On this episode of Self-Publishing with ALLi, Dan Holloway examines Draft2Digital's decision to introduce fees for the first time — a $20 account activation charge for new accounts and a $12 annual maintenance fee for low-activity accounts — and considers both the rationale and the concerns. He also reports on Bookshop.org's record $70 million in sales last year, a 55 percent increase, and explains why the two stories are closely connected.
Listen to the Podcast: Draft2Digital Introduces Fees; Bookshop.org Reports Record Sales
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About the Host
Dan Holloway is a novelist, poet, and spoken word artist. He is the MC of the performance arts show The New Libertines, He competed at the National Poetry Slam final at the Royal Albert Hall. His latest collection, The Transparency of Sutures, is available on Kindle.
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Read the Transcript
Dan Holloway: Hello and welcome to Self-Publishing News. As you probably gathered, the big story last week broke just after I finished recording the podcast, so I'll have a look at it here and give some thoughts. ALLi has already posted about this, so do go and check out all the posts on the ALLi website. Nothing I say here should be taken as in any way conflicting with anything ALLi has said — this is my own take.
The story is from Draft2Digital, which is for the first time introducing fees. There are two types of fees they have announced, both coming into effect on May 14th. The first is an account activation fee — a $20 charge for all new accounts from that date onwards. People who already have a Draft2Digital account will not need to pay this; it is strictly for new accounts only. The second is a $12 annual maintenance fee, specifically for what they are terming low-activity or low-sales accounts — accounts that have earned less than $100 from book sales in the preceding 12 months. If that is the case in any given year, you will be charged $12 for that year. Years in which you exceed that threshold are not subject to the fee. The maintenance fee will be charged on the anniversary of the account activation date.
This has, needless to say, caused all sorts of reactions from indie authors across the internet. Let's look at what Draft2Digital are actually saying about why they're doing this. On the activation fee, their words are: ‘this activation fee, combined with our verification tools and human reviewers, will help us maintain a secure, high-integrity publishing environment.' Essentially, they want a way of stopping bot accounts. It is clear from everything they say in their press release that they have suffered considerably from the creation of accounts not run by humans — many, many such accounts, producing large volumes of AI-generated content that is gaming the system. They say this is causing readers to have less overall confidence when reading indie titles.
That last bit makes me slightly nervous. The idea that this is all done to protect readers who might otherwise doubt the integrity of indie books — my main concern is that Draft2Digital is only one part of a much larger ecosystem. Readers don't know where your book has come from; they don't know it's come through Draft2Digital rather than another platform. So yes, this will help clean up the content on their platform, but we are still part of an ecosystem where books come from a lot of different sources, and it's not obvious that this alone is going to make a massive difference to what readers experience overall.
Having a long memory of what it has been like to be an indie author over many years, I've heard things before about protecting the integrity of indie output and stopping readers from having reason to be nervous about indie content — and that rhetoric does make me slightly cautious. We hear these rounds of talk about tsunamis of this and tsunamis of that. So I am slightly wary of that framing. But I absolutely see why they're doing this, and it makes complete sense. They need to spend their resources looking after the actual human creators on their platform, not be overwhelmed by bot accounts that prevent them from giving proper service where it's needed. That is a very sensible move.
Bookshop.org Reports Record Sales
Another story in the news this week is the announcement of a massive increase in sales from Bookshop.org. Bookshop.org is the platform where readers can buy books from anywhere within the marketplace and have them shipped, with a cut of the sales price going to an independent bookstore of their choice. Last year Bookshop.org announced they were introducing ebooks into this ecosystem, and we are able to get our ebooks onto Bookshop.org through Draft2Digital, who partnered with them in February of this year to provide high-quality content to the platform.
This is a very clear reason why Draft2Digital does not want endless bot accounts producing content that then goes through to platforms like Bookshop.org, which have their own reputation and which would be damaged by association with low-quality AI-generated content. Bookshop.org last year recorded earnings of $70 million — a 55% increase in sales. Since launching in 2020, they have provided $46 million to independent bookstores. Ebooks are currently only 5% of their overall sales, which means there is considerable room to grow. They have already noted that romance is pushing the increase in sales — romance ebooks are a major driver. It is an exciting time to be an indie author with books available through Bookshop.org.
To my mind, the Draft2Digital fees are a price worth paying for access to this kind of partnership and growth opportunity. That is my personal opinion and not necessarily ALLi's, though it may well be. And Bookshop.org also has a partnership with Spotify whereby readers can order physical books through Spotify in-app, fulfilled by Bookshop.org, with money going directly to the indie bookstore of their choice.
With that, I will leave you and look forward very much to speaking to you at the same time next week. Have a lovely week.
