Writing and Publishing: Switching to Draft to Digital (D2D)

Since Pronoun.com announced their last day online would be January 15th, I began researching for an online publisher to substitute all the wonders that Pronoun provided.

It was hard. At the end of the day, I was torn between publishing in each of the online distributors directly, try Publish Drive or Draft to Digital.

Each of them had pros and cons, as was to be expected, but at the end of the day, I decided to go with Draft 2 Digital.

Why Draft 2 Digital?

Elimination and priorities. 

I knew from the get-go I would loose my reviews from ibooks and Barnes and Noble. I had to live with that. Amazon would keep them because I also have my books in createspace (for paperback distribution) and that was the way to keep my reviews. 

My first priority was time. I just do not have time to go to each distributor one by one. I didn’t want to go back to each – amazon, ibooks, kobo, barnes and noble, etc – each time I made a change in my book. Too time consuming. It does have the benefit of a better royalty and the fact you can monitor sales better through each individual channel… but I could live without that.

Then, I basically had to choose between Publish Drive and Draft 2 Digital. Publish Drive has the advantage to distribute through Google Play, D2D does not. Although D2D is apparently pursuing this distribution, so I just might get lucky some day. Also, Google Play opened up again a few months back and if I really fight for it, I might get allowed in on my own. 

The problem with Publish Drive, and what kept me away, is the publishing process. One of the best things about Pronoun was I could provide it with a simple Word document and they would help with the layout. It was glorious! With Publish Drive, you had to do all this hard work on your own. I looked around and apparently people wasted precious time trying to get their manuscript to pass their layout specifications. If you can’t do it, then they offer the service of transferring to epub (for a price). I wasn’t willing to waste time and then find out I had to pay for it. If I’m going to spend money on my books, I want it to be on covers and editing, not layout. I’m not made out of money, unfortunately.

Also, neither service offered the ability to publish books for free on amazon. Apparently that’s exclusive for Pronoun (sad to see that option go).

So, D2D it was!

Uploading a Book to D2D

The first page is for your book details. They ask for the file, the title, if it’s part of a series and the description. They also offer search terms, which are always helpful.

Then you need to upload your cover. 

If your file is pretty much chapters and content, D2D helps you by creating your title page, copyright page and dedication. I liked this so much I went back and deleted what D2D could create for me and worked out great. They also offer to publish your other works before, after on in both places of the book. If you wish, you can select to have readers receive an email notification once you publish something new, too.

The formatting of the book isn’t as great as what Pronoun had, but it’s still pretty good.

Enabling the drop caps is always a plus, in my opinion. Then, they have several formats for the titles of each chapter. I liked Pronoun’s better, but D2D’s aren’t that bad. At least they have some options. They have, as a matter of fact, more options than Pronoun, only Pronoun’s were better.

To the left side of the formatting you can see how the book will look. If you make a change to the chapter formatting, you can see it in real time to the left. That’s pretty neat. More points for D2D!

Once you’re done formatting the text, there is a box at the bottom where you certify you agree with that will be published:

Finally you’ll get to the distributing channels. You can choose which ones to use and which ones not to use. For example, as I published “A Few Drops of Fantasy” on D2D, I couldn’t select the distributors I am currently using through Pronoun. So, I select the other ones first, and once my book is off Pronoun, I can come back and select those. At any time you can select or deselect distributors.

My hope is that Google Play will be listed one day.

The last distributor is for Public Library Services. This is something D2D has better than Pronoun. I published through Pronoun since August and I never got into Overdrive or Bibliotheca. D2D doesn’t offer Bibliotheca, but it offers Overdrive. It took me about a month to be accepted into Overdrive, something that never happened through Pronoun. So, thanks D2D!

Lastly you get your “Success!” you have published page. I confess the time it takes to get uploaded to the big distributors takes longer than what it did on Pronoun, but your books will get there eventually.

D2D also offer the audiobook transfer, but I have never tried it. I don’t know how expensive that is. Something to think about in the future, I guess.

I must also add that once you get your books to amazon, you will need to wait for them to be joined with the paperback. They say it takes about 2 weeks to happen. I waited three and was forced to email amazon. They were pretty quick about it. In 24 hours I have my two versions joined. 

I also had to email Goodreads to have them merge. They even merged my reviews, which was nice.

Finally, if you want your book to be FREE on amazon, you have to ask them to match the price. Just go to your book’s page on amazon and scroll down until you see “Would you like to tell us about a lower price?”. It worked for me. I sent a message twice in a week, listing the Barnes and Noble and Kobo links and, even when they took about two weeks, they did drop the price for “The Recruit” to free, eventually.

I hope this helped someone with their choices!

cheers!