Tag: Draft2digital

The video in this post will answer the question, What is Draft2digital publishing. If you are interested in publishing on other ebook stores or libraries online apart from Amazon KDP, then you need to consider Draft2digital publishing.

Related: Smashwords Draft2digital merger update  

 

What is Draft2digital publishing?

Draft2digital publishing is all about publishing your ebooks, paperback books and audiobooks through Draft2digital. Draft2digital is an online book aggregator or distribution platform.

When you publish your book on Draft2digital, it will be distributed to online stores and libraries that are partners with Draft2digital.

Related: Do you want to learn how to get yiur books published in other languages other than English? Get more information about Babelcube publishing and other eBook guides 

 

Watch video on Draft2digital publishing

I want you to watch this video on Draft2digital publishing to learn more.

 

 

Looking for places to publish your ebooks online? Don’t look any further, this post will help you. This post shows online stores to self publish ebooks online.

Related: How I sell ebooks on Amazon 

 

What does it mean to publish your ebooks online

Publishing your ebooks online is all about using the internet to publish and sell your eBooks.

With the popularity and the extensive growth of internet technology over the years, authors now have a wide variety of choices to publish and sell their ebooks online.

 

Publishing ebooks on Amazon

Publishing ebooks on Amazon was almost the only option for authors at the developmental stages of the internet. The Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) was the only option when Jeff Bezos and Amazon started the golden idea of publishing and selling ebooks online.

Though Amazon KDP still controls over 70% of the ebook publishing industry today there are now very reliable platforms to publish and sell ebooks online.

Related: How Jeff Bezos and Amazon started  

 

10 places to publish ebooks online

The following are the 10 places to publish ebooks online:

 

Amazon KDP

Of course, we should start with the leader, Amazon KDP. Jeff Bezos and Amazon have been able to provide an exciting platform to publish and sell ebooks for authors worldwide.

It’s so easy to publish your ebook using the KDP platform. Your ebook will be published and will be on sale online within 24 to 72 hours.

When everything is done right, your book should be approved for publication after you uploaded it within 24 hours.

To publish your ebook on Amazon, you will need the following:

• Your well-formatted book in Microsoft Word

• Your well-designed ebook cover

• Your book description

• Seven keywords suggestions that rightly describe what your book is all about

• You will be picking two categories where your ebook will reside on Amazon.

Find ebook guides and resources that can help you publish your ebooks on Amazon the right way to ensure their success 

 

Smashwords/Draft2digital

Smashwords and Draft2digital used to be independent ebook publishing platforms. Today they are now one. Draft2digital recently acquired Smashwords.

You can read the details of the acquisition here 

Draft2digital and Smashwords do the same tasks before their merger. They are both ebook aggregators. They publish ebooks and also distribute the ebooks to many other stores.

Draft2digital has a very interesting publishing platform that allows authors to put in every important detail of ebooks during the publishing process.

Sometimes, a newbie author may find the platform a little bit cumbersome to use but with time may get better and master the use of the platform.

You are expected to submit almost the same information as we have under the section on Amazon above.

You can start publishing your ebook on Draft2digital immediately here

Related: Check out our hugely useful resources page now

 

Payhip

Payhip is another place to publish ebooks online. This is one of the new entrants into the ebook publishing industry.

You will love the Payhip platform so well. It’s so super easy to set up your book on it for sale. A toddler can do this with his eyes closed.

Payhip gives you everything on their platform that will help publish your ebooks and also set them up for sale in minutes.

Publish your ebook on Payhip here 

 

Gumroad

Well, gumroad is just like Payhip.

Our experience is the same here. Gumroad also pays with PayPal. You can sell online courses apart from eBooks on Gumroad just like Payhip.

In terms of sales, we have not made any sales to date on this platform but we observed some authors and publishers have done so.

For Payhip and gumroad, we have started putting the links to our books directly on some of our top-performing blog pages to make sales.

This is the reason why it’s great if authors have their blogs and invest in making the blogs rank higher on Google searches.

Google gives us lots of traffic on our existing blogs these days. We hope to exploit these to sell our books on Payhip and gumroad by God’s grace.

Related: Talking about authors who have blogs, you can learn On-Page SEO Strategies the way we do it which is by making our blogs rank high on Google search with many keywords and keyphrases in our online course, On-Page SEO Strategies for WordPress bloggers.

If you’re interested, register for the On-Page SEO Strategies course now.

