that can get into the few locations SW currently has locked up. (Sony, Diesel, etc.)

Smashwords puts far too many restrictions on how things are done, removing the freedom of publishers to layout their own works.

For me, the requirement to slap "Smashwords Edition" on a copyright page up front (which is 1- a total lie, the edition is no different, and 2- forces me to conform to their wishes for front/back matter) is a dealbreaker.

Seems trivial to some, but the stance is based on freedom.

Plus D2D looks about 500 times better than SW.


----------



## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

Mathew Reuther said:


> As a note, as a result of the big Smashwords thread currently going on, I just wanted to say that anything I can do to help D2D in any way, just ask.
> 
> We need an outlet that can get into the few locations SW currently has locked up. (Sony, Diesel, etc.)
> 
> Smashwords puts far too many restrictions on how things are done, removing the freedom of publishers to layout their own works.
> 
> For me, the requirement to slap "Smashwords Edition" on a copyright page up front (which is 1- a total lie, the edition is no different, and 2- forces me to conform to their wishes for front/back matter) is a dealbreaker.
> 
> Seems trivial to some, but the stance is based on freedom.
> 
> Plus D2D looks about 500 times better than SW.


As someone who distributes direct to all the outlets that D2D ships to, why are you so concerned with the distributors? In fact, Sony and Diesel are the only two retailers that you don't go to direct with and they are negligable in the grand scheme of things. What is your interest in D2D? It took Adam a couple of weeks to admit he had a financial stake in the organisation, are you similarly entwined?


----------



## RM Prioleau

I would be fully committed to D2D if they offer more distribution options. Right now, I'm currently going direct with all the places D2D currently offers except for Apple. Would like to see more distribution options for Sony, libraries, and perhaps other places that SW is currently not distributing to.

I feel very torn between using SW or D2D. SW has a wider distribution option, but D2D has the ease and user-friendliness. Whichever one ends up having the best of both worlds first will be the one I will settle with.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> As someone who distributes direct to all the outlets that D2D ships to, why are you so concerned with the distributors? In fact, Sony and Diesel are the only two retailers that you don't go to direct with and they are negligable in the grand scheme of things. What is your interest in D2D? It took Adam a couple of weeks to admit he had a financial stake in the organisation, are you similarly entwined?


No.

I do have some friends with Sony Readers and I'd prefer to be able to have my work up on Sony. That's as far as my personal motivation to get on either of those sites goes.

I'd also like to see D2D get library penetration because hey, I like libraries. 

So if that could happen, I'd be happy.

(That, and if wanting to decide as a publisher how I layout my titles makes me an anarchist, I guess I should be signing up with the underdog. Surely that makes sense?)


----------



## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

Just a not on the library thing (I love libraries too).

Four of the big six refuse to sell ebooks to libraries and the other two charge triple the paperback price for a total of 26 borrows. Libraries are dying for ebooks. Smashwords has the jump on you guys

http://catalog.douglascountylibraries.org/Union/Search?basicType=Keyword&lookfor=smashwords&shard%5B%5D=eContent&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

It looks like they are adding them in batches because there were 2000 books on that list a few days ago and now there are over 3000. I think the final number will be about 10,000.

Getting indies into libraries would be a fabulous feather in your cap and a boon for all your clients.


----------



## Casper Parks

Distributing to libraries for free is a great idea.

Grade schools through college, plus public libraries.


----------



## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

Personally, I would dearly love to have my Amazon payments paid into paypal. As a non-US resident, it's either a cheque or an awkward and almost-as-expensive third party websites.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> Personally, I would dearly love to have my Amazon payments paid into paypal. As a non-US resident, it's either a cheque or an awkward and almost-as-expensive third party websites.


Unfortunately Australia is still left out in the cold. Maybe now that they have Europe working they'll get to you guys soon.


----------



## Hudson Owen

D2D gets my vote of thanks.  I presented them with a book that contained poetry and prose.  Their meatgrinder didn't quite get it right.  Instead of giving up, Kris and his team went the extra mile and manually formatted the book.  Don't know SW would have matched that high level of service or not.  Book appeared early on several platforms.  Yea+.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> Personally, I would dearly love to have my Amazon payments paid into paypal. As a non-US resident, it's either a cheque or an awkward and almost-as-expensive third party websites.


Depends. If you're European based you can get payed by EFT.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Mathew Reuther said:


> I just wanted to say that anything I can do to help D2D in any way, just ask.


At the moment, the best thing anyone can do for Draft2Digital is spread the word. Right now they're sending out beta invitations instantly to anyone who asks, so tell your friends!



Hudson Owen said:


> D2D gets my vote of thanks. I presented them with a book that contained poetry and prose. Their meatgrinder didn't quite get it right. Instead of giving up, Kris and his team went the extra mile and manually formatted the book. Don't know SW would have matched that high level of service or not. Book appeared early on several platforms. Yea+.


For the record, I have to admit that hand-fixing complex formatting probably isn't something the company can continue to do long-term. We definitely want to be able to recognize (and support) poetry formatting, though--especially since it's so common to embed it in the middle of prose, too--so we took the opportunity to look closely at this particular book and learn everything we possibly could from it, and found a way to make it work while we were at it.

Thanks to everyone who's shared your experiences testing the service. We've come so far in two short months!


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Aaron Pogue said:


> At the moment, the best thing anyone can do for Draft2Digital is spread the word. Right now they're sending out beta invitations instantly to anyone who asks, so tell your friends!
> 
> For the record, I have to admit that hand-fixing complex formatting probably isn't something the company can continue to do long-term. We definitely want to be able to recognize (and support) poetry formatting, though--especially since it's so common to embed it in the middle of prose, too--so we took the opportunity to look closely at this particular book and learn everything we possibly could from it, and found a way to make it work while we were at it.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's shared your experiences testing the service. We've come so far in two short months!


Thanks, Aaron. And please pass along a thanks to Kris and the D2D staff. I hope you/they are all paying close attention to the SW thread as well as identifying the bugs to your automated processes during this beta phase. We're all concerned about D2D's early success outstripping its ability to maintain an efficient author-friendly submission and distribution system, complete with a responsive customer service program. I sincerely hope that you can. There's much to be gleaned from the complaints aired over in the other thread and in the responses they have evoked from Mark.


----------



## DRMarvello

Saul Tanpepper said:


> Thanks, Aaron. And please pass along a thanks to Kris and the D2D staff. I hope you/they are all paying close attention to the SW thread as well as identifying the bugs to your automated processes during this beta phase. We're all concerned about D2D's early success outstripping its ability to maintain an efficient author-friendly submission and distribution system, complete with a responsive customer service program. I sincerely hope that you can. There's much to be gleaned from the complaints aired over in the other thread and in the responses they have evoked from Mark.


Ditto.

And I'm willing to bet that Mark has taken a look at this thread.


----------



## David Alastair Hayden

I'm enjoying the heck out of Draft2Digital. Great setup. Daily stats. Clean interface. Helpful and fast service.

I wish I could go straight to iBooks. I'm in the US and I only use Macs. Alas, the hassles of names and businesses and Apple being fussy.


----------



## Casper Parks

Aaron Pogue said:


> Hand-fixing complex formatting probably isn't something the company can continue to do long-term.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's shared your experiences testing the service. We've come so far in two short months!


Aaron,

My thanks to D2D staff, Kobo went through on both books not an issue. iTunes was an issue.

In the future, from the Starting Gate will have to alter formatting so iTunes goes right through. I had an issue with chapter numbers for my first book. Still waiting on number two.


----------



## Vivi_Anna

Well so far I am very happy with D2D, being in Canada, I've had to go through SW painful process to get my books up onto B&N, and iTunes which took months.  And then not knowing if they are selling at all.

I put up 3 books, and they all got to B&N in less than 2 days.  and iTunes in a week.  AND I can already see what is selling, so if I need to change something, I know immediately.  

I also like that I can upload a formatted word document, and get a nicely formatted version for all platforms.  I don't have to fiddle with a bunch of different formats.  Yeah on that!!

Keep up the good work.  Just make sure that you can keep up with the demand.  I would hate to see this quick turnaround go by the wayside when you get really busy.  Make sure you can hire peeps right away to keep up with the demand.  

Because that is for the NUMBER 1 reason I will continue with you.


----------



## TJHudson

Just throwing in my experience.

Much faster distribution than Smashwords. I also like the fact they email you when a book goes live on an outlet. 

The daily sales reporting is great. I don't know why, but I've already started selling more through D2D than I did with Smashwords. Is this something to do with meta data uploaded with books?

The only negative at the moment is that I cannot distribute for free to B&N.


----------



## AnitaDobs

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> Personally, I would dearly love to have my Amazon payments paid into paypal. As a non-US resident, it's either a cheque or an awkward and almost-as-expensive third party websites.


Well don't forget they are still in beta.

Smashwords will be happy to pay your Amazon earnings into Paypal though. As far as I've heard.


----------



## djnash

8 hours, 22 minutes to get published on B&N via D2D! I'm very impressed!

I assume the lack of cover image will sort itself out in a little while as everything propagates through B&N's servers?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

djnash said:


> 8 hours, 22 minutes to get published on B&N via D2D! I'm very impressed!
> 
> I assume the lack of cover image will sort itself out in a little while as everything propagates through B&N's servers?


Almost certainly. (It always has for me, anyway.) If it doesn't show up within a day or two (depending how patient you feel), you can definitely send an email to customer support.


----------



## JeanneM

Please forgive me, but I'm too tired to go through all of the pages of this thread.  Could someone make my life easier and give me advice on how to preview my manuscript in kobo and itunes?  I downloaded the apps, but there were no further instructions on how to look at my book.  I don't want to checkmark ok to publish until I can see them.  I'm so confused.


----------



## Andre Jute

JeanneM said:


> Please forgive me, but I'm too tired to go through all of the pages of this thread. Could someone make my life easier and give me advice on how to preview my manuscript in kobo and itunes? I downloaded the apps, but there were no further instructions on how to look at my book. I don't want to checkmark ok to publish until I can see them. I'm so confused.


Nothing to forgive Jeanne. We all get so worn down that we need help and a friendly place to ask. Adobe gives away a free programme that reads EPUBS like those KOBO and Apple use. It's called Adobe Digital Editions. Good luck.

Here it is again in plain URL form.
http://www.adobe.com/products/digital-editions/download.html


----------



## Jenmills

So is there any word yet on whether Amazon reviews are retained after switching to D2D distribution?


----------



## That one girl

I was so pro-D2D, and still am for the most part, but I'm still waiting for a book I submitted eight days ago to hit iTunes. It makes me sad. They were very helpful getting my previous series up, though. I had a couple of warnings on my epub and they tried really hard to help me figure it out. In the end, I figured out the fix on my own, but they were super cool about it.

I would love to switch over my other series to D2D, but don't want to lose the 100+ reviews. That's another big downfall.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

I self-submitted two titles 7 days ago and am still waiting. I suspect it's Apple being randomly slow again. (The title before these two took 9 days, also self-submitted.)


----------



## JeanneM

Thank you, Andre.  I appreciate the links.


----------



## DRMarvello

That one girl said:


> I was so pro-D2D, and still am for the most part, but I'm still waiting for a book I submitted eight days ago to hit iTunes. It makes me sad.


Don't be sad! The Apple delay is all Apple. According to the D2D dev team, your book is submitted to the Apple review queue within about an hour of submission. If you are lucky, Apple will approve it within a matter of hours. If not, it can take up to three weeks.

On top of that, D2D watches your submissions. If your book sits in the review queue for long enough (I've forgotten how long that is), they will intervene on your behalf and poke Apple about it.

What saddens me is that D2D is getting blamed for delays that are out of their control, in spite of their extra efforts to have our backs.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

DRMarvello said:


> Don't be sad! The Apple delay is all Apple. According to the D2D dev team, your book is submitted to the Apple review queue within about an hour of submission. If you are lucky, Apple will approve it within a matter of hours. If not, it can take up to three weeks.
> 
> On top of that, D2D watches your submissions. If your book sits in the review queue for long enough (I've forgotten how long that is), they will intervene on your behalf and poke Apple about it.
> 
> What saddens me is that D2D is getting blamed for delays that are out of their control, in spite of their extra efforts to have our backs.


I agree. Even so, I think it might be a good time to start tempering expectations just a little. D2D has just put out another call for registrations and submissions, and as they grow, I expect their responsiveness to begin to lag a bit. While they deserve every bit of praise they've been getting to this point (and, almost certainly, little of the condemnation), it's still early days. Plus, a little fire under their feet is a good thing. It'll hopefully keep them on their toes. Right now is the absolute wrong time for Kris and his staff to be resting on their laurels.

(Yes, I'm an advocate of the tough love approach  )


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

There should an indication of when the book shipped to Apple that is different from when it's published there. I think the icon changes color or something?


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Katie Elle said:


> There should an indication of when the book shipped to Apple that is different from when it's published there. I think the icon changes color or something?


I think the icon changes color and size when it goes live. I think you can assume it ships very quickly. I would like to see the terminology changed to "Submitted to (channel)" rather than "Published," but keeping the latter for when it goes live.


----------



## Casper Parks

DRMarvello said:


> Don't be sad! The Apple delay is all Apple. According to the D2D dev team, your book is submitted to the Apple review queue within about an hour of submission. If you are lucky, Apple will approve it within a matter of hours. If not, it can take up to three weeks.
> 
> On top of that, D2D watches your submissions. If your book sits in the review queue for long enough (I've forgotten how long that is), they will intervene on your behalf and poke Apple about it.
> 
> What saddens me is that D2D is getting blamed for delays that are out of their control, in spite of their extra efforts to have our backs.


Agree, iTunes delays is not a D2D issue.


----------



## DRMarvello

Saul Tanpepper said:


> I agree. Even so, I think it might be a good time to start tempering expectations just a little. D2D has just put out another call for registrations and submissions, and as they grow, I expect their responsiveness to begin to lag a bit. While they deserve every bit of praise they've been getting to this point (and, almost certainly, little of the condemnation), it's still early days. Plus, a little fire under their feet is a good thing. It'll hopefully keep them on their toes. Right now is the absolute wrong time for Kris and his staff to be resting on their laurels.
> 
> (Yes, I'm an advocate of the tough love approach  )


I'm right there with you, Saul. We fans can be a fickle bunch. So far, I've been very happy with D2D. I've had several email exchanges with Kris and the responses were all quick, cordial, professional, and thorough. I hope the D2D team remains committed to a high level of customer service as they grow, but I must admit my expectations are low in that regard.

As for the Apple problem, I think a bit more transparency is needed. I think it would help if the status showed *when* the book was submitted to the Apple review queue. There's an implicit "waiting on Apple" status that should probably be made more clear so authors know where the problem lies.

Unfortunately, Apple makes everyone look bad. It doesn't matter how you submit books to them, there's a review cycle of some kind that introduces a variable delay in the acceptance of your book. I'm not sure what's really going on, but it looks like submissions get queued for review, and then every once in a while Apple grabs all of the books waiting in the queue and processes them. While they are processing that batch, more books queue up for the next round. How quickly your book gets accepted depends upon when you happen to submit it during the review cycle. If you happen to submit the day before they start another round, you can get approved quickly. If you submit the day *after* they cleared the queue, you'll have to wait until they finish processing the prior batch, which might be a while. [Please remember I'm making this up. What really happens at Apple may be something completely different.]

The other thing I've noticed is that they seem to have different levels of acceptance. I submitted one book that was accepted very quickly, but then days later, it was taken off line and pushed back for a problem with the cover image. So being "accepted" doesn't necessarily stick.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

I think you're spot on regarding the queue. That's the way it seems.



DRMarvello said:


> The other thing I've noticed is that they seem to have different levels of acceptance. I submitted one book that was accepted very quickly, but then days later, it was taken off line and pushed back for a problem with the cover image. So being "accepted" doesn't necessarily stick.


I can certainly vouch for this. Every once in a while one of my GAMELAND books gets hung up because I have "S.W. Tanpepper's" on the cover as the author attribution but list my name as Saul Tanpepper (it's listed as Saul inside on the title and copyright pages). "_Author names on the cover must match the product description,_" or some such wording, is the usual speedbump (even though a dozen other of my books passed this apparent restriction). But if I resubmit the exact same files with no changes, they tend to go through about 80% of the time. Pretty sure it's because they've got humans doing the checks and things slip by. (Our book blog book, for example, go through even though it contains Amazon links inside). Same goes for Createspace. Had the name issue hangup with them, but persistence paid off there as well. *shrugs*


----------



## Kwalker

I've noticed that when I am publishing to multiple channels with them, such as apple and Kobo, I get an email that looks like this:


> The book Second Stone (Souls of the Stones, #2) is now published to Kobo and can be viewed here.
> 
> Here is the status of this book at all sales channels selected by you:
> 
> Apple Submitted to Distributor on Feb. 20, 2013, 4:26 p.m.
> Kobo Published on Feb. 20, 2013, 4:40 p.m.


So I see when they were submitted, even if they aren't live.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

DRMarvello said:


> As for the Apple problem, I think a bit more transparency is needed. I think it would help if the status showed *when* the book was submitted to the Apple review queue. There's an implicit "waiting on Apple" status that should probably be made more clear so authors know where the problem lies.


In addition to the email Kelly mention, I _think_ the information you're asking for is on the View Book page. Go to your dashboard, choose a book that says "Publishing" (which is the default if it's still waiting to be published at any of the sales channels), and then look at the list of distributors on the right. It will say:


*"Requested Listing <date>"* if you've clicked "Publish" but D2D hasn't submitted it yet
*"Submitted to Distributor <date>"* if Draft2Digital has submitted it but hasn't heard back from the sales channel yet
*"Needs Review <date>"* if D2D or the sales channel requires you to make some change or provide additional information (and you should have an email from customer support explaining what's needed)
*"Published <date>"* if it's successfully published (even if the sales page isn't live yet, which can be a problem at iTunes)

I don't have any examples with "Submitted to Distributor" in my dashboard, so it's possible I'm wrong about that one, but that would be the one that provides the information you're asking for. I'll double-check with the devs and make sure they show that. Might be nice to add that timeline to a mouseover tooltip, so you can see the historical dates for each stage. What do you think?


----------



## Not Here Anymore

Mathew Reuther said:


> I self-submitted two titles 7 days ago and am still waiting. I suspect it's Apple being randomly slow again. (The title before these two took 9 days, also self-submitted.)


I'm in the same situation: waiting for book submitted to Apple 11 days ago. Title before went live in 7 days. It's great when it goes up quickly and also nice to know I'm not the only one waiting. As for the status, I just check the title in the My Books page to see what date it was submitted. I agree it's not fair to blame D2D for delays. Apple's review system is what it is. Now if someone could get an expedited review channel with Apple that would be a winner. I can dream, right?


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

People who went directly have the same complaints. It seems that everything is reviewed manually and if they see anything that tickles them in any way, it goes into a queue and The Central Scrutinizer has to read the entire thing and judge whether or not it is moral enough for Apple's customers.


----------



## JeanneM

I hope it works well for all of you, but I just couldn't figure it out.  I wrote support for help last night, but no word back.  Anyway, I deleted it all and will crawl back into my prehistoric cave where computers don't exist.  Excuse me while I adjust my fur covering.


----------



## Anjasa

Is it possible to just quickly scan the price of all the books without having to go through the 'edit book' thing?


----------



## 31842

First off, VERY happy Draft2Digital customer here!  I've listed several of my books with them and have been thrilled to pieces.  Just wanted to see if I was the only one experiencing this glitch or if it was something system wide.  It appears my sales reports are stuck on February.  Is anyone seeing anything for March?


----------



## Victoria Champion

KateDanley said:


> First off, VERY happy Draft2Digital customer here! I've listed several of my books with them and have been thrilled to pieces. Just wanted to see if I was the only one experiencing this glitch or if it was something system wide. It appears my sales reports are stuck on February. Is anyone seeing anything for March?


It was explained to me by CS at d2D that you don't see a listing for a particular month unless you have sales for that month. Sorry.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Just finished skimming through this thread, reading random pages and the FAQ (thanks for that). As soon as six of my titles come out of Select mid April, I'll be uploading them through D2D.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Anjasa said:


> Is it possible to just quickly scan the price of all the books without having to go through the 'edit book' thing?


Short answer: No, but there should be. I'm pretty sure I requested that already, but I'll make sure it's on the To Do list.

If the books are already published, there's a way that's a little bit faster than clicking all the way through the Edit Book process. From the main book list, you can click any of the sales channels logos (my go-to is always Amazon) to see the book's product page. So you could just scroll down the list opening all the B&N pages with one click each.

Obviously, that's not as convenient as staying on the page, but it's a workaround for now.


----------



## DRMarvello

Aaron Pogue said:


> In addition to the email Kelly mention, I _think_ the information you're asking for is on the View Book page.
> ...
> Might be nice to add that timeline to a mouseover tooltip, so you can see the historical dates for each stage. What do you think?


I do like the idea of a timeline, but I'm a dataphile. If D2D is already keeping a status history that records the timeline, I would love to have it. However, I can't speak for anyone else regarding how valuable that info would be versus how much work it would be for D2D to add the status auditing. In general, "Where is it now?" is probably the most pressing question. The timeline would be gravy.

Now that I think about it more, D2D probably *is* keeping that info, or probably should be if they are not. As a distribution company, the distribution time line would be important data for evaluating and monitoring performance.


----------



## Guest

Can't wait until author website integration is ready. That's the only reason that right now I'm still looking at Ganxy.


----------



## That one girl

Can someone explain to me the royalty pay out for iTunes through D2D? I assumed they paid 60% like Smashwords, but I just got a royalty statement that equals about 25% of 60%. For instance, if I sell 118 books at $5.99 each, how much should the royalties earned equal?

Regardless, I'm going back to Smashwords. Even if D2D ends up correcting their mistake. I don't need to lose hundreds of dollars of every month just to be on a nicer looking website.


----------



## Anjasa

Another question: Is it normal to get "Sorry, we could not find what you were looking for." for B&N? I published a dozen books yesterday and half went through fine, but the other half say it can't be found, even though it says 'published'. Just curious if it'll just take time or if it's something to worry about.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

That one girl said:


> Can someone explain to me the royalty pay out for iTunes through D2D? I assumed they paid 60% like Smashwords, but I just got a royalty statement that equals about 25% of 60%. For instance, if I sell 118 books at $5.99 each, how much should the royalties earned equal?
> 
> Regardless, I'm going back to Smashwords. Even if D2D ends up correcting their mistake. I don't need to lose hundreds of dollars of every month just to be on a nicer looking website.


The "Feb 2013" income is actually for books sold in January. I thought mine was wrong, too, until I realized this. Is it possible you're thinking February royalties?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

That one girl said:


> Can someone explain to me the royalty pay out for iTunes through D2D? I assumed they paid 60% like Smashwords, but I just got a royalty statement that equals about 25% of 60%. For instance, if I sell 118 books at $5.99 each, how much should the royalties earned equal?


Hmm. The royalty _should_ be pretty close to 60%, so I'd expect your royalties on 118 books at $5.99 to be around $420.

It's possible you're looking at your royalty statement for _money paid_ in February (for sales that occurred in December/January) and comparing it with your book sales for February (which won't be paid until March/April).

(Edit: Ah, Saul beat me to it.)


----------



## Aaron Pogue

genevieveaclark said:


> Um, so this thread was started on Dec 31 2012. So anyone who entered the beta as a result of this thread could only have sales from January. D2D pays on the 15th of the month 60 days after the sales period, on a monthly basis. So January sales shouldn't be paid until April 15, correct? Unless I'm misunderstanding the payment schedule?
> 
> It would be good to get anything weird about payments or royalties cleared up and reported here, if only because D2D hasn't had a big payment for the beta users yet, and that...would matter.


Actually, D2D pays on the 15th of the month after the royalties are received. For most sales channels (Amazon, B&N, and Kobo), that means 60 days after the sales period. But it turns out that Apple (like CreateSpace) only delays payments by about 30 days, so the payments going out now are for January sales through Apple or CreateSpace, and December sales through the other three.


----------



## That one girl

I understand now, but the name of the report is confusing. The month in the name of the royalty report should correspond with sales, not payments from distributors. That doesn't make sense from an author point of view.

Edit: The main confusion for me stemmed from the fact that I received this same royalty report for January last month. I didn't understand why I was receiving it again.


----------



## DRMarvello

I think the confusion stems from the fact that D2D is unintentionally confusing us with the facts.

Last month (Feb 9 to be exact), I got my "January 2013 Apple Sales Report." All D2D was doing with that report was reporting the sales that Apple had reported to them for the month of January. I for one appreciated getting that information.

Today, we got our "February 2013 Royalty Report," which tells us how much we earned in royalties from the distribution partners through the end of February. Because the distribution partners pay *after* the sales are made, the royalties we earned in February were for sales made in prior periods (as Aaron said).

One thing that might help clear up the confusion is if D2D adds back the Start Date and End Date columns for the report they put on the second tab of the spreadsheet. The sales report we got last month included those columns so it was clear when the sales occurred. The same info would be helpful for knowing what period of time the royalties cover.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Count me as initially confused by the email also. I thought my Feb royalty reports were short, and almost called support. After investing my spreadsheet and d2D site, I realized they were for Jan sales. The name of the email needs to be clarified/changed in my opinion. Should probably be titled _Payment/Remittance for Jan Sales_ (email received in Feb), _Payment/Remittance for Feb Sales_ (email received in Mar), etc... .


----------



## Victoria Champion

Oh by the way...I submitted an ebook on Feb19, which is still in Publishing stage at iTunes according to d2D, but I got the idea to click on the little apple icon on the right on the My Books page at d2D, and lo and behold, my ebook is live. I linked to it immediately on blog and twitter, but I wonder how long it's been live and how many sales I missed out on? Anyway, wonder why d2D hasn't updated my book's live status? Also, just to verify that it actually is live, when I go to my publicly visible author page at iTunes, it is listed there along with my other books.


----------



## Not Here Anymore

Victoria Champion said:


> Oh by the way...I submitted an ebook on Feb19, which is still in Publishing stage at iTunes according to d2D, but I got the idea to click on the little apple icon on the right on the My Books page at d2D, and lo and behold, my ebook is live.


Mine, too! Yay! I submitted my book on Feb 20 and had been waiting. I think mine just went live in the last day or so because I checked another book in itunes this weekend and looked at my author page. It wasn't up then and it is now. Maybe d2d has an automated email that goes at at a certain time of the day? I'm not going to be too hard on them because they've been nothing but awesome for me and they are still in beta...


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Just as an FYI for you folks who are using D2D to go to Apple. Going direct does not get you an email notification when your title goes live. You have to check manually. So you're not missing anything with D2D.


----------



## DRMarvello

Mathew Reuther said:


> Just as an FYI for you folks who are using D2D to go to Apple. Going direct does not get you an email notification when your title goes live. You have to check manually. So you're not missing anything with D2D.


For a while there, we were getting a cute little email from D2D that included a link to the book's iTunes preview page when the book went live. I really liked that email because I've never had any luck finding my book's preview page any other way. I'm sure it doesn't help that I don't own a single Apple device.


----------



## Richardcrasta

I love D2D's easy sales report: Total Books Sold Overall.
Just one page, if I want.
It also seems that you refresh sales only once a day: at midnight EST, is this correct? 
In KDP, despite my best resolve, I keep clicking on all 7 channels including Brazil and Japan, even though I've never sold a book there, and perhaps never will--and many times a day.


----------



## jdrew

Any idea when this will be out of beta and open to others?


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

jdrew said:


> Any idea when this will be out of beta and open to others?


There was a call regarding more openings for beta testers just the other day, so you can request an invite (check the link on the first page).

ETA: here's the link to register: https://www.draft2digital.com/register/


----------



## Victoria Champion

DRMarvello said:


> For a while there, we were getting a cute little email from D2D that included a link to the book's iTunes preview page when the book went live. I really liked that email because I've never had any luck finding my book's preview page any other way. I'm sure it doesn't help that I don't own a single Apple device.


I just got the email from d2D letting me know my book was live on iTunes, so seems to be a delay of a day or so for notification. Sounds reasonable. I had gotten the other emails sooner than that but seems like things at iTunes might be delayed. I am liking your batch theory for the cause.


----------



## DRMarvello

Victoria Champion said:


> I just got the email from d2D letting me know my book was live on iTunes, so seems to be a delay of a day or so for notification. Sounds reasonable. I had gotten the other emails sooner than that but seems like things at iTunes might be delayed. I am liking your batch theory for the cause.


Thanks for letting me know. I'd be disappointed if we stopped getting the notification emails.


----------



## Casper Parks

Ages Past went live on iTunes overnight!

My next book D2D is getting B&N, Kobo and iTunes. Looking forward to D2D adding Google Play, Sony and more. 

Realize they are busy now. Down the road, I am hoping they allow libraries to get free e-books.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

We have a Facebook page now!

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Draft2Digital/341297015982331

The best thing our users can do to help support Draft2Digital is spread the word. This is just one more way to do that.

If you like D2D, please drop by and click the button to that effect.

Thanks!


----------



## Victoria Champion

genevieveaclark said:


> Wait, do you get personalized email notifications for every stage? Like, approval, submission, acceptance, going live, whatever?
> 
> That seems...both awesome, and unsustainable.


I just get Live emails.


----------



## Casper Parks

Aaron Pogue said:


> We have a Facebook page now!
> 
> https://www.facebook.com/pages/Draft2Digital/341297015982331
> 
> The best thing our users can do to help support Draft2Digital is spread the word. This is just one more way to do that.
> 
> If you like D2D, please drop by and click the button to that effect.
> 
> Thanks!


People are posting good things in Google Plus about Draft2Digital...

I cannot find D2D there with a personal page.


----------



## N. Gemini Sasson

High marks to D2D for ease of upload! I've been in the process this week of migrating books to D2D. The first two books which I uploaded early in the week only took a day or two to show up on B&N and Kobo. Two sales on B&N already.  The TOCs came out nice and functional and the formatting looks very clean. Just uploaded three more today, with one last one to go next week as soon as it comes out of Select.

Just waiting on Apple. _ZzzzZzzzZzzz..._

Thanks to the D2D team for making the site so easy to navigate and the conversion process so painless.


----------



## djnash

Yup, still waiting on iSlow here too after a week. I see some have been waiting longer than this, so not too worried just yet. No sales yet, but that's what you get when you upload book 2 before book 1 (Select expires in 6 days) 

One thing though, not too sure what it's about, but when I got the two confirmation emails for Nook and Kobo, I noticed something...

Here is the status of this book at all sales channels selected by you:

Apple Submitted to Distributor on *March 2, 2013, 1:24 p.m*.
*Barnes & Noble Published* on March 2, 2013, 2:49 p.m.
Kobo Submitted to Distributor on March 2, 2013, 5:10 a.m.

Then...

Here is the status of this book at all sales channels selected by you:

Apple Submitted to Distributor on *March 3, 2013, 3:33 p.m*.
Barnes & Noble Published on March 2, 2013, 2:49 p.m.
*Kobo Published* on March 5, 2013, 4:40 p.m.

Weird.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

I went live on the 8th on Apple after posting on the 25th. I did not use D2D, but they are running very slowly right now. 11-12 days for me...


----------



## DRMarvello

djnash said:


> One thing though, not too sure what it's about, but when I got the two confirmation emails for Nook and Kobo, I noticed something...


If the difference in the Apple submission dates bothers you, you can always ask Kris about it. But my guess is that Apple bounced the book for something D2D was capable of fixing for you. They probably fixed the issue and resubmitted without rattling your cage about it.

If you uploaded a Word doc, its possible that your book contained something that revealed a weakness in their conversion to EPUB. Apple rejected it, they saw and fixed the problem, and resubmitted your book. I'm just guessing here, but I can attest that sequence of events would be typical during a beta period.


----------



## CoraBuhlert

Apple is just slow, period. I just got the "Your book has been published mail" for one of my titles after more than a week.


----------



## djnash

It doesn't really bother me, it's just an interesting curiosity. I did consider if it was something that needed fixing and D2D took care of it, but I did upload my own ePub file.


