As if I didn’t have enough pain and anguish in my life, I decided to try publishing a print (paperback) book on Draft2Digital (D2D). I have almost sixty erotic romance novels published in electronic, paperback, and audiobook format, with nineteen in paperback.

Publishing a paperback brings another level of complexity to publishing. With electronic books (eBooks), it’s pretty easy to do as you simply furnish a document file of the story and an image for the cover. Easy peasy, but print brings additional challenges.

I distribute my erotica through Amazon, SmashWords, and Google Play Books, which are my primary tier of publishers. SmashWords, in turn, pushes out to Apple, Barnes & Noble, Scribd, etc. Amazon is about a third of my sales, and SmashWords is about two-thirds. My SmashWords sales also include sales to their submarkets, such as Apple Books.

Last month, my print sales were almost thirty percent as it gives my readers something to do with their other hand. Due to the popularity of printed smut, I decided to try Draft2Digital as they are branching out into printed erotica.

I’ve decided to try D2D print and see if I can expand my porn empire with those guys. Amazon and D2D will take your electronic story and convert it into paperback form, but I am one who is never shy about seeing if it hurts when you stick your finger in a light socket.

I use QuarkXPress to publish my paperbacks, and beyond banging my head against the wall, I’m reasonably satisfied with Quark. Comparing an electronic book to a printed book, it’s evident that the printed version is a lot fancier with page numbers, dropped caps, etc.; those embellishments are challenging to do with Word.

So yesterday, I started with a copy of the source files for The Shrink, one of my latest erotic romances, which I think is pretty decent. The Shrink is 240 pages of never-ending sexual adventures as Foxy goes to a psychiatrist in the hopes of curbing her addiction to well-hung young men, only to discover that he’s trouble also. Between the shrink and his cute receptionist, Foxy seems to have forgotten why she went there in the first place.

Draft2Digital is not difficult for print publishing but has a few rough edges. D2D will provide a free ISBN number for your story, but apparently, you have to wait until it’s published to figure out what it is. I would have liked to embed the ISBN number in the front of the story but gave up as it didn’t seem to be available.

The cover design was a little wonky, also. Amazon generates a template file with dimensions based on the page count. With D2D, an image template is created but without detailed dimensions. I had to do some guesswork to determine the exact page size and object placement. Luckily, with CorelDraw, altering the Amazon version slightly to match D2D’s requirements is reasonably straightforward.

I uploaded a final copy of the body and cover image yesterday for review. As of today, D2D is still reviewing my story, but hopefully, it will be available soon so I can buy a copy. At least I know that I’ll sell one copy.

My end goal is to see if there are markets that Amazon is not reaching to increase my unit print sales. With self-publishing, the author is not forced to buy ten thousand copies of their masterpiece, store them in the garage, and hope someone buys the books. With print-on-demand, each sale is printed and mailed off to the author’s adoring fans without any hassles.

Now for something completely different. Have you noticed that the default font on Windows computers is now Aptos instead of Calibri? I was always fond of Times New Roman, but I guess Bill plans to sell us something.

For a link to all of my erotic stories in electronic, paperback, or audiobook format, click this link.

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Larry Archer’s the name, and smut’s my game. I’m a teller of tall tales, primarily erotic in nature. In plain English, I write porn or smut stories for those times you feel like reading with one hand.

Available at:
Kinky Literature
Amazon
SmashWords
Apple iBooks
Kobo
Barnes and Noble
Scribd
Google Play Books

Check me out on:
MeWe – Uncensored Content
Mastodon’s Erotic Author’s Page
Mastodon’s Author’s Page