If you would like to sell your ebooks on Gumroad, please start here.

 

NowNowBooks

This is our very own Nigerian online bookstore. Though this is presently built for local publishers in my country, we are making efforts to take it internationally soon.

Read more about NowNowBooks now. Read more about NowNowBooks now.

 

Street Lib

This is another platform to publish ebooks online. It’s built just like Smashwords and Draft2digital.

It’s also an ebook aggregator. They help to distribute your books to many partner ebooks stores and libraries online.

We have not exploited this platform. We hope to do so next year. We have only one book published on the platform so far.

Want to try out this platform, please visit here to start 

 

LeanPub

LeanPub is another ebook publishing platform online. It’s also free to publish your ebook on this online platform.

The only drawback, from our experience, on this platform, is that it can be difficult for a newbie to navigate this platform to publish their first ebook.

However, you can always find your way around after you are done with the first ebook.

You need to check out LeanPub to see other types of information products you can publish on the platform. Please visit the publishing platform now 

 

Publish Drive

Publish Drive is another ebook publishing website online. Publish Drive is different, in terms of operation, from the platforms listed above.

Publish Drive allows authors to publish one book on their platforms for wide distribution. If you want to publish more books, you will have to pay for them.

I like the organized way, Publish Drive goes about its operation especially in the area of bringing up more platforms and also giving authors more  ways to market their books.

Another unique thing about Publish Drive is that it allows you to share royalty with others if you are co-authoring a book with other authors. Publish Drive handles all the processes in this case.

Do you want to publish your books in Publish Drive, please do so here

 

 

You read that right! Draft2digital closes accounts of Smashwords authors. I and my team got a ridiculous email from Draft2digital that our Smashwords account has been closed!

 

Smashwords Draft2digital merger update

Well, in case you want to know what this is all about. Read this post to learn about the merger between Smashwords and Draft2digital that happened some months ago.

In that post, we gave you an update about the merger between these two publishing giants. We thought this business merger would help more authors to gain visibility and find their publishing voices. We never thought it would work against some authors in some regions of our world.

Related: Find all our best-selling book publishing and marketing ebook guides and online courses. 

 

Email communication Smashwords and Draft2digital staff

The following email communication happened between our team and the staff of Draft2digital and Smashwords after we received that ridiculous email from them closing our Smashwords account without giving us any notice whatsoever!

First email reply from us

We sent the first email reply to a Draft2digital support email. Please read it below:

Hello,

Thank you for your email. But I want to believe I received this in error.

In my Smashwords account, I submitted tax information as when due.

I have also received payments by PayPal for many years now.

If there are any other requirements, I am ready to provide them.

I want you to look at this and let me know what you think.

Thank you

Sesan OGUNTADE

 

Second email reply from us

We sent the second email reply to a Smashwords support email. Read it below:

Hello,

I received an email from D2D that my account has been closed because of US laws.

I was shocked to read this. I joined Smashwords in 2013 and I am surprised to know now that I can’t do business with a US company.

I want to believe Mark Coker does not know about this.

I am also surprised that I was not given any notice whatsoever before the closure of the account. That is purely unjust to an author who has created income for Smashwords for nine good years. It’s so bad to treat an author this way.

More annoying is the fact that I can’t login to my account to pick up my book files. This is unprofessional and very bad.

How do I monitor the sales that will come from my book sales in the next few days, weeks, and months? D2D will not cut out my share for me? That’s ridiculous.

I want to pick up my files in my account. I hope D2D will allow me to do that so that I can publish them in other places.

I hope to read from you so that I can understand the way to pick up my book files.

Email response we got

Hi Sesan,

Thanks for writing in. Effective March 1st, 2022, Smashwords, Inc. merged with Draft2Digital, LLC, and we will be moving our payment platform to the Draft2Digital, LLC payment system and following their Terms of Service. Unfortunately, per the new Terms of Service, we will no longer be able to provide services to residents of Nigeria at this time, and your account will be closed effective immediately. Going forward, we will continue to explore options to pay authors in Nigeria that meet United States tax and bank regulatory rules and guidelines.

If you have a balance on your account, you will be contacted directly by way of the email address on this account to choose a payment option to receive your final royalties. Please allow 3 – 6 months for us to move to the new payment platform.

 

Draft2digital closes accounts of Smashwords Authors: What we think

Draft2digital demonstrated very clearly that they are not ready to toe the line of the vision Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, followed for many years to help all authors irrespective of where they hail from to gain visibility.