----------



## Guest

Is there a way to de-activate the chapter link creation when you upload your book? Because mine ends up completely garbled.


----------



## Cherise

I tried this out today! I can't use what it generated. Please have an option for non-fiction books where it doesn't say:

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.


Also, for anthologies, don't make it say:

Written by (author name)


On the copyright page, add:

All rights reserved.


----------



## Richardcrasta

A question that concerns me about payments from Kobo and any other affiliate sales.
Kobo has a policy of not paying to WritingLife members until your royalty balance reaches $100 (mine has been stuck at $60 for over 2 weeks, and I hate that).
Now that I have already had a few sales on Kobo through D2D, I wanted to know if they pay you right away, and if you in turn pay us on the 15th of the month following, or what the policy is.
Thanks.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Richardcrasta said:


> A question that concerns me about payments from Kobo and any other affiliate sales.
> Kobo has a policy of not paying to WritingLife members until your royalty balance reaches $100 (mine has been stuck at $60 for over 2 weeks, and I hate that).
> Now that I have already had a few sales on Kobo through D2D, I wanted to know if they pay you right away, and if you in turn pay us on the 15th of the month following, or what the policy is.
> Thanks.


Draft2Digital gets paid on approximately the same delay as WritingLife users, but they get to count all their users' royalties against that balance so they should receive a payment every month. (This applies to all the other vendors, too.)

So if you use D2D, your concern wouldn't be with WritingLife's $100 threshold, but D2D's threshold on your account. It can differ based on payment method, but for most users, the D2D payment threshold is $10. Once you have $10 in royalties due (combined across all books and all sales channels), you'll get paid.

That is to say (as you guessed) you'll get paid by the 15th of the month following the month when we receive royalty payments. So if you made sales in February that Kobo reports in March and sends out payments for at the end of April, you should get paid by D2D at the beginning of May.


----------



## Cherise

Success!

I just uploaded Draft to Digital ePUB book and ePUB preview files directly to Apple! 

I got around my non-fiction troubles by not letting Draft to Digital make my title page or my copyright page. I labeled these as such and let them go into the table of contents as such.

I'm very happy to use this free file conversion service!


----------



## Lisa J. Yarde

On freebies, I've been able to track free downloads via iTunes. Has anyone offered a freebie using D2D on Kobo? Were you able to track freebies there, as opposed to Kobo direct where you can't track them at all? Thanks.


----------



## Herc- The Reluctant Geek

Has anyone used D2D for distributing to Amazon. I'm wondering if you can add the D2D publications to Authro central, and if you do, can you still edit decriptions through D2D?


----------



## 41419

The publishing times for Barnes & Noble seem to have improved considerably. A (french!) book I published yesterday went live in 2 hours and 48 minutes. Seriously impressive. Even more impressive was that a new file was uploaded this morning (correcting some errors Apple flagged), and that went live on B&N in about 30 minutes. 

I don't know how they do it, but I like it. Presumably, price changes would go through just as quickly, but you would need to test yourself. I'll play with that when I try to engineer a free run via Apple in a few weeks. One of the potential stumbling blocks to getting the book back to the paid side on Amazon quickly enough to matter will be both how quickly those price changes take effect at Apple and Barnes & Noble (the latter is important because D2D won't push the free price out to B&N, but 99c instead - so if Apple changes quickly and B&N doesn't, your book will go back to paid, but will probably get price-matched to that 99c price). I'll report back.

One potential wrinkle I noticed: when you go back to edit a file, the search terms (keywords) aren't saved. What I don't know is whether the system is recording them or not. As far as I know, Kobo don't use the keywords (because that path leads to a functioning search system!) but the others do (and Kobo may well do in the future) so it would be good to know.


----------



## M.A. Thomas

Jumping in here to say that I'm hopelessly, head over heals in LOVE with D2D. Moving my books to D2D has been one of the best decisions I have made. I have zero complaints.

I have a crush on them, seriously 

Here's what I love:

User-friendly dashboard
Quick publication turnaround
Friendly and fast customer service

And no, they haven't paid me to write this.  I just love them. I'm planning on moving all of my books to D2D and will also be using them to distribute to Createspace.


----------



## AnitaDobs

Just figured I'd put some royalty breakdowns from D2D up here as I just got my csv and it's actually less than what was previously mentioned on this thread, which is no ones fault but my own lack of decent math.

2.99 = $1.65 royalty (less than the 1.78 previously thought.. boo  but oh well)

4.99 = $2.75 Royalty

7.99 = $4.41 Royalty

I don't have any 3.99 or 5.99 titles so someone else can chime in with those figures if they've got 'em.

edit: Forgot I have a 6.99 = $3.86 royalty.

2nd edit: These are all B&N figures ...


----------



## Victoria Champion

Different distributors pay different royalties, so would be different or same for others based on various factors.


----------



## AnitaDobs

Victoria Champion said:


> Different distributors pay different royalties, so would be different or same for others based on various factors.


Ah, ya, I should have mentioned they are all B&N. I forgot about that.

edit: edited the above to make it clearer.

1.78 is amazon & Kobo??


----------



## Harriet Schultz

I just went through the publishing process with D2d for my second novel and it was a joy compared to the same experience for the first one with Smashwords. 

Kris was super responsive on fixing glitches in formatting that impacted the final product and wrote back personally within hours vs. the days it took to get someone in customer service at Smashwords to do the same. And I was able to review the epub version within five minutes or less of uploading the book's file.

In addition to the ease of doing this, I didn't have to pay someone to format my mss. to Smashword's arcane specifications and I'll be able to track sales in a much more timely way. So far this is all good. I hope it can stay that way.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

If you've enjoyed publishing through Draft2Digital, you can help spread the word on your website using logos and links from the new media page:

https://www.draft2digital.com/media/

Thanks to everyone who's left feedback on this thread. I continue to monitor all of it on behalf of the developers, and we're pursuing some exciting changes based on your comments. Keep 'em coming!


----------



## Victoria Champion

AnitaDobs said:


> Ah, ya, I should have mentioned they are all B&N. I forgot about that.
> 
> edit: edited the above to make it clearer.
> 
> 1.78 is amazon & Kobo??


At $2.99, Amazon, Kobo, and iTunes pay 70% royalties. Now, at Amazon, the amount received varies by a few cents or more depending on bandwidth download fee per sale (based on ebook file size and geographic region of sale). So, as far as d2D goes, check this:

https://www.draft2digital.com/pricing/

My royalty on a $2.99 book at iTunes via d2D, is $1.78.

Edited to add: This is basically the same royalty as AllRomance eBooks/OmniLit (60%).


----------



## Sara Fawkes

I'm looking forward to trying D2D this weekend for my own series. When I first release AHW or any of the sequels, I didn't bother going through SW because:

1) They tend to reject serials like mine on the (misguided) principle that such things don't sell 
2) I hate the fact that it can take MONTHS to get onto iTunes, the only major store I don't go direct through

I've played some with the D2D interface and love it, but the real test will be publishing. Can't wait to try it out!!


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Having some difficulty with the TOC and scene breaks but Sean is working on it. I have several more books to upload over the next month so I hope this works out. 

Hey, just noticed the new animated icons.


----------



## Casper Parks

Aaron Pogue said:


> If you've enjoyed publishing through Draft2Digital, you can help spread the word on your website using logos and links from the new media page:
> 
> https://www.draft2digital.com/media/
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's left feedback on this thread. I continue to monitor all of it on behalf of the developers, and we're pursuing some exciting changes based on your comments. Keep 'em coming!


I put up the logo at my site as a show of support. I was reluctant because it read "Published by D2D". "Distributed by D2D" sounds better.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Casper Parks said:


> I put up the logo at my site as a show of support. I was reluctant because it read "Published by D2D". "Distributed by D2D" sounds better.


Thanks, Casper. You're right about the wording. I've asked the developers to change the text on those images. Shouldn't take long.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Aaron Pogue said:


> Thanks, Casper. You're right about the wording. I've asked the developers to change the text on those images. Shouldn't take long.


This is a small change and awesome.


----------



## Casper Parks

Aaron Pogue said:


> Thanks, Casper. You're right about the wording. I've asked the developers to change the text on those images. Shouldn't take long.


Thanks...


----------



## Aaron Pogue

I mentioned this briefly last week, but Draft2Digital now has an official presence on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/Draft2Digital

And (new) on Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/Draft2Digital

They should eventually have a blog on the D2D website, too, but that's probably way down the line. Improving the distribution service is still higher priority than developing communication channels.

In the meantime, if you're a frequenter of Facebook or Twitter, I recommend signing up to one of those pages to get updates and news concerning the service, since they're going to be somewhat official. I'll try to post all the most important stuff here, too, but it'll be easier to find the signal through the noise on one of those feeds.

(Also: Last time I posted about Facebook, Casper pointed out that we should have a Google+ page, too. That hasn't happened yet, but I'll see what I can do.)


----------



## Richardcrasta

dgaughran said:


> One potential wrinkle I noticed: when you go back to edit a file, the search terms (keywords) aren't saved. What I don't know is whether the system is recording them or not. As far as I know, Kobo don't use the keywords (because that path leads to a functioning search system!) but the others do (and Kobo may well do in the future) so it would be good to know.


Don't know if this is a problem or not, but I hope that, as with most other platforms, when you return to edit a book, you don't need to re-insert keywords or any other information that you are not saving . . . even if it appears blank.

I'm taking care of the copyright page problem (nonfiction) by inserting my own copyright page.

Great service. How often are sales updated on the D2D dashboard, and at what time approximately? Are there 1-2 day delays?


----------



## 31842

dgaughran said:


> Presumably, price changes would go through just as quickly, but you would need to test yourself.


Just did a price change and it was up on all the sites within 48 hours. I also noticed that when I set my price to $0.00, Amazon did a price match within two weeks without anyone reporting the lower price. It just happened. I'm very pleased!


----------



## sgroyle

KateDanley said:


> Just did a price change and it was up on all the sites within 48 hours. I also noticed that when I set my price to $0.00, Amazon did a price match within two weeks without anyone reporting the lower price. It just happened. I'm very pleased!


Could you explain how you set your price to zero? Did you do that through D2D? And if so what channel did you use? Sorry for all the questions but really interested to know how as I want to do the same for one of my books.


----------



## 31842

sgroyle said:


> Could you explain how you set your price to zero? Did you do that through D2D? And if so what channel did you use? Sorry for all the questions but really interested to know how as I want to do the same for one of my books.


Sure! I distributed my book to Kobo and iTunes via Draft2Digital. I already had it listed on Amazon and B&N, so I left those just the way they were. On Draft2Digital, I just listed the price at $0.00 and voila!


----------



## sgroyle

KateDanley said:


> Sure! I distributed my book to Kobo and iTunes via Draft2Digital. I already had it listed on Amazon and B&N, so I left those just the way they were. On Draft2Digital, I just listed the price at $0.00 and voila!


Wow - that is very cool; especially with D2D's lightening speed - this may be just a tiny breakthrough; thanks for your help .


----------



## Aaron Pogue

dgaughran said:


> One potential wrinkle I noticed: when you go back to edit a file, the search terms (keywords) aren't saved. What I don't know is whether the system is recording them or not. As far as I know, Kobo don't use the keywords (because that path leads to a functioning search system!) but the others do (and Kobo may well do in the future) so it would be good to know.





Richardcrasta said:


> Don't know if this is a problem or not, but I hope that, as with most other platforms, when you return to edit a book, you don't need to re-insert keywords or any other information that you are not saving . . . even if it appears blank.
> 
> ...
> 
> Great service. How often are sales updated on the D2D dashboard, and at what time approximately? Are there 1-2 day delays?


There was a quirk to the user interface that sometimes allowed authors to save a book page without saving the search terms (which is almost certainly what happened to David). The developers fixed that issue this week, so going forward, everyone's search terms should be saved and applied correctly.

For most sales channels, Draft2Digital updates sales reports every hour. Apple updates every day.


----------



## FranceBarnaby

Is there a process for switching all your current titles from SW to D2D? Has anyone done this? How painful or painless is the process. I have 8 titles and would to switch them all over. I just find SW too frustrating to work with.


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

Just upload them to D2D then once they're up at Apple, you can remove them from Smashwords. It can take Apple a while to get to things though, so the best thing is to just leave the Smashwords copy until it's live from D2D.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

*Announcement: International Direct Deposit!*
This has been in the works for a while, but now it's official:

Draft2Digital is proud to announce direct deposit (via wire transfer) to international users! Just visit your dashboard and go to *My Account | Manage Payment Options*, and provide your bank routing information.

Like most other payment methods, you must meet a minimum threshold of $10 in order to receive payment.

Try it out. Let me know how it works.

*Questions: Coupon Codes*
Now that that's done, the developers are looking into offering coupon codes. Bear in mind that Draft2Digital does not currently act as a storefront, so the only coupon value they could offer is "Free," but you could create multi-use coupons for short-term promotions, or keep the codes private to share free copies of your book with your writing group or book reviewers.

These all sound like valuable uses to us, but we want to know how _you_ would use coupon codes. What features would you want to see? What pitfalls do you want us to avoid? We haven't actually tested any other providers' coupon feature (with the exception of Amazon gifts), so we would welcome feedback from those of you who have.


----------



## Sharebear

FranceBarnaby said:


> Is there a process for switching all your current titles from SW to D2D? Has anyone done this? How painful or painless is the process. I have 8 titles and would to switch them all over. I just find SW too frustrating to work with.


I was wondering this too. Also will I lose all my reviews?


----------



## DRMarvello

Aaron Pogue said:


> *Questions: Coupon Codes*
> Now that that's done, the developers are looking into offering coupon codes. Bear in mind that Draft2Digital does not currently act as a storefront, so the only coupon value they could offer is "Free," but you could create multi-use coupons for short-term promotions, or keep the codes private to share free copies of your book with your writing group or book reviewers.
> 
> These all sound like valuable uses to us, but we want to know how _you_ would use coupon codes. What features would you want to see? What pitfalls do you want us to avoid? We haven't actually tested any other providers' coupon feature (with the exception of Amazon gifts), so we would welcome feedback from those of you who have.


YAY COUPONS! How's that for feedback?

For my purposes, what you propose would be perfect. One of the only reasons I would consider listing with SW at this point would be so I could offer coupons for giveaway promotions.

I'm sure others will disagree with me, but I also think D2D should stay out of the retail business. Focus on your core business (distribution), and do it better than anyone else. A storefront positions you in competition with your customers (who are retailers, not authors), and it dilutes your limited technical resources. Just look at what has happened at Smashwords: Everyone is clamoring for web site updates and improvements to the online store interface, when the fact is that 90% of their income (according to Mark himself) is on the distribution side. Stay focused on what you do best, and keep doing it better than anyone else.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

I'll echo yay coupons. I have reasons for wanting to be able to give away free one-use codes, and I currently cannot. If D2D could handle this need for me, I'd be happy.

I'd like to see multiple types of coupon codes:

1) One-use codes that are valid until a set date (or until deactivated)
2) Limited-use codes that are valid until a certain number of uses have occurred, or a set date passes (or until deactivated)
3) Multi-use codes that are valid until a set date (or until deactivated) 

All three of these have value. (Think reviewers, social media promos, free sale periods, etc.)


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Mathew Reuther said:


> 2) Limited-use codes that are valid until a certain number of uses have occurred, or a set date passes (or until deactivated)


I'd love this option. Set up a promotion or giveaway or a request for reviews and let it run until a set number of books is out there. And everyone knows limited supply increases demand (and increased demand enhances perceived value).


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Casper Parks said:


> I put up the logo at my site as a show of support. I was reluctant because it read "Published by D2D". "Distributed by D2D" sounds better.


Casper, this is now fixed. You can get the new images from the Media Kit page. Thanks so much for showing your support!



Mathew Reuther said:


> I'll echo yay coupons. I have reasons for wanting to be able to give away free one-use codes, and I currently cannot. If D2D could handle this need for me, I'd be happy.
> 
> I'd like to see multiple types of coupon codes:
> 
> 1) One-use codes that are valid until a set date (or until deactivated)
> 2) Limited-use codes that are valid until a certain number of uses have occurred, or a set date passes (or until deactivated)
> 3) Multi-use codes that are valid until a set date (or until deactivated)
> 
> All three of these have value. (Think reviewers, social media promos, free sale periods, etc.)


All of that is very doable. There'll probably be a new "Manage Coupons" page where you can view how many uses a given coupon has, how many have been used up so far, set the expiration date, and deactivate it.


----------



## Mathew Reuther

Saul Tanpepper said:


> I'd love this option. Set up a promotion or giveaway or a request for reviews and let it run until a set number of books is out there. And everyone knows limited supply increases demand (and increased demand enhances perceived value).


My thought was that these were good for driving social media engagement.


----------



## djnash

My book has just gone live at iTunes. It took 13 days, but here's the thing... I originally uploaded my own ePub, but this evening I used the D2D tool on a .doc version. It updated on Nook in about 45 minutes and lo and behold, the new D2D version went up on the iBookstore after a couple of hours.

I think there must have been something in the ePub I uploaded that Apple didn't like.

Firestone runs out of Select in 8 hours.

Honestly, use the D2D formatting option. It rocks.


----------



## DRMarvello

Aaron Pogue said:


> All of that is very doable. There'll probably be a new "Manage Coupons" page where you can view how many uses a given coupon has, how many have been used up so far, set the expiration date, and deactivate it.


It will be interesting to see how they manage the public UI. Right now, there isn't one. Allowing readers to download a book means there's some kind of public-facing product catalog with a way to "order" a specific book (however loosely that gets implemented) using the coupon. That's two of the three major pieces of a storefront (product catalog/order management/payment processing). Sounds like a fair amount of work. Need help?


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

Aaron Pogue said:


> *Announcement: International Direct Deposit!*
> This has been in the works for a while, but now it's official:
> 
> Draft2Digital is proud to announce direct deposit (via wire transfer) to international users! Just visit your dashboard and go to *My Account | Manage Payment Options*, and provide your bank routing information.
> 
> Like most other payment methods, you must meet a minimum threshold of $10 in order to receive payment.
> 
> Try it out. Let me know how it works.


I went to my account page, gathered all the info and tried to fill in the form, but when I pressed submit, a lot of the information went blank with arrows that I had to fill in the information. I sent a screen shot to support, so I'll see what they make of it. Also, I have a W8BEN that I sent to Amazon, but Amazon required a 'reference number', and D2D didn't give any...


----------



## Lady Vine

AmsterdamAssassin said:


> I went to my account page, gathered all the info and tried to fill in the form, but when I pressed submit, a lot of the information went blank with arrows that I had to fill in the information. I sent a screen shot to support, so I'll see what they make of it. Also, I have a W8BEN that I sent to Amazon, but Amazon required a 'reference number', and D2D didn't give any...


I asked Kris if I could use my name as the reference, and he said that was fine.


----------



## Sara Fawkes

Alright, so earlier today I decided to follow the advice of several others and allow D2D to load all my front matter in automatically. I uploaded a .docx of JUST the story itself, minus any other formatting (homemade title page, TOC, copyright page etc), and let them do their work.   Wow, these guys make GREAT versions of the file!!  

I've had several people tell me that I should use the D2D .mobi file to upload onto Amazon, as it gets rid of the Paperwhite problems many readers have been having. Is it alright if we do this, or does D2D keep proprietary rights to their converted files a la Apple?


----------



## djnash

Sara Fawkes said:


> Alright, so earlier today I decided to follow the advice of several others and allow D2D to load all my front matter in automatically. I uploaded a .docx of JUST the story itself, minus any other formatting (homemade title page, TOC, copyright page etc), and let them do their work.  Wow, these guys make GREAT versions of the file!!
> 
> I've had several people tell me that I should use the D2D .mobi file to upload onto Amazon, as it gets rid of the Paperwhite problems many readers have been having. Is it alright if we do this, or does D2D keep proprietary rights to their converted files a la Apple?


It says on the site you are free to do what you want with the output files.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Sara Fawkes said:


> Alright, so earlier today I decided to follow the advice of several others and allow D2D to load all my front matter in automatically. I uploaded a .docx of JUST the story itself, minus any other formatting (homemade title page, TOC, copyright page etc), and let them do their work.  Wow, these guys make GREAT versions of the file!!


I'm not too fond of the way D2D does it, but it does make for a cleaner file. I'll probably go ahead and do that for the next one.


----------



## Casper Parks

Running free for a title with iTunes / iBooks through D2D. Anyone know if the free downloads will appear at D2D?


----------



## Hildred

djnash said:


> My book has just gone live at iTunes. It took 13 days, but here's the thing... I originally uploaded my own ePub, but this evening I used the D2D tool on a .doc version. It updated on Nook in about 45 minutes and lo and behold, the new D2D version went up on the iBookstore after a couple of hours.
> 
> I think there must have been something in the ePub I uploaded that Apple didn't like.
> 
> Firestone runs out of Select in 8 hours.
> 
> Honestly, use the D2D formatting option. It rocks.


FWIW all my titles are now taking 3-4 weeks to go through (using epubs.) But when I update backmatter and thus update the files, (again, epub) they go through in less than a day. I'm thinking Apple is just automatically taking file updates without really perusing them like they do new material.

And I know it's not D2D's fault, but uuuugh I hate waiting a MONTH on iTunes to go up. Even Kobo is up in less than a day now. (I upload there direct, but when I started in October it took them weeks on average to upload.)


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Casper Parks said:


> Running free for a title with iTunes / iBooks through D2D. Anyone know if the free downloads will appear at D2D?


Yes, free downloads are included in sales reports for iTunes. (They're _not_ currently reported for the other vendors, but will be soon.)

That used to cause problems for users with lots of free downloads, because it skewed the (paid) charts so much as to make the chart unusable. That can now be fixed by going to *My Sales | See All Sales Charts | Trends*, which now offers a dropdown option to include paid and free transactions in the chart, just paid, or just free.

They should be adding that level of control to the other charts early this week.


----------



## Casper Parks

Aaron Pogue said:


> Yes, free downloads are included in sales reports for iTunes. (They're _not_ currently reported for the other vendors, but will be soon.)
> 
> That used to cause problems for users with lots of free downloads, because it skewed the (paid) charts so much as to make the chart unusable. That can now be fixed by going to *My Sales | See All Sales Charts | Trends*, which now offers a dropdown option to include paid and free transactions in the chart, just paid, or just free.
> 
> They should be adding that level of control to the other charts early this week.


Thanks...


----------



## szaxe

Aaron Pogue said:


> *Questions: Coupon Codes*


Hi, I have spent a long time developing something for musicians, that play transposing instruments, that I consider unique. What I propose allows players to read and play to backing tracks on multiple platforms, from Iphone/Ipod/Kindle up to PC/Mac, etc using a *Single copy* of the *Score* and track regardless of the instruments key. I really can't elaborate as I haven't yet submitted a patent application (although I'm ready I want to source a market before starting the application/grace period ticking).

I have popped into the WC and asked for suggestions and although board members have been very friendly and helpful I haven't had a workable answer. Maybe because there isn't one, or at least not yet?

I would be surprised if I was alone in requiring a manner whereby I could sell/promote ebooks that allowed access to external interactive files, which mobi/epub ebooks don't support, and your question offers an answer, or at least if the codes were individual/unique to each ebook sold?

Anyhow, do you think it would be possible to have codes that are specific to a purchase? This would mean the code could limit the buyer to an allotted amount of, or period too, download files from a website.

Regards Szaxe.


----------



## szaxe

szaxe said:


> Anyhow, do you think it would be possible to have codes that are specific to a purchase?


Duh!!! What an idiot I am .... Just realised when the excitement wore off, when you distribute it it's out of your hands and as there is no physical copy it would again be at the mercy of Amazon or whoever to randomise the code 

Regards Szaxe.


----------



## Richardcrasta

Casper Parks said:


> Running free for a title with iTunes / iBooks through D2D. Anyone know if the free downloads will appear at D2D?


What I'm not clear is this: Does D2D allow differential pricing for different channels? I notice just one place to enter a price, whatever it is, and I thought it would apply to all the channels you were publishing on.

Yes, free downloads do appear at D2D--I did one on Apple. . . how? That was the only channel I published that title on. However, the sales reports don't distinguish between paid sales and free downloads. Am I right, Aaron? (It would be nice if this issue could be fixed!)


----------



## jdrew

I just went with D2D for my second book.  My first attempt didn't go so well, but I got a really quick response to my call for help and they got things straightened up on the first try.  Part of the issue was the intro material and the way I'd set up my chapters that might have been less than ideal for conversion.  Upload to B&N took next to nothing.  Still waiting on Apple which sounds normal from posts here.
So far this has been a good experience and I hope they continue to focus on distribution.  That's what I need as I'd much rather write more than spend all my time getting to the available distribution channels.  
I'm going to put up a D2D marker on my website tonight.
Thanks.


----------



## otterific

The first book I uploaded to D2D took two days to go live on Kobo and Apple. I've uploaded five others, and they all went live on Kobo within a few days, but still waiting on Apple after 8 days.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Apple has their own schedule and there's nothing d2D can do to affect that.

My blurb didn't update after I uploaded a new file and updated the blurb (for iTunes) and I contacted support and they were able to get Apple to update my blurb, so they can have some effect behind the scenes, I just don't they can get the publishing time of the file to go any faster.

Someone mentioned Apple might publish in batches and I think that seems to be the case.


----------



## N. Gemini Sasson

Just a heads up for those of you transitioning from SW to D2D. I uploaded my Word docs and had them converted for six books over about a week's time. They all looked great, btw. All books were up on B&N and Kobo within a day or two (with the exception of one that I uploaded right before a weekend).

Today I was adding Goodreads reviews to my Kobo book pages, when I suddenly discovered two of my titles were missing from Kobo. D2D Support answered me within hours. They suspect that because the ISBNs were the same that someone at Kobo accidentally took down the new D2D versions, too. Hopefully it will get sorted quickly, but I've been very impressed with support at D2D so far. They are AMAZING!

ETA: I should mention that I delisted from SW on the appropriate channels after they appeared at B&N and Kobo. All the B&N versions remained. The ISBNs were the same for SW and D2D, since I was just changing distributors and hadn't altered the books.

(Now, if Apple would just hurry up...)


----------



## DRMarvello

N. Gemini Sasson said:


> Today I was adding Goodreads reviews to my Kobo book pages, when I suddenly discovered two of my titles were missing from Kobo. D2D Support answered me within hours. They suspect that because the ISBNs were the same that someone at Kobo accidentally took down the new D2D versions, too.


That makes sense, as disturbing as it is. If Kobo deletes books based on ISBN and two books have the same ISBN, both books get deleted. This could be an ongoing problem unless Kobo does something on their end to fix it (like deleting by ISBN + distributor instead). Granted, D2D can probably just "re-push" the book info to get it back into Kobo, but that is attacking the symptom, not the problem.


----------



## N. Gemini Sasson

DRMarvello said:


> That makes sense, as disturbing as it is. If Kobo deletes books based on ISBN and two books have the same ISBN, both books get deleted. This could be an ongoing problem unless Kobo does something on their end to fix it (like deleting by ISBN + distributor instead). Granted, D2D can probably just "re-push" the book info to get it back into Kobo, but that is attacking the symptom, not the problem.


Just wanted to make sure everyone was aware it _can_ happen - although it didn't with my other four books. So check your listings as they go up and then double check them after they've been delisted from SW.

BTW, it has already been fixed, apparently. D2D is the bomb!


----------



## szaxe

OK, I have worked out how to use coupons if they become available. So could you tell me when and if these will be a feature of D2D?

I intend to have a website with separate Interactive DVD and PDF downloads, the two formats offered for the scrolling transposable sheetmusic

( which are set to the backing tracks with and without a lead instrument).

The Ebooks for the MasterMelody tutorial will be sold hopefully through the D2D options.

I realize now I can sell a package on my website that includes the tutorial with an option to buy the package discounted for any customer with 
a coupon from a separate ebook purchase.

Any one sharing the coupon code will not result in a free download, but only with an unwarranted discount (cheap advertising). Win win, as it would

be cheaper than what I intend paying affiliates.

Regards Szaxe.

P.s It might seem long winded, but it has always worried me that those buying an ebook on Amazon etc and coming to the website to buy music would feel cheated having bought the tutorial 
separately.


----------



## Anjasa

Is there any way to view more than 5 books at a time? It's, like, one of the only things I find to be very clunky about D2D is that sometimes I'm trying to quickly scan which books are published and which aren't, but it takes several clicks to go through my entire catelogue.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Anjasa said:


> Is there any way to view more than 5 books at a time? It's, like, one of the only things I find to be very clunky about D2D is that sometimes I'm trying to quickly scan which books are published and which aren't, but it takes several clicks to go through my entire catelogue.


Try going to https://www.draft2digital.com/book/?numItems=100.

The devs tell me that will eventually be a setting on the User Options page (once there is a User Options page), but for now that's the shortcut.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Aaron Pogue said:


> Try going to https://www.draft2digital.com/book/?numItems=100.
> 
> The devs tell me that will eventually be a setting on the User Options page (once there is a User Options page), but for now that's the shortcut.


Dude! I didn't even realize I wanted this until I tried it. Very nice. (I'm easily pleased)


----------



## szaxe

szaxe said:


> OK, I have worked out how to use coupons if they become available. So could you tell me when and if these will be a feature of D2D?


Hi Aaron any idea of the above please?

Regards Szaxe.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

szaxe said:


> Hi Aaron any idea of the above please?


Yep. Coupon codes are definitely on the agenda. The exact timeframe (like everything in this beta) is still up in the air.


----------



## szaxe

Aaron Pogue said:


> Yep. Coupon codes are definitely on the agenda. The exact timeframe (like everything in this beta) is still up in the air.


OK thanks, I'll keep an eye on the thread.

Regards Szaxe.


----------



## Anjasa

Aaron Pogue said:


> Try going to https://www.draft2digital.com/book/?numItems=100.
> 
> The devs tell me that will eventually be a setting on the User Options page (once there is a User Options page), but for now that's the shortcut.


Thanks so much!


----------



## djnash

Has anyone uploaded a book since last Friday (15th) and seen it go live on Kobo?

My first book went up in a couple of days, the second, I'm still waiting after 6. 

Thought I'd ask here before emailing D2D to see if its just me, or everyone.

Thanks.


----------



## 41419

I'm waiting 10 days now on an Apple book to go live - everything else published within expected parameters (1 day for Kobo/B&N, 1 week for Apple). I'm guessing the delay is down to it being a foreign language title, but we'll see.


----------



## djnash

Apple took 13 days for my first one. So I'm expecting that will be next week. I'm raising an eyebrow over Kobo though as 6 days seems a little long...


----------



## Gertie Kindle

djnash said:


> Has anyone uploaded a book since last Friday (15th) and seen it go live on Kobo?
> 
> My first book went up in a couple of days, the second, I'm still waiting after 6.
> 
> Thought I'd ask here before emailing D2D to see if its just me, or everyone.
> 
> Thanks.


I uploaded two books on the 16th and they have yet to go live on Kobo or Apple.


----------



## Mel Comley

I'm coming out of Select at the end of March, should I upload my files now to iTunes as it is taking a long time to publish or is that tempting fate?


----------



## N. Gemini Sasson

Mel Comley said:


> I'm coming out of Select at the end of March, should I upload my files now to iTunes as it is taking a long time to publish or is that tempting fate?


Mel, it took exactly two weeks for my first two titles to show up at iTunes, so I think you'd be safe to start it at least a few days early.

As a note, I uploaded a Word doc to D2D - don't know if that makes a difference, but I do have one friend who submitted a professionally formatted e-pub and it was bounced back by Apple, so it will take her longer to get hers up, provided the formatter fixes the issue.

ETA: Books 3-5 took 12 days each to go live on iTunes. One more to go, but that one was a few days behind the others, as I had to wait for it to come out of Select.

***Mel, if you decided to get a jumpstart on uploading before leaving Select, I suppose you could just tick Apple when you upload, and then wait to add Kobo and B&N once your book is completely out of Select. You may want to check on the timeframe others have given for Apple here, in case there is some variation.


