Note: since the publication of this post, a lot has changed in the publishing landscape. I still use Draft2Digital to get my books into Apple and Barnes & Noble, but I also use Smashwords for the other channels. So yes — Smashwords has improved. Lots.
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I love Smashwords and I’ve got nothing but respect for the service. Enabling authors to upload our books to the likes of Apple’s iBookstore and Barnes & Noble all from the comfort of one portal is very handy, particularly to those of us based in the UK who can’t upload directly through those stores.
However, Smashwords is also a bit of a nightmare.
The user interface isn’t the most attractive, the epub creator leaves much to be desired, and although the best of intentions are in place with the ‘meatgrinder’, it often causes more headaches than it’s worth.
And after the majority of those headaches, it can still take weeks before your book is distributed to another store.
Enter Draft2Digital: a new platform for creating and publishing eBooks.
What is Draft2Digital?
Draft2Digital acts in a very similar way to Smashwords: it enables you to upload your books for publication in four of the biggest eRetailers (Amazon, Apple, Kobo and B&N). It’s designed by self-published authors for self-published authors, and it’s my new favourite publishing website, to the point that I’m pulling my short stories from Smashwords and going all in with Draft2Digital.
Why is it so different to Smashwords?
1. Better user interface
The user interface is gorgeous and easy to use. The uploading process was an absolute breeze and I was all up and ready to publish in a matter of moments. After publication, you can easily keep tabs on your books and which platforms they’ve sold any copies via. There’s plenty of white-space and the place simply looks pretty professional.
Part of the professionalism is probably down to the fact that Draft2Digital is not a ‘store’ like Smashwords but a tool for conversion and uploading. That said, I don’t see much of a problem (personally) there — I barely sell any copies on Smashwords, so I’m hardly missing out.
2. Effective epub creator
One of the major downsides with Smashwords is its reliance on the .doc format. I know, I know — they accept epub now — but it’s still a frustrating process that results in hundreds of rejections even though you’re absolutely certain your epub file is as perfect as it can be.
Draft2Digital is .doc uploading done right.
I was a little underwhelmed initially when I saw that the recommended format was .doc. However, I decided to go down that route, and the options and ease-of-upload is fantastic.
Firstly, there’s no style guide. You simply put your chapter headings in bold, make sure everything is as you want it, and upload.
Even more impressively, there’s no need whatsoever to format the table of contents of your book. If you put your chapter headings in bold, Draft2Digital does the hard work for you.
You don’t even need to create your own copyright page, title page or ‘about’ page if you don’t want to. I prefer to format my own ‘about’ pages, but with a simple click of a button, Draft2Digital does all that for you too if you want it to. Afterwards, they send you a nice, well-formatted ePub/mobi copy of the book (which you can use elsewhere). Not only a great, easy publishing process but a great book formatting tool all in one.
Smashwords: I love you, but it’s time to up your game on the ease-of-use front.
3. Faster publication
Little anecdote: I withdrew my short stories from KDP Select back in February.
Through Smashwords, Silhouette became available on Apple’s iBookstore a few weeks later. Something in the Cellar, on the other hand, was never shipped.
The formatting was fine. In fact, everything was fine, but for some reason it was just never sent out to Apple. I waited for months and resubmitted several times but to no avail.
Ten hours after uploading Something in the Cellar via Draft2Digital, the book is now available in Apple’s notoriously difficult to break iBookstore.
Frankly, I’m stunned. I don’t know why this is the case, and I’m well aware that Apple can vary the length of time it takes to publish, but the fact is, the book’s there now. I can finally, FINALLY forget about having to publish it and just let it do its thing (hopefully sell!) whilst focusing on future projects.
4. Real-time reports
I’ve obviously not seen this first hand but apparently, Draft2Digital offer close-to-real-time sales reporting, which is something Smashwords also lack.
Any fellow obsessive indie author will be well aware of what a big deal this is. We don’t want to have to wait for weeks to see if we’ve sold any — we want it now! Draft2Digital offers this through its sleek, clean interface.
