Draft2Digital’s recent announcement about adding maintenance fees spurred me to look at further alternatives to supplement Amazon. So I checked out Lulu and set up an option to order from there. Lulu seems nice, with ample links to resources for authors and with a higher royalty percentage for me than anywhere else if you purchase a paperback (and pretty high for e-book too). Caveat, I haven’t ordered a physical proof to validate, but everything looked good in the digital preview; both cover elements and interior were properly positioned within the guiding lines and well centered on the page.

I also updated the spine and back blurb font on Amazon to match my cover for Lulu—I finally figured out how to easily add text to my source image file for paperbacks instead of relying on these platforms’ cover creators, which all have different font options and layout limitations. Draft2Digital, and by extension Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and everywhere else D2D distributes to would actually cost me to change until end of June, so the spine and back blurb text formatting from those sources will remain different from Amazon and Lulu until then, especially on the spine. All interior content and the cover art is the same regardless of where you get the book, though!

Regarding Draft2Digital and next steps: I’m not on the hook for any account maintenance fees until October, but if Gloamwood doesn’t earn $100 in net royalties through Draft2Digital’s channels before then, I would be liable for a $12 fee to keep distributing through them… each year. Perhaps I’ll be pleasantly surprised, but I do not expect my beloved hobby project to achieve this fee-waiving threshold. Not only is my audience small and so far just friends and family, most folks have purchased through Amazon instead.

Which is absolutely fine, to be clear. Amazon gives me far higher royalties for the paperback than D2D’s channels, and higher than most for e-book except for Smashwords. (I just hesitate to recommend or push Amazon due to some of their business practices, particularly how they treat their workers and use difficult-to-recycle packing materials—and I know some of my friends have qualms with them. Hence, the Lulu option.)

If my prediction is correct, I’ll evaluate whether to stop distributing wide or use Amazon’s or Lulu’s expanded distribution options. Theoretically, I could directly set up on a bunch of other distributors, but I’d really rather not. It’s not worth the effort.