----------



## Richardcrasta

Much well-deserved praise for D2D's quality, service, speed, ease of use. I even saw some sales in my first 20 days . . . but am noticing a huge slowdown close to a freeze in the last 10-12 days, and am wondering whether I did something wrong D2D wise, or whether this has happened to others too. Is it because I started adding a "copyright page" (as I felt D2D's self-generated copyright page was too basic and didn't allow for disclaimers, a short "about the book" and a few quotes of "praise for the author"), or is it something else?


----------



## djnash

Day 8 of the great Kobo mystery. I emailed D2D on Wednesday and Kris replied within hours saying the had also noticed Kobo had stalled and that they had emailed them about it. At this rate Apple could well beat Kobo in this race


----------



## Gertie Kindle

djnash said:


> Day 8 of the great Kobo mystery. I emailed D2D on Wednesday and Kris replied within hours saying the had also noticed Kobo had stalled and that they had emailed them about it. At this rate Apple could well beat Kobo in this race


I was really looking forward to seeing how Kobo did for me. When I was with SW, Kobo far outsold the other outlets.


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

I can't speak for D2D, but I know when I started to go to Kobo Direct, sales roughly doubled compared to Smashwords.


----------



## Casper Parks

Running free promo at iTunes. Kobo hasn't updated to free. Figured it was on Kobo's end for the delay. Next book, I will use D2D again. Speaking of which, I must get back to work.


----------



## 41419

My French titles went live at Apple, so that's great.

Two possible wrinkles I noticed when I went back to change the price:

1. Keywords (Search terms) don't appear to be saved in the system. Or maybe they're saved in the system but don't display in the interface. Needs to be fixed.

2. Do you need to re-upload the cover when just changing price? If not, then the messaging on that page could be improved.


----------



## RedTash

So are we of consensus that 8 days or more to upload to Apple is to be expected?  I just booked an ad for April and I want to make sure I push through my price changes with enough time to spare.


----------



## 41419

RedTash said:


> So are we of consensus that 8 days or more to upload to Apple is to be expected? I just booked an ad for April and I want to make sure I push through my price changes with enough time to spare.


8 days is a fair average for publishing (assuming you don't fail EPUBCHECK - which you can test in advance). Price changes go through quicker. I just tested one a couple of hours ago to see how long it takes. I'll report back, but expect it only to take a day tops.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

One book is live on Kobo now. I uploaded the second book at the same time (the 16th) so I expect it to pop soon.


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

As I said in another thread I began using D2D last week for Apple and Barnes. Three days later, I had a look at the accounts page to update the biography and pic etc, and noticed my very first Nook sale. Awwww, makes me all warm and tingly...


----------



## RedTash

dgaughran said:


> 8 days is a fair average for publishing (assuming you don't fail EPUBCHECK - which you can test in advance). Price changes go through quicker. I just tested one a couple of hours ago to see how long it takes. I'll report back, but expect it only to take a day tops.


Thanks, DG. I'm on day 8 for one of my submissions. I know it passed epub check the 2nd time.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

dgaughran said:


> Two possible wrinkles I noticed when I went back to change the price:
> 
> 1. Keywords (Search terms) don't appear to be saved in the system. Or maybe they're saved in the system but don't display in the interface. Needs to be fixed.
> 
> 2. Do you need to re-upload the cover when just changing price? If not, then the messaging on that page could be improved.


1. Those are both worth mentioning, David. As I understand it, there used to be a bug that kept keywords from getting saved under some circumstances. That should be fixed now (and they should _definitely_ show up whenever you go back to that page). If you don't have any keywords, trying putting them back in, saving the form, and then make sure they stick around. If they don't, that's something Customer Service needs to know about.

2. The cover image issue is just a matter of feedback. You don't need to re-upload the cover every time you change a setting, but you're right that the UI leaves that unclear. This is a known issue, and the devs are working on a fix.


----------



## djnash

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> One book is live on Kobo now. I uploaded the second book at the same time (the 16th) so I expect it to pop soon.


I'm *still* waiting for Kobo (uploaded on 15th) and I used D2D's conversion process. I have no idea what's going on and I'm getting grumpy


----------



## 41419

RedTash said:


> Thanks, DG. I'm on day 8 for one of my submissions. I know it passed epub check the 2nd time.


Ok, both books went free on Apple. So it took some time between 2 and 5 hours. Can't be more exact 



Aaron Pogue said:


> 1. Those are both worth mentioning, David. As I understand it, there used to be a bug that kept keywords from getting saved under some circumstances. That should be fixed now (and they should _definitely_ show up whenever you go back to that page). If you don't have any keywords, trying putting them back in, saving the form, and then make sure they stick around. If they don't, that's something Customer Service needs to know about.


They appeared to have saved this time. If it happens again, I'll report it.


----------



## Sara Fawkes

Does anyone know how long it's taking nowadays to get books through onto Apple? I have some readers really itching for the iTunes release (uploaded it to D2D on the 16th), and I'd like to know how far in advance I should load my next book to perhaps get a similar release date to the rest of my stuff...


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Sara Fawkes said:


> Does anyone know how long it's taking nowadays to get books through onto Apple? I have some readers really itching for the iTunes release (uploaded it to D2D on the 16th), and I'd like to know how far in advance I should load my next book to perhaps get a similar release date to the rest of my stuff...


I uploaded two books on the 16th as well and they haven't been picked up by Apple, yet. One showed up on Kobo, but not the other one.


----------



## N. Gemini Sasson

Sara Fawkes said:


> Does anyone know how long it's taking nowadays to get books through onto Apple? I have some readers really itching for the iTunes release (uploaded it to D2D on the 16th), and I'd like to know how far in advance I should load my next book to perhaps get a similar release date to the rest of my stuff...


Sara, I submitted my last book via D2D on March 11th and it showed up on Apple on the 23rd. For each of my 6 books it took 12 - 14 days.

For B&N and Kobo, it took anywhere from the same day to 4 days (uploaded just before a weekend, I think), but usually it was 1 to 2 days for either.


----------



## N. Gemini Sasson

Just a suggestion for Aaron to pass along - perhaps add a shortcut to price change? 

I went to change the price on one of my books temporarily and had to go through all of the editing/converting pages before I got to the one which asks for the price. (Or am I missing something?) As this is something that authors will want to do occasionally in order to run sales, it would streamline the process immeasurably. Thanks!

Also, can anyone tell me how long price changes are taking to go through to the various retailers? I'll need to change the price again next month, as I couldn't get a BookBub ad booked until then.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

N. Gemini Sasson said:


> Just a suggestion for Aaron to pass along - perhaps add a shortcut to price change?
> 
> I went to change the price on one of my books temporarily and had to go through all of the editing/converting pages before I got to the one which asks for the price. (Or am I missing something?) As this is something that authors will want to do occasionally in order to run sales, it would streamline the process immeasurably. Thanks!
> 
> Also, can anyone tell me how long price changes are taking to go through to the various retailers? I'll need to change the price again next month, as I couldn't get a BookBub ad booked until then.


That's a good suggestion. You can speed things up a _little bit_ once you get to the Edit Book page by clicking the "Publishing" arrow at the top. That'll skip past the acquisitions and layout steps and let you just modify the sales channels and pricing.

Still, that's not at all obvious. I'll discuss other options with the devs.


----------



## Colin Taber

I had a pretty good experience with my recent upload on D2D.

I was live on B&N same day, much to my surprise, with a few sales quickly following.

Kobo took a day or two more, while Apple went live 12 days after my upload.

I've now had sales across all channels.  

I do like the interface.


----------



## jdrew

War Party went live at Kobo today, submitted D2D back on March 17.  Went live at B&N same day.  Still waiting on Apple.  Based on the discussion here that is no surprise. At this point D2D still seems like the best bet for me to hit multiple channels.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

March Madness hit Kobo this morning. I'm surprised it took so long as I uploaded that and Ring Out the Old on the same day and the latter popped on Kobo last week. Now just waiting on Apple.


----------



## Harriet Schultz

tkkenyon said:


> Hi Aaron, et al,
> 
> Just uploaded my first book via D2D, and the experience was great.
> 
> I just have a quick question: I notice that you can't set the B&N price to "free," though you can for Apple and Kobo. I'm trying to get this book perma-free everywhere, as it is the first installation of a series. How come?
> 
> TK Kenyon


I had the same question and D2D told me that B&N won't let them set prices to free and that perhaps that will change when they upload more and more books there. It's a B & N policy, not D2Ds. Annoying, however. I kept my perma-free short on Smashwords just for B & N because of this.


----------



## djnash

Are free book sales reported on D2D along with paid sales?


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Both books are now on all three outlets. Yay!


----------



## jdrew

War Party went up at Apple last night.  Seems about normal based on everyone else's experience.
About B&N and no freebies, will they allow budget prices like $.99 or maybe $.59?  I'm guessing so but don't remember seeing any specific examples.  I might have missed them.


----------



## Harriet Schultz

Has anyone else had D2D publish a book to Apple that was previously sent there by Smashwords? 

Legacy of the Highlands has reviews, also bought bys, etc. and the D2D upload of the novel to Apple doesn't include these.  In fact, there are now two versions of my book on Apple! I'll "opt out" of the one on Smashwords, but it's frustrating that the novel now looks unread and unrated on Apple more than a year after it was published. 

D2D says they can't fix this. Has anyone found a way to do so, perhaps through Apple?


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Just published a third book on D2D. I think I'm finally getting the hang of it.


----------



## Lady Vine

Has anyone else noticed something odd going on with the reporting at D2D? Today I've just had about 30 new sales show up for last month. It's all over the place at the moment. The numbers aren't adding up.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Lady Vine said:


> Has anyone else noticed something odd going on with the reporting at D2D? Today I've just had about 30 new sales show up for last month. It's all over the place at the moment. The numbers aren't adding up.


What you're probably seeing is a temporary glitch in the real-time reporting. (Glitches like that won't ever affect your payments--those are generated from royalty statements provided by the distributors, not off the calculated real-time sales data.)

In this case, it would likely be caused by the developers tinkering with the database queries because they're trying to add real-time royalty estimates to the sales reporting. I think that'll be a welcome addition once it's final.


----------



## Lady Vine

Aaron Pogue said:


> What you're probably seeing is a temporary glitch in the real-time reporting. (Glitches like that won't ever affect your payments--those are generated from royalty statements provided by the distributors, not off the calculated real-time sales data.)
> 
> In this case, it would likely be caused by the developers tinkering with the database queries because they're trying to add real-time royalty estimates to the sales reporting. I think that'll be a welcome addition once it's final.


Ahh, okay, cheers.


----------



## Dan Harris

Something's definitely gone a bit funky with the reporting; my total sales number actually went down today, and doesn't match the graph underneath it


----------



## Gertie Kindle

This time, Kobo beat out B&N. Book 3 is live on Kobo less than 24 hours.


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

A quick update on my situation. It has been 9 days since I started with D2D and today the first of my books I uploaded as ePubs (out of 9) went live on Apple. Nine days is fast for apple I think. I once tried Lulu a long time ago and gave up after three weeks. All 9 went live on Barnes within a day or two as well. I am supremely pleased so far with D2D. 18 sales so far from Barnes. That's 18 I would never have seen because Barnes and Apple are both new markets to all my books


----------



## Mark Dawson

Aaron,

A quick question: when looking at the My Sales page I'm getting contradictory information. The total books sold overall reports 377 copies (which seems low), but when I drill down into the outlets I'm getting the numbers I would expect (B&N 482, Apple 122, etc). Why does the total not equal the sum of the stores? Am I missing something?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

The developers introduced a small reporting glitch late yesterday afternoon while working on their database queries. This glitch multiplies B&N sales reports in the overall totals without impacting the drill-down or the graphs.

It's a temporary problem and it will have no impact on the accuracy of your royalty payments. Still, we all apologize for any confusion it has caused.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Aaron, I've got an item on my wish list: Clicking on a book's bar in the sales graph takes you to the book's page (with the monthly sales graph).



Mark Dawson said:


> ...when I drill down into the outlets I'm getting the numbers I would expect (B&N 482, Apple 122, etc).


Nice sales, Mark!


----------



## Fictionista

Just hit "publish" about an hour ago, via D2D and I have to say, it's way too easy. If only everything in life were this easy.  

Anyway, moments later I received an email telling me that more information was needed from me for publishing to Createspace. Problem is, I wasn't intending to publish to Createspace at this time but think I may have forgotten to un-check that box before submitting my book. I replied to the email telling them that it was a mistake and am wondering how I would go about undoing the Createspace part of the publishing process?


----------



## Midnight Writer

*deleted*


----------



## Fictionista

Lanette Curington said:


> It is easy!
> 
> Just log into D2D, click the book title, then at the bottom click the Edit Book button.
> 
> You don't have to upload or put in all the info again. At the top are Acquisitions > Layout > Publishing
> 
> Click Publishing, and uncheck the retailers you don't want. Then check the Confirm box. And click Publish My Book!
> 
> That should do it.


Awesome! Just did it and it worked. Thanks so much!

For all the agonizing I've done leading up to this process, worrying about getting formatting correct on KDP, D2D has taken away every ounce of my stress. I'm a believer now.


----------



## Richardcrasta

Mighty pleased to be with D2D.

Just one small suggestion: could you have one option for a one-page sales view with titles on one side, months (Jan, Feb, Mar, etc.) on the other, and the total/month-to-date sales figure for each month. That way you get a comprehensive picture of all your titles at one go (provided you have 20 or less), and how they are doing individually and in comparison to the others over a time period of a few months to a year?

Thanks!


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

Obviously, there are other factors that could be responsible, but since moving to D2D with better formatting and stuff not being given away sales at Apple have roughly doubled.


----------



## henickebooks

I just started using Draft2Digital this week. The upload process was pretty painless compared to Smashwords and Apple's iConnect/iTunes Producer. It took two days to publish to Kobo. I had a problem uploading one of my titles directly to Apple, but no problem with D2D. I'll be glad when the add more vendors so I can stop using Smashwords.


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

henickebooks said:


> I just started using Draft2Digital this week. The upload process was pretty painless compared to Smashwords and Apple's iConnect/iTunes Producer. It took two days to publish to Kobo. I had a problem uploading one of my titles directly to Apple, but no problem with D2D. I'll be glad when the add more vendors so I can stop using Smashwords.


I guess you would mean Sony? I've never used Smashwords. Does the Sony channel really produce enough sales to make me go looking for a way into it?


----------



## ldenglish

Has anyone seen a slow-down with publishing to iTunes? I uploaded four books and the first three were on Apple in a matter of days, but the fourth (uploaded on the same day) is still "publishing" after 15 days.


----------



## Steve W.

markecooper said:


> I guess you would mean Sony? I've never used Smashwords. Does the Sony channel really produce enough sales to make me go looking for a way into it?


Just my two cents, with the caveat that I'm a total newbie and haven't put a title up for sale yet. But if you've made the decision not to sell exclusive on KDP, you should be in every sales channel. I'm going to give KDP a try, but if I decide not to keep them there at some point, I'm going to have my titles for sale in every digital market I can get into. If it's worth it for the bigger publishers to put their titles in there, it's worth it for the little publishers, and self publishers to do so too. That's just my opinion.

Cheers-


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

Sony & Diesel make up 6/10 of 1% of our sales.


----------



## Fictionista

Well so far the only place my Hearts in the City has gone live at is Barnes and Noble. I was actually surprised at how fast it was. I'm assuming that it's normal for Kobo and Apple to take a little longer...?


----------



## katiemoe

I just published 2 of 3 books on D2D (one book remains in KDP Select) and after working the format of the first epub file, I got the hang of it. I do Kobo and Barnes direct but wanted to use D2D for the apple platform. It would be great if they add Ingram at some point in the future.

I would not have found out about D2D had it not been for these boards, so thanks for everyone who have been discussing their experience with this service.


----------



## Anjasa

So sorry if this was already asked.

Apple is a bit peculiar about what they will and will not accept for erotica. Is it acceptable to have the same book listed twice with one copy going to B&N and the other going to Apple? The only difference would be the blurb.


----------



## jdrew

So far, I'd have to say I will continue to use D2D.  They actually work with authors to get books out there.
I see others have asked about expanding distribution channels - does D2D plan on doing that somewhere in the future for some of the smaller sales venues?
Second, I personally have not sold much yet through D2D.  Looks like others have, which is good.  I wonder where the breakeven point is for D2D.  Long term if you aren't making money, you'll disappear.  So, without getting into details, how goes it?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Anjasa said:


> Apple is a bit peculiar about what they will and will not accept for erotica. Is it acceptable to have the same book listed twice with one copy going to B&N and the other going to Apple? The only difference would be the blurb.


No problem at all.



jdrew said:


> I see others have asked about expanding distribution channels - does D2D plan on doing that somewhere in the future for some of the smaller sales venues?
> Second, I personally have not sold much yet through D2D. Looks like others have, which is good. I wonder where the breakeven point is for D2D. Long term if you aren't making money, you'll disappear. So, without getting into details, how goes it?


We're definitely working on other venues. During the beta, the developers' top priority is working out problems with the conversion, delivery, and accounting software, but as soon as that's rock solid, we plan to expand as quickly as possible.

As far as your second question goes (without getting into details), Draft2Digital has far surpassed all growth and income projections for its first quarter. I see no cause for concern there.


----------



## Casper Parks

Aaron Pogue said:


> No problem at all.
> 
> We're definitely working on other venues. During the beta, the developers' top priority is working out problems with the conversion, delivery, and accounting software, but as soon as that's rock solid, we plan to expand as quickly as possible.
> 
> As far as your second question goes (without getting into details), Draft2Digital has far surpassed all growth and income projections for its first quarter. I see no cause for concern there.


As D2D embarks on this journey, it is nice to have cleared the starting gate with them.


----------



## Anjasa

Thanks, Aaron!


----------



## Guest

I'd say the only thing I still have to figure out is how to get people to actually buy my stuff on B&N, Kobo and iTunes. I sold 500 copies on Amazon and 4 via D2D.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

If anyone's planning to go to the Writer's Digest East conference in New York City this weekend, stop by our booth!


----------



## Mel Comley

Hi Aaron, 

can you tell me if there's a glitch with the sales report? I've been with D2D almost 3 months now and never had a day without a sale. I uploaded 7 more books this week so expected more sales than usual, not less. I haven't had a sale for 3 days now.

I'm not complaining (well, maybe a little as I've left Select) but wanted to know if something was wrong at your end.

Anyone else's sales dried up or is it just me?


----------



## N. Gemini Sasson

Mine have slowed too, Mel. But I changed the price on my bestselling book from 99 cents back to $2.99, so I wasn't surprised by that.


----------



## Anjasa

Question!

Okay, I'm trying to make my own title page, however it's not recognizing the page break.

Right now in my doc file I have:

Title page

Disclaimer

Book Description


The title page and disclaimer are coming up on the same page, and then there's a blank page, then Book description.

I want title page /break/ disclaimer /break/ book description /break/.

Has anyone else had this problem? I use parentheticals for some of my books, and it sometimes causes the author's name to go on the second page using the D2D built in title page creator.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Anjasa said:


> Question!
> 
> Okay, I'm trying to make my own title page, however it's not recognizing the page break.
> 
> Right now in my doc file I have:
> 
> Title page
> 
> Disclaimer
> 
> Book Description
> 
> The title page and disclaimer are coming up on the same page, and then there's a blank page, then Book description.
> 
> I want title page /break/ disclaimer /break/ book description /break/.
> 
> Has anyone else had this problem? I use parentheticals for some of my books, and it sometimes causes the author's name to go on the second page using the D2D built in title page creator.


That's why I make my own title page. The only thing I let D2D generate is the TOC and Also By. The trouble with that is it picks up the title of the book as the first line in the TOC.


----------



## Mel Comley

Oops, my sales seem to have righted themselves, just had a few come though! Phew!


----------



## Jay Walken

Anjasa said:


> Question!
> 
> Okay, I'm trying to make my own title page, however it's not recognizing the page break.
> 
> Right now in my doc file I have:
> 
> Title page
> 
> Disclaimer
> 
> Book Description
> 
> The title page and disclaimer are coming up on the same page, and then there's a blank page, then Book description.
> 
> I want title page /break/ disclaimer /break/ book description /break/.
> 
> Has anyone else had this problem? I use parentheticals for some of my books, and it sometimes causes the author's name to go on the second page using the D2D built in title page creator.


Had the same problem. This is how I suggest you handle it.
Have "Title Page" "Description" and anything else you would like a separate page for in Heading1 style in .doc. Also all the chapter headings.
And make sure any subheadings are just bold and 12 point, not 14 or 16 point. D2D picks up every 16 pt line as a page title, and sometimes, I think, 14 pt too.

good luck!


----------



## Jay Walken

Mel Comley said:


> Hi Aaron,
> 
> can you tell me if there's a glitch with the sales report? I've been with D2D almost 3 months now and never had a day without a sale. I uploaded 7 more books this week so expected more sales than usual, not less. I haven't had a sale for 3 days now.
> 
> I'm not complaining (well, maybe a little as I've left Select) but wanted to know if something was wrong at your end.
> 
> Anyone else's sales dried up or is it just me?


Sales have slowed for me too, in April, dramatically.


----------



## Mel Comley

Thanks Jay, sorry to hear that, but also glad this hasn't only affected me.

I guess Aaron will drop in to answer us soon.


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> That's why I make my own title page. The only thing I let D2D generate is the TOC and Also By. The trouble with that is it picks up the title of the book as the first line in the TOC.


This is because you used the same style as your chapter headings for your title page probably Heading 1. It happens with mobi pocket and calibre too. I don't use D2D to create my ePubs, but it probably works the same way. My fix is this:

Highlight the title and change the style to normal. The title words will shrink. While still highlighted change the font size to the size you used as part of heading style 1 (I use 14pt garamond) and save the doc. When its converted, the title should still look big but will be ignored when the toc is built.


----------



## Anjasa

Jay Walken said:


> Had the same problem. This is how I suggest you handle it.
> Have "Title Page" "Description" and anything else you would like a separate page for in Heading1 style in .doc. Also all the chapter headings.
> And make sure any subheadings are just bold and 12 point, not 14 or 16 point. D2D picks up every 16 pt line as a page title, and sometimes, I think, 14 pt too.
> 
> good luck!


Thanks, Jay  I'll give that a try. For the body, D2D is amazing but for the other stuff it gets a bit pickier.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

markecooper said:


> This is because you used the same style as your chapter headings for your title page probably Heading 1. It happens with mobi pocket and calibre too. I don't use D2D to create my ePubs, but it probably works the same way. My fix is this:
> 
> Highlight the title and change the style to normal. The title words will shrink. While still highlighted change the font size to the size you used as part of heading style 1 (I use 14pt garamond) and save the doc. When its converted, the title should still look big but will be ignored when the toc is built.


Thank you so much. I will definitely try that.

SW's Meatgrinder is much easier, but D2D's end product is much better once you get the original doc right.

My only other problem is the scene breaks and here's the solution to that. Hope D2D gets it fixed, soon.

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,147106.msg2147662.html#msg2147662


----------



## katiemoe

I feel I had a great experience getting 2 books up to iTunes. I did have to work with the file (I'd let D2D do their conversion, then I downloaded the epub and work with it in Sigil, then upload the corrected file as an epub) and I had a sticky problem of Sigil - for some mysterious reason, was setting the version number on the content.opf file to 1.0 instead of 2.0 (and then iTunes was rejecting it) but the D2D support person was great to take a look and find that simple problem and then my two books breezed through easily.

I'm pleased to have found out about D2D through these boards.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Mel Comley said:


> I guess Aaron will drop in to answer us soon.


Sorry I took a couple days to answer. I was at the Writer's Digest conference, and it kept me busier than I ever expected.

It's probably already become clear, but you guys definitely weren't alone. I've seen a lot of writers talking about a slowdown in sales this last week (D2D users or not). The best guess I've heard for an explanation is that it's consumers tightening their belts as we head into crunch time for (US) tax filing. I'm hoping that means we'll see a bounceback after mid-April, when users start spending their tax returns on recreation.

There _was_ some kind of reporting glitch from B&N on Saturday when they provided us some low numbers, but that has now been corrected. All reports should be accurate at this point.


----------



## Steve Vernon

All right.

So I have just entered Flash Virus: Episode One into Draft2Digital - aimed at the i-Pad and the Nook.

I'll be adding other books just as soon as I can see that the first one cleared through all right.

Wish me luck, gang. I almost know what I'm doing...


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Words said:


> Are all three payment options available to authors outside of the US? (I'm in Canada.)


Yep! Take your pick.


----------



## Lady Vine

I don't know if anyone has posted on here about it already, but I thought I'd let people know. I got my first payment from D2D in the last couple of days. Yay! I'm in the UK and it was a direct transfer. Now things are still a little confusing with regards to which months the payments cover, and as my statements are in USD I'm not sure about the conversion rate. It would be ideal if we could get the converted amount in the statements, as most of us will need it for tax returns. 

But anyway, just letting you guys know that I've been paid by D2D. I know some people were waiting for us to mention this before they joined, so there it is.


----------



## 41419

I don't know if I was just lucky, or whether Apple or D2D have changed something but... I published three titles (from scratch, not changes), and they went live on Apple in around 8 hours - which is about 7 days quicker than usual!


----------



## Gertie Kindle

dgaughran said:


> I don't know if I was just lucky, or whether Apple or D2D have changed something but... I published three titles (from scratch, not changes), and they went live on Apple in around 8 hours - which is about 7 days quicker than usual!


Jealous!!!


----------



## otterific

I changed my prices today on one of my books for a promo coming up this weekend. I was hoping I didn't wait too long (using DSD for itunes and Kobo)They went through within a few hours. I also uploaded a new book two days ago, which went live in one day on itunes. The last time I uploaded a new title, it took 10 days for it to go live on itunes.


----------



## Maya Cross

Just double checking. If I upload an updated book file to D2D, it will push it through without the book being taken down for sale on B&N? Because I've got a ton of momentum going at the moment and I don't want to interrupt it.

Also, what sort of time frame should I be waiting for an Apple upload, before I start investigating? It's been nearly three weeks and it's still listed as 'publishing'.

Thanks!


----------



## Sophrosyne

I'm loving D2D. I couldn't get my epub through Sigil or Smashwords or Apple. Drove me crazy. Sent the doc to D2D, they did the epub conversion and I was published at Apple soon after. Which is amazing. Very fast. And well worth it for me. Much better than dealing with the headache that is Apple.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

My first sale through D2D!! I thought that counter was stuck on zero forever. I'm happy. Of course, by tomorrow, I'll be grumbling that it's not two!


----------



## Katherine Roberts

Ha, I've finally found my way to the Draft2Digital thread! 

I'm in the UK, just starting to put some of my books through d2d, and am delighted with the easy, smooth way they converted to epub - which is a new format for me.

A question: I've had 3 titles on their way into Kobo since 4th April but not published there yet - is this an unusual time to wait, or normal? My last book through them went into Apple within a day (which I gather is quite amazing!), but I've only used amazon's kdp before so not quite sure how things work in the world of epubs.

I'd also be interested in any tips for marketing at Kobo, Apple and Nook, since I'm pretty sure my d2d sales are still stuck on zero... I'll be getting all the links into my website soon, which might help a bit?


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Katherine Roberts said:


> Ha, I've finally found my way to the Draft2Digital thread!
> 
> I'm in the UK, just starting to put some of my books through d2d, and am delighted with the easy, smooth way they converted to epub - which is a new format for me.
> 
> A question: I've had 3 titles on their way into Kobo since 4th April but not published there yet - is this an unusual time to wait, or normal? My last book through them went into Apple within a day (which I gather is quite amazing!), but I've only used amazon's kdp before so not quite sure how things work in the world of epubs.
> 
> I'd also be interested in any tips for marketing at Kobo, Apple and Nook, since I'm pretty sure my d2d sales are still stuck on zero... I'll be getting all the links into my website soon, which might help a bit?


Mine went through D2D to Barnes within the 48 hours expected, but Apple took 8 or 9 days. I go Kobo direct which I found takes 3 or 4 days, but updates to the files I have no clue because I am still waiting arggggggg!


----------



## CoraBuhlert

Apple was really fast this time around. It took barely a day for the books to become available there.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

CoraBuhlert said:


> Apple was really fast this time around. It took barely a day for the books to become available there.


I'll have five more books going up this weekend. Hope that still holds true.


----------



## NRWick

I have to admit that even though I can easily go with iTunes on my own, and do, D2D is looking more and more appealing because I really LOATHE iTunes Producer and the process of submitting to iTunes. It's such a pain.


----------



## JumpingShip

I had uploaded one book last week to B&N and Apple. The B&N went through in less than 24 hours. Apple took about four days (the weekend fell in there) and then it was rejected because I forgot I had Amazon links to my other books in the back. I removed those, and uploaded it again and this time, it was accepted and live at Apple in about 4 hours. I was shocked!   I also submitted it through Kobo via D2D. Since I'm making it free, losing royalty wasn't an issue and it just seemed easier than trying to learn Kobo's layout. 

I just have to say that I am very impressed with the ease and simplicity of uploading via D2D.


----------



## Adam Poe

I clicked through a few (and read) a few pages of this massive thread but did not find this info.

What is the process to move books from Smashwords to D2D without causing downtime or loss of reviews/ratings?


----------



## 41419

Adam Poe said:


> I clicked through a few (and read) a few pages of this massive thread but did not find this info.
> 
> What is the process to move books from Smashwords to D2D without causing downtime or loss of reviews/ratings?


From the limited info I have (my own books and a couple of other authors), I can say that I didn't lose any reviews or ranking at Barnes & Noble, but did at Apple (and you will at Kobo too if you aren't going direct). In the case of Kobo, that's a known issue on the retailer side which they should have a fix for very soon. I have no idea at Apple, but had little sales/reviews/momentum there anyway.

As for the process, I fed out the D2D versions first, waited for them to appear (1 day for B&N), waiting for the editions to be merged (a couple of days for one book, a week or longer for the other), then switched off the Smashwords versions. Pretty painless.

Although I probably would have left things via Smashwords had they been doing well.


----------



## Adam Poe

dgaughran said:


> From the limited info I have (my own books and a couple of other authors), I can say that I didn't lose any reviews or ranking at Barnes & Noble, but did at Apple (and you will at Kobo too if you aren't going direct). In the case of Kobo, that's a known issue on the retailer side which they should have a fix for very soon. I have no idea at Apple, but had little sales/reviews/momentum there anyway.
> 
> As for the process, I fed out the D2D versions first, waited for them to appear (1 day for B&N), waiting for the editions to be merged (a couple of days for one book, a week or longer for the other), then switched off the Smashwords versions. Pretty painless.
> 
> Although I probably would have left things via Smashwords had they been doing well.


Thanks for the info, trying to decide if it is worth it or not yet. I'd rather not lose 28 ratings with a 4.5 average on Apple


----------



## Marti talbott

I would try it, but I still don't want a TOC in my books. Is there an opt out of that feature?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

dgaughran said:


> From the limited info I have (my own books and a couple of other authors), I can say that I didn't lose any reviews or ranking at Barnes & Noble, but did at Apple (and you will at Kobo too if you aren't going direct). In the case of Kobo, that's a known issue on the retailer side which they should have a fix for very soon. I have no idea at Apple, but had little sales/reviews/momentum there anyway.
> 
> As for the process, I fed out the D2D versions first, waited for them to appear (1 day for B&N), waiting for the editions to be merged (a couple of days for one book, a week or longer for the other), then switched off the Smashwords versions. Pretty painless.
> 
> Although I probably would have left things via Smashwords had they been doing well.


David's information tracks pretty closely with what we've seen at Draft2Digital. That's essentially what we'd recommend to users considering the transfer.

I'm encouraged to hear that Kobo has plans to improve things. It's a shame Apple doesn't.



Martitalbott said:


> I would try it, but I still don't want a TOC in my books. Is there an opt out of that feature?


We have plans to make it optional as soon as the devs can provide a User Options page, but there's a major complication: Apple requires the TOC. We'll have to disable Apple distribution for books without TOC (or _only_ add the TOC to the Apple version). Both methods are possible, but it'll take some work to figure out what's the best functionality.


