Draft2Digital – Fees! Why? What? How Much?

No one likes fees. But they are a part of our life. A few weeks ago, Draft2Digital announced that for the first time ever, there will be fees for authors on their platform. Let’s go through the why, the what, and most importantly – how much! Stay tuned!

Hi, I’m M.K. Williams, an author. I love sharing my insights about all things books and publishing with you. Before I get into the details about today’s topic, don’t forget to subscribe. You’ll be notified when I put out new videos every week about publishing, making a career out of being an author, and now being a mompreneur.

Quick intro to anyone new here or new to self-publishing: Draft2Digital is the main aggregator for ebooks and print books for self-publishing authors. An aggregator is a service that takes the book file that you upload once, and they get it out to their network, which includes Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Everand (previously Scribd), OverDrive, Hoopla, etc. Historically, they have had no fees. To create an account. To upload. Now they did have a token system for revisions to print books. Print revisions were so many tokens that you were allowed per 90 days. If you needed more tokens, there was a fee to make more changes. Effectively, they were trying to incentivize you to check your files.

So, when news hit a few weeks ago that Draft2Digital was introducing fees… people were upset. And that’s understandable. I saw the email and did an eye roll and groaned, but I knew I needed to read it again the next morning with fresh eyes.

As authors, we are running a business. We have ot budget where our royalties go to fund that business. Hearing that we now have to pay more for access.. Can be tough. Especially for those of us who don’t make that much yet.

And as a disclaimer – I have no formal relationship with Draft2Digital other than my books are distributed through them. I have never been sponsored by them, they dont’ do any affiliate payments to me. I have no incentive to be kind to them other than my books are on their platform but I am free to take them elsewhere.

So first,
Why are they adding fees? – Simply put – this is a business. Costs are going up for everyone, across the board. Draft2Digital has to maintain their website, pay their customer service staff (and they generally have well-regarded customer service), and keep the lights on. In addition, they’ve seen a lot of AI slop get pushed onto the system, which requires them to check every book more for quality. That takes time. And money. If the small activation fee can deter some AI uploads, then that helps all of us, actual authors. This is one point that my contacts at D2D wanted to make clear. There was a hige stigma around self-publishing when I got started. Years of hard work and amazing quality have proven to readers and publishers that indie authors and indie books are quality. With the explosion of ai slop that is at risk. 5 years ago, the D2D team was handling maybe a dozen fraudulent or spam accounts being created and shut down each week. Now it is hundreds a week! That means the human team at D2D has to spend more time maintaining that quality for all of us.

What are the fees? And how much are they? There are two fees being implemented:
Activation fee for new accounts
Annual maintenance fee

The activation fee is $20 for new accounts. If you have an account set up, but you don’t have any books, you are NOT subject to this fee. If you’ve had an account for years, if you were transferred over from the Smashwords merger, you don’t have to pay this fee. SO if you are thinking of starting an account with Draft2Digital, keep that in mind.

The annual maintenance fee is $12 for accounts that earn less than $100 in royalties each year. So the accounts that can least afford the fee. But Draft2Digital makes a cut of each sale; that’s how they have been in business up until now. If you have books on there that aren’t making money for you, they aren’t making money for D2D either. This fee is based on your account anniversary date. They look at the preceding 12 months of sales.

For example, if you joined Draft2Digital this January 2026, your account won’t be reviewed for a potential annual maintenance fee until January 2027. So you have time to sell or prepare for this fee.

Now, when I saw this email, my first thought was… welp, guess I’m going to be paying that fee. Because I have not been following my own advice. I have been neglecting my backlist. And it shows in my sales. So I went to check my account status. Boom. Don’t have to pay until April 2027. Phew. Got some time.

So how can I avoid the annual maintenance fee?
Well, I could sell more books. Duh! Okay, I said that to be funny, but yeah. I would need to focus my marketing on my wide ebook platforms. Which is a great time to remind you all that my entire catalog is available on Hoopla, Libby, Overdrive, B&N, Kobo, Apple, and Bookshop.org.

I know so many of us indie authors are not necessarily raking it in. Even those of us who sell well, count on that money to fund the ads, to sell more books, to pay the table fees, to sell more books. It’s a once-a-year $12 fee, it’s a dollar a month. To avoid the fee you need to earn between $8 and $9 a month in royalties. Easier said than done for some, I know. But you can look at this as a challenge for the next year to get your sales up. And then you have more sales AND no fee.

The other way to avoid this annual maintenance fee is to go to another platform. So how would that work?

Well… Barnes & Noble Press, Apple Books for Authors, Kobo Writing LIfe, and Voices by InAudio are all platforms that you can go sign up for. All allow you to upload and sell for free, but they take a cut of each sale. But that’s a lot of extra logins to manage. And uploads or reuploads for edits.

You could switch to IngramSpark, another aggregator. I use them for my print books. If you do too, you might think, ” Okay, get all the print and eBooks on one aggregator.” At the time I’m recording this, IngramSpark doesn’t have any upload or change fees. HOWEVER, they’ve changed this policy MULTIPLE times in the past few years. Doing away with upload fees, but only having change fees, you can get codes here, oh no more fees. But for how long? If you want to do this dance again, if / when IngramSpark adds fees back, go ahead and switch to IngramSpark. You’ll get your eBooks to pretty much all the same places that Draft2Digital can.

Another aggregator is PublishDrive. They have one free plan where you would only be able to publish 1 book on their platform, distribute to three channels, and only publish eBooks. For anything above that (more than one ebook, more than 3 retailers, more than one format), you’d be looking at a minimum of $13.99 A MONTH for their start plan.

So, those are your options. You CAN move to another platform. You CAN choose to stay. For those who have been following me for years, you know how frugal I am. Even to the detriment of my book sales. But, if I end up having to pay this maintenance fee, so be it. It will push me to market smarter the following year. And also, I don’t mind paying this small amount for the convenience of uploading once and getting my ebook out to this network.

Some of you reached out to me as soon as this news broke to ask about what to do. What’s going on? I didn’t post this video for 2 weeks. BECAUSE, 1. I had a time-sensitive video for last week and 2. As an author, we cannot be this reactionary. Draft2Digital gave people a heads-up about this. You can and SHOULD reevaluate your platforms, your pricing, and your publishing strategy at least once a year. But you shouldn’t be quick to jump platforms. That’s not a strategy, that’s panic. Any time you are making a change, it should come from a strategic place, and not a scared place. Scared decisions don’t turn out well.

If I were starting today and I had to pick my distribution mix, I would probably still include Draft2Digital for my wide eBook distribution. While I could go with IngramSpark for ease of us and (currently) no fees, I like that I have price controls with Draft2Digital for sales and promotions. That has been critical to participating in SYK days. Yes, I can manually change the price in IngramSpark, but then it doesn’t show the regular price, and the limited time frame for the discount to press urgency.

My parting thoughts on this are: The way you handle anything is the way you handle everything

Print costs increase
Companies are acquired or merged, and customer service does take a hit
Fees are added.
You paid a fee the week before a company announces no more fees

It’s not fair to you
But if being an author hasn’t already taught you that life isn’t fair…. I don’t know what will.

When we have a knee-jerk reaction, when we pull our books immediately, when we catastrophize, everything feels like a catastrophe.

Okay, what other questions do you have about this update? About other platforms? About where you can buy my ebooks so I don’t have to pay a fee in 2027?

D2D Announcement: https://draft2digital.com/blog/understanding-d2ds-activation-and-maintenance-fees/
IngramSpark: https://www.ingramspark.com/pricing
PublishDrive: https://publishdrive.com/pricing.html