Good evening. Today I wanted to focus on something else for those of you thinking about self-publishing today and that is choosing an aggregator/distributor. Whichever term you want to use, this is a crucial decision you will have to make as an author. For a long while now I would praise Draft2Digital, and in many respects I still do. They’re not perfect, but for what they have, they are a great company that I’ve had a pleasant experience with. If you’ve listened to any of my podcasts, or even in previous blog posts, you’ve probably seen me praise them and tell of my enjoyable experience while publishing Afterworld or The Ripper. So why am I switching?

Well, let’s get this out of the way first: it’s not anything terrible that the company had done. Indeed, they are still the same splendid company that was there when I was praising, but something happened that changed the game. It all came in an email to a website I subscribe to. The website in question? appsumo.com. What was in this all powerful email I received? Well, if you’re familiar with appsumo you might guess, but if not, then let me explain. Appsumo is a website that partners with companies to offer deals, sometimes limited, sometimes permanent, but usually lifetime. So I open my email up and see the words “Hit Publish” as the title for the email. Already I’m intrigued as an author. No idea what it’s about, but publishing is in my wheelhouse. So I open it and find the best deal any author (that doesn’t want to spend even more time when we have so little) could hope for. A lifetime subscription to PublishDrive Pro (almost). We’ll get into that later.

Now, if you know little about either of these companies, let me do a brief explanation of why this is so valuable. Draft 2 Digital is a platform you can publish to and they send your book out to multiple companies. The companies take their cut (usually about 30% for an ebook) and then draft2digital takes their cut of 10% for providing the services. So say, for example, your book is $10 (this is just to make the math simple, you can’t get 70% of the ebook royalties on amazon and a few others if you go over $9.99). So say that’s the case, then after amazon takes 30% you’re left with $7. Now from there Draft2digital receives that $7 and takes 10% so you’re left with $6.30. That isn’t bad, for every ten books you basically lose the profit from one. Now what if you could keep that 10% and still not have to go to each platform? See where this is going?

Welcome to PublishDrive. Now there’s more than just the royalty aspect to consider, so make sure you check out all their cool features. Before I would have never considered them, especially during my startup phase which unfortunately I’m still in. The current cost of using them to publish is $9.99 a month for two books/book formats. This basically means you can only publish one ebook and paperback, or audiobook, and then you’re cut off until the next tier, which is 6 for $19.99 a month. That is too much of a money sink for a beginning author. Now fast forward to a few days ago? I grabbed the lifetime license from https://appsumo.com/products/publishdrive/ and now I’ll be able to receive maximum royalties from my current and future books.

Now there are a couple of caveats here. Tier one lets you submit up to 24 books, or 8 books with all 3 current formats (no hardcovers available yet). Their second, or highest tier, will run you just under $140 and will let you publish 96 books, or 32 with all current formats. The second little string attached to the deal is you have to have not previously used PublishDrive in the past. Unfortunately, this is for new users only. That being said, 8-32 books will cover most authors. Romance authors may struggle a bit with that, but most fantasy/sci-fi authors such as myself will find one of those numbers acceptable. I’m not sure if this deal will go on forever, a limited time, or what so hopefully if you’re just stumbling onto this blog post, it’s still active.

That’s about it, though. That’s why I’m switching. Perhaps in the future, an even better deal will appear somewhere else and make me move over. I’m not too picky. As long as it’s relatively simple and helps production/distribution, then I’ll make the switch. Or I might do like I do now. While I’ve mostly moved my books over to PublishDrive, there are still about 3 markets (currently) that draft2digital covers and PublishDrive does not. So I’ve left them there for those. It’s never a good idea to put your eggs in one basket, as they say. The more prospective clients, the better.

Thanks again for reading the blog. Hopefully, you enjoyed something new other than just book/audiobook updates. I know I’ve spoken to a couple of fans who are eventually thinking of self-publishing their own works. Even if you’re not thinking about self-publishing today, perhaps this will help you and them both down the line. Unless, of course, you are them. Anyway, stay safe, and as always, keep posted!