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Putting my reader hat on for a moment, I have to say I prefer a TOC in the ebooks I buy. I sometimes re-read books and want to jump to a particular chapter. Also, I have never liked greyed out options in my reader. Menus that don't work annoy me even if I've never used them before. They make me think I'm missing something I guess.


----------



## N. Gemini Sasson

dgaughran said:


> From the limited info I have (my own books and a couple of other authors), I can say that I didn't lose any reviews or ranking at Barnes & Noble, ...
> 
> As for the process, I fed out the D2D versions first, waited for them to appear (1 day for B&N), waiting for the editions to be merged (a couple of days for one book, a week or longer for the other), then switched off the Smashwords versions. Pretty painless.


On my books, only one retained its reviews at B&N and remained linked to the paperback. Maybe what I did wrong was delisting from SW too quickly? I wonder if I listed them again briefly on SW, the reviews for those versions would reappear and eventually my D2D versions would be linked to the paperbacks Anyone else have this problem with B&N?


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

As a reader, I don't care so much about the html TOC, but if there's no NCX/"go to" TOC it really irks me.


----------



## Marti talbott

Apple accepts my books through Smashwords without a TOC. Have you tried one without? I'd be happy to give you one to try. The thing is, if they don't require a TOC from traditional publishers, Indie books are going to stick out like a sore thumb. In paperbacks/hard covers, very few fiction books have them and since the reader is automatically returned to the page they last read on an electrical device, I see no advantage. The last thing I want to do is name my chapters. Don't readers have a search function if they get lost in a book?

Ha, I have a Kindle, but I haven't seen it since my daughter helped me set it up. She loves it.


----------



## Anjasa

I was trying something new by making a clean .html file to upload, but when I try to put it up on D2D it says "File Type is Not Supported".



> What input formats do you support?
> The easiest and most popular format is a Word document. Upload your story in Word .doc or .docx format, and we'll convert it into an ebook. RTF, HTML, and Open Office's .odt should work fine, too. Anything Word can read, we can read.


Then sounds a bit vague, since Word can read/save in HTML format. Is there planned support for HTML docs?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Martitalbott said:


> Apple accepts my books through Smashwords without a TOC.


You're right. One of the developers corrected me on that this morning. Apple requires the TOC metadata, but not an actual HTML page (the embedded one). The only drawback would be for first-generation Kindles which don't support the metadata, and that's certainly worth leaving up to the author.

Given all that, it definitely seems like TOC should be optional endmatter just like all the others. I'll put that on the list.



Anjasa said:


> Is there planned support for HTML docs?


There definitely is. Contact Customer Support, and they should be able to get it resolved.


----------



## Anjasa

I probably have twenty posts in this thread saying the same thing, but:

Thanks, Aaron!


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Martitalbott said:


> Apple accepts my books through Smashwords without a TOC. Have you tried one without? I'd be happy to give you one to try. The thing is, if they don't require a TOC from traditional publishers, Indie books are going to stick out like a sore thumb. In paperbacks/hard covers, very few fiction books have them and since the reader is automatically returned to the page they last read on an electrical device, I see no advantage. The last thing I want to do is name my chapters. Don't readers have a search function if they get lost in a book?
> 
> Ha, I have a Kindle, but I haven't seen it since my daughter helped me set it up. She loves it.


I've read several trad pubbed books with TOC and they all have just the chapter numbers, "chapter one" or "Chapter 1"


----------



## Pamela

Thanks to Aaron Pogue! - The service is wonderful, fast, easy.  I added two books.  So much better than SW's horribly confusing formatting problems and meatgrinder process.  

I forgot about links in one novel.  I was informed about the problem in an email and edited the book.  It was up on B&N in just a few hours.


----------



## Marti talbott

Thanks, Aaron. When that TOC choice happens and when they are accepting new writers, please let me know. I would like to get paid monthly, as I am sure we all would.


----------



## Lady Vine

Apple has definitely sped up its process. My latest book was on sale about 18 hours after being submitted. 

Good luck with your erotica books, though. That wait's at least 10 days.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Lady Vine said:


> Apple has definitely sped up its process. My latest book was on sale about 18 hours after being submitted.
> 
> Good luck with your erotica books, though. That wait's at least 10 days.


Got you beat. I posted a book this afternoon and it's already up on Apple. That is fast.


----------



## Buttonman88

Did anyone ask about ISBNs?

D2D state that they do not provide ISBNs. Since I availed of the free Smashwords ISBNs and since ISBNS are required for Nook and iTunes, must I buy my own new ISBNs independently to publish through D2D to these sites?

I assume everyone who migrates from SW to D2D is being honest and not reusing their SW ISBNs since they are technically the property of SW.

So what should I do about ISBNs then Aaron?

Mike

*Edit:* Just checked and DUH! yes Apple and Nook recommend ISBNs but do not require them. Kobo also recommend but don't say if they require one. Anyone clarify Kobo for me?


----------



## Cherise

No one requires ISBNs anymore.


----------



## Buttonman88

Cherise Kelley said:


> No one requires ISBNs anymore.


They are HasBNS now eh Cherise!


----------



## CoraBuhlert

Some places still require ISBNs, e.g. most German e-book stores and some small US places like Bookstrand or Books on Board still want them. But all of the big players have moved away from ISBNs.


----------



## Cherise

Buttonman88 said:


> They are HasBNS now eh Cherise!


You made me chuckle!


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

Bookstrand kicked indies off last year because of the paypal scandal, but before they did, they didn't require ISBNs.


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

If you want your goodreads reviews to appear on Kobo you use the 13digit ISBN, otherwise just leave it blank. I am still using them from the booklet I bought for my paperbacks.


----------



## Fictionista

I am having a problem. When I upload the word file for my book and then look at the table of contents in the layout, it's only recognizing chapters one, two, three and five and is not recognizing chapter four. Anyone know why this might be happening? I've checked and double checked that all the Chapter headings are bolded and in a larger font than the story content but to no avail.


----------



## JumpingShip

Fictionista said:


> I am having a problem. When I upload the word file for my book and then look at the table of contents in the layout, it's only recognizing chapters one, two, three and five and is not recognizing chapter four. Anyone know why this might be happening? I've checked and double checked that all the Chapter headings are bolded and in a larger font than the story content but to no avail.


Did you make highlight the chapter as an official 'Heading' on Word? Not just made the font big and bold?


----------



## Fictionista

MaryMcDonald said:


> Did you make highlight the chapter as an official 'Heading' on Word? Not just made the font big and bold?


I didn't, actually. I didn't know it was necessary. However, I think I might have figured out the problem. I went back and looked at the word doc and the margins were all screwed up for the heading for chapter four. I uploaded the file again and this time, chapter four is being recognized along with the other chapters.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

MaryMcDonald said:


> Did you make highlight the chapter as an official 'Heading' on Word? Not just made the font big and bold?


I've never had to do that. I just make the chapter headings 14pt. Conversely, if I don't want something to show up, I make it the same size as the text.


----------



## P.C. (Peter) Anders

I don't know if this problem has been answered, sorry.
If I make a book free on Apple, the software requires that I charge at least 99 cents on BN, but it does not give me an option to keep the price at $2.99 (its original price) on BN.
Is there such an option? The trouble with reducing a price on BN to 99 cents, even for a few days, is that Amazon might price match it. Which becomes a nuisance to get back up (as other threads have noted), whereas with a zero price, they are not going to price match it except after weeks and weeks of effort.

By the way, I have essentially disabled the Kobo editions of nearly all my D2D books. I find they simply don't sell, and if I unpublish them, then the books still remain available on Kobo's site!


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

P.C. (Peter) Anders said:


> I don't know if this problem has been answered, sorry.
> If I make a book free on Apple, the software requires that I charge at least 99 cents on BN, but it does not give me an option to keep the price at $2.99 (its original price) on BN.
> Is there such an option? The trouble with reducing a price on BN to 99 cents, even for a few days, is that Amazon might price match it. Which becomes a nuisance to get back up (as other threads have noted), whereas with a zero price, they are not going to price match it except after weeks and weeks of effort.
> 
> By the way, I have essentially disabled the Kobo editions of nearly all my D2D books. I find they simply don't sell, and if I unpublish them, then the books still remain available on Kobo's site!


At the moment, when you publish a book through D2D the price you set applies to all channels for that book. So going perma free on a title will give you, for example, free on iTunes and Kobo, but $0.99 on BN. I have one book on D2D set at perma free and it goes to Kobo iTunes and BN like that.

I use Kobo Writing Life for all my other titles. Kobo took 3 days to remove a de-listed title so that I could use D2D for that perma free thing even though I used the same ISBN to keep goodreads reviews.

It's Kobo not D2D in other words.


----------



## P.C. (Peter) Anders

markecooper said:


> At the moment, when you publish a book through D2D the price you set applies to all channels for that book. So going perma free on a title will give you, for example, free on iTunes and Kobo, but $0.99 on BN. I have one book on D2D set at perma free and it goes to Kobo iTunes and BN like that.
> It's Kobo not D2D in other words.


Right understand the first point. Am checking to see if Aaron can tell the developers to give us the option of choosing a pricing above 0.99 on BN when going free on other channels.

Second point: yes, I realize it is Kobo's mistake/tardiness/sloppiness, not D2D's. D2D is extremely efficient.


----------



## Lady Vine

And also the ability to price for UK and EU currencies. My second book has now been price-matched on Amazon thanks to Apple. I'm not happy, seeing as I hardly sell any books on Apple.


----------



## Katherine Roberts

Lady Vine said:


> And also the ability to price for UK and EU currencies. My second book has now been price-matched on Amazon thanks to Apple. I'm not happy, seeing as I hardly sell any books on Apple.


I agree it would be good to set the UK prices separately at D2D, then we could pick an Apple-friendly price for all and avoid the price matching problem. (Mine have been rounded down at Apple UK but so far Amazon have not noticed... should I tell them, or does the price matching happen automatically?)


----------



## Lady Vine

Katherine Roberts said:


> I agree it would be good to set the UK prices separately at D2D, then we could pick an Apple-friendly price for all and avoid the price matching problem. (Mine have been rounded down at Apple UK but so far Amazon have not noticed... should I tell them, or does the price matching happen automatically?)


It seems to be automatic. It's happened on my two best sellers. I have several others that aren't price-matched, and that's because they haven't sold nearly as well as the other two. So I'd say it will happen on the most popular titles in your catalogue.


----------



## Steve W.

Why are the asterisks in my mss. vanishing during the conversion process? I've tried it a hundred different ways and they keep disappearing.


----------



## CoraBuhlert

Lady Vine said:


> And also the ability to price for UK and EU currencies. My second book has now been price-matched on Amazon thanks to Apple. I'm not happy, seeing as I hardly sell any books on Apple.


Yes, this please. There are many of us for whom the European markets are a significant part of our income and so it's important for us to have the ability to set prices in GBP and EUR as well.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Steve W. said:


> Why are the asterisks in my mss. vanishing during the conversion process? I've tried it a hundred different ways and they keep disappearing.


Try putting a piece of clip art instead of the asterisks for your scene breaks. Maybe a border or something like that. Keep the height down as small as possible without losing definition. Width seems to be okay. Also, put a hard return both before and after. They'll disappear, too, but that's okay.

I did it for the last two books and it comes out fine.


----------



## AnitaDobs

D2D just keeps getting better and better in my mind...

Putting in the keywords in the keywords section, I realized one I put last should come way closer the top, the first keywords being the strongest apparently.

I could have deleted 8 or so keywords I'd just put in, just to be able put the other keyword I'd just thought of at the top, but then hovering over the keywords (not over the 'X' for delete) it looked like I could do something.

Imagine my surprise when I realized I can simply click on it, and drag it upwards to the position I want it to be in! Those guys think of almost everything.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

AnitaDobs said:


> Imagine my surprise when I realized I can simply click on it, and drag it upwards to the position I want it to be in! Those guys think of almost everything.


We also shamelessly steal all the good ideas that get posted here, and then take credit for them when future users stumble across them.


----------



## Mel Comley

I love D2D to bits, but can you guys kick KOBO's butt for me. My latest book was uploaded on 03/26/2013 but it hasn't appeared on KOBO yet. I've even tried re-uploading it to see if that would jolt it, but it hasn't.

Also, I know you're still in beta, I wanted to know if your royalty statements are going to be available weekly and become more in depth like KDPs?

I had an excellent week on B&N last week (CJ was in the top 100 for five days) and I was frustrated yesterday because I couldn't total up sales like I do with Zon sales.


----------



## Katherine Roberts

Mel Comley said:


> I love D2D to bits, but can you guys kick KOBO's butt for me. My latest book was uploaded on 03/26/2013 but it hasn't appeared on KOBO yet. I've even tried re-uploading it to see if that would jolt it, but it hasn't.


I second that - Kobo needs kicking! I've got 3 books uploaded on 4th April still not in Kobo, though D2D support have sent a ticket so hopefully soon... and two more I uploaded since went through fine. Does something happen at Kobo when you send in more than one title per day maybe? (I uploaded 4 that day, one published no trouble but the other 3 got stuck.)


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Katherine Roberts said:


> I second that - Kobo needs kicking! I've got 3 books uploaded on 4th April still not in Kobo, though D2D support have sent a ticket so hopefully soon... and two more I uploaded since went through fine. Does something happen at Kobo when you send in more than one title per day maybe? (I uploaded 4 that day, one published no trouble but the other 3 got stuck.)


I've got one stuck at Apple and two at Kobo.


----------



## Sam Rivers

I haven't tried this yet.  Does anyone recommend it?


----------



## Dan Harris

Wild Rivers said:


> I haven't tried this yet. Does anyone recommend it?


Uh... yeah. Lots of people. Did you read any of the posts on the previous 39 pages?


----------



## jdrew

I'm thinking about lower the price for War Party which is at Apple, B&N and Kobo through D2D.
Is this going to be difficult?  Any suggestions from those here who have changed prices on D2D?


----------



## Mel Comley

My KOBO title went through, took nearly a month - that's the ONLY title I've had a problem with, I have 24 titles with D2D.

Price changes vary between one and two days.


----------



## CoraBuhlert

Today, I just had my first B&N sale via D2D, so I've finally managed to break the bastion that is B&N (I can't seem to sell anything there, no matter what I do) as well.


----------



## David J Normoyle

So, I've been very happy with D2D. However, I will be going down the permafree road at some stage. As I understand it, the only way to get a book free on B&N is through Smashwords. Any chance that'll change and D2D will be able to offer that option in the near future?


----------



## Gertie Kindle

David J Normoyle said:


> So, I've been very happy with D2D. However, I will be going down the permafree road at some stage. As I understand it, the only way to get a book free on B&N is through Smashwords. Any chance that'll change and D2D will be able to offer that option in the near future?


I'm going to opt out of B&N for permafree. Amazon will price match Apple. If I go through SW for the first book free, it'll take ages to get on B&N anyway and the last time I put this series on SW, only 3 of the 4 books were accepted for the premium catalog.


----------



## RuthNestvold

About a month ago, I had a Bookbub ad for Yseult, and it took Smashwords weeks to provide info on the sales in the Apple store -- and the proceeds still haven't been credited to my account. 

As a result, I'm thinking of moving Yseult to D2D. Those who've done this before: how long does is take for the book to be delisted on iTunes? Did you wait until it disappeared to upload the book to D2D?


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

RuthNestvold said:


> About a month ago, I had a Bookbub ad for Yseult, and it took Smashwords weeks to provide info on the sales in the Apple store -- and the proceeds still haven't been credited to my account.
> 
> As a result, I'm thinking of moving Yseult to D2D. Those who've done this before: how long does is take for the book to be delisted on iTunes? Did you wait until it disappeared to upload the book to D2D?


I think the consensus is that it's best to have a period of overlap to ensure the book remains available on the site and to allow time for the books to be linked and reviews to migrate over (doesn't always happen). Having it double listed from two different distributors has never been a problem for me.


----------



## RuthNestvold

Thanks, Saul! 

Another question: What's the latest on the ongoing TOC debate? For Yseult, I don't really like the huge long list of unnamed chapters (there's like 35 of them), so I always make a custom TOC with links to the the named "books" (Book I: Two Women, Book II: A Man and a Woman, etc.)

Is it possible by now to keep that, or does the long chapter list get created automatically? 

Also, where does chapter creation with Createspace now stand? I'm putting together a collection of short stories I wrote with a friend of mine who definitely wants a physical book, and I thought I'd use D2D for that, but I'm wondering how the TOC works with short story titles.


----------



## KerryT2012

I think the title of this post should change to better than Smashwords  .
I have been on Smashwords for 3 weeks, I sell nothing but the freebies - Downloads and Libraries.  Within  2 days sold 6 copies on Draft2Digital. 
It is not just the sales, but the fast service too. I like the fact that they use the keywords to try and draw sales in.  With evertything there are setbacks such as no KDP and no Free day promotions on Amazon.  I think that I can do with the KDP, because I do not think it works well for me and the free days did not work at all this month.


----------



## Sapphire

Sarwah2012 said:


> I have been on Smashwords for 3 weeks, I sell nothing but the freebies - Downloads and Libraries. Within 2 days sold 6 copies on Draft2Digital.


I've read anecdotes such as this several times. If this is true, WHY? Why would the same book on the same site sell differently depending on how it was placed there?


----------



## KerryT2012

Sapphire said:


> I've read anecdotes such as this several times. If this is true, WHY? Why would the same book on the same site sell differently depending on how it was placed there?


Draft2Digital makes an effort to put the book on the same sites i.e. the keywords etc. they set up the algorithm to do this/they seem to check the format and make sure it is good to go, generally help you out - whereas Smashwords, leave you to your own devices and expect to make money off it.


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

> I've read anecdotes such as this several times. If this is true, WHY? Why would the same book on the same site sell differently depending on how it was placed there?


If it's short, the entire book isn't being given away as a sample. I've found this improved my sales greatly. The burb also transfers better and the Smashwords format is ugly.


----------



## Sam Rivers

I have been following this thread carefully and like the favorable comments.  18 of my books just came off of Select, so I am going to put them on D2D.


----------



## Sam Rivers

> As for sales: I sell a few short stories on Amazon but nothing compared to my novel. Smashwords, I sell... well, nothing. It'll be interesting to see if there's any change.


I never had any luck selling anything through Smashwords either.


----------



## Fictionista

How do we track any refunds on D2D?


----------



## Sam Rivers

> Uh... yeah. Lots of people. Did you read any of the posts on the previous 39 pages?


I got up to page 10 so only have another 30 to go.


----------



## Sam Rivers

I joined D2D today.  They sent me an invite immediately, so I went and filled out all the paperwork.  Then I put in two of my books.  It is not too bad once you understand how the system works.  I will try to put two books on everyday until I get the 18 that came off of Select.  Of course, others will be coming off too so it will take me a while.

One question I have though has probably been answered, but I have only read through the first 10 pages of this thread.

What happens if I submit a book to D2D that is already on B&N?  Do I need to remove it from B&N?

Now on to page 11 of this thread.


----------



## Sam Rivers

I published a short story this afternoon, and I just got an e-mail from D2D that it is for sale on Apple iTunes. I checked the link and it is actually there. So that only took 3 or 4 hours. The e-mail said that the book has been submitted to Kobo and B&N. So tomorrow I will put some more of my books with D2D.


----------



## Sam Rivers

BUMP


----------



## Sam Rivers

I read this entire thread and found that the problems that people were complaining about were fixed quickly.  It is a wonderful replacement for Smashwords.

I am going to keep publishing direct to Amazon but will use D2D for B&N, Apple, and Kobo.  

One suggestion that I would make for anyone trying D2D is to fill out all the categories under My Account, especially those relating to publisher and Contributors.

After I published four of my books to D2D, I downloaded a high quality mobi from D2D and updated my Amazon books.  The book from D2D looks much more professional than the one that I was using.

I still have 12 books that are currently available to put on D2D.  I am going to start working on getting them on today.

Smashwords was never easy to use and took forever and a day.  D2D is fast and easy to use. The owner of Smashwords must be like the owner of a buggy whip factory watching a herd of Model Ts driving by.

Thanks Aaron for bringing D2D to our attention and helping make it into a wonderful system.


----------



## AnitaDobs

Sarwah2012 said:


> I have been on Smashwords for 3 weeks, I sell nothing but the freebies - Downloads and Libraries. Within 2 days sold 6 copies on Draft2Digital.
> It is not just the sales, but the fast service too. I like the fact that they use the keywords to try and draw sales in. With evertything there are setbacks such as no KDP and no Free day promotions on Amazon. I think that I can do with the KDP, because I do not think it works well for me and the free days did not work at all this month.


I'm no big fan of Smashwords, but you're kind of comparing apples to oranges in this regard.

3 weeks on Smashwords is not equal to a couple of days on D2D. Your titles probably hadn't even arrived at the vendor yet from Smashwords (B&N, Kob and so on.) And Smashwords in of itself doesn't sell much on their own site in comparison to the big names. So, you won't be getting any sales figures for the sales for those 3 weeks on the places they distribute to anytime soon. You may have sold some if they have already arrived, but you wouldn't know for quite sometime.

D2D distributes much faster, which is why you are seeing your sales from the vendors. Their reporting is also shockingly quicker (obviously in a good way.)

Smashwords _does_ use keywords, the box to fill in is there when you upload the book (to be fair to Smashwords,) but the question has always been if those keywords actually ever arrive where they are suppossed to.

Smashwords still has one major advatage. Perma-free, so they can't be discounted (no pun intended) completely (yet?)

I'd still upload to Smashwords though, just not distribute as much.



Sapphire said:


> I've read anecdotes such as this several times. If this is true, WHY? Why would the same book on the same site sell differently depending on how it was placed there?


It's a mystery, but there is so much evidence of it being true, that it must be. It could just be the ugly single block of text that Smashwords sends over without paragraph breaks to the major sites, compared to D2D that give the luxury of paragraph breaks and doesn't force you into a writing excercise of summerization (no more than 400 words) as Smashwords does.

Maybe customers dislike a crappy looking single block of text, I know I do. Wouldn't be encouraging if you think an author doesn't know what a paragraph break is, and I think that's maybe what customers assume. Who want's to read a book with no paragraph breaks?? 

Or, it could be D2D's special secret sauce 

Anyway, whatever they are doing, they're doing it right.



Katie Elle said:


> If it's short, the entire book isn't being given away as a sample. I've found this improved my sales greatly.


  Thanks for giving me a great 'deadpan' laugh. I LOL'd and ROFL'd.

I'm not even sure you intened this as humor, but it works for me


----------



## jdrew

Just two comments:
Great service here.  They get back to you right away if you have a problem or question.
Second, I will definitely be using D2D with other books going forward. 
Thanks to everyone at D2D.


----------



## Sam Rivers

Yesterday I put four books on D2D and checked that I wanted to distribute to B&N, Apple, and Kobo.  This morning all four were on B&N and Kobo.  Only one was on Apple so I guess they are slower.


----------



## Fictionista

jdrew said:


> Just two comments:
> Great service here. They get back to you right away if you have a problem or question.
> Second, I will definitely be using D2D with other books going forward.
> Thanks to everyone at D2D.


I've called them directly and spoken to them twice on the phone - each time they were very prompt and helpful in their response.


----------



## Victoria Champion

I have a question. I am already distributing to iTunes via d2D. I want to add B&N (because I am weary of dealing with their problems directly and would rather go through a middleman). So, do I just go into the EDIT mode on d2D and check the B&N box and then hit Publish again? Will that mess up my iTunes listing at all?


----------



## Victoria Champion

Another question: I see that according to the emails d2D is still breaking up payments based on pen name/publisher name instead of combining them? I thought they would be combined this month?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Victoria Champion said:


> I have a question. I am already distributing to iTunes via d2D. I want to add B&N (because I am weary of dealing with their problems directly and would rather go through a middleman). So, do I just go into the EDIT mode on d2D and check the B&N box and then hit Publish again? Will that mess up my iTunes listing at all?


That's exactly the process. It shouldn't mess up your iTunes listing (although the book at iTunes will be updated, if you've made any changes).



Victoria Champion said:


> Another question: I see that according to the emails d2D is still breaking up payments based on pen name/publisher name instead of combining them? I thought they would be combined this month?


The payment will be combined, but the emails are still split up by publisher (making it easier to track/account for the different companies).


----------



## Sam Rivers

I made some pictures changes to some books that I had already published.  It was easy to do and took only a few minutes.  The more I work with this program, the more I like it.  I love the way the book looks when it is finished.  The best part is the nice TOC.

This program is wonderful!


----------



## Sam Rivers




----------



## Sam Rivers

Four of my books have been published to Apple including to Kobo and B&N.  However, the other six that have some mature subject matter been published only to Kobo and B&N.  

Does Apple have a problem with erotic subjects?


----------



## Victoria Champion

Aaron Pogue said:


> The payment will be combined, but the emails are still split up by publisher (making it easier to track/account for the different companies).


I received the combined EFT today, thanks!


----------



## Victoria Champion

Wild Rivers said:


> Does Apple have a problem with erotic subjects?


I've had erotica go through the next day and take as long as 3 weeks.


----------



## RuthNestvold

Does D2D by any chance have any mechanisms in place for collaborative works? The story collection I'm working on right now is of stories I wrote with Jay Lake, and it would save me massive amounts of work if I could have him sign up for an account here and we could somehow split the profits. 

It wouldn't be a one time thing, either -- I'm planning on putting together a couple more collections of our stories, as well as a stand-alone novella. 

I could imagine there would also be quite a market from other writers who work together as well.


----------



## Kellie Sheridan

RuthNestvold said:


> I could imagine there would also be quite a market from other writers who work together as well.


I think this has come up before in this thread, but I'll second it just in case. It would be a game changer for me.


----------



## Hildred

Wild Rivers said:


> Four of my books have been published to Apple including to Kobo and B&N. However, the other six that have some mature subject matter been published only to Kobo and B&N.
> 
> Does Apple have a problem with erotic subjects?


My erotica takes about 6-8 weeks to get on iTunes. I am not a unique case.

iTunes moves all smut to the back of the processing line. It's driving me bonkers because my iTunes sales are one of my highest and we're both leaving money on the table here.


----------



## Sam Rivers

> My erotica takes about 6-8 weeks to get on iTunes. I am not a unique case.
> 
> iTunes moves all smut to the back of the processing line. It's driving me bonkers because my iTunes sales are one of my highest and we're both leaving money on the table here.


It makes absolutely no sense to hold back the best selling type of novels. Perhaps that is why Apple stock has been dropping like a rock over the last year. It makes you wonder if Apple can compete in the real world?


----------



## Sam Rivers

I hope to have at least one new book out this month.  What I plan to do is run it through D2D and get a professional looking book.  Then I will put it on B&N, Kobo, and Apple through D2D.  

Since most of my sales come from Amazon, I will take the mobi copy from D2D and use it to put on KDP.  Then my book on Amazon will look great from the very beginning.

I am very impressed with the service that D2D provides.  If I were just starting out, I would run everything through D2D.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Uploaded four more books last night. It's a series so I'm hoping permafree kicks in quickly.


----------



## Sharon Austin

So far, I'm very pleased with Draft2Digital.


----------



## ProKindler

Are you allowed to have multiple accounts? This way I can have one for each place and link to my other books. For example Barnes and Noble, I would use one account for just that site so I can link to my other books inside my book. That way my books on apple or sony don't link to my B&N books.


----------



## Anne Frasier

had anybody used D2D for Createspace? sounds like they have a single design for that.  i wonder what size they use and what the finished product looks like.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

ProKindler said:


> Are you allowed to have multiple accounts? This way I can have one for each place and link to my other books. For example Barnes and Noble, I would use one account for just that site so I can link to my other books inside my book. That way my books on apple or sony don't link to my B&N books.


Might it be easier to just publish the same title multiple times, checking only the vendor(s) you want that particular edition to go to? You could even subtitle it "Barnes & Noble edition," etc, if you're inclined to. Not sure what D2D's policy on this is, so you may want to query them. But at least this way all your accounting is done in the same place.


----------



## Sam Rivers

One question that I was wondering about.  I have published 19 of my books through D2D so far.  However, the rest of my books are under Select and some will come off next month.  What I would like to do is go ahead and start the publishing process on some of the other ones.  Then stop after the mobi and epub are created.  I can't see a draft button though so what happens if I get out of the process.  Does it save a draft for me or does it go away?

If it saves a draft then I could get started on putting some of my other books on there and then complete the publishing process when the book comes off of Select.

Has anyone tried this or should I contact D2D to find out?


----------



## scottmarlowe

I'm adding my first book now.


The process was fairly painless. I'm starting with iTunes distribution and I'll go from there.


----------



## Sam Rivers

Bump


----------



## Sharon Austin

Wild Rivers - I accidentally put one of my books in Draft mode. I didn’t like something about the book when I previewed it. Unsure how to get off that page I (think) I clicked on My Books. When I got there I saw the book I had just uploaded and viewed. Beside it was the word Draft in big red letters. It stayed there until I re-uploaded the book and clicked publish.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Is there any way to do your own ToC? I'm uploading an anthology on Monday and instead of chapters, I'll have story headings. That should work fine with the D2D software except I want to add a tagline to each one. Can I do that?


----------



## Sam Rivers

> Wild Rivers - I accidentally put one of my books in Draft mode. I didn't like something about the book when I previewed it. Unsure how to get off that page I (think) I clicked on My Books. When I got there I saw the book I had just uploaded and viewed. Beside it was the word Draft in big red letters. It stayed there until I re-uploaded the book and clicked publish.


Thanks Sharon, I wasn't sure it even had a draft mode. I will experiment with it and see if I can make it go into draft mode.


----------



## Sam Rivers

> Is there any way to do your own ToC? I'm uploading an anthology on Monday and instead of chapters, I'll have story headings. That should work fine with the D2D software except I want to add a tagline to each one. Can I do that?


As near as I can tell, it treats anything that is centered as a chapter. At first it was picking up my whole title and the first paragraph as a chapter. So I had to put a page break after the title to keep it separate.

So you should be able to make it work. I made one of mine Chapter 32 - Regular Ending and another one Chapter 32 - Alternate Ending. The rest of the chapters just were Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc.

You could also make a whole paragraph a chapter if you centered in the middle of the page. That might make a problem is it were a poem which is usually centered. Just play around with it and see what the results are.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Wild Rivers said:


> As near as I can tell, it treats anything that is centered as a chapter. At first it was picking up my whole title and the first paragraph as a chapter. So I had to put a page break after the title to keep it separate.
> 
> So you should be able to make it work. I made one of mine Chapter 32 - Regular Ending and another one Chapter 32 - Alternate Ending. The rest of the chapters just were Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc.
> 
> You could also make a whole paragraph a chapter if you centered in the middle of the page. That might make a problem is it were a poem which is usually centered. Just play around with it and see what the results are.


Centering is definitely a consideration. I thought it just picked up the larger font, but the poems are centered and this could cause a problem. I think I'd better contact support. Thanks for bringing that up.


----------



## Harriet Schultz

I just wanted to mention how easy it is to change your prices for a sale using D2D. Within hours of changing the price of Legacy of the Highlands for a Bookbub promo, the new price appeared on Apple, Kobo and B&N. 

Other writers on the Bookbub thread here who publish direct to Kobo or use Smashwords have complained about the price not changing in time for their sale. I'm sticking with D2D because it's so responsive and user friendly -- as they grow, I hope that part of the business doesn't suffer.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

RuthNestvold said:


> Does D2D by any chance have any mechanisms in place for collaborative works?


There's nothing in place yet, but it's definitely something I want to offer. I know it's on the developers' list; it'll just take some time.



ProKindler said:


> Are you allowed to have multiple accounts? This way I can have one for each place and link to my other books.


You're probably _allowed_ to have multiple accounts, but I can't imagine it would be worth the hassle. As Saul pointed out, it would probably be a lot less hassle to maintain multiple book projects per title ("B&N Version," "Apple Version," etc.). When you publish a book, the sales channels you've chosen for that project show up as icons on its dashboard row, so you could easily tell them apart, even without putting it in the name.

