ALLi News Editor, Dan Holloway
Many thanks to the team at Draft2Digital for sending over the press release, which I have used as the basis for this news but have, as always, cut and phrased it to reflect my voice and our authors’ slant. You can read the release as issued on the D2D website.
Draft2Digital will be partnering in a retail distribution deal with the popular social reading app Fable. For those who self-publish through Draft2Digital, distribution to Fable will be available through an opt in as it is with other channels through whom the platform distributes.
What differentiates Fable from other sales outlets is its social reading element. In essence, what that means is that it exists to serve book clubs. In fact, since it started up in 2021, it has grown to host some 25,000 book clubs with a total of 650,000 members.
Book clubs are, of course, an author’s dream for two reasons. They mean multiple sales. And they mean that people don’t just let your book sit on their device, but they talk about it, get inside it, probably mention it to their friends, certainly get to know it well enough to be interested in whatever else the author may have written.
Virtual book clubs, fuelled by the rise of passionate online communities of readers, bring the buzz of evenings over pie and wine with friends to the online world. Much of that buzz comes from the recommendations of influencers from the likes of BookTube and BookTok, and Fable boasts clubs actively hosted by 200 such influencers. Fable also promise a coming feature allowing authors to set up promotional clubs to discuss their books.
Fable’s book clubs don’t require you to buy books through their store in order to take part in their conversations. Though many will. And to take part in a book club you will have had to acquire it somewhere, even if not there.
This has no information beyond the press release. I expected better.
I went to the Fable site and read the Ts and Cs. Like all social media platforms everything you contribute to Fable belongs to them, including your own photo. I’m sure it will help authors but since we write for a living they could have allowed us to own the words we wrote on their website but they did not.
Honestly, the robbery we must endure to reach our audience !