Why I Delisted My Books From Draft2Digital

Recently, Draft2Digital made an announcement that they're going to charge a $20 fee to create a new account with them and charge $12 to authors who make less than $100 in a year. They claim the sign up fee is in response to an "onslaught from automated content farms" and the $12 fee "helps offset ongoing compliance, security, and infrastructure costs."

On top of that, every payment method now has a minimum threshold you need to reach in order to get paid. PayPal, for example, used to have a $0 threshold, but now it's $10.

I have no idea when this change was made and I wasn't given an email about it.

In regards to the fees, I don't buy the reasoning behind them. Paying $20 to sign up is not going to be a hurdle for people who pump out AI books. I doubt AI content farms cost $0 to run and doubt even further that poor people have the proper technology to run such a program. Scammers are far more likely to have more money compared to indie authors who struggle to make $10 in sales. The $12 fee clearly is a punitive measure on authors who have low sales. If Draft2Digital was seriously concerned with "rising costs" of operating their business, then it would make sense to charge a fee on high earners since they actually make money. It's like putting a wealth tax on the poorest people instead of the richest people.

It's clear Draft2Digital wants to monetize poorer authors to further line up their own pockets. Previously, they made money by taking a cut of your royalties. So if you made money, then they would make money too. They don't edit or market your book for you (at least not in my case). If the $12 fee was instead an optional subscription to receive professional help for your books, then that would be a fair deal. If you didn't want to pay the fee, you wouldn't get the extra service. But as usual with corporations, increasing profits is a higher priority than increasing quality of service.

It's also clear that the AI excuse is illegitimate. Draft2Digital did not offer a detailed breakdown of how the $20 fee would stop or slow content farms. $20 is "modest" for scammers but for poor authors it's a steep price. If they were serious about combatting content farms, they would put a limit on how many books an author can upload through the site (let's say a maximum of 3 books a month). Many social media sites, for example, put a limit on how many posts you can make per day. Draft2Digital claims they have human reviewers and verification tools, which ought to be enough to combat the content farms.

The biggest smoking gun on this AI excuse is on Draft2Digital's FAQ: they accept so-called "AI-assisted" books. They have no problem with books that are completely generated by AI so long as the book has gone through "extensive editing from a human."

This sure is a massive contradiction. On one hand, they oppose content farms, but on the other, they support AI-assisted books. How is this in any way "genuine?" Let's use myself as an example. I'm currently in the process of writing the second draft for Armored Piercing 3. My first draft was about 1200 pages and it took 3 years to write (remember, I write my first drafts by hand). The outline for the second draft is 151 pages, which took a few months to finish. Let's say the second draft ends up being 800 pages and it takes me 1 year to write. Typing it up on Word will take a long time and then even more time to edit my book for publishing. Now let's say a so-called author used AI to generate an 800-page book and they do some editing to get it ready for publishing. Who did more work: me writing my book from scratch or the author who edited an AI-generated book? Would that author be just as genuine as me?

Now personally, I wouldn't have a problem with AI if the AI made the book from scratch and not scrape off other people's books. I think a machine learning AI could do that, but it would take a long time for the AI to learn how to write a proper book. Since corporations want quick cash, the AI being pushed instead scrapes off other people's content in order to "speed up" the process. Generating an AI book and then editing it would make you an editor, not an author. If you wrote the first draft yourself and you used AI to edit your book, then it wouldn't be bad at all; it would be similar to using Grammarly to edit your book.

However, Draft2Digital didn't make a distinction between "AI-assisted" books and content farm "slop" in their announcement. In fact, they seem to take a strong anti-AI stance by claiming to support "genuine authors like you." Being the editor of an AI-generated book and claiming to be an author doesn't sound very genuine to me. AI gets a lot of heat these days, so pandering to the anti-AI people gets you a lot of praise. I've seen many people online fall for the anti-Ai rhetoric from Draft2Digital. Some even praise the introduction of fees and shame low-earning authors. And yet, not one post talking about Draft2Digital affirming support for "AI-assisted" content in their FAQ.

So, the $12 "maintenance" fee and the threshold minimum for payments led to my decision to delist all my books with Draft2Digital. I'm waiting to see if they'll reverse their decisions. I predict they might reverse the $12 fee but keep the sign up fee and threshold minimums. Especially in regards to the thresholds, I've seen no pushback on that at all. If they maintain this policy, I will delete my account. I have direct accounts with Amazon and Kobo, so if one of those are your preferred platform then you have nothing to worry about for now.

I hope other platforms don't follow suit. If Kobo also introduced fees and Amazon forced thresholds on all payment methods, then I will definitely quit self publishing. Draft2Digital's move is similar to vanity publishing. As I stated in a previous blog post, I chose to do self publishing because the publishers in my city required a steep upfront payment to publish with them. Vanity publishers are a scam because they make their money through authors paying them, not through selling books. Draft2Digital's fees are way cheaper, but it is the same idea. I was considering quitting publishing because I put so much effort in but get little money in return. Now having a whole different reason to quit was something I was not expecting at all this year.

Also, I might delist my books on Kobo as well. They also have a threshold, of $50 this time. I only got one paid sale on Kobo, but I never got the money because it's way below the threshold.

I struggle to even sell free copies on Kobo. Only popular authors sell well on Kobo. If you're unpopular like me, then Kobo is a waste of time and effort. Though to be honest, every store is a waste of time and effort when you have no popularity. I sold plenty of free copies on Smashwords, but that didn't result in gaining a loyal fanbase who support me. It would crush me if I finally publish Armored Piercing 3 and Amazon/Kobo follow Draft2Digital's footsteps. All that time and energy just to go down the drain. If I had a well paying job or I lived in a rich household, then I wouldn't worry about low sales or unjustified fees. Over 7 years being a published author and it feels like I wasted my time. At this point, Amazon is the only thread keeping me in this business.