That's all a temporary solution, anyway. The devs are hard at work on a new feature that would perfectly address your actual issue. We absolutely want to be able to embed a generic "bookstore" link within the book, and have the publishing software replace it with the relevant link (to B&N or Apple or Amazon) depending on where we're distributing that particular edition. Again, it's just a matter of time until that feature gets rolled out.



Wild Rivers said:


> Does it save a draft for me or does it go away?


This has probably already been sufficiently answered, but just to be sure: Yes, you can start a project and save it as a draft. The only trick is that you have to provide a minimum amount of information for the initial "Add Book" form to save. I _believe_ the required elements are title, product description, and at least one category. You don't have to have final text in there, but you have to put _something_.

You also have to upload a valid manuscript. If the manuscript upload fails, the rest of the form won't be saved. They're working hard to solve that problem right now, but it's something to keep in mind.



Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Is there any way to do your own ToC? I'm uploading an anthology on Monday and instead of chapters, I'll have story headings. That should work fine with the D2D software except I want to add a tagline to each one. Can I do that?


You can certainly provide your own ToC. The conversion software does its best to recognize a user-provided ToC, and when it finds one, it leaves it alone. I'm not sure how perfect that recognition is at the moment, but I know it's available.



Wild Rivers said:


> As near as I can tell, it treats anything that is centered as a chapter.


The conversion process is actually a little more nuanced than that, but you're pretty close. It's actually looking for things that stand apart from the body text and look...title-ish. If your body text is all left aligned except a handful of short paragraphs that are centered, the system will guess that the short centered paragraphs are titles.

If you have a mix of different alignments, but a handful of them are centered and bold (or centered and a larger font, or centered and a larger font and bold), then the system will evaluate all the different combinations, run a statistical analysis, and make its best guess at what counts as chapter titles.

Ultimately, Wild Rivers's advice is the best: Just play around with it and see what the results are. But don't wear yourself out trying to make your formatting work in our system. If you can't get it to work the way you want, or if you do but you feel like there could have been a better way, contact Customer Support and let them know.

The service is still in a beta precisely _because_ they're still trying to get that process as smooth and painless as possible. Your experiments and feedback can only help.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Thanks, Aaron. I'll try it with my own TOC first. There is a place underneath the chapter list where I can contact support if the chapter headings don't come out the way I want them.


----------



## Sam Rivers

I have published 19 books through D2D and only had trouble with the first one.  I think that being able to easily make a TOC is a great feature.


----------



## scottmarlowe

Well, that was fast. My first foray with D2D is already on iTiunes.


----------



## Sam Rivers

> Well, that was fast. My first foray with D2D is already on iTiunes.


As long as the book doesn't deal with the mating habits of humans, it gets pubished to Apple within hours.


----------



## Katherine Roberts

I'm delighted to report that my three books "stuck" on their way into Kobo are now unstuck! (In the end, I made some updates and resubmitted them, which seemed to do the trick.)

The changes went into Barnes&Noble incredibly quickly (about an hour) and Apple nearly as fast.

So I'm happy again.


----------



## Sharon Austin

You're welcome, Wild Rivers.


----------



## JumpingShip

I'm wondering how long it normally takes for Kobo to put a book up? I see that someone here put there's up about a week ago and it went right up. Mine was uploaded a little more than three weeks ago, and then it didn't get submitted to Kobo for about a week. That was on 4/24. It still hasn't published there. My B&N and Apple submissions were on their sites within hours. 

My hope was that Amazon would price match to free on the book, but so far it hasn't with Apple, so I really need Kobo to go live and increase the chances that Amazon will price-match.


----------



## scottmarlowe

Wild Rivers said:


> As long as the book doesn't deal with the mating habits of humans, it gets pubished to Apple within hours.


No mating habits, human or otherwise. 

Let's say I were to actually get a sale on iTunes... anyone know how long it takes for sales to show up on the D2D reporting?


----------



## scottmarlowe

scottmarlowe said:


> Let's say I were to actually get a sale on iTunes... anyone know how long it takes for sales to show up on the D2D reporting?


To answer my own question...

from: https://www.draft2digital.com/faq/

How long does it take for my sales information to show up?

Some of our sales channels provide real-time sales information. That's an awfully handy feature for self-published writers, and we do our best to capture that information and pass it along.

For most sales channels, your sales should show up within an hour. The iBookstore only provides updates once daily, but as soon as we have them, we'll post those numbers to your reports.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

scottmarlowe said:


> To answer my own question...
> 
> from: https://www.draft2digital.com/faq/
> 
> How long does it take for my sales information to show up?
> 
> Some of our sales channels provide real-time sales information. That's an awfully handy feature for self-published writers, and we do our best to capture that information and pass it along.
> 
> For most sales channels, your sales should show up within an hour. The iBookstore only provides updates once daily, but as soon as we have them, we'll post those numbers to your reports.


Good to know. I suspected Apple only updated once a day. My freebie pubbed on Monday and by Wednesday morning, I had downloads. Nothing again until this morning. So, I'm guessing the Wednesday report was actually from Tuesday downloads. Pretty quick action on the book. Now if they'd only read it and go on to the second in the series.


----------



## Sam Rivers

scottmarlowe, I notice that you are from Rockwall, TX.  I have a brother that lives there.  It is a nice small town on the coast.


----------



## ToniD

I need to add a TOC to my books, and am trying D2D to format a word file. I understand that will automatically add the TOC. Very cool.

Thing is, when I created and downloaded the D2D mobi file, my computer says 'cannot open.' 

What program thingy do I need in order to open it?

Help.

Thx


----------



## Sam Rivers

> Thing is, when I created and downloaded the D2D mobi file, my computer says 'cannot open.'
> 
> What program thingy do I need in order to open it?


I like Kindle for PC since it shows the mobi exactly how it would look on the Kindle.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311


----------



## Chris Slusser

For viewing .mobi files there's also:

Kindle Previewer:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765261

Mobipocket Reader:
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloadsoft/productdetailsreader.asp


----------



## Lady Vine

You can also use Calibre, which lets you view pretty much all book formats.


----------



## ToniD

Thanks for the suggestions.

I already have mobipocket....I'll try opening the downloaded file there. Otherwise, will check out the others.


----------



## Richardcrasta

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Is there any way to do your own ToC? I'm uploading an anthology on Monday and instead of chapters, I'll have story headings. That should work fine with the D2D software except I want to add a tagline to each one. Can I do that?


Why don't you center and use a large font for a heading titled "Table of Contents". In which case, my guess is the table will be included. I do that for the Copyright Page too.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Richardcrasta said:


> Why don't you center and use a large font for a heading titled "Table of Contents". In which case, my guess is the table will be included. I do that for the Copyright Page too.


Yes, I do that also for the copyright page, but if I do that with a ToC, it will probably just add that title. That would probably put two ToC titles in the ToC. I think?


----------



## RuthNestvold

Until now, I've always uploaded epubs to D2D. Now I'm going to upload doc for the first time, since I want D2D to do everything, including Kindle and CreateSpace. (It's a collection of collabs, and I decided it would just be easier for me to keep track of it if "all" *g* the income was coming in at one place.) 

For me, this is an experiment. We'll see how it goes!


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

> I like Kindle for PC since it shows the mobi exactly how it would look on the Kindle.


Not really. It doesn't have the same fonts as the kindles and didn't show the problems with KF8/small fonts/etc. You really want to use the downloadable kindle previewer, which will let you see what it looks like on different versions of the kindle.


----------



## Casper Parks

Anyone heard how D2D is progressing with expanding distribution?


----------



## Jonathan C. Gillespie

I just want to throw in my endorsement for this service. I'm using D2D for my iTunes distribution, and I've been very pleased with their professionalism and promptness.


----------



## jdrew

RuthNestvold said:


> Until now, I've always uploaded epubs to D2D. Now I'm going to upload doc for the first time, since I want D2D to do everything, including Kindle and CreateSpace. (It's a collection of collabs, and I decided it would just be easier for me to keep track of it if "all" *g* the income was coming in at one place.)
> 
> For me, this is an experiment. We'll see how it goes!


Ruth, keep us informed as I've had similar thoughts but so far have not really considered going through D2D for CreateSpace. Let us know how it works.


----------



## dalya

New email from D2D today. I'm sure everyone with an account there got a copy, but I'll paste it in here for reference in case you didn't or you're new:



> Thanks for participating in the Draft2Digital Closed Beta program. Your participation during these last few months has been invaluable. With your help we have accomplished a lot and I wanted to let you know about some of the most significant improvements.
> 
> Improved format recognition and conversion - Thanks to the thousands of new documents in our database, we've gotten much better at recognizing your formatting and converting it into clean, professional ebooks.
> International Direct Deposit - Our international authors and publishers can now receive payments directly into their bank accounts.
> Distribution improvements - Distribution is faster, more reliable, and can scale to handle the amazing growth in volume we are seeing every day.
> Improved feedback for user-provided epubs - We now give immediate feedback on the quality of user provided epubs to help out those authors who like to make their own.
> Cleaning of common epub errors - We are now able to fix several common issues we've found with user-provided epubs.
> 
> We have now reached the next phase of Draft2Digital: the Open Beta. This means there are no more beta codes; new authors will just sign-up using the registration page. During this phase, we will be working on the following improvements (and others as requested by our outstanding authors):
> 
> Improved Sales Reporting - We know you want a lot of data, and we're working hard to get it to you. Watch for cool new controls on the My Sales page.
> Notification Preferences - Communication is critical to any good relationship. We are working to add new methods of communication between us and our users, while still making sure you always remain in control.
> Format Conversion Customizations - You've taught us a lot about the formatting requirements of our community. We look forward to adding more customization options, while still keeping the publishing process as simple as possible.
> Coupon Codes - You've asked for them so you're going to get them.
> Print Formatting and Layout - Watch for significant improvements to our print format processes, formatting, and layout.
> 
> Again, we sincerely thank you for your participation as we strive to make the exact product you want to use. Your feedback, critiques, and suggestions are always welcome and encouraged. Never hesitate to contact us.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Kris Austin
> President and CEO
> Draft2Digital, LLC
> https://www.draft2digital.com


----------



## N. Gemini Sasson

Gah. You beat me to it, Dalya.  

Many thanks to the gang at D2D for listening and continuing to strive for improvement. You guys rock!


----------



## scottmarlowe

Coupons are the only thing keeping me on Smashwords right now. I'm curious how D2D plans to implement them, but if they get it right (and I've no reason to think they won't; I've been impressed so far) I may say sayonara to the Meat Grinder.


----------



## Skyler West

I am wanting to switch to D2D from Smashwords as I'm having no success with sales through them, and I'm not a huge fan of the site. Can anyone tell me how you do the 'switchover' from one to the other? Is it a case of just click UNPUBLISH on Smashwords for your titles and then wait for 3 weeks for them to be removed from their premium catalogue before resubmitting them via D2D? Any help appreciated. Thanks folks.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Skyler West said:


> I am wanting to switch to D2D from Smashwords as I'm having no success with sales through them, and I'm not a huge fan of the site. Can anyone tell me how you do the 'switchover' from one to the other? Is it a case of just click UNPUBLISH on Smashwords for your titles and then wait for 3 weeks for them to be removed from their premium catalogue before resubmitting them via D2D? Any help appreciated. Thanks folks.


I'd upload to D2D and wait for the books to get up onto the dist sites before taking them down from SW. It doesn't matter if both copies are visible and available on the channels. In fact, some overlap (days to weeks) may facilitate review migration/edition linking. I have a few books with multiple editions (SW, D2D) available on some sites without any problems. Of course, not all reviews will migrate/copies will link, so you'll want to keep an eye on this and see if you can get the sites (through SW, D2D) to request the vendors link the copies.

For B&N, you may want to stay with SW, as D2D doesn't yet have an agreement with B&N to list free.


----------



## Skyler West

Thanks Saul. I didn't realise you were allowed to have 2 copies of the same book on at once. That helps for sure. I don't plan on making it free, so for the time being it won't matter about B&N not having that option


----------



## Skyler West

Has anyone else had issues with formatting after uploading their word document to D2D? The actual chapters come out okay, but it ignores my title page, and my copyright page ends up removing my paragraph spaces and just pushes it all together. Is this something that often happens, and I need to contact support about? Thanks.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Skyler West said:


> Has anyone else had issues with formatting after uploading their word document to D2D? The actual chapters come out okay, but it ignores my title page, and my copyright page ends up removing my paragraph spaces and just pushes it all together. Is this something that often happens, and I need to contact support about? Thanks.


Spacing is a problem. A double space will convert to single space. I make sure my title and each chapter heading is at least 14pt and if I want a double space, I triple space in the doc.

I was going to post about this issue today because I uploaded a docx yesterday that had multiple formats. Prose that was first line indent, free verse with a space between each line, poems with two lines together and a space between stanzas. The finished product was a nightmare. I seriously considered taking it down and going through the meatgrinder. <shudder>

But I contacted support and they suggested I upload an epub. I had to put my own ToC and cover in the epub. When I uploaded it, I got the message that D2D doesn't support epub, but what they mean is that they won't add the ToC and you can't request the title page, etc. I went ahead and submitted it, after a false start and some tweaking (thanks, Jeff) and it now looks the way I wanted it to.

I'll know what to do next time around. But even in a straight prose doc, the spacing can get wonky. I was assured they were working on this.


----------



## Skyler West

Thanks Gertie. I tried an ePub but wasn't too happy with outcome either, so I spent some time making a perfect ePub version by converting it from my Mobi file. It worked like a charm. Hopefully the result will look good in each store. Books are submitted, so I just need to wait now. Thanks for the help.


----------



## Sam Rivers

I finally had a sale through D2D which was for apple.  It has been a few weeks since I put some of my books on D2D.

Another one of my books came off Select so will put it on D2D.

This is the first time I have ever sold anything under Apple since I have never had anything with them.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Wild Rivers said:


> I finally had a sale through D2D which was for apple. It has been a few weeks since I put some of my books on D2D.
> 
> Another one of my books came off Select so will put it on D2D.
> 
> This is the first time I have ever sold anything under Apple since I have never had anything with them.


I never listed with Apple either because I don't use macs, but as soon as I listed to iTunes with D2D and the books went live I started getting sales there.


----------



## Sam Rivers

I got a sale from Kobo though D2D today.  So that gives me 2 sales.  I wonder if sales are slowly starting to trickle in.

I go direct with Amazon and sales are picking up there too so it may turn out to be a good month.


----------



## Chris Northern

I decided to test Draft 2 Digital for Barnes & Noble. Just a test case. Just one book. Just Barnes & Noble.

The site is easy to use (though as I am a well known idiot I made an error or two but honestly most people will not have a problem). All The King's Bastards went live on B&N inside 24 hours. The support team fixed the problem inside 10 hours (didn't call me an idiot, which was nice of them).

That's what I know so far. A good experience. Happy.


----------



## Marti talbott

I have two books I wanted to put through this service, opened an account and uploaded one. It was very smooth until I got to the distribution. It is already on sale everywhere but Apple, but I didn't see where I could exclude the other vendors. Anyone know how to do that?


----------



## Ryan Sullivan

I plan to publish with D2D in a few months time when I take my book off Select. So I tested out the D2D conversion software -- because I had some drop caps and such, there were some errors, so I took out the fancy formatting, and it worked like a charm. Extremely intuitive, and a gem to work with. I experimented further by changing the chapter titles from just bold, to all capitals and bold. Might even try capitals unbolded, to see if the chapter headings still get picked up.

One thing I'm wondering about is the indents. They seem slightly big to me. I've definitely seen worse, but I just think these ones could be better, maybe 50% less, or 25% less.

Could you please tell me if I'm just being picky? If readers think it looks good this way then I don't mind at all! The ebook in its entirety came out really great, from what I checked over.


----------



## Sam Rivers

> I have two books I wanted to put through this service, opened an account and uploaded one. It was very smooth until I got to the distribution. It is already on sale everywhere but Apple, but I didn't see where I could exclude the other vendors. Anyone know how to do that?


Just uncheck the boxes that you don't want to distribute to. I only keep Kobo, Apple, and B&N. I go direct with Amazon.


----------



## Marti talbott

I figured it out. I had to go back a couple of times to make the select boxes to appear. It is very, very smooth and if these two work well, I'll be moving all my books over from SW.


----------



## Chris Northern

Just got my first sale through B&N as a consequence of using D2D. This experiment continues successful. Happy.


----------



## Julie Harris

Are ISBNs still necessary for Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo?


----------



## Victoria Champion

Julie Harris said:


> Are ISBNs still necessary for Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo?


nope


----------



## Julie Harris

Thanks, Victoria


----------



## Fictionista

Okay I'm very puzzled right now. D2D just sent me the following email:

_Apple has rejected Falling for Delilah for the following reason:
--------------------
Metadata
Description Up-Sells
The description must not up-sell to another product.

May, 15 2013, 5:01 AM - Apple
Metadata attached to the ticket by the feed.
--------------------_

Um, what does this mean?? The book has been published to Apple every since April 19th well over a month ago. Why a problem now? Does anyone have a clue what the email is talking about?


----------



## CoraBuhlert

D2D sent me a bunch of publication notifications for Apple and one for B&N today - for books that had already been published to Apple and in some cases had already sold there. They were all German titles, so maybe that was the reason for the double notifications. Odd at any rate.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Just uploaded book #10 with no quirks. I think I'm getting the hang of this thing!  

Now I need to go back and redo some of the first ones I uploaded to add also by and teasers. Those two features come out really nice. Got my first non-freebie sales on Apple today. B&N and Kobo remain strangely silent.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

I just finished updating five of my titles and I have a question. If I update a description does it automatically update when it's listed as a teaser in another book? 

Also, as I add new titles, does the "also by" in the other titles automatically update?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> I just finished updating five of my titles and I have a question. If I update a description does it automatically update when it's listed as a teaser in another book?
> 
> Also, as I add new titles, does the "also by" in the other titles automatically update?


Unfortunately, the answer to both questions is "no" (for now, anyway). The system doesn't modify your published books until you tell it to,

So if you modified the title and description of Book 2 and you wanted to update the Also By and Teaser that appear in Book 1, you would need to republish Book 1. You can do that by editing the book, clicking ahead to the "Layout" page, and then choosing "Save and Continue." You don't have to modify anything, it'll automatically re-generate the teaser and also by, and then when you go ahead and publish Book 1, it'll include the changes.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Aaron Pogue said:


> Unfortunately, the answer to both questions is "no" (for now, anyway). The system doesn't modify your published books until you tell it to,
> 
> So if you modified the title and description of Book 2 and you wanted to update the Also By and Teaser that appear in Book 1, you would need to republish Book 1. You can do that by editing the book, clicking ahead to the "Layout" page, and then choosing "Save and Continue." You don't have to modify anything, it'll automatically re-generate the teaser and also by, and then when you go ahead and publish Book 1, it'll include the changes.


Okay, no problem. Since I'm publishing a title every month, I'll have to go through all the previous titles to update them each time. Just realized I'll have to do the other series, as well. Back to work!


----------



## Vivi_Anna

Aaron Pogue said:


> Unfortunately, the answer to both questions is "no" (for now, anyway). The system doesn't modify your published books until you tell it to,
> 
> So if you modified the title and description of Book 2 and you wanted to update the Also By and Teaser that appear in Book 1, you would need to republish Book 1. You can do that by editing the book, clicking ahead to the "Layout" page, and then choosing "Save and Continue." You don't have to modify anything, it'll automatically re-generate the teaser and also by, and then when you go ahead and publish Book 1, it'll include the changes.


Aaron, this might've been already answered...but if I switch over my books from B&N through SW to you to B&N, will my reviews transfer over? Or will I lose all of them?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Vivi_Anna said:


> Aaron, this might've been already answered...but if I switch over my books from B&N through SW to you to B&N, will my reviews transfer over? Or will I lose all of them?


Well, we can't make any promises, because that's under the control of B&N. But in our experience, the reviews do transfer over. I've done this with my own books, and we've had other users in the thread report the same thing.

Our recommendation has been to leave the existing listing up, publish the book through D2D, and then wait until both are live and linked together (which should happen automatically). Once that has been done, you can cancel the old listing, and the new one will keep the old one's reviews.


----------



## Vivi_Anna

THANK YOU Aaron!!

Am going to do that this week.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

is there a problem with Apple? The book I published on the 21st still isn't live there. I contacted support day before yesterday but haven't heard back.

The good news is that Amazon price matched my freebie even though B&N has it for 99 cents.


----------



## MQ

I published my books on D2D yesterday.  Today they were already on BN and on top of that I already had a sale!  

Usually with SW I dread their autovetters and have to wait until it is approved for premium catalog before I can even see them on BN, so this was a pleasant surprise.

I only wished I could set books as FREE on D2D for BN, this way I could get Amazon to price match them but that's not a big problem.  At least now I can see what my BN sales are.  Hopefully soon they will also be on Apple...yay!


----------



## Amyshojai

Interesting...will check into this. I have a play script with a co-author we'll be licensing and were debating on what route to take for publication.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Mobashar Qureshi said:


> I published my books on D2D yesterday. Today they were already on BN and on top of that I already had a sale!
> 
> Usually with SW I dread their autovetters and have to wait until it is approved for premium catalog before I can even see them on BN, so this was a pleasant surprise.
> 
> I only wished I could set books as FREE on D2D for BN, this way I could get Amazon to price match them but that's not a big problem. At least now I can see what my BN sales are. Hopefully soon they will also be on Apple...yay!


Amazon price matched me today and others have said their books were price matched in spite of the 99 cent price on B&N. I just asked a few people to notify Amazon about the $0 price on Apple and Kobo and it worked.



Amyshojai said:


> Interesting...will check into this. I have a play script with a co-author we'll be licensing and were debating on what route to take for publication.


Amy, I found the set-up to be a little tricky, but the quick upload to the other channels is well worth the learning curve.


----------



## Amyshojai

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Amy, I found the set-up to be a little tricky, but the quick upload to the other channels is well worth the learning curve.


Thanks Gertie. I'm giving a Webinar tomorrow on Ebooks and options so will include D2D, and look into it myself once I can breathe again!


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Julie Harris said:


> Are ISBNs still necessary for Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo?


No, but if you use an isbn your goodreads reviews will appear at Kobo automatically after a couple of days  That's assuming your books have the correct isbn on the book at goodreads of course.


----------



## Katherine Roberts

Vivi_Anna said:


> Aaron, this might've been already answered...but if I switch over my books from B&N through SW to you to B&N, will my reviews transfer over? Or will I lose all of them?


Hopefully not! I was very impressed when B&N automatically linked up reviews for the print edition of "Spellfall" (which had been out of print for years), when I published the ebook there recently through D2D.


----------



## MQ

Does anyone know how long it takes D2D to get the books on ibookstore?


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

> Does anyone know how long it takes D2D to get the books on ibookstore?


Less than a day. The question is how long the ibookstore takes to actually list them, which can be anywhere from a day to (if they think you might be naughty) a few months.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Mobashar Qureshi said:


> Does anyone know how long it takes D2D to get the books on ibookstore?





Katie Elle said:


> Less than a day. The question is how long the ibookstore takes to actually list them, which can be anywhere from a day to (if they think you might be naughty) a few months.


Usually a day or so, but this last book of mine took ten days and there was nothing naughty in it at all. I think they just pick some books at random to manually check them, sort of like an IRS audit.


----------



## Victoria Champion

From the new email:

"User Provided Epub Repair - We now repair many more common user-provided ePub errors caused by many popular ePub creation programs."

I don't want you to alter my epubs in any way. Is there a way to opt out of this? I am concerned your 'repairs' will break my formatting, TOC, and other elements of my meticulously formatted epubs to conform to some 'standard' I don't want.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Victoria Champion said:


> I don't want you to alter my epubs in any way. Is there a way to opt out of this? I am concerned your 'repairs' will break my formatting, TOC, and other elements of my meticulously formatted epubs to conform to some 'standard' I don't want.


When D2D detects these sorts of issues (on file upload), they'll pop-up a message indicating that it has been detected and repaired. So you don't need to worry about them ever changing anything you don't want--if you see that message you can double-check the repaired file, or you can just go back to your source and fix the problem yourself.

And these aren't style or preference modifications. The only changes covered by this are validation errors (with easy solutions) that prevent distribution to particular channels. For instance, bad attributes on elements (such as "vlink") prevent the book from passing epubcheck, which means it _cannot_ be published at Apple (without correcting the issue).

In any case, if you don't see the notice on file upload, you can be confident your files haven't been modified in any way. If you ever _do_ see that notice for a document you're confident in, definitely contact Customer Support and let them know.

There's a little more information available on the FAQ.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Aaron Pogue said:


> When D2D detects these sorts of issues (on file upload), they'll pop-up a message indicating that it has been detected and repaired. So you don't need to worry about them ever changing anything you don't want--if you see that message you can double-check the repaired file, or you can just go back to your source and fix the problem yourself.
> 
> And these aren't style or preference modifications. The only changes covered by this are validation errors (with easy solutions) that prevent distribution to particular channels. For instance, bad attributes on elements (such as "vlink") prevent the book from passing epubcheck, which means it _cannot_ be published at Apple (without correcting the issue).
> 
> In any case, if you don't see the notice on file upload, you can be confident your files haven't been modified in any way. If you ever _do_ see that notice for a document you're confident in, definitely contact Customer Support and let them know.
> 
> There's a little more information available on the FAQ.


Thanks, Aaron!


----------



## Gertie Kindle

If the spacing problem drives me any crazier, I'll probably have to go the epub route. Really don't want to because there are a lot of features I like such as the teaser page and the also by. 

I've worked around the scene breaks, but the spacing has me batty.


----------



## Thomas Watson

Decided to move Mr. Olcott's Skies over the D2D and see what the fuss is about. It was for sale on B&N and Kobo in less than 24hrs. Took a week for Apple, which isn't bad at all.

Favorably impressed, so far.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Thomas Watson said:


> Decided to move Mr. Olcott's Skies over the D2D and see what the fuss is about. It was for sale on B&N and Kobo in less than 24hrs. Took a week for Apple, which isn't bad at all.
> 
> Favorably impressed, so far.


Wait until you see how quickly you can change a cover or a price. Usually as fast as 24 hours.


----------



## Casper Parks

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Wait until you see how quickly you can change a cover or a price. Usually as fast as 24 hours.


Using D2D I went from free at i-Books and Kobo, less than 24 hours for price change.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Casper Parks said:


> Using D2D I went from free at i-Books and Kobo, less than 24 hours for price change.


That's the biggest advantage of D2D in my book.

Got an email today. Looks like they are rolling out some changes to resolve the scene break and spacing issues. Hallelujah!!


----------



## gregoryblackman

Hey all, feeling like the spurned lover of Smashwords, I'm finally deciding that I might make the move. The 200 characters max for barnes and noble is killing me.

Some questions if all of you, though, if that's all right.

1. How was payment been? Is it through Pay Pal, as well? Any Canadian problems?

2. Can you go free on Barnes and Noble?

3. How is their publishing? Smashwords has been really bothering me as I've created a template for my chapter breaks that looks great and works well on all formats. 50% of the premium checkers block my books and I'm forced to re-upload the same book 2-3 times (taking a month longer than it should) until one of their in-house publishing realizes that it's my style.


Any help would be appreciated. After being told I need to re-upload the same book by Smashwords for the third time I'm about to lose my mind. If it was an error I would understand, but it's always the same response, one of their checkers doesn't like it and refuses, the next one puts it through.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

gregoryblackman said:


> Hey all, feeling like the spurned lover of Smashwords, I'm finally deciding that I might make the move. The 200 characters max for barnes and noble is killing me.
> 
> Some questions if all of you, though, if that's all right.


I answered this at 2am from my Fire, hit post, and KB went offline. <sigh>



> 1. How was payment been? Is it through Pay Pal, as well? Any Canadian problems?


Haven't been with D2D long enough to get paid.



> 2. Can you go free on Barnes and Noble?


No. The best they'll do is .99, but Amazon will still price match from Apple and Kobo. Others have done it and so have I.



> 3. How is their publishing? Smashwords has been really bothering me as I've created a template for my chapter breaks that looks great and works well on all formats. 50% of the premium checkers block my books and I'm forced to re-upload the same book 2-3 times (taking a month longer than it should) until one of their in-house publishing realizes that it's my style.


Your template might or might not work. All you can do is try it. There were some problems with spacing and scene breaks in the conversion process, but I just got an email yesterday those have been fixed. Can't wait to try it out.

You can always load an epub and get the exact look you want. I thought about it, but then I'll lose out on the automated also by page and the teaser page (which is really quite nice). Both are optional, but I like them. I do my own title page and copyright.



> Any help would be appreciated. After being told I need to re-upload the same book by Smashwords for the third time I'm about to lose my mind. If it was an error I would understand, but it's always the same response, one of their checkers doesn't like it and refuses, the next one puts it through.


Tell me about it. I uploaded a four book series and they approved all but book three. That's when I made the decision to switch to D2D. When I saw how fast my books appeared on the other channels and how fast I could make changes, I was sold.


----------



## JRHenderson

Just bumping, as there have been a few "How does D2D compare with SW?" questions in the Writer's Café recently, and this thread had fallen quite far down the pile...


----------



## jdrew

JRHenderson said:


> there have been a few "How does D2D compare with SW?" questions in the Writer's Café recently, and this thread had fallen quite far down the pile...


What are they saying about D2D vs SW? I have never used SW and unless D2D goes downhill I'm going to stay with them. I still like to keep up with what's going on.


----------



## phildukephd

Aaron, I am a D2D promoter, with only one BIG suggestion: *Please start selling my 26 ebooks on your own site, not just through other vendors. *Thank you.


----------



## JRHenderson

jdrew said:


> What are they saying about D2D vs SW? I have never used SW and unless D2D goes downhill I'm going to stay with them. I still like to keep up with what's going on.


Well, in the last day or two there have been some questions that compared the services...

"Advantages of Smashwords over D2D?" -- http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,154005.0.html
"Moving from Smashwords to D2D" -- http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,153972.0.html

So I thought that bumping this thread might be helpful...


----------



## Gertie Kindle

The big difference is the quick publication time and how quick prices an covers can be changed. That's a huge advantage over SW.

Has anyone uploaded a book since the changes? I'll put a new one up in about a week.


----------



## jdrew

JR - thanks for the links.  Interesting what others see as advantages, requirements and all that.  For me, I don't see anything in there that makes me want to switch.  That could change, everything is constantly changing, so it's good to keep up.


----------



## Katherine Roberts

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Has anyone uploaded a book since the changes? I'll put a new one up in about a week.


Yes, I finally uploaded my huge omnibus (7 book bundle)!

I'd been dreading doing that book, because the Kindle edition was a headache when I uploaded it to Amazon. But once I'd sorted out my chapter headings d2d's changes look really good... left-justified first line for chapters and sections, and a user-defined scene break (just a single * in the omnibus, since I didn't want to make the file bigger than it has to be by using little images as I do in the individual books).

I'm very pleased with d2d.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Katherine Roberts said:


> Yes, I finally uploaded my huge omnibus (7 book bundle)!
> 
> I'd been dreading doing that book, because the Kindle edition was a headache when I uploaded it to Amazon. But once I'd sorted out my chapter headings d2d's changes look really good... left-justified first line for chapters and sections, and a user-defined scene break (just a single * in the omnibus, since I didn't want to make the file bigger than it has to be by using little images as I do in the individual books).
> 
> I'm very pleased with d2d.


Thanks. Now I won't be so nervous next week when I upload the new one. If it looks good, I'll redo all ten of my books on D2D <dread>


----------



## Julie Harris

When you say 'Easy Self Publishing" you're not wrong. Two hours later my 11th book is on Barnes and Noble. Five hours after that, it's up on Amazon. AND D2D can pay this Australian via EFT. Nothing else to say except, thank you, thank you, thank you.


----------



## Zoe York

Yeah, I was pretty impressed! I had some spacing issues, but found a work around. I was live on B&N within four hours. Still waiting on iTunes (24 hours now).


