Writer’s Corner: Publishing with Draft2Digital

Caracature of a woman typing on a keyboard at a very messy desk. Text: Writer's Corner with Kaye Lynne Booth

I’ve posted on the value of publishing wide with Draft2Digital and Books2Read links. You can see my previous article here. I am in no way compensated for sharing information about D2D, but I am a big fan of publishing with them.

As an author and publisher who uses Draft2Digital to publish wide, distributing my books globally, including subscription services and libraries, I’m a huge advocate of their services. But I recently caught episode 333 of the Stark Reflections podcast with Mark Leslie Lefabvre titled, “10 Things You Likely Didn’t Know About Draft2Digital”. In this episode, Mark shares a replay of a presentation he gave at 20BooksVegas in early November of 2023, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were several cool things about publishing with D2D which I didn’t know.

I’ve used D2D to publish since 2018, and I was already aware of many of the great tools and services that they offer, such as royalty payment splitting for collaborations, which I use with WordCrafter anthologies. And of course, I knew about using Books2Read links, so potential readers can find your book through most of the major distributors in one place, and in any format in which your book is available.

The ability to publish through most of the publish on some subscription services and get your books onto the major library distributors was one of the reasons that I chose to go with D2D in the first place. What I didn’t know, was that some authors even use D2D’s free tools to create their book files, probably because it is easy and doesn’t require you to have Vellum or a Mac, and then publish direct onto other platforms without using D2D’s aggregating services, and they are okay with that. I use these tools to create my files for my ARC copies, but I prefer to let D2D do all the heavy lifting for me. Publishing direct to all the distributors that I use through D2D would be an outrageous amount of work.

I was also aware of D2D’s “Refer a Friend” program, which provides you an affliliate link you can share for folks to sign up. Any author who signs up to D2D with your affilliate link earns you a percentage of money earned by D2D from any books they sell over the next two years. Any D2D user can get an affiliate link. If you read this and decide to give Draft2Digital a try, you can sign up through my affilliate link, below, and it doesn’t cost you anything. My affilliate link is paid outof D2D’s cut of any works you sell using D2D as an aggregator. Here is my affilliate link: https://www.draft2digital.com/WordCrafter

There are some promo services which I was not aware of. I knew you could create your own independent promos. In fact, I used this feature to set up the WordCrafter Holiday Book Extravaganza in December, discounting the entire WordCrafter Press backlist. In episode 333, I learned how I can also get my book into D2D promotions, which is really pretty cool when you think about it.

I also learned that D2D now offers free AI narration of audio books through Apple Books. Now this is something that interests me, as audio books have previously been out of reach for me due to the expense of narration. You can see my post and discussion on the use of AI here.I knew they had this coming, but it was in the beta stage the last I had heard. Apparently they have rolled it out, and I will be looking into this further in the near future.

I was so excited to learn about this feature of D2D that I just couldn’t wait to check it out.I’m happy to announce that the AI narrated audiobook of The Rock Star & The Outlaw will be available through Apple Books soon.

Audiobook Cover: Sundial and planet with lightning bolts in background. Black leather clad woman and man dressed as a cowboy standing behind a large guitar in foregroound.
Text: The Rockstar & The Outlaw, Kaye Lynne Booth, When a woman with a guitar meets a cowboy with a gun, it's time to travel, AI Audio Narrated

Mark Leslie Lefabvre is an expert in the publishing industry, having worked for Kobo before coming to D2D, in addition to being a succesful hybrid author. Honestly, he says it all better than I do, and he knows a lot more about the inner workings of D2D. So if you want to know more about what D2D has to offer, listen to episode 333 here: https://starkreflections.ca/2023/11/17/episode-333-10-things-you-likely-didnt-know-about-draft2digital/

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Author Kaye Lynne Booth

For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is a passion. Kaye Lynne is an author with published short fiction and poetry, both online and in print, including her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction; and her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets; Book 1 of her Women in the West adventure series, Delilah, and her Time-Travel Adventure novel, The Rock Star & The Outlaw. Kaye holds a dual M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing with emphasis in genre fiction and screenwriting, and an M.A. in publishing. Kaye Lynne is the founder of WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services and WordCrafter Press. She also maintains an authors’ blog and website, Writing to be Read, where she publishes content of interest in the literary world.

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14 Comments on “Writer’s Corner: Publishing with Draft2Digital”

  1. Fascinating. Thank you for sharing.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Kymber Hawke says:

    This was interesting! I’m gong to look into it.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. beth says:

    ah, interesting –

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Wow! Great information, Kaye. Thanks for the update. I didn’t know D2D offered all these services. I use Vellum for my book creation. It’s the best program I’ve found. xx

    Liked by 1 person

    • That’s the nice thing, Colleen. With D2D, you don’t need Vellum or a Mac. Since I work on a PC that made it much cheaper forr.

      Liked by 1 person

      • I’m on a Mac and have invested all that $$ now. It would have been nice to know this a long time ago. (I also bought the Atticus App, but it was very glitchy on my Mac). When I first published in 2016, I used D2D but was not impressed with the quality of the book produced or the system. But, that was then… I’m glad they improved the system. I hear many folks say it takes forever for their books to show up on Amazon. You know the great Zon… anyway, it seems like a viable way to publish for many. It’s good you share this information.

        Liked by 1 person

        • It does take a long time. My preorders don’t show up on Amazon often until the day of release. But I think that’s Amazons way of slapping my hands for not publishing direct. I could do that with my own books, I suppose, but I really like that D2D handles the royalty split for me on collaborations. To me, it’s worth letting Amazon drag their feet.

          Liked by 1 person

        • I agree on the collaborations. There’s no better way to do it.

          Liked by 1 person

  5. Hi Kaye, this is an interesting post. I didn’t know about all these services. I read an article that the apple audio book service only offers 5 AI voices and you don’t get to listen before publication to correct pronunciation errors. I haven’t checked if this is true, but maybe look into it.

    Liked by 1 person


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