Welcome back to another Open Book Blog Hop!

How many of you use Draft2Digital? How will the new pricing structure affect you?

Remember to visit my fellow writers to see what they have created. You can find their works here!

AI is becoming an ever-increasing problem for publishers, retailers and authors alike. Those of us who labour over a single book for months or years are struggling to be heard, shouting into a crowded marketplace that’s becoming increasingly flooded by poor-quality AI-written books. All of a sudden, new authors are coming up with 10’s of new books within a year. This isn’t a guarantee that they are AI, but the odds would suggest they are – that’s a lot of books to write in a short time span.

So the likes of KDP, IngramSpark, and Draft2Digital are trying to find ways to discourage them. D2D’s approach is simple. For all NEW accounts, there’s a one-off $20 sign up fee. Hopefully, this will disuade many of them. And if this doesn’t, they’ve added a new fee – if you have sales totalling less than $100 in a 12-month window, there’ll be a new $12 fee. Seems reasonable on the face of it.

But the reality is different. These AI authors can churn out material with no effort in no time, and make sufficient sales to dodge the penalty charge. And as the curve drops, they churn out more content to ride the upswing again. They’re not worries if their books are good, or if any single on is a best seller. They’ll ride the “new book sales high” and move on to the next, and the next. So how does it play out for us indie authors?

Let’s look at an open and honest review of my 2025 in book terms. I’ll start by saying this doesn’t account for direct sales of paperbacks – I buy these as author copies from KDP and sell them myself. These also wouldn’t be counted from a D2D perspective either. My combined sales earnings last year on KDP including eBooks, Kindle Unlimited page reads and paperback sales across four books was the grand total of £11.05. This includes releasing a new book. I’d be charged by D2D $12 for this. I’d lose money. Even counting in my direct sales, I’m only at £61.57. So not a great deal better and still incuring the charge.

It’s difficult enough to make a wage as an independent author without these punitive charges. I’d been so disappointed with my KDP sales that I was all set to move to D2D, but with this new move, I’ll take my chances where I am. If other outlets follow suit, though, I may have to reconsider whether creating books is viable anymore. Who knows what the future might hold?