5. CreateSpace options
Finally, I should mention a lesser-noticed feature in the form of a CreateSpace option. That’s right: Draft2Digital will take your book and turn it into a paperback without any of the formatting hassle (I can vouch for it being a real hassle) found if you do it yourself.
I’ve yet to experiment but I’m sorely tempted to do so with my next novel. I know it means slightly reduced royalties, but if it’s that vs. paying hundreds for professional print formatting, then it’s worth it, right?
Competition is healthy
On a whole, I can’t see the rise of Draft2Digital being anything but good news for Smashwords. Ideally, Barnes & Noble and Apple would enable easy distribution from the UK, but until that point, it’s nice to have a stress-free way to get our books out to the remaining major stores.
And for US-based citizens, sometimes it’s nice to just have everything under one dashboard. Right now, I believe that Draft2Digital offer the best dashboard, and I’m certainly not alone in that sentiment.
What do you make of Draft2Digital? Do you use Smashwords? How is it for you? Direct upload vs. one dashboard?
PS: I know I promised a summary of my writing diary today but I’ve been kinda busy (read: eating) so I’ll be sure to post one either tomorrow or Friday. I also need to do part 2 of my eBook marketing summary. Ah, blogging — I wait weeks for inspiration to creep along and before I know it…
Once again Great info. I will seriously look into this. Have you given up on KDP?
Hi Michael,
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the info.
KDP is something I’m dipping in and out of. I still 100% recommend it for giving a new release a kick, but I withdrew my short fiction a while back as I fancied experimenting in new markets.
So to answer your question: nope, still a big fan, just experimenting with other avenues using my shorter fiction.
Cheers!
Ryan
Interesting development. I’ve been with Smashwords since January and whilst they’re adequate as a host and probably do a fair job o distributing, they’re not exactly (as you pointed out) user-friendly. You mentioned the Createspace option – very interesting addition. Does this mean that Draft2Digital is in bed with Amazon – or might even be part of that particular giant?
I actually know one of the creators of Draft2Digital. He and a few of his programming friends from college built it from the code up. They are not in affiliation with Amazon as far as I know; they just wanted to create a user-friendly platform for writers who are looking to convert their .docs to ebooks.
Do you happen to know who is behind D2D?
Anne — I believe it is Aaron Pogue, who is a self-published author.
Wouldn’t it make sense to publish with Draft2Digital instead of Kindle KDP for the free option? Because with Draft2Digial, you can offer your book for free with Amazon instead of having do choose the Select program with KDP and making it exclusive. Seems you’d get the best of both worlds by not being exclusive AND offering your book for free on Amazon for a time. Yes? Or am I overlooking something that would make me still want to publish direct with Kindle KDP? Any insights?
Thanks for the comment. You’ve raised an interesting point that I did not cover in this blog post. Unfortunately, Draft2Digital (nor Smashwords) allows authors to post to Amazon for free. Amazon have a 99c minimum listing price. The way to get around this is to post for free on other platforms and get Amazon to price match for you.
Also, I’d advise going direct wherever possible. Not only do you get a greater royalty cut, but you don’t have to rely on one service. Imagine if these distributors suffered a glitch. I’d rather just one/two stores be affected than all of them.
Hope this helps clear the free/distribution dilemma up a little!
Have you compared Draft2Digital to BookBaby?
Hi Gary,
I haven’t, but I can do that right now. I’d place BookBaby immediately at the bottom of the pile simply because they charge $199 for a service that Smashwords and D2D provide for free. As far as I’m aware, they don’t take a cut of royalties as a result, but if you’re capable of making back $199 in sales (100 books just to cover costs) then I think it makes more sense to go direct or with one of the other two and keep the profits for yourself.
Hope this helps
Ryan.
Thanks for the great post Ryan. I read it just after moving 4 books to Draft2Digital from Smashwords. I think you hit just about every reason why Smashwords is a great company, but is really lagging behind, especially in the head scratching amount of time it takes them to do what should be very simple procedures. I am still using Smashwords, but only to distribute to the fringe sellers. I had also heard that when you switch from Smashwords to Draft2Digital, your reviews and ratings are wiped out (since one of my books has 30 ratings with an average of 4 stars, I’m kind of hesitant to move that one. Thanks again. Really enjoyed the post 😉
Cheers, M.J. Smashwords is a fantastic company and they’ve made some great moves since I wrote this post, such as introducing pre-orders and a few other things. I think that sounds like a valid enough reason not to move one. Both are good platforms, I just think D2D has the edge. Not having to keep a separate file with ‘Smashwords Edition’ is nice, too.