----------



## thesmallprint

d2d seem a good bunch, who really want to make their business work - investment and fine customer service. Good luck to them


----------



## Casper Parks

Steeplechasing said:


> d2d seem a good bunch, who really want to make their business work - investment and fine customer service. Good luck to them


They've been good to me. I am looking forward to expanding into Sony, Diesel, Google Play Ingram, ARe and Omnilit, Goodreads. Hoping they consider Books-A-Million.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

How does everyone else feel about the first line of the first paragraph of a chapter or scene not being indented? I'm wondering why it's being done that way.


----------



## David J Normoyle

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> How does everyone else feel about the first line of the first paragraph of a chapter or scene not being indented? I'm wondering why it's being done that way.


That's standard formatting as far as I know. I didn't realize until I checked other books, but it seems to be always done like that.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

David J Normoyle said:


> That's standard formatting as far as I know. I didn't realize until I checked other books, but it seems to be always done like that.


I checked. You're right, although not for every book. All but one out of six I looked at are like that. Can't believe I never noticed it in all the thousands of book I've read.

The only time it's a problem, then is when I have a two paragraph blurb in the front and one is justified and the other not. I'll just have to remember to eliminate the indent in the second paragraph.

Thanks.


----------



## Not Here Anymore

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> How does everyone else feel about the first line of the first paragraph of a chapter or scene not being indented? I'm wondering why it's being done that way.


So, it's not just me?

I spent the last two hours trying to figure out what I'd done to cause the first line NOT to indent.

I wonder if it is a change since the update a while back. The previous books I uploaded had indents on every paragraph.

Not fond of it myself, but since D2D gave us back our page breaks I can deal with it.


----------



## DRMarvello

David J Normoyle said:


> That's standard formatting as far as I know. I didn't realize until I checked other books, but it seems to be always done like that.


It is. Most traditionally-formatted books do not indent the first paragraph of a chapter, and they often use a drop-cap (most common) or raised cap (less common). For non-fiction, not indenting the first paragraph extends to sub-headings within a chapter.

Since drop-caps are difficult to do reliably with ebooks, we are seeing an increasing trend toward raised caps, which are comparatively easy.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

DRMarvello said:


> It is. Most traditionally-formatted books do not indent the first paragraph of a chapter, and they often use a drop-cap (most common) or raised cap (less common). For non-fiction, not indenting the first paragraph extends to sub-headings within a chapter.
> 
> Since drop-caps are difficult to do reliably with ebooks, we are seeing an increasing trend toward raised caps, which are comparatively easy.


It's only a problem with the two paragraph description I put in the front matter. So, I'll justify the second paragraph and then it'll look fine. All the decades I've been reading and I never noticed that.


----------



## DRMarvello

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> It's only a problem with the two paragraph description I put in the front matter. So, I'll justify the second paragraph and then it'll look fine. All the decades I've been reading and I never noticed that.


I know what you mean. I'm sure the only reason I know about it is because my wife has been formatting print books for years, and I had to learn typographic conventions from her when I started to do e-book formatting.


----------



## Harriet Schultz

I just ran a two-day promotion in which my book was marked down from $2.99 to $0.99. D2D accomplished this on Apple, B & N and Kobo within hours. They did the same when I updated both of my books covers. 

Amazon, however, has become incredibly slow and less responsive. It took three days for my new cover to appear and they still haven't corrected the price on the promo book. KDP customer service said it will be done in the next 72 hours. That's almost 4 days of lost income for both me and them. 

Not intended to be a rant, just praise for D2D.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Any reason why sales haven't updated this morning?


----------



## jdrew

Harriet Schultz said:


> I just ran a two-day promotion in which my book was marked down from $2.99 to $0.99. D2D accomplished this on Apple, B & N and Kobo within hours. They did the same when I updated both of my books covers.
> 
> Amazon, however, has become incredibly slow and less responsive. It took three days for my new cover to appear and they still haven't corrected the price on the promo book. KDP customer service said it will be done in the next 72 hours. That's almost 4 days of lost income for both me and them.
> 
> Not intended to be a rant, just praise for D2D.


I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. I am planning both a cover change to Shepherds and some price changes. Since I'm using both Amazon and D2D I hope things go better on both accounts not just D2D.


----------



## The 13th Doctor

Received a royalties email today from D2D. Have made money! 

My books seem to be doing better there than on Amazon for paid sales. Should really start marketing more to B&N and Apple.


----------



## Fictionista

Yay!! I too, received my (first) royalties deposit notification email from D2D today! Money will come in handy too.


----------



## The 13th Doctor

Congrats, Sherilyn. Here's to many more!


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Any reason why sales haven't updated this morning?


The delay you were seeing probably had to do with Apple sales. D2D reports the numbers as soon as they get them; that's hourly with most vendors, but Apple only provides the data once a day (mid-morning US time), and they were a bit late today.

If you want to check on that in the future, there's a 3rd party tool that tracks when Apple reports become available: http://appfigures.com/itcstatus


----------



## Fictionista

Aaron Pogue said:


> The delay you were seeing probably had to do with Apple sales. D2D reports the numbers as soon as they get them; that's hourly with most vendors, but Apple only provides the data once a day (mid-morning US time), and they were a bit late today.
> 
> If you want to check on that in the future, there's a 3rd party tool that tracks when Apple reports become available: http://appfigures.com/itcstatus


Thanks! 

I'd been feeling a little unmotivated to write this past week, but this helped sparked my motivation all over again.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Aaron Pogue said:


> The delay you were seeing probably had to do with Apple sales. D2D reports the numbers as soon as they get them; that's hourly with most vendors, but Apple only provides the data once a day (mid-morning US time), and they were a bit late today.
> 
> If you want to check on that in the future, there's a 3rd party tool that tracks when Apple reports become available: http://appfigures.com/itcstatus


Thanks. They usually update by eight.


----------



## Nathan Elliott

Aaron Pogue said:


> If you want to check on that in the future, there's a 3rd party tool that tracks when Apple reports become available: http://appfigures.com/itcstatus


Now that right there is customer service and transparency. Not too many businesses would invite that level of scrutiny and cut off their own opportunities to deflect blame. Although maybe in d2D's case, the blame (if one should even think of blame over a reporting delay on the order of hours) is more likely to lie upstream, so maybe they actually benefit from the scrutiny. A good position to be in. Keep up the good work.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Nathan Elliott said:


> Now that right there is customer service and transparency. Not too many businesses would invite that level of scrutiny and cut off their own opportunities to deflect blame. Although maybe in d2D's case, the blame (if one should even think of blame over a reporting delay on the order of hours) is more likely to lie upstream, so maybe they actually benefit from the scrutiny. A good position to be in. Keep up the good work.


Interesting graph. Confirms that they usually update by the time I get back from walking the dog.


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Has anyone heard whether D2D will ever get Nook to accept free titles? I am desperate to get book 1 of my series back on Nook, but Amazon sent me a nastygram last time they found it on Barnes for 99cents.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

markecooper said:


> Has anyone heard whether D2D will ever get Nook to accept free titles? I am desperate to get book 1 of my series back on Nook, but Amazon sent me a nastygram last time they found it on Barnes for 99cents.


Last I heard, B&N had an exclusive contract with SW to go free on their site. I don't know why Amazon would be upset about that. If it's free on Amazon, then it's not selling for less on B&N.


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Last I heard, B&N had an exclusive contract with SW to go free on their site. I don't know why Amazon would be upset about that. If it's free on Amazon, then it's not selling for less on B&N.


I think because you are not allowed to list a book for less on other sites. Amazon accept free promos on other sites and will match to them if they feel like it, but if I list on Barnes I have to set a list price of 99cents, while on Amazon the list is $4.99 which would break TOS.

The only way out currently is to pull the book from Barnes or set the book to 99cents on Amazon. I could use Smashwords just for the one book and channel I guess, but that means messing with the dreaded style guide and meatgrinder.


----------



## DRMarvello

markecooper said:


> The only way out currently is to pull the book from Barnes or set the book to 99cents on Amazon. I could use Smashwords just for the one book and channel I guess, but that means messing with the dreaded style guide and meatgrinder.


FWIW, you can upload EPUB files to Smashwords now.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

markecooper said:


> I think because you are not allowed to list a book for less on other sites. Amazon accept free promos on other sites and will match to them if they feel like it, but if I list on Barnes I have to set a list price of 99cents, while on Amazon the list is $4.99 which would break TOS.
> 
> The only way out currently is to pull the book from Barnes or set the book to 99cents on Amazon. I could use Smashwords just for the one book and channel I guess, but that means messing with the dreaded style guide and meatgrinder.


Yeah, I know. I thought about going through SW for B&N, but I have the same dread. If worse comes to worse, I'll pull my books from B&N, but I don't think that's going to happen. All prices are the same except the two permafree on Amazon are 99 cents on B&N.


----------



## Fictionista

Any possibility of there ever being a D2D Android / iPhone app?

That would make me so happy.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Fictionista said:


> Any possibility of there ever being a D2D Android / iPhone app?
> 
> That would make me so happy.


It's on the wishlist. I'd certainly love to have one if just for the sales reports.

What would you like to see it do?


----------



## Fictionista

Aaron Pogue said:


> It's on the wishlist. I'd certainly love to have one if just for the sales reports.
> 
> What would you like to see it do?


Glad to hear it's on the wishlist!

An app that to view our sales charts in real time, as well as call up past sales / royalty reports, manage our account settings, list what books we have published per each channel etc would be great.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Fictionista said:


> Glad to hear it's on the wishlist!
> 
> An app that to view our sales charts in real time, as well as call up past sales / royalty reports, manage our account settings, list what books we have published per each channel etc would be great.


Those are some good suggestions! I think we'd come up with about half of them, but yeah, I can see a real benefit to all of it.


----------



## jdrew

I added a new collection of short fiction through D2D and using the 0.99 it went through almost immediately at B&N, took a little longer at Kobo and still hasn't made it at Apple.  I haven't gotten around to trying to change prices on current books and the new cover for Shepherds isn't ready yet so I have those two things to try.  At this point, D2D has worked very well.


----------



## Casper Parks

Wish list, add Google Play distribution.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Hey d2D staff, I don't blame you at all for the B&N problems. No need to apologize, but thanks anyway. I expected them to do that when they switched to Nook Press from PubIt.


----------



## Ashy

Casper Parks said:


> Wish list, add Google Play distribution.


+1


----------



## Fictionista

Aaron Pogue said:


> Those are some good suggestions! I think we'd come up with about half of them, but yeah, I can see a real benefit to all of it.


Thanks for taking the suggestions into account.


----------



## Katherine Roberts

Victoria Champion said:


> Hey d2D staff, I don't blame you at all for the B&N problems. No need to apologize, but thanks anyway. I expected them to do that when they switched to Nook Press from PubIt.


Ah, so that's what happened... my titles were all back up on B&N before I even picked up the apology email, so full marks to D2D.


----------



## Marti talbott

Are the Apple reports late today, or is it just my books?


----------



## Nathan Elliott

Martitalbott said:


> Are the Apple reports late today, or is it just my books?


Apple is delayed today. (It is not d2D's fault.)


----------



## Marti talbott

Nathan Elliott said:


> Apple is delayed today. (It is not d2D's fault.)


I didn't assume it was.


----------



## 31842

Just a little heads up.  I published to Kobo via draft2digital at the end of June when Kobo was doing a big overhaul of their site.  One of my titles says, "Published" but when I followed the link to Kobo a few days ago, I learned my book is not published.  The other one has been stuck in "Publishing" since the end of June.  I think it is a Kobo issue rather than a draft2digital issue (I sent an email to D2D and they said they were going to look into it), but you might just check your Kobo links to make sure you're listed.  I've had no issues with the books I published before then or since.  It was just this bizarre two week window.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Draft2Digital passed some pretty exciting milestones this month!


1,000 published users
10,000 books in our catalog
1,000,000 (paid) books sold

Thank you all for helping make this happen!


----------



## Fictionista

That's awesome news!!


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Aaron Pogue said:


> Draft2Digital passed some pretty exciting milestones this month!
> 
> 
> 1,000 published users
> 10,000 books in our catalog
> 1,000,000 (paid) books sold
> 
> 
> Thank you all for helping make this happen!


Great news, Aaron. Do you think these stats might encourage Barnes to negotiate with you regarding free pricing?

Keep up the excellent work.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Katherine Roberts said:


> Ah, so that's what happened... my titles were all back up on B&N before I even picked up the apology email, so full marks to D2D.


Me, too.

Thanks, D2D for being on top of this.


----------



## Casper Parks

Aaron Pogue said:


> Draft2Digital passed some pretty exciting milestones this month!
> 
> 
> 1,000 published users
> 10,000 books in our catalog
> 1,000,000 (paid) books sold
> 
> Thank you all for helping make this happen!


Great news...


----------



## jdrew

Aaron Pogue said:


> Draft2Digital passed some pretty exciting milestones this month!
> 
> 
> 1,000 published users
> 10,000 books in our catalog
> 1,000,000 (paid) books sold
> Thank you all for helping make this happen!


This is really good news for all of us who have gone D2D, not only as it encourages us to keep up our marketing and sell more books, but gives us assurances that D2D will be able to remain as a viable option for us.
Keep up the good work.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Just FYI, Barnes & Noble appears to be underreporting sales for yesterday and today. We expect the matter to clear up within a day or two.


----------



## Kwalker

Aaron,

Does D2D have any thoughts regarding pre-orders as a to be coming soon feature?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Kwalker said:


> Does D2D have any thoughts regarding pre-orders as a to be coming soon feature?


We certainly intend to offer this functionality in the near future. While we're still in negotiations with Amazon and B&N, we already have the capacity at Apple and Kobo, and we're ironing out the technical details now.


----------



## RM Prioleau

(This has probably been asked many times before, but I'm too lazy to scroll through 40+ pages of this thread )

How long does it take for books to show up in the iTunes store if you publish with D2D? I have a free book that I am trying to get price-matched everywhere, and after doing a Google search over the net and these forums, people have said that Amazon price-matches with Apple almost immediately.


----------



## jdrew

Kwalker said:


> Aaron,
> 
> Does D2D have any thoughts regarding pre-orders as a to be coming soon feature?


Can you explain what this feature will allow, do?


----------



## KaryE

RM Prioleau said:


> (This has probably been asked many times before, but I'm too lazy to scroll through 40+ pages of this thread )
> 
> How long does it take for books to show up in the iTunes store if you publish with D2D? I have a free book that I am trying to get price-matched everywhere, and after doing a Google search over the net and these forums, people have said that Amazon price-matches with Apple almost immediately.


My book took a little over a week to show up. That said, the Zon did not price match and still hasn't. /grumble


----------



## Kia Zi Shiru

I uploaded through D2D to B&N and iStore, B&N is live but iStore isn't yet. I'm pretty happy with the speed of the story going to B&N and I love the website. Now just waiting for sales


----------



## 41419

My experience with Draft2Digital over the last 6 months or so has been very positive - until recently.

I've really been a fan of the quick uploading and distribution, the ease and speed with which you can change prices, and, crucially, how they place books in the correct categories - something where Smashwords always fell down for me.

Unfortunately however, the outage on July 17 has hit me hard. I had a BookBub ad running that day, and as many of you will know, BookBub is one of the few things that can help you get traction outside of Amazon.

Just after the BookBub email went out, I got the email from D2D saying my books had been pulled by Barnes & Noble. Even the outage was resolved a few hours later, that was prime selling time - or would have been had my book been available.

It cost me significant sales that day, and even more money in residual sales from when the price would have been raised the following week. Probably hundreds of dollars, but, even worse, it's the only shot I'll have to get that title going on Barnes & Noble for probably another 6 months or so. In other words, one hell of a wasted opportunity.

Despite repeated requests, I never got an explanation of how this happened or what steps will be taken to prevent it happening again. And of course, this episode has led me to question whether I can rely on D2D. At the very least, my previously unqualified recommendation of their service now comes with a heavy caveat.

I don't know why or how this happened (as I got no explanation), and I'm not saying any of this to moan. Yeah, it sucked, but that's life. It's just something to consider for those contemplating switching from Smashwords.


----------



## jenminkman

Are sales on B&N being reported again through D2D? I was selling a book a day and then sales suddenly completely died. No sales since July 27th/28th (which is when there was allegedly a problem with reports from B&N coming in properly on D2D). Is that still a problem or is my book just really unpopular all of a sudden?


----------



## Gertie Kindle

KaryE said:


> My book took a little over a week to show up. That said, the Zon did not price match and still hasn't. /grumble


Did you report it or ask anyone else to report it? There's a thread here called (I think) Make It Free. Mine didn't get price matched until after several people reported it.


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

I've uploaded the new files with new covers for publication on B&N today and D2D got them on B&N super quick. 

One advantage of the new covers is that XinXii made a mistake and published my books to B&N just before D2D, which was a pain in the ass for two reasons - first of all, I had given XinXii permission to publish to Spain and Germany, not to the US. 
And Reprobate was published a dollar cheaper because of a promotion when Peccadillo was published. Since this was not corrected, the price of Reprobate was price-match adjusted on Amazon, which costs me revenue. 

And B&N 'couldn't' remove the XinXii version.

I haven't updated the XinXii versions with new covers (yet), so you can easily distinguish between the new and the old versions. And now I could renegotiate with B&N about removing the old versions... Hopefully they'll be gone soon.


----------



## CoraBuhlert

E-Mail XinXii about it and request that they pull your books from B&N. They responded to me within two or three days, though pulling the books from B&N takes longer (a week and counting for me now).


----------



## Maya Cross

jenminkman said:


> Are sales on B&N being reported again through D2D? I was selling a book a day and then sales suddenly completely died. No sales since July 27th/28th (which is when there was allegedly a problem with reports from B&N coming in properly on D2D). Is that still a problem or is my book just really unpopular all of a sudden?


Sales are definitely still being reported. Sorry =(


----------



## AmsterdamAssassin

CoraBuhlert said:


> E-Mail XinXii about it and request that they pull your books from B&N. They responded to me within two or three days, though pulling the books from B&N takes longer (a week and counting for me now).


I did, and they pulled, and the books are still up on B&N... Maybe more people should be reporting the XinXii version as 'Publisher Doesn't Hold Rights'...


----------



## CoraBuhlert

I just did, so maybe it helps.

It seems to me that XinXii and B&N don't have a very good relationship, which is why I pulled the XinXii books from B&N to go via D2D.


----------



## P.C. (Peter) Anders

Aaron Pogue said:


> Draft2Digital passed some pretty exciting milestones this month!
> 
> 
> 1,000 published users
> 10,000 books in our catalog
> 1,000,000 (paid) books sold
> 
> Thank you all for helping make this happen!


1,000,000 paid books sold is awesome!
Congratulations!


----------



## Vaalingrade

Can I have the bars back on my sales page?

I don't like the look of the line graph and frankly have no idea what it's supposed to be showing the trends of.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Vaalingrade said:


> Can I have the bars back on my sales page?
> 
> I don't like the look of the line graph and frankly have no idea what it's supposed to be showing the trends of.


The bars are still on the first page. The line graph only shows if you go into "see all sales charts."


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Is Apple being particularly slow to publish for anyone else?


----------



## Lydniz

Yes, and Kobo too.


----------



## ER Pierce

Is there a way for Authors who put together an Anthology to all be listed on the same book yet get paid separate royalties, or do all payments go to one person? This would be a HUGE benefit to multi-author boxed sets and Anthologies if each person listed received their own percentage. 
Does this question make sense?


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Lydniz said:


> Yes, and Kobo too.


Okay, so it's not just me. Thanks.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

ER Pierce said:


> Is there a way for Authors who put together an Anthology to all be listed on the same book yet get paid separate royalties, or do all payments go to one person? This would be a HUGE benefit to multi-author boxed sets and Anthologies if each person listed received their own percentage.
> Does this question make sense?


Not only does it make sense, it's a feature I would _love_ to see, and it's certainly one we intend to pursue.

It would be useful for more than just anthologies, too. I have a cover art deal that requires me to pay 15% of proceeds from one short story to the artist, and I hate having to keep track of that. He's already listed as a contributor on the account, so I would love to have him provide D2D with his payment info and then direct D2D to split the payments on that specific title.


----------



## Casper Parks

Any word or time frame for Google Play?


----------



## AngryGames

Aaron Pogue said:


> Not only does it make sense, it's a feature I would _love_ to see, and it's certainly one we intend to pursue.
> 
> It would be useful for more than just anthologies, too. I have a cover art deal that requires me to pay 15% of proceeds from one short story to the artist, and I hate having to keep track of that. He's already listed as a contributor on the account, so I would love to have him provide D2D with his payment info and then direct D2D to split the payments on that specific title.


Yes please. Trying to break up royalties for multiple contributors is a nightmare, and requires a heck of a lot of trust as well. With this Konrath 8 Hour Challenge, a few of us are talking about doing it regularly, and then combining each challenge's stories into a collection and put a $.99 or $2.99 price tag on it. The problem is someone has to take care of doling out the royalties, and when there are 10-30 authors involved...


----------



## CoraBuhlert

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Is Apple being particularly slow to publish for anyone else?


I'm uploading to Apple via D2D and it's extremely slow at the moment. My Konrath challenge book still isn't in the Apple store after almost two weeks (and it's not even remotely erotic nor likely to be mistaken for erotica). The last book I uploaded before the Konrath challenge also took more than a week to finally appear in the Apple store.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Well, I can't delay my new release announcement any longer just because I'm waiting on Apple. I also have a boxed set I just uploaded and it's going to be 0.99 for two weeks. If it's not up on Apple by then, their customers are going to lose out.


----------



## 41413

Does anyone know if the delay is on Apple's end or D2D's end?


----------



## Maya Cross

Well, given my book two weeks ago went live on B&N in about six hours, I feel like the delay must be with Apple? It seems unlikely D2D is processing B&N super fast and ignoring their other partners.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Maya Cross said:


> Well, given my book two weeks ago went live on B&N in about six hours, I feel like the delay must be with Apple? It seems unlikely D2D is processing B&N super fast and ignoring their other partners.


I have the emails saying when they send out the files, but this time, the notice for Apple is a bit different.

Apple *Requested Listing* on Sept. 5, 2013, 1:10 p.m.
Barnes & Noble Published on Sept. 5, 2013, 4:16 p.m.
Kobo Submitted to Distributor on Sept. 5, 2013, 1:16 p.m.

The notice for the book before that read:

Apple *Submitted to Distributor* on Sept. 1, 2013, 8:20 a.m.
Barnes & Noble Published on Sept. 1, 2013, 9:18 a.m.
Kobo Published on Sept. 1, 2013, 8:41 a.m.

Don't know why the difference in verbiage.


----------



## S. Shine

It's Apple. They more than take their sweet time when it comes to their book department. I guess they don't really like the idea of making money.


----------



## 41413

Argh. I'm sitting on releasing my new book on Amazon until it goes through at Apple. This is KILLING me.

/whine


----------



## Vaalingrade

S. Shine said:


> It's Apple. They more than take their sweet time when it comes to their book department. I guess they don't really like the idea of making money.


It makes sense, seeing as they can't somehow take credit for creating books like they did MP3 players or tablet computers, nor make books look like bars of soap.


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

> Argh. I'm sitting on releasing my new book on Amazon until it goes through at Apple. This is KILLING me.


Is it erotica or erotic romance (or just romance with a spicy cover?). I'm backed up to April.


----------



## 41413

Katie Elle said:


> Is it erotica or erotic romance (or just romance with a spicy cover?). I'm backed up to April.


Nope, run-of-the-mill urban fantasy with a boring cover. April, huh? WOW. Sorry to hear that.


----------



## johnaburks

Mine seem to be taking forever to get on Kobo through D2D at the moment. Much longer than before, anyway.


----------



## 41413

My book has a link now, although it's not live in any of the stores yet. I'd guess it'll pop in tomorrow or the day after. Woo hoo!

That would be about a week from hitting publish to going live.


----------



## Katherine Roberts

I just uploaded a book that went on Nook in a day, though Kobo and Apple took almost 2 weeks - Apple was last, but only by a day. All of them published within D2D's estimated time scales.

And I'd like to praise D2D for sorting out my W-8BEN so swiftly and easily. I received my ITIN in the post two days ago, and by the end of the day they had dealt with the paperwork by email and stopped withholding 30% tax in time for this month's payment... v. impressed


----------



## daringnovelist

Given Mark Coker's statement that he doesn't consider Smashwords' automatic "opt in" to be a problem, AND that Smashwords still insists on the use of a Word document to use all the features of their site, I am considering switching.  

The issue holding me back right now is pen names:

It appears that neither Smashwords nor D2D allow a writer to disassociate pen names from their central account. Sure you can write erotica under one name and children's books under another -- but they appear together under the same publisher umbrella.

At the moment, it seems like the best solution for authors who want to keep one of their pen names anonymous, would be to put one name at Smashwords, and the other at D2D.  If, however, D2D offered some real way to separate pen name (even a system of having two accounts going to the same bank) I would have little problem jumping from Smashwords to D2D with all of my books.

As it is, I'll probably wait until I have some pen name books I want to publish, and set up an account only for them.

Camille


----------



## Aaron Pogue

daringnovelist said:


> If, however, D2D offered some real way to separate pen name (even a system of having two accounts going to the same bank) I would have little problem jumping from Smashwords to D2D with all of my books.


I've got some good news, Camille! Unless I'm misreading something in your post, D2D already offers everything you're looking for. When you sign up for the account, D2D sets up a default Publisher for you, but once you've signed up, you can go to "My Account | Manage Publishers" and create as many distinct Publishers as you want.

Each one can have its own name, logo, description, and payment method. Every time you publish a book, you get to choose which publisher you want to assign that book to. They'll all be associated with your user account, but the only ones who will ever see that connection are the D2D staff (and you, of course).

As I said, I think that addresses all your concerns. If it doesn't, let me know, because we're always on the lookout for new features and enhancements for the service.


----------



## Just Browsing

On Smashwords, you'd need to create two separate accounts (which I have). On D2D, you can manage it from one. I've one that, and the different publishers/authors show up just as I'd want them (on the channels too, not just on D2D).


----------



## daringnovelist

Aaron Pogue said:


> I've got some good news, Camille! Unless I'm misreading something in your post, D2D already offers everything you're looking for. When you sign up for the account, D2D sets up a default Publisher for you, but once you've signed up, you can go to "My Account | Manage Publishers" and create as many distinct Publishers as you want.
> 
> Each one can have its own name, logo, description, and payment method. Every time you publish a book, you get to choose which publisher you want to assign that book to. They'll all be associated with your user account, but the only ones who will ever see that connection are the D2D staff (and you, of course).
> 
> As I said, I think that addresses all your concerns. If it doesn't, let me know, because we're always on the lookout for new features and enhancements for the service.


That sounds great! That's exactly what I'm asking for: when the consumer looks at these publishers, they won't find any connection between them. There is no place where they would see that "Dark and Naughty Erotica" is actually put out by the same people who publish "Sweet Children's Bible Studies" even if they dig a little.

I admit that I really do like Smashwords. I like that they are working hard to break into new territory. But I am tired of real, basic problems being ignored or dismissed.

One additional question: How do you feel about serials? I usually don't publish partial stories (rather the opposite, I serialize on my blog and then collect the stories to publish) but I am considering serializing a very long novel of mine, and I know that Smashwords has said that they do not want serialized fiction on their site.

Camille


----------



## Maia Sepp Ross

I saw the comment from July about pre-orders. Is this available yet? (I'm only concerned with B&N and Apple.)
Thanks,
Maia


----------



## Speaker-To-Animals

Yeah, there's no problem using mutiple publishers and names on D2D.

On the other side of things, while Smash requires a Word doc for their own site's multiple formats, for syndication, they'll accept an epub. It seems to require the Smashwords statement, but doesn't seem to impose the same (IMHO ugly) formatting restrictions as the meatgrinder. You can pad the line and paragraph spacing to make things more readable.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

maiasepp said:


> I saw the comment from July about pre-orders. Is this available yet? (I'm only concerned with B&N and Apple.)
> Thanks,
> Maia


I'm not so sure this is an option Kris should aggressively pursue with D2D. While I have used the pre-order option with Kobo through KWL, my recent experience with Smashwords' pre-order has been disappointing. Smashy's lack of reliability aside, they have no control how quickly their vendors put up updates (which isn't Smashwords' fault). These weaknesses can seriously hinder enthusiasm and effectiveness of the program. I've bashed Smashwords for their own incompetence, but I can see where they and D2D would be criticized for aspects out of their control.

I posted about my experience with Smashwords here the other day: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,161782.0.html


----------



## Maya Cross

Kris is pushing for D2D to have B&N preorders. He's told me as much several times. In fact he said he was working on it just the other day. I would have no problem with this, because their uploads to B&N take <8 hours like clockwork every time I've done them. I assume they can maintain that sort of efficiency with preorders too.

Also, they do currently have the capability to do preorders for Apple and Kobo, but I believe it will be on a 'per title' basis right now and may require some base level of sales to justify it, since right now it has to be done manually by their staff, but they're working on opening that to everyone as part of their system too.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Pre-orders would probably have helped my twelve title series, but I'm down to the last three releases now so it doesn't matter. I have another series starting in December that I'd be interested in trying pre-orders for.


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Pre-orders would probably have helped my twelve title series, but I'm down to the last three releases now so it doesn't matter. I have another series starting in December that I'd be interested in trying pre-orders for.


Give yourself more than a couple weeks lead time to make sure the final versions there when the book goes live. The biggest problem with Smashy is that there's no consistency in their premium screening process, which means your book could be sent to the vendors anywhere from a day to several weeks after it passes their auto-vetter. D2D doesn't have this problem, but you still have to factor in the vendors not okaying your book in a timely fashion, either. Kobo and B&N are much quicker - reliably so - than Apple.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Saul Tanpepper said:


> Give yourself more than a couple weeks lead time to make sure the final versions there when the book goes live. The biggest problem with Smashy is that there's no consistency in their premium screening process, which means your book could be sent to the vendors anywhere from a day to several weeks after it passes their auto-vetter. D2D doesn't have this problem, but you still have to factor in the vendors not okaying your book in a timely fashion, either. Kobo and B&N are much quicker - reliably so - than Apple.


Thanks for the advice. Apple and Kobo just okayed one through D2D after two weeks. Delayed my new release announcement. I will definitely follow your advice with the next one and put it up at least two weeks early, which means I'd better get my editor on track.


----------



## Kathy Clark Author

I've been trying since last Thursday to put two books up but with zero success  Their tech support is a little slow.  They've been unable to make the epub version reflect the chapter centering and paragraph indents even though they work fine on Smashwords and Amazon.


----------



## The 13th Doctor

Wasn't sure if I should start a new thread so decided to play it safe and add to this one..

I've just gone onto D2D to check for any new sales and I see they've updates the 'My Sales' page to show estimated royalties for previous and current months, plus there's a Raw Sales Data bit too.


----------



## MorningJoe

garam81 said:


> Wasn't sure if I should start a new thread so decided to play it safe and add to this one..
> 
> I've just gone onto D2D to check for any new sales and I see they've updates the 'My Sales' page to show estimated royalties for previous and current months, plus there's a Raw Sales Data bit too.


That's so funny I logged into KB this morning for the same reason and was debating about starting a new thread or reviving the old one. Following your lead I will put in my 2 cents here.

The new layout is AWESOME! D2D continues to impress me and I really hope that they are able to expand their distribution agreements for even more reach. As a brand new author struggling through amazon, smash words, and D2D I must say they D2D's website is simple, clean, and really easy to use. The new sales page is great and I really appreciate you guys continuing to innovate. This is all the more helpful because for some odd reason I seem to be selling a large amount through B&N which I distribute through your site.

Keep up the good work and to anyone on the fence about trying them I cannot recommend D2D highly enough.