It was a passion for Mark Coker. But it’s so sad to read from Draft2digital that they have terms of service that do not make Nigerians or Africans do business with a US company – that’s completely ridiculous in this present world!

Amazon and Google and Facebook do business with Nigerians. Payoneer is a very popular platform today and it is available to Nigerians and almost everyone on the globe.

 

Disruption of our distribution services

As Draft2digital closes accounts of Smashwords Authors, they have disrupted our distribution services without giving us any notice whatsoever. That’s so bad for authors who have created income for Smashwords for many years.

 

As Draft2digital closes accounts of Smashwords Authors: Advice to authors in this region

If your account has been closed by Draft2digital, don’t despair. We will surely find you a better option here. Stay tuned to this blog.

Thank you for reading. Let me read your comment. Share this ridiculous news on social media with your friends.

 

Related: Find all our best-selling book publishing and marketing ebook guides and online courses. 

 

Some months ago, the Smashwords Draft2digital merger hit the internet and the publishing space. Our team at KDP College is presenting an update on the merger of these publishing giants.

Related: How to publish a book on Amazon for free  

Smashwords Draft2digital merger: What is it all about

The Smashwords Draft2digital merger is about the business alliance that happened between the two self-publishing companies some months ago. Both companies decided to pitch business tents together to give more value to their customers.

Smashwords blazed the trail some years ago in the ebook publishing industry. It became a go-to online company for many authors who use its website to self-publish their ebooks and get them distributed worldwide across many online channels, stores, and libraries.

Draft2digital, on the other hand, came into the scene some years after Smashwords hit the internet space. Draft2digital, on its part, has helped lots of authors to publish their ebooks and paperback books and get them distributed across many online channels like Smashwords.

Read What is Amazon Kindle Book Creator  

 

Smashwords Draft2digital merger: Underground work in progress

The KDP College team have been monitoring event and news about the different phases of this merger. Most importantly, we want to get information across to authors about how this new development can help them achieve more as authors in terms of the following:

• Publish more books
• Sell more books
• Get their books distributed across more channels
• Gain access to online tools that will make online Publishing easier for authors

At KDP College, we are confident that the Smashwords Draft2digital merger will help authors in many ways. The merger of these giant publishing companies will help authors publish and sell more books.

 

Remaining phases of merger integration

The Smashwords Draft2digital merger integrated has been divided into three phases according to a recent release by the Draft2digital team.

Phase 1 of the merger integration

These are the following activities under phase 1:

• Authors of Draft2Digital (D2D) will gain distribution into the Smashwords Store, just as they distribute to other retailers.

• D2D will also roll out their support for the Smashwords Erotica Certification System to D2D authors.

• At the end of Phase I, D2D authors are expected to be selling in the Smashwords Store, but they will not yet have access to all the unique and exciting bells and whistles Smashwords has to offer.

Phase II of the integration

The following are the activities under phase 2 of the merger integration:

D2D authors will have access to the same tools Smashwords authors have access to over the years. They will be able to use tools like:

• Smashwords Coupons
• Self-serve merchandising,
• Smashwords Interviews
• The ability to enroll in site-wide sales (such as the Summer/Winter Sale going on now!), and
• The ability to run exclusive early releases with Smashwords Presales.

Phase III of the Smashwords Draft2digital merger integration

The following are the activities under phase 3 of the Smashwords Draft2digital merger integration:

After D2D authors have access to the same Smashwords Store tools as current Smashwords authors, the migration of current Smashwords author accounts into Draft2digital will begin.

 

What happened after these Phases

According to the news release, “After these three phases are done, the integration will be complete! And from there, it’s all about innovating and improving, and building new tools and services to power up your publishing business.”

 

FAQ of the Draft2digital Smashwords merger

Question:

Should I continue uploading new titles to Smashwords, or should I start uploading straight to Draft2Digital?

Answer:

It depends. If the Smashwords Store is an important sales channel for you, and if you regularly utilize our awesome tools for coupons and self-serve merchandising, then it’s probably best to continue uploading to Smashwords, as you always do.

But if you want to start experimenting with Draft2Digital’s tools and distribution, or if you want to sign up for the D2D Print beta (more on that below), you can open a Draft2Digital account anytime.

We have just presented above the remaining three phases of the Smashwords Draft2digital merger integration.

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