I too am an author with books published through Smashwords. Since joining them in 202 I have had 1 sale!! In fact I had 5 books sold but they where purchased fraudulently through the misuse of a credit card that belonged to somebody else. I was never paid my royalty fee even though they recorded the sales as sales!! I asked them to delete the data as it was wrong and they refused. Then to cap it all, I used their reader sets the price option, and had one sale of one of my fiction books. In fact I received no income from the book sale, as according to that Smashwords option, readers can choose, not to pay!! I sent them an email saying thay where misleading the author and where operating using sharp practices as a sale set by the reader should default to .99 cents. These rascals already have a free option where readers don’t have to PAY any money. What a bonkers bunch. Now I am moving over my remaining indie books to Draft2Digital. Incidentally I am now getting sales from these guys and I am very happy. Smashwords have been a big disappointment and must UP their game.
Thank you
Alex
Hi, I use both smashwords and D2D. There’s a bit of D2D bashing going on in the public arena from a certain quarter, which I am trying to address the balance a little. That aside, the main issue for any platform, is resolving any issues / problems with their affiliates. One case is the latest issue with D2d and amazon. Just having somebody to sort things out with is a major headache for D2D. My books via d2d are still on amazon and still selling.
Smashwords is similarly useless at resolving issues with affiliates. I discovered by accident, that smashwords latest affiliate, flipkart India, has marked several of my ebooks as “out of stock” which, a week later is still the case. How does a damn ebook become out of stock??? and why can’t smashwords resolve this? They haven’t even made it public knowledge on their site updates for other writers to be aware of the situation. I’ve done more by posting it on the forum.
As for Kobo, My books are all bouncing up and down the sales rankings, so I assume ok. It is just Kobo’s affiliates, like WH Smiths in Uk being bloody minded.
Hi Ryan
I have been having a lot of hassle relating to Amazon books web site. Any ideas how to stay published on their web site as Darft2Digital have now had back word from Amazon that they will now withdraw all books uploaded on their web site from them. This is a real pain, any ideas would be helpful.
Alex
Hi Alex,
I would always upload direct where possible. Amazon’s KDP is the best in the industry, with 70% royalties and more. There’s really no need to go Amazon via D2D or a third party distributor. http://kdp.amazon.com
I only go with D2D for the sales channels not available in the UK, such as Barnes and Noble.
Hope this helps,
Ryan.
Ryan Hope it’s alright for me to borrow your post with a direct link back to this url. No doubt, my followers will be stoked to read this informative blog and I know I can’t say it any better than you’ve done already.
Thanks
Hi Mimi,
No problem. Glad you enjoyed it.
Ryan.
My 50 page ‘How to Drive an 18-Wheeler’, with cover and copywrite, has just been formatted by Booklaunch for uploading to Smashwords. You said that SW doesn’t affiliate with Amazon. I don’t wish to be shortchanged in sales. Does being formatted for SW limit my distribution capabilities? or can I still distribute through Draft2Digital without having to reformat? Is listing them on both sites acceptable? Also, is there a comprehensive website that easily explains how to go about getting my book uploaded? I have no mentor to help me through this process, and all the sites I’ve gone to for information have left me dazed and confused. I have on a couple of occasions lost my work by not understanding the instructions. Duh. thanks for the chance to learn new tricks.
I just uploaded my first novel with Draft2Digital and can’t say enough nice things about them. I will be going through them always! Love them!
I feel like a lost and wandering author soul….. 🙁 However, I’m beginning to get my hope back. I so appreciate this blog and all the comments that came from it. I think I will take a deep breath and try to go with Draft2Digital. Pray for me, I’m rather slow at all the many changes in the computer and book writing world that I can hardly keep up, even with the new terms and companies that change every day! Hugs to you all brave authors sticking your toes out and going deeper. Helps me a lot. 🙂