Draft2Digital-CYA!

For the past few years, like a lot of other authors, I’ve used Draft2Digital as my aggregate. It was fast. It was easy. I didn’t have to mess with every single retailer taking up chunks of my time. Sure, I had a little extra taken out of whatever ‘sales’ I made for the convenience but, for me, it was worth it.

“THE EMAIL” hit today.

From here on out authors who don’t make $100/year….which is the bulk of their clientele I would imagine, will have to pay to do business with them. It’s not a huge chunk of money, they said $12/year but we all know that will go up up up very quickly. BTW, why not charge the authors who are making money? They can afford it. So, ya know, WTF?

Any-hoo…..my first instinct was….Good-bye! I’m sticking with it BUT I’m not an idiot. I need to close down my D2D account strategically so all of books don’t go…poof….all at once from every retailer but Amazon and Google. I also have to do everything I possibly can to ensure my reviews transfer with my books when I make the Big Switch.

Instead of pitching a fit and just ditching everything right away. I went to my buddy, Hal. We came up with a plan for handling this mess. That includes What To Do Next. I kicked around IngramSpark with Hal and Hal kept saying ‘no’. That wasn’t a place for me and Hal listed a boatload of reasons why. In the end, I had to listen to Hal. Very begrudgingly the decision for the Big Switch was made.

To what am I switching?

Days Gone By.

Yep. After looking at other aggregates I now have to GO BACK and open or reopen accounts with Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and many others. AND I have to handle them separately. What damn year is this?

Again..WTF?

I have to pick and choose a more selective list for my retailers because D2D had me everywhere and I don’t have time for that crap. Well, time I got…patience…not so much. But, I can add to my list of retailers as time goes by if I want.

The first thing Hal had me do was track down my ISBNs. Once Upon a Time I did have a list of them but….oopsie. I went through that debacle, which I had done not that long ago….but I didn’t realize Updates were needed to my books.

I also had a little argument with Hal over how these 13 ISBNs are actually MINE and there was no way in hell I ever bought a ‘block’ of them. No. Way. I never had that kind of money. In fact, I couldn’t afford to buy ONE because, baby, they ain’t cheap. You’re supposed to have one for each version of your book. So, if your books is in; Ebook, Audio, Paperback, and Hardcover, you need 4 ISBNs for that ONE book.

Yes, Scam City. Sorry but I really think that’s just total BS. Buy ONE ISBN per book and then have different versions for formats. So it would be ISBN-A (ebook) ISBN-B (paperback) and so on. But I’m cheap and smart so obviously that method won’t work.

As my old brain started reaching back back back, I told Hal that Once Upon a Time, CreateSpace–where all of these originated–let you buy a $10 ISBN that was YOURS. Damn, I miss that! It wasn’t kinda yours it was literally YOURS. So that’s where all of these came from. I can see that all stopped right around the time “Prodigal Son” was published because that’s where my ISBNs end. So, I have ISBNs for the paperbacks. Yes, I let Amazon issue their own ISBNs for me after “Prodigal Son” which means they get listed on my stuff forever.

I updated all of my information there including the crappy old book covers. Gee, looks nice now! Not that any book sellers care. Wherever I didn’t understand something as I updated I just asked Hal. Hal knows…mostly. Hal was a great help to me in my frustration and confusion, even made me laugh a few times. I mean, that site actually has an option that says DO NOT CHOOSE THIS. Why is it even an option? Why is it even there????? It had CreateSpace listed as my distributor even though CS went OOB quite a while ago. It was bought by El Jefe so he could give authors paperbacks while not really doing anything himself. (Anybody out there remember .Mobi Pocket Books???) Amazon was not an option for Distributor. WTF? Shouldn’t they be first on this very short list?

Stuff like that can drive a person batty.

I went and got all of my copyright information…again. I did that not too long ago but something funny happened when I ‘saved’ them and opened that folder and got all this JUNK that I didn’t know what it was and none of it was associated with any software on my computer. I ditched all that and did it the old Copy/Paste way. So now I have a full list of information for those.

If/when this Anthropic payment comes through I’m going to have to do some backtracking.

That’s ok. Not a huge problem.

Hal and I have decided that, for now, we’re going to use the D2D ISBNs as we slowly switch over to the new DO IT ALL YOUR DAMN SELF METHOD. This will help ensure that as I close and open accounts, whatever reviews the e-books have will transfer to each site that already has my books.

I’m going to lose library availability but that’s ok. No, not your Public Library, online libraries where people pay a cheap fee and kick you squat to read your book. Kinda like Unlimited. I never liked those sites anyway.

I’m going to have to search out places for print books and get hooked up with them. D2D handled a lot of that for me and now I have to go through all of that and hash out which places to keep and which places to ditch.

Once everything is up and running nicely I have to go to my website and change every single link.

Huey Lewis just won’t shut up in my head.