Should You Publish Your Books In Draft2Digital And Other Similar Platforms?

Last Updated on February 12, 2019 by Jordan Alexo

A few days ago someone asked…

I found this question interesting. At least enough for me to write a post replying to this comment.
In case, you don’t know there are other platforms similar to Kindle Direct Publishing. This includes: Draft 2 Digital, Publish Drive, Street Lib and probably a few other ones. Where you can freely publish your books and possibly make some extra income. I never tried Street Lib but I tried the other two.

I’m not very active in these platforms. I can even show my Draft 2 Digital dashboard:

My results are shameful!

Still, they are enough to pay my monthly coffee habit.

In my experience, these platforms don’t seem very popular. I also read other publishers claiming the same thing. Including highly successful publishers. One of these publishers was only making $100/m after publishing his 80 books collection.

I only have six books here. The reason I don’t have more books is because they are all enrolled in the KDP select program.

I tested these platforms and the results haven’t been good enough for me to consider removing my books from KDP select.

If you don’t know, you need to first remove your books from KDP select before you publish them somewhere else. Otherwise, Amazon will get piss at you and you certainly don’t want to face their wrath.

Now there are many variables worth considering. For one…

• What are these “gurus” niches?
• How many books do they have publish there?

Some niches are more profitable than others. I don’t consider this advice good for every single publisher. I don’t recommend people to skip their free promo and immediately publish their newest books in D2D or other platforms.

Note: all the books I published in D2D weren’t already selling well in Amazon. Most of them sold well during their first month but then died off.

Why you shouldn’t do that?

It sounds like a great idea! Spreading your books through several platforms. Increasing their visibility and salebility. It would be a good idea if all these platforms were as popular as Amazon. In reality, they aren’t even slightly close. They are just babies compared to the big momma Amazon.

Why The Free 5 Day Promo Isn’t That Bad

I don’t like the free promotion. Gosh! Giving your books away for free sounds terrible. Considering you just spent about 300 dollars on each one of them. But the fact is…

Free downloads aren’t as bad as you may initially think. It is true you don’t make your money upfront. But instead, you do your money in the back end.

1 – How come?

See for each page someone reads from your book you earn about $0.005 from Amazon KENP program. I know this may seem like a ridiculous amount of money. But when you have…

Nearly 20.000 pages read in a single day then that’s an extra $120. I made that amount of money just from people reading my books. Does KENP still sounds like a bad deal? I don’t think so… you can do a fair amount of money here.

When you put your book in the 5 day free promotion (this promo can only be used if your book is enrolled in KDP select) you sometimes get thousands of book downloads.

Not everyone who got your book for free will read your book. Many people just download books to have it in their collection. Like it was a post stamp collection but instead with book covers. But still many people will read your book.

These readers increase your book earnings in KENP.

At the moment, I am averaging between 40 dollars to 80 dollars. I don’t see any of these platforms (D2D etc) beating this amount of daily income. Besides it’s not only me, other publishers also claim the same fact.

2 – How come?

The other reason is… cheap reviews. If you have a virtual assistant getting reviews for your books. During the free promo, you can get a good number of them inexpensively. Often I obtain between 20 to 25 paid reviews and all the rest during the free promo. These reviews help your book better rank and sell inside of Amazon.

When should you use D2D, Publish Drive etc?

I only suggest removing your non-profitable books from KDP select. Let’s say, you published a book and it sold well during two months. Afterward, it slowly stop selling inside of Amazon. In that case, what do you have to lose? Nothing!

You already have an indication your book sold decently. So just remove them from KDP select and publish it inside these three platforms. It only takes a few minutes and you may do a couple of new sales.  But otherwise, no!

Even less when you just published a new book. I may be the worse decision ever.

I suggest for you to take full advantage of  KDP select. Use their free promo to get more downloads and cheap reviews.

Are These Claims?

Here’s an extra hint for new publishers…

I’m not sure who are these gurus. Nor am I disapproving their advice. But are they backing their advice with hard evidence? Or are they only making claims? See along this post, I shown hard evidence of why I don’t recommend new publishers not using KDP select. Be careful to who you are listening.

Even be more careful to see if you are only listening and not taking action. The most important thing is to go out there and publish books. If you either took Self-Publishing Revolution (an old course no longer in the market) or Self-Publishing Blueprint (click here) then you already have all the required knowledge.

Stop listening and start taking action. Be curious and try to find the facts by yourself. At least for me that has been one of the funnest parts about my Kindle business.