If you’re not interested in publishing stories in paperback form, then “Move along. Nothing to see here.” However, if you think that your version of The Old Man and the Sea or Gone With The Wind is lurking somewhere in your keyboard, this post may be of interest to you.

As a self-published author of sixty electronic, paperback, and audiobook stories, I’ve published 20 paperback versions of my electronic and audiobook stories. My sales volume of paperbacks is typically 20% – 30% of total sales, so publishing my stories in paperback interests me.

I typically publish through two main channels, Amazon Kindle (KDP) and Draft2Digital (SmashWords). I also sell through Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Scribd, and others. These are handled through SmashWords which is pretty neat in my way of thinking. By publishing through two major publishers, I’m pushing out to a range of outlets with little additional work.

Recently, Draft2Digital or SmashWords started offering paperback versions of their electronic stories. I decided to take one of my currently published paperbacks, The Shrink, and publish it through D2D to understand the differences between Amazon KDP and Draft2Digital.

The actual publishing process is similar between the two. Amazon KDP is more refined, in my opinion, likely because they’ve been publishing print books for a long time. The biggest issue I have with D2D is that you are expected to have everything finished beforehand.

Remember that this is my first print book with Draft2Digital, so I expected some hiccups. I assumed I would be assigned an ISBN number to attach to the book, only to discover that it is printed on the book’s cover and the author doesn’t know it upfront. With my KDP books, I embedded the ISBN number in the interior which is a no-no I found out. Also, if you let D2D take your published electronic version of the story, everything will be done automatically.

Being the anal OCD person I am, relinquishing control is difficult, and I’ve always done everything myself. So, if you are willing to close your eyes and trust the ether gnomes, these problems may not bother you.

D2D rapped me across the knuckles and informed me that they owned the ISBN, and I couldn’t place it inside my book. Like KDP, you leave a space on the rear cover, and the printer adds the ISBN. It was not a big deal; it just surprised me.

The other issue I had was the cover dimensions. The author must supply a single image file, which is the front cover plus the spine plus the rear cover. Precise dimensions are required for both the interior and the cover. In my case, I publish 6×9 inch books. The height of the book is simple, as it’s 9.25 inches. Nine inches plus an eighth-inch bleed top and bottom.

The tricky part is the spine width. The spine is the edge of the book, which connects the front to the back cover and varies depending on the book’s number of pages. Laying out the cover is complex because the position of the objects moves right to left depending on the page count.

Like Amazon, once you tell D2D how big your book is, they will provide an image file to size. I use CorelDraw, and placing the cover image template makes it relatively simple, but I prefer Amazon’s method, where you also get dimensional data to assist in laying everything out.

The process is also relatively easy, and I know I’ll be prepared next time.

To my surprise, I found that the sale cost of a paperback is larger at D2D for the same royalty. Amazon KDP has a 60% author’s royalty margin, and D2D is 45%. The author’s royalty is the sale price times the margin minus the print cost of the book.

In the case of The Shrink, D2D charges $4.42 for a 240-page book, and Amazon charges $3.88. D2D is a little higher on printing cost, but the 15% difference in royalty makes you price their books substantially higher to receive the same margin.

My books are typically in the 50,000 to 100,000-word category, and I assume a five-dollar royalty for every book I sell. My sale price for The Shrink is $13.99 at Amazon KDP and $19.99 at Draft2Digital. I make roughly $4.50 at either publisher.

I’m concerned that D2D’s higher price will hurt sales, but I’ll have to see.

If anyone is interested, let me know, and I’ll follow up with a more detailed explanation of how costs are derived.

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