----------



## The 13th Doctor

MorningJoe said:


> That's so funny I logged into KB this morning for the same reason and was debating about starting a new thread or reviving the old one. Following your lead I will put in my 2 cents here.
> 
> The new layout is AWESOME! D2D continues to impress me and I really hope that they are able to expand their distribution agreements for even more reach. As a brand new author struggling through amazon, smash words, and D2D I must say they D2D's website is simple, clean, and really easy to use. The new sales page is great and I really appreciate you guys continuing to innovate. This is all the more helpful because for some odd reason I seem to be selling a large amount through B&N which I distribute through your site.
> 
> Keep up the good work and to anyone on the fence about trying them I cannot recommend D2D highly enough.


There's a thread about it now. 

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,163199.0.html


----------



## Casper Parks

Their new layout is nice.


----------



## jdrew

I continue to be glad I've gone with D2D.  I like the changes to the sales page.  And now have all three of my works through them for Apple, B&N and Kobo.  So far, they've been responsive to feedback and I can only hope they continue to be author friendly.


----------



## Victoria Champion

It's been two weeks today since I submitted my ebook to iTunes. Should I wait a little longer or should I resubmit?


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Victoria Champion said:


> It's been two weeks today since I submitted my ebook to iTunes. Should I wait a little longer or should I resubmit?


If you resubmit, it starts the clock all over again. Write to customer support and ask them to put in a ticket.


----------



## Victoria Champion

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> If you resubmit, it starts the clock all over again. Write to customer support and ask them to put in a ticket.


Glad I asked first, thanks!


----------



## Gertie Kindle

I see Kobo is now reporting free downloads. Is D2D going to be getting that info and passing it on?


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> I see Kobo is now reporting free downloads. Is D2D going to be getting that info and passing it on?


Bumping this so maybe I can get an answer to my question.


----------



## Victoria Champion

I'm sticking with you, d2D. <3


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Victoria Champion said:


> I'm sticking with you, d2D. <3


Absolutely!


----------



## 41419

I haven't been able to access the site properly for at least a week. I can kinda log-in, but all the pages seem to half-load, and don't really work. Is it just me, or are others noticing this? I need to change a price soon...


----------



## Andre Jute

dgaughran said:


> I haven't been able to access the site properly for at least a week. I can kinda log-in, but all the pages seem to half-load, and don't really work. Is it just me, or are others noticing this? I need to change a price soon...


Seems fine. I just logged in. Perhaps the glitch is at your end.


----------



## dotx

Haven't had a problem, dgaughran.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

I uploaded two books and new covers on two different books over the past few days and haven't had a problem at all.


----------



## 41419

Thanks for checking guys. I've tried different browsers and different computers (in different locations). 

Might be my account.

Can anyone tell me the email address for Support? The site isn't loading enough for me to find it anywhere....


----------



## Gertie Kindle

dgaughran said:


> Thanks for checking guys. I've tried different browsers and different computers (in different locations).
> 
> Might be my account.
> 
> Can anyone tell me the email address for Support? The site isn't loading enough for me to find it anywhere....


[email protected]


----------



## Remington Kane

Hours of Operation

Monday-Friday

8am to 4pm CST
Phone:

(866) 336-5099
Fax:

(866) 358-6413
E-mail:

[email protected]


----------



## Sam Rivers

I have been with D2D for about six months and have all my books running through them.  I have them distribute to Apple, B&N, and Kobo and I do Amazon myself. However, if I were a new writer starting out, I would put everything through D2D since is is super easy to use.

Sales were slow at first, but now I am making some good sales through D2D so I am glad that I went with them.


----------



## 41413

Were you also having this problem before you moved, DG?

_edited to remove stupid autocorrect typo, dammit iphone_


----------



## Sally C

Just checking - have things changed recently, or do you still have to go via smashwords to set a book free on B&N?


----------



## Cherise

You still have to go through Smashwords to get a book free on Barnes and Noble, but now Amazon will pricematch to iTunes or Kobo, so Barnes and Noble is no longer needed to go free on Amazon.


----------



## Patty Jansen

I've jumped on the bandwagon!

I've listed a few titles with D2D at B&N, since seeing my B&N sales through Smashwords dwindle. I also don't really like that Smashwords Edition mandatory thingie on the title page.

One disadvantage of the D2D machine: your EPUBs will be larger. MUCH larger, so sites charging for bandwidth will be massively disadvantaged.


----------



## 41419

The problem has been resolved. Thanks for all your help guys!

*waves at TK*


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Patty Jansen said:


> I've jumped on the bandwagon!
> 
> I've listed a few titles with D2D at B&N, since seeing my B&N sales through Smashwords dwindle. I also don't really like that Smashwords Edition mandatory thingie on the title page.
> 
> One disadvantage of the D2D machine: your EPUBs will be larger. MUCH larger, so sites charging for bandwidth will be massively disadvantaged.


Why larger? Create your own and upload them. D2D policy is not to edit or mess around with files you upload as ePub.


----------



## joanhallhovey

congratutions!  This is indeed an ambitious project and I've no doubt it will be a very successful venture.  My publisher takes care of formatting and all that, but if ever I decide to go it alone on a book - well, I've bookmarked your site.  All the best~

Joan.


----------



## Sally C

Thanks, Cherise!


----------



## Patty Jansen

markecooper said:


> Why larger? Create your own and upload them. D2D policy is not to edit or mess around with files you upload as ePub.


Whatever policy and why I can't comment on. The file *are* larger after uploading and "conversion".


----------



## 41419

For all you D2D users, have you had problems accessing the dash/site over the last month?

At least half the time, I get something like this instead of the normal dash/site and can't do anything. V. frustrating if you need to make a quick price change...


----------



## Patty Jansen

I get that sometimes when sites don't load properly or the net connection is crap. It's a plain HTML backup or something. The problem may be at your end. We've just replaced our modem and that solved a lot of strange problems I'd been having.


----------



## The 13th Doctor

I sometimes get that, David, and not just on D2D. Once I hit F5/Refresh it normally sorts itself out.


----------



## 41419

Yeah, no, refreshing doesn't help and I've tried at a couple of different locations. Connection here is pretty fast actually, and the other location is super-fast.

Could be something native to my account - it has been like this for over a month now. I've email them, but just wanted to check in here to see if it's a known issue.

Pretty annoying when you need to make a quick price change...


----------



## Andrew Ashling

Restarting the browser or emptying the cache of the browser helps in the very rare cases I encounter this problem.


----------



## 41419

Hmmm, doesn't seem to work. Tried a fresh browser too.

I've emailed them and I'll report back - in case anyone else is having similar issues.


----------



## RuthNestvold

I haven't ever had that happen to me on Draft2Digital, David. Other sites on occasion, though. I know for a while I was getting that on Pinterest frequently.


----------



## 71089

DELETED BECAUSE OF TOS CHANGE


----------



## cdvsmx5

Specifically, you don't have a CSS file (cascading style sheet) which describes the appearance and location of HTML elements. It could be a crap cached version on your computer, but it could also be a crap file cached by your ISP. Make sure your internet settings require a new version every time.


----------



## 41419

Thanks for all the help guys - resetting the wifi router worked.

Huzzah!


----------



## giftedrhonda

I switched to using D2D and I like it so far (I used Smashwords in the past). They've been fast and responsive and rather easy to navigate, and once I figured out all the different links on the sales page, I was good to go. I use them to distribute to Kobo and iTunes, and I directly pub to BN and Amazon. I will definitely use them for my future self-pubbed works.


----------



## Harriet Schultz

giftedrhonda said:


> I switched to using D2D and I like it so far (I used Smashwords in the past). They've been fast and responsive and rather easy to navigate, and once I figured out all the different links on the sales page, I was good to go. I use them to distribute to Kobo and iTunes, and I directly pub to BN and Amazon. I will definitely use them for my future self-pubbed works.


I've been with D2D for about a year after leaving Smashwords. Uploading is easy (no meatgrinder) and their customer service is terrific with quick responses, something Smashwords never mastered.


----------



## Vaalingrade

Just got n email from D2D:



> We have some exciting news to share! In our first year, we gained 2,000 users, and those users recorded 2.5 million book sales through our service. We want to thank you for the success you've shared with us and show you how we're spending those extra resources.
> 
> Starting this week, we'll begin rolling out some powerful enhancements to the website. Here's a quick introduction to the new features and a look at what's to come.
> Public Book Pages
> 
> As you know, we're already generating product pages for all your books. We show you the book's cover, description, and links to all the sales channels where your book appears.
> 
> This page has only been available to you in the past, but we're adding a public version which will give you an easy way to share your book with buyers.
> 
> The web address is the same as the one you use to view an individual book. When you're logged in, you'll continue seeing the same page, but anyone else who views the page will see the public version.
> Advanced User Options
> 
> The public page won't show your sales chart or allow downloads, of course, but we understand there may still be some users who don't want public pages at all. In order to support those users, we've added an Advanced User Options page under My Account. You'll be able to disable public book pages for your account with just the click of a button.
> 
> You'll already find a few other account options on that page, too, but this is just the beginning. We're proud to have an easy, quick publishing solution for all of our users, but we're also excited to provide the tools for our advanced users to customize some of these settings. This page will definitely grow over time.
> Improved Chapter Recognition
> 
> We've also made some major improvements on the Layout page for anyone who uses our document conversion service. We are always working to enhance our first-pass chapter recognition, and now we're offering you additional tools to correct the table of contents quickly and easily when our first guess is wrong.
> Submission Review Process
> 
> If you've published anything to Kobo through us, you're already familiar with this new feature. We've begun screening all new submissions to ensure they meet the content guidelines of our sales channels before delivering them.
> 
> We had two guiding objectives as we implemented that process:
> 
> We should only ever reject books that we're absolutely confident the sales channel would reject.
> We must maintain the level of speed, convenience, and customer service our users expect from us.
> 
> That required us to develop a system of rapid recognition, reliable accuracy, and flexible overrides. We feel we've largely been successful with these goals.
> 
> Our sales channels required us to implement this process, but it brings several strong advantages for our users. In a general sense, as we improve our adherence to our sales channels' guidelines, our users will experience more streamlined reviews and increased approval rates.
> 
> But in a more personal way, you'll receive much faster feedback when your book contains content or formatting that would have generated a rejection once it was reviewed by the sales channel. We only filter based on the rejections we've consistently received from our sales channels, and these rules are retailer-specific (so your book won't be delayed for distribution at one sales channel because of some obscure publishing rules at another).
> 
> As always, if you experience any problems with this process, we encourage you to contact our customer support so we can resolve your problem and improve our service.
> Coming Soon
> 
> These are the first major features we've announced in a while, but you can expect more improvements to our service in the next few months. Here are some of the ones we're most excited about:
> 
> New sales channels
> Publishing page improvements
> Coupon codes
> 
> And that's just in the next few months. As amazing as our first year was, we expect our second to be even better. I can't wait to see everything we can accomplish together.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Kris Austin
> CEO
> Draft2Digital, LLC


Sounds awesome, though I'm not sure how/if I wold use the book pages, seeing as I already have mine on my site.


----------



## Cherise

Aaron, I know you will send out another email to everyone when this goes live, right? So that we can disable the public page option? 



> Public Book Pages
> 
> As you know, we're already generating product pages for all your books. We show you the book's cover, description, and links to all the sales channels where your book appears.
> 
> This page has only been available to you in the past, but we're adding a public version which will give you an easy way to share your book with buyers.
> 
> The web address is the same as the one you use to view an individual book. When you're logged in, you'll continue seeing the same page, but anyone else who views the page will see the public version.
> Advanced User Options
> 
> *The public page won't show your sales chart or allow downloads, of course, but we understand there may still be some users who don't want public pages at all. In order to support those users, we've added an Advanced User Options page under My Account. You'll be able to disable public book pages for your account with just the click of a button.*


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Cherise Kelley said:


> Aaron, I know you will send out another email to everyone when this goes live, right? So that we can disable the public page option?


You can do that right now. Log in, go to My Account | Advanced User Options and then uncheck "Allow public book pages" and click *Save*.


----------



## Marti talbott

I'm excited about these new possibilities, especially the new sales channels. I absolutely love D2D!


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Great new features! Very excited about new sales channels and coupon codes.


----------



## BlankPage

_Comment removed due to VS TOS 24/9/2018_


----------



## Cherise

Aaron Pogue said:


> You can do that right now. Log in, go to My Account | Advanced User Options and then uncheck "Allow public book pages" and click *Save*.


Thanks!

Suggestion:

I would feel more secure about this if a confirmation came up, telling me that the change got saved. It could take me to a confirmation screen, or a confirmation applet could appear on the page. Right now, I get nothing, so I hit save three times, just to make sure.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Estelle Ryan said:


> A question about the public pages: Are these for the books only? Or will it connect all the books published from one account. What if an author has books published under a pen name and wants no connection between the different names/books? I love the idea of having another place that will give my books visibility, but want to keep things very separate.


Currently, they are for individual books only. We do have some plans to add more of a "catalog" functionality someday, where a reader viewing one book could click through to other books in the same series, by the same author, or (maybe) by the same publisher.

I can't think of any reason that we would *ever* show other books by the same D2D user account. We are very aware of the privacy/branding concerns of our users in this matter, so we'll do whatever's necessary to keep things as separate as our users want.

As part of that, we only display these pages for books that are currently published through our system (not drafts or books that have been unpublished), and the page only displays metadata that has been published.



Cherise Kelley said:


> Thanks!
> 
> Suggestion:
> 
> I would feel more secure about this if a confirmation came up, telling me that the change got saved. It could take me to a confirmation screen, or a confirmation applet could appear on the page. Right now, I get nothing, so I hit save three times, just to make sure.


That's excellent feedback, Cherise. I can't believe we overlooked it. I'll make the recommendation to our developers now.


----------



## The 13th Doctor

Received the email, too. Am intrigued about the new sales channels in particular.


----------



## BlankPage

_Comment removed due to VS TOS 24/9/2018_


----------



## Quiss

Did I see COUPONS


----------



## N. Gemini Sasson

Thrilled to see D2D continuing to grow and change!

I want to give a shout out to the super team at D2D for being on the ball. Last week I had a BB ad coming up and changed the price on D2D. For whatever reason, it wasn't going through, so after trying it a second time, I contacted tech support. It was fixed manually overnight, on a weekend no less. Meanwhile, B&N UK had insisted on keeping one of my discounted prices in effect long after I'd raised the price back up, which meant Amazon UK was price matching. D2D pursued the matter and got it corrected. I love the responsiveness of D2D!


----------



## jdrew

I agree.  Good to see D2D growing and actually taking the suggestions of authors into account and doing something about it.  I am interested in the coupons possibility and perhaps other channels coming available.
Keep up the good work.


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Looking forward to the new sales channels and coupons, but what I really want to see is a way to set prices for different territories. Right now, our Amazon UK sales are price matched to iTunes UK store with no way to effect that. For example, if I price a book on D2D for Barnes and iTunes at $0.99 it will go to Barnes for sale at  $0.99, to iTunes  $0.99 and to iTunes UK for £0.49

Along comes Amazon, sees iTunes at £0.49 and cuts the price by 50% The only way to get Amazon back to 99p is pricing no less that $1.62 at D2D currently. A $4.99 book at D2D causes the AMZ UK store to price around £2.99

So if we could just have territory pricing, or just a UK and everywhere else box?


----------



## Steve Vernon

Definitely excited to see the new changes taking shape.

Something that allows the reader to check out ALL of the books in any one series would be a GREAT idea.


----------



## AriadneW

Looking forward to new sales channels and coupons. I have been so happy with D2D, I'm sure it can only get better.


----------



## Sam Rivers

One thing I really like is D2D shows money we have earned for the month.  I wish Amazon would do that; you have to wait until the middle of the next month to find out.

I have been on D2D since last summer when I got out of Select.  At first my sales were slow, but now they are doing great.

I am looking forward to the improvements and the new sales outlets.


----------



## xoxo

Yes! *Coupons!* I can finally ditch Smashwords!

I love D2D.


----------



## CoraBuhlert

markecooper said:


> Looking forward to the new sales channels and coupons, but what I really want to see is a way to set prices for different territories. Right now, our Amazon UK sales are price matched to iTunes UK store with no way to effect that. For example, if I price a book on D2D for Barnes and iTunes at $0.99 it will go to Barnes for sale at $0.99, to iTunes $0.99 and to iTunes UK for £0.49
> 
> Along comes Amazon, sees iTunes at £0.49 and cuts the price by 50% The only way to get Amazon back to 99p is pricing no less that $1.62 at D2D currently. A $4.99 book at D2D causes the AMZ UK store to price around £2.99
> 
> So if we could just have territory pricing, or just a UK and everywhere else box?


Yes, this. Territorial pricing would be great for those of us who have significant sales outside the US. At least, give us the option to set a price for USD, GBP and EUR separately, like XinXii does.


----------



## Silly Writer

Not much to add, except I am a fan-girl of Tara at D2D. If she can't fix the problem, she's on it like a dog with a bone until she or someone can.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Those of you opting out of the public pages, would you mind telling me why? I would appreciate any input, either way. Thanks.


----------



## JRHenderson

Hi Aaron.

I have a US version of my book and a UK version and I'd like to get them into B&N.

If I upload through D2D, will I get the option to put one in the US Nook Store and the other in the UK Nook Store? Or would I just upload both versions, making it clear in the blurb that one is for US customers and the other is for Brits, Aussies and Canadians?

Many thanks,
John.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

JRHenderson said:


> I have a US version of my book and a UK version and I'd like to get them into B&N.
> 
> If I upload through D2D, will I get the option to put one in the US Nook Store and the other in the UK Nook Store? Or would I just upload both versions, making it clear in the blurb that one is for US customers and the other is for Brits, Aussies and Canadians?


John,
I understand your plight! I checked with the developers, and Draft2Digital doesn't currently has any means of delivering territory-specific book projects. I did share the request with them, but it's something they'd have to coordinate with B&N, so it would take a while if it did happen.

In the meantime, seems like your second option should work. It's not quite as elegant, but it'll do the job.

Good luck!


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Well, here's the latest.



> We are currently experiencing severe distribution issues at Amazon. At this time they are not accepting any new books from us, and they have begun removing live books from sale.
> 
> Late last night, we received a message from Amazon informing us that they considered our account to be in violation of their terms. At the same time they blocked all access to our account and began delisting our books.
> 
> While Amazon has proven difficult to work with in the past, we've always responded promptly to their complaints both with regard to the immediate incident and with new procedures and programmatic solutions to prevent recurrences of the problem. We had done the same with the specific complaints that triggered this action, and we believed--and still do believe--that we had fully and satisfactorily addressed the matter.
> 
> I believe the termination was made in error due to confusion on Amazon's part, and we are doing everything we can to pursue immediate and complete reinstatement of our account. Unfortunately, Amazon has historically been uncommunicative and inflexible concerning account issues, so we can make no guess as to when the matter will be resolved.
> 
> I deeply regret the inconvenience this creates for you, and share your frustration at the unfairly short notice. We are working aggressively to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and we will keep you updated as we learn more information.


Anybody delisted, yet?


----------



## Fictionista

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Well, here's the latest.
> 
> Anybody delisted, yet?


To my horror, I just received this email from D2D as well. Very worrisome as well as depressing. Bad enough my erotic titles were removed from Kobo some months back, now this And no real resolution in sight?

As of this moment, both of my books are still showing on Amazon.

Might as well hang up my hat and be done with it.  I'm sure I could publish to directly to Kindle, but my formatting skills suck. The whole beauty of D2D is how seamless the whole process is. Here's hoping this issue gets resolved ASAP.


----------



## Silly Writer

Does anyone know if you delist with D2D and upload direct to Amazon, do you keep your reviews?!


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Fictionista said:


> To my horror, I just received this email from D2D as well. Very worrisome as well as depressing. Bad enough my erotic titles were removed from Kobo some months back, now this And no real resolution in sight?
> 
> As of this moment, both of my books are still showing on Amazon.
> 
> Might as well hang up my hat and be done with it.  I'm sure I could publish to directly to Kindle, but my formatting skills suck. The whole beauty of D2D is how seamless the whole process is. Here's hoping this issue gets resolved ASAP.


Download your file from D2D and use that on KDP. You can preview it if you're uncertain it will work. I use the same files everywhere without a problem. I go KDP direct though of course. Is this an erotica issue/category violation thing like WH Smith?


----------



## Silly Writer

But I'd you download your file, and upload to Amazon, don't you lose all of your reviews?


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

L.L. Akers said:


> But I'd you download your file, and upload to Amazon, don't you lose all of your reviews?


Yes. But if this is something she feels is enough to make her quit D2D or publishing entirely, then going direct and starting over is better than nothing. It sucks either way.


----------



## Fictionista

markecooper said:


> Download your file from D2D and use that on KDP. You can preview it if you're uncertain it will work. I use the same files everywhere without a problem. I go KDP direct though of course. Is this an erotica issue/category violation thing like WH Smith?


Awesome idea I hadn't thought of. I'm gonna give it a shot. Thanks! 

EDIT: I have no idea how to go about downloading my file from D2D...help! 

EDIT: Oops...didn't notice the "download" option staring me straight in the face...LOL. Got it!


----------



## Guest

L.L. Akers said:


> But I'd you download your file, and upload to Amazon, don't you lose all of your reviews?


I'm not sure. I know that for people who go direct to Amazon via KDP, if they want to switch to D2D for Amazon they DO lose all their reviews. I believe that was tested by D2D. I'm not sure if you go the other way, from D2D to KDP, if you'd lose all your reviews. Hopefully someone from D2D will let you know on this thread, or you might want to email them to ask.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

markecooper said:


> Download your file from D2D and use that on KDP. You can preview it if you're uncertain it will work. I use the same files everywhere without a problem. I go KDP direct though of course. Is this an erotica issue/category violation thing like WH Smith?


I don't think so. It sounds like it's a general violation. Amazon didn't say anything about reviewing the titles individually and restoring those who are not in violation. We're all getting slammed.


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Kitten said:


> I'm not sure. I know that for people who go direct to Amazon via KDP, if they want to switch to D2D for Amazon they DO lose all their reviews. I believe that was tested by D2D. I'm not sure if you go the other way, from D2D to KDP, if you'd lose all your reviews. Hopefully someone from D2D will let you know on this thread, or you might want to email them to ask.


I think you would because when you start at KDP the book would get a new AISN and be considered a different title. So BEWARE if you do this.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Fictionista said:


> To my horror, I just received this email from D2D as well. Very worrisome as well as depressing. Bad enough my erotic titles were removed from Kobo some months back, now this And no real resolution in sight?
> 
> As of this moment, both of my books are still showing on Amazon.
> 
> Might as well hang up my hat and be done with it.  I'm sure I could publish to directly to Kindle, but my formatting skills suck. The whole beauty of D2D is how seamless the whole process is. Here's hoping this issue gets resolved ASAP.


Were your erotica titles ever restored to Kobo? Were you given a chance to make them compliant?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Kitten said:


> I'm not sure. I know that for people who go direct to Amazon via KDP, if they want to switch to D2D for Amazon they DO lose all their reviews. I believe that was tested by D2D. I'm not sure if you go the other way, from D2D to KDP, if you'd lose all your reviews. Hopefully someone from D2D will let you know on this thread, or you might want to email them to ask.


We did do those tests, and you're right. The reviews won't transfer.

Kris already said it in his email, but I want to say for my own part how sorry I am for the problems this creates. I'm in it with the rest of you. _Taming Fire_ has been listed through the Draft2Digital account from day one, so I stand to lose 255 reviews and the 4-star rating on the book that made my name in the first place. I'm sick with worry, and it kills me to think that everyone else who used Draft2Digital for Amazon distribution is going through the same thing right now.

I still hope that Draft2Digital can get this resolved. As much as I love Amazon, they can sometimes be an incredibly uncooperative business partner.

I'm going to be pretty busy all day trying to see what I can do to help them sort this out, but I'll keep them posted on anything you guys say in this thread, and of course we'll let you know the moment we have any useful news.


----------



## Fictionista

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Were your erotica titles ever restored to Kobo? Were you given a chance to make them compliant?


My titles were never restored to Kobo, no. I wasn't even aware we could make a complaint. Can we do this? I've been a little out of the loop with everything lately.

Have people been getting their erotic romance titles restored to Kobo?


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Fictionista said:


> My titles were never restored to Kobo, no. I wasn't even aware we could make a complaint. Can we do this? I've been a little out of the loop with everything lately.
> 
> Have people been getting their erotic romance titles restored to Kobo?


I don't know. I was just curious. It took over a month for some of my sweet romance titles to be restored and I finally pulled all of them.

I relisted my permafree and the sequels with Kobo in December and finally had to write D2D to get them out of limbo. Nothing offensive in those books either.

Speaking of permafree, I'm wondering if that's the issue with Amazon. We can list on Apple and Kobo for free, but Amazon required minimum of 0.99.


----------



## Guest

Fictionista said:


> My titles were never restored to Kobo, no. I wasn't even aware we could make a complaint. Can we do this? I've been a little out of the loop with everything lately.
> 
> Have people been getting their erotic romance titles restored to Kobo?


I think Gertie means making the books "compliant," as in adjusting the cover or blurb to make the books suitable for Kobo. I know people have adjusted their blurb and/or cover when Amazon takes down an erotica title, and sometimes their book is put back on Amazon. I don't know if the same thing happens with Kobo.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Kitten said:


> I think Gertie means making the books "compliant," as in adjusting the cover or blurb to make the books suitable for Kobo. I know people have adjusted their blurb and/or cover when Amazon takes down an erotica title, and sometimes their book is put back on Amazon. I don't know if the same thing happens with Kobo.


Yeah, that's pretty much what I meant. If Kobo is allowing erotica authors to bring their books into compliance, why should they hold back my definitely compliant books?

Basically, that's why I pulled everything out of Kobo and just putting my toe back in the water with a couple of books left me with a bad taste in my mouth.


----------



## MatthewAlanThyer

It looks like a pretty good deal, but I'm still waiting for someone to integrate with CreateSpace. The conversion process should be very similar. I cannot figure out why no one has done this yet.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Saguahe said:


> It looks like a pretty good deal, but I'm still waiting for someone to integrate with CreateSpace. The conversion process should be very similar. I cannot figure out why no one has done this yet.


I've been doing the formatting for CS myself for so long that I can practically do it in my sleep.


----------



## MorganKegan

Well, this is all interesting... as in the Chinese curse.

Fortunately, for my new release I chose to directly upload to Amazon and Google Play, and only use D2D for iBooks, Nook, and Kobo. So from what I'm reading here, I shouldn't be affected.


----------



## Sam Rivers

This sounds ominous!

I only have book that has been sent to Amazon so if I lose it, it won't be a great loss.

I usually published directly to Amazon.

I just checked and that book is still published through D2D to Amazon.  I don't think I will publish any more that way if it is going to get pulled.


----------



## Midnight Writer

*deleted*


----------



## Gertie Kindle

What's the status of the situation with Amazon?


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> What's the status of the situation with Amazon?


There's been no meaningful communication from Amazon since last Thursday, and everything hangs in limbo. We're pounding on doors (metaphorically speaking), and we have some hope of finally talking with someone today.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Aaron Pogue said:


> There's been no meaningful communication from Amazon since last Thursday, and everything hangs in limbo. We're pounding on doors (metaphorically speaking), and we have some hope of finally talking with someone today.


Okay. Keep us posted.


----------



## Fictionista

Latest email:

_We have finally received follow-up communication from Amazon concerning the suspension of Draft2Digital books that took place on Thursday, January 30th. They offered us no opportunity to appeal or correct their complaints, and showed little concern for the impact that action has had on our users, but they did at last provide some detailed information concerning the fate of the books in our account.

Any of your books listed at Amazon through Draft2Digital will be removed from sale shortly. They recommended that you upload the books through your personal KDP account. We asked them to provide some way to migrate the current books (with rank and reviews intact), but no such option is available.

However, we were assured that if you list the book again using the same title and contributor names, their system will automatically recognize it as a match and transfer the existing reviews to the new book.

We understand and sincerely regret the inconvenience this causes you. We have made every effort to comply with Amazon's requirements and to resolve their complaints, but Amazon's absolute failure of communication and hostility toward our business model thwarted our best efforts.

We will continue to pursue a more stable business relationship with Amazon, but for the immediate future, we will cease all distribution there. We did receive assurances that they intend to make timely payment for all book sales that occurred through our account.

In the meantime, if we can assist you in any way, please contact our customer support and we'll do our best to ease this transition_

Sigh...


----------



## Marti talbott

Forgive me if this question has been answered, but by making our book pages public, does it mean they are thinking of selling books directly from D2D in the future?


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Yeah, just got the email from D2D re: Amazon. Very upsetting.


----------



## Sam Rivers

One concern that I had was whether D2D was going to converting our word docxs to mobi.  Right now they convert the doc to mobi and epub.  Then I uploaded the mobi to Amazon since the coversion looked so good.

I hope D2D keeps doing this even if Amazon doesn't let them upload from D2D.


----------



## Aaron Pogue

Wild Rivers said:


> One concern that I had was whether D2D was going to converting our word docxs to mobi. Right now they convert the doc to mobi and epub. Then I uploaded the mobi to Amazon since the coversion looked so good.
> 
> I hope D2D keeps doing this even if Amazon doesn't let them upload from D2D.


They will absolutely continue to provide mobi conversion along with the epub, and users are welcome to download the Draft2Digital mobi for use on their KDP accounts.


----------



## Sam Rivers

> They will absolutely continue to provide mobi conversion along with the epub, and users are welcome to download the Draft2Digital mobi for use on their KDP accounts.


That makes me feel good since D2D makes a wonderful mobi with TOC and the book looks much better. Even if I didn't get many sales, I would still keep using D2D because of that feature.

However, my sales have actually been fairly good through D2D so I am pleased with that result.


----------



## Silly Writer

I've been pleased with everything D2D has done, and I go through them (or did until now) for everything. This is not fair. I hope D2D will put their efforts into a storefront now so we can all support them, like they've supported us.


----------



## Silly Writer

This was my answer in another thread when someone asked why would anyone give them 10% to handle our books (was asked to keep it all here):

Because if you're not computer savvy (like me), it can be overwhelming to figure out how to upload to every retailer. Not only that, but they handled the formatting beautifully, all I had to do was upload my Word doc., and total sales was in one place (could look at break-out reports I'd wanted to), the changes to prices, MS, or blurbs happened within hours even on Apple (for me anyway), and they did a great job handling print for CreateSpace, leaving me a huge chunk of time to work on WIP. Not to mention their outstanding customer service skills! Monthly pay, immediate human on the line if you call... I could go on, but that's the big stuff. So sad for D2D


----------



## jdrew

Fictionista said:


> Latest email:
> 
> _We have finally received follow-up communication from Amazon concerning the suspension of Draft2Digital books that took place on Thursday, January 30th. They offered us no opportunity to appeal or correct their complaints, and showed little concern for the impact that action has had on our users, but they did at last provide some detailed information concerning the fate of the books in our account.
> 
> Any of your books listed at Amazon through Draft2Digital will be removed from sale shortly. They recommended that you upload the books through your personal KDP account. We asked them to provide some way to migrate the current books (with rank and reviews intact), but no such option is available.
> 
> However, we were assured that if you list the book again using the same title and contributor names, their system will automatically recognize it as a match and transfer the existing reviews to the new book.
> 
> We understand and sincerely regret the inconvenience this causes you. We have made every effort to comply with Amazon's requirements and to resolve their complaints, but Amazon's absolute failure of communication and hostility toward our business model thwarted our best efforts.
> 
> We will continue to pursue a more stable business relationship with Amazon, but for the immediate future, we will cease all distribution there. We did receive assurances that they intend to make timely payment for all book sales that occurred through our account.
> 
> In the meantime, if we can assist you in any way, please contact our customer support and we'll do our best to ease this transition_
> 
> Sigh...


Well, as much good as Amazon has done for some of us, this appears to be them acting a bit big for their britches. Is it another case of power corrupting?


----------



## Fictionista

Aaron Pogue said:


> They will absolutely continue to provide mobi conversion along with the epub, and users are welcome to download the Draft2Digital mobi for use on their KDP accounts.


