The Dread Machine
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Decoding Draft2Digital
🕑 Added 2023-04-26 21:13:20 +0000 UTCRemember last week, when I said, "Every summer, I spend a few weeks researching other printers. Usually, we end up stuck with KDP..."? Well, I'm going to show you what that research process looks like.
Today, I evaluated Draft 2 Digital, a print-on-demand and book distribution company we've been monitoring for a few years. Up until last year, D2D only published and distributed ebooks, but now, they support print. They also have a very intriguing royalty split system, which allows writers to collaborate on titles and automate the royalty distribution process.
As publishers, we are mostly interested in D2D's distribution tools, which auto-lists the title to every major online bookstore. This is a tedious process that I could do manually, but it's time-consuming and we never see sales from these channels, so I am very interested in automating that.
Here's what I've learned today.
- D2D's royalties are half of what KDP offers publishers.
D2D's FAQ claims: For print books, you will make about 45% of the list price of your print book, minus the base printing cost.
I couldn't find the "base printing cost," but the number their royalty calculator spit out has us earning $2.47 per sale—just 20.58% of the list price ($12.00).
On this same title, The Dread Machine makes $4.83 per sale via Amazon/KDP, which comes out to 40.25% of the list price. KDP also reveals the printing cost and the taxes—but we'll cover that soon.
While D2D's statements here might not rise to the level of false advertising, it seems like intentional obfuscation, especially considering the sheer volume of documentation they provide. The great documentation gave me the impression that D2D was a fairly transparent company, but the numbers aren't adding up, so as a potential customer, my faith in their honesty is a bit rattled. Every claim I see now triggers a voice in my head that asks, "Okay, but what aren't they saying, and how far along in the production process do I need to get before I discover the truth?" (The answer to that last part turned out to be: all the way to the end.)
- D2D charges obscene rates for physical proofs.
I'm not joking when I say I almost choked on my coffee when I saw that D2D charges $30 for a single printed proof. This is an objectively wild price. For comparison, KDP charged us $2.37 for this issue's proof, plus $3.59 for shipping and $0.38 for taxes—$6.34 total.
- D2D prohibits file changes for 90-day periods.
This is a major dealbreaker. Should we notice a problem in one of our issues, whether that's with the cover or the interior, we need the flexibility to immediately upload corrections.
Per D2D's "Print Masterclass #3":
Edits can take several days or even weeks to process with the bookseller, depending on the nature of the update and the store site.
In the meantime, the title containing the error will still be available for purchase. 😬
Now, do we often have to upload corrections?
Yes. Absolutely.
Once, a story duplicated in the print edition. A whole ass story. Another time, we (and by "we," I mean "I") forgot to include a missing author bio. Recently, chapter headers showed the wrong title and author on a particular story. I'm sitting here waiting on the third set of Darkness Blooms proofs, because of the cover printing issue caused by KDP's process.
Did anyone (other than you fine people and everyone you relay this cautionary tale to) hear about these embarrassing mistakes? No. Because I caught them before anybody else and had the ability to quickly make the necessary changes—for free. (We'll get into that next.)
Needless to say, this kind of restriction (imposed by Draft2Digital's system limitations, it would seem) is unacceptable. A writer self-publishing a title on a flexible timeline might not be bothered by this, but we have strict delivery deadlines, and there's no effing way I'm going to let a printing company keep us from updating flawed files for three months. [[YIKES.]]
So, at this point, it's clear that we're not going to be working with D2D this year, but I happened to also notice this:
- Despite advertising (in bold print) that they don't, D2D does, in fact, charge fees for updating your book.
I'll provide the following disclaimer: Up until last year, D2D only published ebooks, so the inconsistencies I found could be the result of sloppy copywriting, poor documentation upkeep, or a combination of the two. (In my professional opinion, it's a noticeable combo.)
From their homepage:
The bottom line is, we charge no fees for formatting or updating your book. Make as many changes as you want to your book, update the cover, distribute it to any and every sales channel you want..."
I found this to be untrue, at least for print titles. Let's get back to that whole 90-day restriction on changes.
From their "Print Masterclass #3":
We give authors one free change every 90 days. (That’s 90 days after the last time you made a change to your book—so once you use a free edit, the ticker starts counting back up to 90.)
When we say “changes” or “edits” here, we mean any change to your cover (including replacing or updating the design, or switching from matte to glossy or vice versa) or the interior. Basically, any change you make to your book file counts.
If you want to make any changes to a print title on Draft2Digital, you have to use a "Change Token." D2D provides one free Change Token per title every 90 days, but if you burn your complimentary Token and need to make another change, you have to purchase additional Tokens. To figure out how much these things actually cost, I had to log into my D2D account and attempt to buy one.
Change Tokens are $25 each, but...
From their "Everything You Need to Know" blog post:
The cost of a change token may be adjusted from time-to-time as the cost of changes shifts, but change tokens you purchase or receive now will be good at any time in the future.
I checked D2D's Terms of Service regarding the treatment of these Change Tokens and didn't find anything fishy or unreasonable there.
How does D2D justify charging for file uploads?
From their "Print Masterclass #3":
Draft2Digital incurs a fee from our print partner each time a change is made, so we can’t allow for unlimited edits.
I have no way of confirming this, so it's total speculation here, but I suspect D2D's "printing partner" is Ingram, the largest printing and print distribution company in the world. (Their creepy—but accurate—corporate tagline is: "If you are reading a book, Ingram Content Group is probably behind it.")
We don't (or rather can't) work with Ingram because they serve the Big 4/5 publishing companies, and those companies have a very vested interest in making Ingram's services as inaccessible as possible. I'll be researching their POD solutions—IngramSpark and LightningSource—next week, and I'll share what I find here.
However, if this is the case, D2D's Change Tokens are half the price of what Ingram's POD solutions were charging for uploading new files the last time I checked (a WTF-inducing $50).
If you're wondering how a company can justify charging $50 to replace a file, so are we, but unlike D2D, Ingram doesn't bother attempting to explain it, but I suspect it's to discourage those who would flood the market with bot-written titles (and also poor people and indie publishers with tight budgets).
Despite the drawbacks (and there are many drawbacks), KDP charges $0 for file uploads, processes the changes in 24-72 hours, and has no prohibitions regarding frequency.
With all this said, I want to share some not-so-shitty observations:
- D2D's title creation process was very easy.
Uploading the files and configuring the title's metadata was a complete breeze. Very beginner-friendly. Two big thumbs-up for that.
- If you're a self-publishing writer who wants wide distribution without having to DIY it, D2D might be a great option for you.
D2D's marketing tools make it a very attractive option for writers pursuing self-publishing. Although, I would recommend doing the math or experimenting with a single title first if you have a platform already; you might be better off selling directly.
Conclusion
I would not recommend D2D to anyone who has an investment to recoup.
Issue 3.1 cost $2,000 to produce. To break even on acquisitions alone ($1,335), we'd have to sell 540 copies via Draft2Digital—assuming I didn't screw something up (which I would) and end up having to pay for "Change Tokens."
Selling direct to our customers, which results in a healthy $7 margin (give or take sixty cents, depending on the issue's page count), we'd break even on acquisitions in 190 copies. I don't think we've ever sold more than 70 physical copies of any issue, but 190 at least looks potentially attainable, lol.
If anyone has any questions about any of this tedious, boring stuff, let me know in the comments!