Will it also to allow us to do this with books that weren't yet already uploaded through D2D? Because I have a couple of releases coming up very shortly that I was planning to publish through D2D, and I will still do so for B&N , Itunes and Kobo, but will be publishing through Kindle direct for Amazon. I have zero experience with formatting files, so if there's a way I can still upload my files for Amazon through D2D just for formatting purposes and then download the then formatted file, that would be awesome.


----------



## Willo

I'm honestly beyond disgusted with Amazon at this point. They forget that indies are also their customers in many cases (I am buying less and less from them the more they pull this sort of thing - Regularly running searches for books I want off of Amazon). With every "guess-what-you-did-wrong-we-won't-say-exactly-what" type book purge/extremely vague TOS violation festival, glitch that throws off rankings, and extremely inconsiderate decision that costs indies money (such as having to relist a number of books because Amazon likely feels threatened by D2d), the more they fan the flames of ire in people who are TIRED of their nonsense.

They're the last place I list to now (I'd much rather* build recognition on other platforms indies can trust* with solid promotion). Amazon has power because customers and indies give it to them. If another outlet gets viral promotion, Amazon is pissing off enough people off that it *will * matter and affect their market share.

D2D is amazing.

God, I hope they partner with Google (are you listening Google?). One day, Google (or someone else...) may eat Amazon. Plenty of people use their phones as eReaders now *raises hand*. The Kindle is unlikely to last forever, and when its popularity fades, a shift is likely to tilt in the favor multi-option distributors/retailers, especially those who allow readers to actually own their books (#SideloadingFTW). 

 #amazonFAIL



Martitalbott said:


> Forgive me if this question has been answered, but by making our book pages public, does it mean they are thinking of selling books directly from D2D in the future?


God, I hope so.



L.L. Akers said:


> I've been pleased with everything D2D has done, and I go through them (or did until now) for everything.* This is not fair. I hope D2D will put their efforts into a storefront now so we can all support them, like they've supported us.*


#Yes
I would support the hell out of that.

#FingersCrossedForaD2DStore

edit: Accidental bolding adjustment


----------



## Becca Mills

Aaron Pogue said:


> There's been no meaningful communication from Amazon since last Thursday, and everything hangs in limbo. We're pounding on doors (metaphorically speaking), and we have some hope of finally talking with someone today.


Aaron, any chance the introduction of public pages at D2D is the true source of the problem with Amazon? The 1/28 email about public pages mentioned that coupon codes are a future goal. Maybe these changes are making D2D sound like a budding competitor to Amazon, even if D2D actually has no such plans.


----------



## Sam Rivers

> I have zero experience with formatting files, so if there's a way I can still upload my files for Amazon through D2D just for formatting purposes and then download the then formatted file, that would be awesome.


D2D gives you a mobi and a epub file to check out. If it if okay, then use that file to upload to Amazon. That is what I normally do anyway since most of the time, I go direct to Amazon.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Wild Rivers said:


> D2D gives you a mobi and a epub file to check out. If it if okay, then use that file to upload to Amazon. That is what I normally do anyway since most of the time, I go direct to Amazon.


I've never used their mobi to go direct to Amazon. I'm thinking that might be part of the problem because if I put a teaser at the end, it doesn't link to Amazon. It links to my website where all of the other vendors are listed.

When I go direct with the three books, I'll link directly back to amazon.


----------



## Ed Robinson

I am right in the middle of the process with D2D today. I can see the mobi with Kindle Previewer and it looks great. How can I save/download it to send to KDP? 
Really disappointed when I tried to publish to KDP via D2D and it wouldn't let me.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Ed Robinson said:


> I am right in the middle of the process with D2D today. I can see the mobi with Kindle Previewer and it looks great. How can I save/download it to send to KDP?
> Really disappointed when I tried to publish to KDP via D2D and it wouldn't let me.


Click on your book under the "my books" tab. On the right side, you'll see "download" inside a yellow bar. There's a drop down menu above that where you can select the mobi file to download.


----------



## Ed Robinson

Ok. I see it but it opens in Picture Manager, and it's some random pic. None of the options for "Open With" will let me view it. Kindle Previewer is not listed as an option.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Ed Robinson said:


> Ok. I see it but it opens in Picture Manager, and it's some random pic. None of the options for "Open With" will let me view it. Kindle Previewer is not listed as an option.


I guess you need to download mobipocketreader. I didn't think about that because we used to have to use mobipocketcreator to make the mobi files and I've had both forever. It's free.


----------



## Silly Writer

Ed Robinson said:


> Ok. I see it but it opens in Picture Manager, and it's some random pic. None of the options for "Open With" will let me view it. Kindle Previewer is not listed as an option.


I went to D2D and saved the mobi to my computer. Then went to KDP and uploaded that Mobi. It will give you a Kindle previewer, you can look at the Fire, the PaperWhite and any other reader Amazon supports. After I finished, I bought a copy and checked it on my own kindle. It was fine.

I did my change-over last week when the first flag went up. Reviews transferred over but I lost ranking and Also-Boughts. I luckily had an ENT promo set up so got a new better ranking with that, and finally, 6 days later, I have some also-Boughts again, although completely different than what they were.

Also don't forget, you have to find the link everywhere you ever put it (Facebook, Blog, websites) and change it, as you will get a new ASIN number and old links don't work anymore.

Eta: also change link for here at Kboards in signature (have to do that in your profile).


----------



## Ed Robinson

I got my problem resolved. This issue with D2D and Amazon is lousy, at least for D2D and there customers.


----------



## Sam Rivers

I published a book last evening through D2D to B&N, Kobo, and Apple.  I used the mobi from D2D to publish to Amazon.

I already have received e-mails saying the book has been published by Amazon, B&N, and Kobo.  The only one that is taking longer is Apple.

So less than 24 hours after I published the novel 'Arrival of the Overlords' it was available for sale.


----------



## Silly Writer

Ed Robinson said:


> I got my problem resolved. This issue with D2D and Amazon is lousy, at least for D2D and there customers.


Yes it is lousy. I've changed my profile to my sad monkey face in honor of D2D. I'm truly beyond sad that their hard work has fizzled with the 'zon. But I'll continue to use them for their other distribution.


----------



## jdrew

Yes this arrangement or lack of one between D2D and Amazon is rotten.
I'm staying with D2D for everything I can. I just went through a "won't publish" issue with Apple through D2D and guess who got me the information I needed to straighten things out - yes D2D and now I can say my latest co-authored children's book, _*Girls Gone Great*_, is available at Apple.
Thanks you guys.


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Anyone else notice the new tab at D2D for setting up paperbacks?


----------



## The 13th Doctor

markecooper said:


> Anyone else notice the new tab at D2D for setting up paperbacks?


Ooh, just noticed it.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Thanks. Can't wait to use it.


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Thanks. Can't wait to use it.


Could this mean *gasp* that D2D has made friends with some brick and mortar stores?


----------



## Gertie Kindle

markecooper said:


> Could this mean *gasp* that D2D has made friends with some brick and mortar stores?


I think it means they've come out of beta for CS paperbacks. Anyway, I'm going to try it as soon as I get some time.


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> I think it means they've come out of beta for CS paperbacks. Anyway, I'm going to try it as soon as I get some time.


Yeah, it IS the createspace thing, but I was hoping. Can you imagine the howls of trad publishing if their "ace in the hole" was pirated by indies? Most of us only consider trad worth considering for what they can offer in that area. Without it? Poof, there goes their one advantage over us.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

markecooper said:


> Yeah, it IS the createspace thing, but I was hoping. Can you imagine the howls of trad publishing if their "ace in the hole" was pirated by indies? Most of us only consider trad worth considering for what they can offer in that area. Without it? Poof, there goes their one advantage over us.


It'll happen. I've everything from novella length up out in paperback. I've been lazy about the last three, but I'll get to it.


----------



## Abalone

I signed up for D2D two weeks ago and received this email today. I figured some of you publish through them and would like to know why your books are on hold.



> We are experiencing significant publishing delays at Kobo. This affects new listings, metadata and pricing updates, as well as delistings.
> 
> These delays are entirely the result of technical issues on Kobo's backend, triggered by our rapid growth and high volume of deliveries. Kobo is working closely with us to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and prevent any future recurrences.
> 
> While your changes may be slow to appear on the Kobo website, we are tracking them internally and will ensure eventual delivery. We understand that some types of changes can be extremely time sensitive (especially price changes and delist requests), and we are doing everything within our power to push those changes through by hand.
> 
> If you need assistance with a priority change, please feel free to contact Customer Support. We are working aggressively to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and we will keep you updated as we learn more information.


----------



## Cherise

Bumping for those who may not realize that free and easy book formatting exists for ebooks and paperbacks.


----------



## Bluebonnet

Thanks so much to the people here on Kboards for keeping us up to date about the D2D situation with Amazon! Not a single person on the official Kindle forum seems to be aware that you can no longer publish to Kindle through D2D.  In fact, I just saw one of their forum "experts" (a person who publishes Kindle how-to guides) tell a new poster yesteday that he could use D2D to publish a Kindle book. 

Kboards is the best!


----------



## jdrew

markecooper said:


> Anyone else notice the new tab at D2D for setting up paperbacks?


Well this is news. I'm going to have to go check out D2D and see what is there. Thanks to all for keeping the news items coming. Anyone have any more info regarding the possible connection to brick and mortar bookstores?


----------



## Patty Jansen

Was hoping that someone would dig up this thread, because I couldn't find it.

I published on D2D in December. I now have accrued more than $700 worth of sales via them, but my "payable" line in the dashboard has yet to see a single cent. I have to admit I don't like this. When am I going to see any of this money? Not until April?


----------



## Lydniz

Patty Jansen said:


> Was hoping that someone would dig up this thread, because I couldn't find it.
> 
> I published on D2D in December. I now have accrued more than $700 worth of sales via them, but my "payable" line in the dashboard has yet to see a single cent. I have to admit I don't like this. When am I going to see any of this money? Not until April?


Have you contacted them? Their customer service is generally excellent. I have never had any trouble getting paid myself, and for much smaller amounts than that.


----------



## Patty Jansen

Lydniz said:


> Have you contacted them? Their customer service is generally excellent. I have never had any trouble getting paid myself, and for much smaller amounts than that.


At this point I don't see a need to contact them. I'd just like to know how long it takes for them to finally start paying out sales.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Patty Jansen said:


> At this point I don't see a need to contact them. I'd just like to know how long it takes for them to finally start paying out sales.


Here's what they say about that.

"Our sales channels all have different policies on their payments. Most of them delay payments by about 60 days after the end of the month in which the sale happens. We can't control that, but whatever we get (no matter when the sale happened), we'll send along to you in your next payment."

Congrats on $700. Hope you get it soon.


----------



## Silly Writer

I published in July and I think my first pmnt was September, but after that first long stretch it is monthly. They've never missed a pmnt or been late for me.


----------



## Andrew Ashling

L.L. Akers said:


> I published in July and I think my first pmnt was September, but after that first long stretch it is monthly. They've never missed a pmnt or been late for me.


Same for me.


----------



## Guest

Patty Jansen said:


> Was hoping that someone would dig up this thread, because I couldn't find it.
> 
> I published on D2D in December. I now have accrued more than $700 worth of sales via them, but my "payable" line in the dashboard has yet to see a single cent. I have to admit I don't like this. When am I going to see any of this money? Not until April?


There are two places you need to put your PayPal email address in, one for author and one for publisher. If one of these hasn't been filled in they won't pay you, even though that's stupid.

On the other hand Kobo and B&N sales for December won't be paid until March, and they usually pay around the 7th. It's only Apple sales you should have received in Feb. That could be it.


----------



## Nic

Has there been any attempt at solving the Amazon problems?


----------



## Patty Jansen

Nic said:


> Has there been any attempt at solving the Amazon problems?


They're not going to, because Amazon enjoys obfuscating any attempts at collaboration. That's what you get for allowing one company to have such a large market share.


----------



## AriadneW

Patty Jansen said:


> I published on D2D in December. I now have accrued more than $700 worth of sales via them, but my "payable" line in the dashboard has yet to see a single cent. I have to admit I don't like this. When am I going to see any of this money? Not until April?


I was paid for B&N November sales and Apple up to the 28th of December in February.

So this month I'm working on the basis that I'll get B&N December and Apple for the last few days of December and then January to whatever the cutoff date.

At the moment my verified royalties shows as zero, but I remember that changing not long before being paid out last month.


----------



## Patty Jansen

AriadneW said:


> I was paid for B&N November sales and Apple up to the 28th of December in February.
> 
> So this month I'm working on the basis that I'll get B&N December and Apple for the last few days of December and then January to whatever the cutoff date.
> 
> At the moment my verified royalties shows as zero, but I remember that changing not long before being paid out last month.


OK then by that timetable, something should start happening this month.


----------



## SamanthaGrey

I know this has probably been answered, but there are 50 pages of this thread... we need like a Table of Contents! How long does distribution to Apple and Kobo generally take? My books were up on B&N the next day.


----------



## Vaalingrade

Apple is a couple of weeks, Kobo appears to be *ten thousand years*.


----------



## Sam Rivers

My books started coming down this afternoon to Kobo.  Maybe I will start getting some sales from them.


----------



## Patty Jansen

Apple appears to be anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Kobo... Why not uploads direct to KWL? My books go live there within two hours.


----------



## Gertie Kindle

Kobo is finally coming through for me, too. I only uploaded my permafree and the follow-up boxed set. With two sites free, hopefully Amazon will keep it free.


----------



## portiadacosta

Yep, all my books that were in 'publishing' at Kobo are starting to be republished now. Everything must be in transition at the moment, because at the Kobo UK site there are two versions of all my titles. I can tell which are the new versions because I did some slight cover changes.

Strangely though, the new versions, instead of having the UK currency equivalent price of 99c ie. mostly about 74p, depending on currency fluctuations, have now been rounded up to 99p.


----------



## emilyward

After having 2 of my books on KWL for more than a year, I made $35. With that $100 threshold, I'll never be paid. I'd rather wait a couple weeks than have a whole other interface to worry about.


----------



## Katherine Roberts

portiadacosta said:


> Yep, all my books that were in 'publishing' at Kobo are starting to be republished now. Everything must be in transition at the moment, because at the Kobo UK site there are two versions of all my titles. I can tell which are the new versions because I did some slight cover changes.
> 
> Strangely though, the new versions, instead of having the UK currency equivalent price of 99c ie. mostly about 74p, depending on currency fluctuations, have now been rounded up to 99p.


I have been uploading some new covers, which seemed to trigger the republishing process at Kobo. I can now see two versions of my books, too... but my new editions in the uk seem to have cheaper prices than the old ones! Must check what's happening there, possibly it's something to do with the exchange rate when things go live?


----------



## Patty Jansen

My D2D dashboard has been frozen since the beginning of the month. I usually get at least a few sales each day. 

Anyone else?


----------



## Nymirra

I guess this is the right thread for it? I'm not sure. Apologies if it isn't, I just wanted to share my experience with D2D so far.

I spent 8 months with Smashwords. I switched to D2D for my B&N, Apple and Kobo distribution in the middle of March, and other than the enforced ToC that D2D grafts on (I always make my own), the experience has been *awesome*. Then again, Smashwords was an abject failure. I'm not sure why, or what went wrong, but in spite of going premium, only a few of my books made it to the aforementioned retailers, and I never saw a sale from them. Not -one- sale. 8 months.

Granted, I'm still small-fry, but it took only 2 days after uploading my back catalog to D2D before the sales started trickling in, slow and steady. I can't upload directly to B&N due to the country I live in, and I don't own a Mac so iTunes is out of the question as well. I couldn't get Kobo to accept my bank information either, but honestly I no longer worry about it. I'm 99,99% satisfied with D2D and I now recommend it over Smashwords to everyone. Amazon used to be 95% of my sales. It's now more like 80%, and that's thanks to D2D doing what Smashwords apparently could not.


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## The 13th Doctor

Patty Jansen said:


> My D2D dashboard has been frozen since the beginning of the month. I usually get at least a few sales each day.
> 
> Anyone else?


4 sales have appeared this morning (all from Apple).

@Nymirra - I've found that I've gained more sales going through D2D rather than Smashwords, too.


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## Patty Jansen

garam81 said:


> 4 sales have appeared this morning (all from Apple).


That'd be it. My B&N are much higher than my Apple sales. There must be some B&N blockage going on.


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## Gertie Kindle

Patty Jansen said:


> That'd be it. My B&N are much higher than my Apple sales. There must be some B&N blockage going on.


I had a few sales through B&N last month and one yesterday. Surprisingly, nothing from Apple other than freebies so far this month and I usually have a few through them by now. If nothing else, I'll have follow-up sales from the permafree.


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## Patty Jansen

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> I had a few sales through B&N last month and one yesterday. Surprisingly, nothing from Apple other than freebies so far this month and I usually have a few through them by now. If nothing else, I'll have follow-up sales from the permafree.


No problem last month. I think I had about 70 sales at B&N through D2D and a handful through Smashwords. Just this month it seems like there is a reporting holdup somewhere.


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## [email protected]

Nymirra said:


> I switched to D2D for my B&N, Apple and Kobo distribution in the middle of March, and other than the enforced ToC that D2D grafts on (I always make my own), the experience has been *awesome*.


We recently added the functionality to let us have a functional TOC for the device that Apple requires but not embed a TOC in the book itself. We can turn this on for your entire account or for individual books. We plan to make this an option you can choose for yourself in the near future, but for the time being you can contact us at [email protected] and we can adjust this for you.

Dan
Draft2Digital


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## Gertie Kindle

What's the maximum file size we can upload? Sorry, I forget.


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## Guest

Patty Jansen said:


> No problem last month. I think I had about 70 sales at B&N through D2D and a handful through Smashwords. Just this month it seems like there is a reporting holdup somewhere.


I've had hardly any sales through B&N this month, but when I contacted D2D they said there was no problem with sales reporting. I usually make $40-$60 per month on D2D, mostly from B&N, but this month I've only made $2. I don't know why I suddenly stopped selling


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## K Meador

I already have ebooks and paperbacks for my books. However, I am not on Kobo or Itunes for them. I am on Itunes for my audio books. Can I use your site to gain access to those two platforms?


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## Silly Writer

K Meador said:


> I already have ebooks and paperbacks for my books. However, I am not on Kobo or Itunes for them. I am on Itunes for my audio books. Can I use your site to gain access to those two platforms?


Just in case they don't pop in here to answer you, I'll take the liberty of letting you know that yes, you can. Once you upload your book to D2D (free), you choose which stores you want them to distribute to. They have:

Kobo
Apple / ITunes 
Barnes & Noble
CreateSpace
And soon (hopefully) GooglePlay.

You can unpublish at any time, or change which stores you want them to publish to. Their interface is extremely user-friendly. With a completed manuscript, you can have it up and running in minutes.


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## Mark E. Cooper

I have mentioned this before, but... what we really need at D2D is a way to price our books by region to stop all the screwing around with price matching. This is becoming essential if it wasn't before as even Kobo where I sell hardly anything now has the ability. I've had to pull all my stuff for Apple away from D2D because of the pricing, and now one of my cheaper books has to be overpriced at Barnes to stop Amazon matching it so low I lose too much royalty.

I know D2D is looking into it, but this has got to be a priority for this year. I think D2D is superior to places like going smash or Nook directly despite needing to pay for their service, I wouldn't pull my last vendor (Barnes) away from D2D if I had any other choice. Maybe I could pull just that one book and use Nook directly for it. That's a possibility but yet another place to maintain does not appeal.


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## [email protected]

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> What's the maximum file size we can upload? Sorry, I forget.


20 MB at this time


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## Gertie Kindle

DanWood said:


> 20 MB at this time


Thanks. Just wanted to make sure.


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## JRHenderson

Have D2D given an update on the Heartbleed situation? Should we change our passwords?


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## Key

Is D2D going to upload to Scribd (subscription reading plans that pay the author royalties) the way Smashwords has started doing?


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## [email protected]

In regards to Heartbleed an email will be coming out shortly.  We patched our servers right after it came to light to prevent any future exploit and we don't believe we were targeted.  We do recommend that everyone change their password the next time they visit our site.

We are in final negotiations with Scribd and look forward to providing new sales channels soon.

Dan
Draft2Digital


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## Gertie Kindle

Got your email. Changed my password. 

Thanks for your prompt response to this issue.


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## JRHenderson

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Got your email. Changed my password.
> 
> Thanks for your prompt response to this issue.


^ This. Kudos to Draft2Digital for quickly and clearly telling their customers what the Heartbleed situation is and what they need to do.

If only some of the other web companies were this responsive....


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## jdrew

JRHenderson said:


> ^ This. Kudos to Draft2Digital for quickly and clearly telling their customers what the Heartbleed situation is and what they need to do.
> 
> If only some of the other web companies were this responsive....


Boy do I second that. Thanks D2D for being on top of things and looking out for your authors.


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## Sharon Austin

Changed mine, too. Thanks, D2D.


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## Vaalingrade

Before Heartbleed, the most common password was password.
After, the most common will be password1


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## [email protected]

Draft2Digital is very pleased to announce today that we hit 25,000 books live across our sales channels and our authors have made over 3.5 million sales! 

We want to thank all of our authors for letting us be a part of their publishing success. We have a lot of exciting news coming up and we look forward to another great year.

We also want to extend our thanks to the Writers' Cafe community here at Kboards. We have had the chance to work with many of you and it has been a pleasure.  We've learned a lot from all the knowledgeable folks here.

Dan
Publishing Operations and Author Relations
Draft2Digital


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## Lydniz

Congratulations!


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## Saul Tanpepper

D2D has been great to work with. A well-run, responsive company and site. Looking forward to working with it and hearing the news!

Congrats on the milestone!


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## AriadneW

That's awesome! I love working with you guys.  Congratulations!!


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## Gertie Kindle

Wow! That is really fantastic and well-deserved.

Can't wait for the exciting news.


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## Gertie Kindle

Did I read somewhere that D2D will be distributing to Scribd?


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## I Give Up

Congratulations!


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## bardeh

Congrats to you guys at D2D. You're a pleasure to work with, and your website is fantastic.


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## Nymirra

bardeh said:


> Congrats to you guys at D2D. You're a pleasure to work with, and your website is fantastic.


I can only echo this. The website and basic service is great. The cherry on top is the very helpful and swift customer service you have had, the few times I've needed to contact them.


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## Lady Vine

Does anyone know what the rule is about TOCs and Apple? They're such a bother on shorter works, and I'd prefer not to have to use them. I know B&N are fine with them. Not sure about Kobo though. 

Tia


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## Gertie Kindle

Lady Vine said:


> Does anyone know what the rule is about TOCs and Apple? They're such a bother on shorter works, and I'd prefer not to have to use them. I know B&N are fine with them. Not sure about Kobo though.
> 
> Tia


On a short work I use this TOC.

Description
Beginning
Contact
Copyright

Haven't had any trouble getting that through or you can't just let D2D generate the TOC.


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## Lady Vine

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> On a short work I use this TOC.
> 
> Description
> Beginning
> Contact
> Copyright
> 
> Haven't had any trouble getting that through or you can't just let D2D generate the TOC.


I upload my own epubs, so no. I normally include a TOC for D2D and have a TOC-less version for Amazon, but now I just want one file for all of them, and minimal front matter.


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## jdrew

So what do you all know about the new distribution channels D2D has added?


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## Gertie Kindle

jdrew said:


> So what do you all know about the new distribution channels D2D has added?


There's some info on this thread.

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,188422.msg2657494.html#msg2657494

When I went to the website and saw Janet Evanovich at the top, I figured it had to be okay.


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## Aaron Pogue

Draft2Digital is a KBoards success story. We first launched in December of 2012 with a closed beta and a single post--this post--on the KBoards Writer's Cafe. It quickly became one of the most-viewed threads of all time in the Writer's Cafe, and single-handedly drove the early adoption and growth of our company.

That's been three years ago, now. To celebrate the anniversary, I decided to update the old thread and share some interesting statistics.

*The Announcement*
It was December 2012 when we launched the beta of our service at Draft2Digital.com. I sent out an email invitation to a handful of friends and family, and I posted a thread about it at KBoards. That was the full extent of our advertising and promotion efforts, but it worked. The authors here at KBoards loved Draft2Digital right out of the gate (you can read their reactions in the early pages of this thread), and within a month our catalog increased from ten authors and 30 titles to *332 authors and more than a thousand titles*. Combined, those books generated almost *$6,000 in royalties* for our authors that first month.

Three years later, we now have *70,000 titles from 18,000 authors*. Combined, those books now generate nearly *a million dollars in royalties* for our authors every month. And we're only growing!

*Our Success Is Your Success*
As I said, Draft2Digital is a KBoards success story. In so many different ways, it all started right here.

Thank you for providing a rich, informative community for all authors looking to understand a complicated industry. Thank you for taking a chance on another indie experiment and providing the feedback--both the compliments and the criticism--that we needed to turn Draft2Digital into the company you needed. And thank you for spreading the word.

*A Look Back*
It's pretty amazing seeing how far we've come, both in terms of those growth numbers, and the site itself. We've added a ton of new features, partnered with some powerful new digital stores, and even gone through a site-wide redesign. Here are some screenshots from our site back in 2013:






























And some of the same pages now:






























That's some pretty incredible change, and we've barely gotten started! Just wait until you see what we have coming in 2016.

Thanks again for everything you've done.


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## Susanne O

I'd like to say a huge thank you to D2D for your terrific site. I have done so well since I published through you. Happy New Year!


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## Lady Vine

Susanne. said:


> I'd like to say a huge thank you to D2D for your terrific site. I have done so well since I published through you. Happy New Year!


Seconded. You guys showed up just in time and made the publishing process easy and pleasant. Many thanks.


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## Cherise

Susanne. said:


> I'd like to say a huge thank you to D2D for your terrific site. I have done so well since I published through you. Happy New Year!


Thirded!


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## RD

One of the sites I originally spoke with about publishing. Very friendly and didn't have the fake "I'm not too busy to speak to you" sound in their voice. 

Research points me into going with select since I'm a sci fi author, but I really like the ecosystem over there too.


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## Dennis E. Taylor

Not sure if this is a questions thread or not, but anyway... what's the lead time, generally speaking, between when a book is purchased on one of the channels and when it shows up on the D2D dashboard? Do the sales channels report sales to D2D daily? As they happen? Monthly?


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## Aaron Pogue

Sales typically show up on the following day. Some of the smaller stores report hourly, and some report weekly (or even monthly), but all of the major stores report daily, usually sometime in the morning US-time.


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## Lisa Blackwood

I love D2D. When I go wide again, I'll be using them. (Waiting for my backlist to get bigger.)


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## KelliWolfe

D2D has quite possibly the best customer service people that I've ever dealt with. They're polite, they're quick to respond, they're tenacious dealing with issues with the distributors, and they're always willing to go that extra step above and beyond to help you out. You feel like you've got someone in your corner when you're talking to them. It's a far, far cry from what you get from almost anyone else in this entire industry.  <3


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## Gertie Kindle

L.L. AKers said:


> D2D has been good to me. I'm not wide there right now. I have been twice but went back into KU. Soon will be going wide again though, now that my backlist is growing. And it's nice to know my account is already set up waiting for me, and I don't have to know much to use the site. Just upload and hit go!
> 
> I believe I was one of the early users. I've never worked with a company that has better customer service than D2D. Everything from uploading files, to formatting my print (looked great), to helping me get into categories I wanted to be in. When I go wide for the final time, I fully intend to do it through D2D. It's worth it to let them handle all the heavy work with all the stores so that I can focus on writing. And it's nice to go to one place to see all the reporting together (other than Amazon).
> 
> Thanks, D2D Team. Y'all RAWK!


This ^^^


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## Silly Writer

Reviving this old thread in hopes that Aaron from D2D will pop in and give us his take on Pronoun, as it looks like Pronoun may have a huge impact on their business. Some questions for D2D:

* What are your thoughts on Pronoun in general? (and have you seen the big Pronoun thread here?)

* To me personally, it appears the only game-changer Pronoun really has over D2D is the ability to publish to Amazon (and keep the 70% royalty regardless of list price) benefit and to set books to free at Amazon without jumping through hoops. But at one time, you also distributed to Amazon, and that fell through. Can you tell us why that happened, and if (in your opinion) that could/would also happen to Pronoun in the future? Also, is there any chance you might re-negotiate with Amazon and open that door back up?

* Do you (D2D) want to remind us of what you have to offer that's beneficial to people to stay with D2D over Pronoun?

* Are there any changes coming down the pike we might need to be aware of before anyone jumps ship for no good reason?

It's a fact that D2D has earned our trust, and the customer service is top notch. I don't think anyone would deny that. However, I'm not the first one to express--in private groups--that while I LOVE D2D, this new (to us) company is offering something that's a bit hard to turn away from. Thus, I hoped you'd come in here and _compare apples to apples _and remind us why you took over the top spot at Kboards as the go-to distributor.


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## Gertie Kindle

D2D also had the same deal with Amazon, but Amazon yanked it with no notice and no explanation. Look for the same thing to happen with Pronoun.


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## CassieL

Silly Writer said:


> It's a fact that D2D has earned our trust, and the customer service is top notch. I don't think anyone would deny that. However, I'm not the first one to express--in private groups--that while I LOVE D2D, this new (to us) company is offering something that's a bit hard to turn away from. Thus, I hoped you'd come in here and _compare apples to apples _and remind us why you took over the top spot at Kboards as the go-to distributor.


You know, you say you love D2D but in both threads now you've been pushing Pronoun pretty hard.

For me, personally, D2D doesn't need to answer those questions and I think doing so in a public forum would not be necessarily appropriate. They have business relationships they need to maintain and part of that is not discussing in public why a deal with a distribution platform fell through.

I like D2D. They don't need to come on here and justify themselves to me. Through my three years of publishing with them they've earned my trust. If other authors want to make other decisions based on their own business needs and interests, more power to them.


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## Silly Writer

Cassie Leigh said:


> You know, you say you love D2D but in both threads now you've been pushing Pronoun pretty hard.
> 
> For me, personally, D2D doesn't need to answer those questions and I think doing so in a public forum would not be necessarily appropriate. They have business relationships they need to maintain and part of that is not discussing in public why a deal with a distribution platform fell through.
> 
> I like D2D. They don't need to come on here and justify themselves to me. Through my three years of publishing with them they've earned my trust. If other authors want to make other decisions based on their own business needs and interests, more power to them.


D2D is at liberty to answer whatever questions they can/want. They don't need you--or me--to speak _for_ them. Aaron is not only D2D, but he's an Indie. He understands the questions that are probably in everyone's mind. He's also uber-professional. I have confidence that he'll be able to handle Kboarders who might ask too much information in as professional a manner as he always done.

I like D2D too. That should be obvious in my past posts. But not everyone is familiar with them, we have lots of newbies on these boards. If this doesn't benefit you in particular and you feel comfortable with what you already know, then scroll on. 

As for me 'pushing Pronoun hard,' that's not correct. Discussing the pro's and con's of a new-to-us company is typical and appropriate for a forum. That's why they're called 'discussion forums.'


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## Richardcrasta

Lady Vine said:


> I upload my own epubs, so no. I normally include a TOC for D2D and have a TOC-less version for Amazon, but now I just want one file for all of them, and minimal front matter.





Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> On a short work I use this TOC.
> 
> Description
> Beginning
> Contact
> Copyright
> 
> Haven't had any trouble getting that through or you can't just let D2D generate the TOC.


Thanks, Gertie, that's useful information. But why do you have the copyright page last? Or is this prior to the story, for which I assume you provide a chapter heading?

I had huge trouble getting my D2D books to look right until I realized that, if you exclude your own TOC and do a "Heading1" for every chapter heading as well as "About the Author" and "Other Books By", they will recognize the title page and copyright page and generate a TOC.

For some reason, though, my sales at D2D are doing very poorly in the last few months.


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## ThomasDiehl

Richardcrasta said:


> Thanks, Gertie, that's useful information. But why do you have the copyright page last? Or is this prior to the story, for which I assume you provide a chapter heading?


Why would you have it anywhere else? Readers don't care about the copyright page, so put it all the way in the back.

It's different for paper books, obviously. Readers still don't care, but they are used to ignoring the first few pages on paper books.


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