E-book Redistribution Success!

It isn't about the $12. It's that the $12 wasn't charged to everyone equally, and only penalized low-selling authors. These stores wouldn't have any products if it weren't for the writers producing material, and yet every step of the self-publishing process takes a monetary cut away from the writer.

Since I had already invested in other distributors, I pulled my books since that should prevent the penalty fee. Closing my account, however, seems impossible. I had emailed the company only to receive two form responses in return, so I'll just leave it open to have access to a decade of download records from both D2D and Smashwords. This seems to violate California's "Click to Cancel" law for online businesses, but then I'm no lawyer.

I've seen a number of bad takes on this, telling authors to just "get a job" if you aren't making $100 in ebook sales per year. This take is completely out of touch with the wide demographics of writers and the reasons that they write. Pretty sure a large majority of those trying out self-publishing already have day jobs, or some other means of financial support. Publishing shouldn't be gatekept and available to only the wealthiest writers. It is also ableist in the case of disabled authors who may just be publishing as a hobby with the hopes of one day converting it into passive income streams.

Laughing it off with "oh, it's just $12" comes across as classist. Not everyone can justify spending thousands on advertising their books when the cost of living has skyrocketed in recent years, and that investment doesn't necessarily lead to sales that recoup the initial costs of advertising or assembling the book in the first place. Not everyone approaches writing with the idea of it being a career. Some genres, like poetry, don't sell that much in the first place. If the platform itself isn't showing your books as recommendations on similar titles and encourages the practice of permafree ebooks that have no profit by default, you can't place all the blame on authors.

Even with my consistently performing nearly every week until summer 2025, handing out postcards encouraging free downloads and having over a dozen titles available, I had a grand total of 208 downloads since 2022 through platforms other than KDP. 120 came from Draft2Digital / Smashwords. 88 came through PublishDrive, primarily on Google Play Books. I haven't had sales any through StreetLib, but then I only use them to reach primarily Italian markets. On Amazon Kindle I have nearly 5,000 downloads from past free promos. Amazon has the majority of e-book customers in its system, so it makes sense that more people would download there.

StreetLib made it easy for me to re-list unpublished books merely by selecting "available" on the first screen. PublishDrive found new coding errors in the files I had uploaded 4 years ago, so I had to re-download Calibre and dust the cobwebs off of the HTML coding side of my brain. Luckily the 50 or so CSS errors within these seven titles from the template I had used were the same in nearly every e-book, so I could quickly copy/paste the fixed code. The titles that passed inspection were re-listed some of the other major retailers, Nook, Kobo and Everand, in less than 48 hours. Apple currently only has Heaven is Portable, but I expect the rest to follow soon.

I had purchased an appsumo deal for PublishDrive years ago prior to their institution of monthly fees, and am so glad that I did, as their interface is easy to use and their sales reports are easy to access and sort for years at a time, and they distribute to a large number of retailers. Should my ebook income ever become profitable enough to where it could cover the cost of purchasing ISBNS, then I'll re-evaluate distributing to the handful of services that require ebooks to have ISBNs.

I currently have no intentions of releasing ebooks for titles beyond Heaven is Portable. 15 of my books are available as ebooks: Tea & Sprockets, Abundant Sparks & Personal Archeology, Look Ma! No Hands!, Poet Loiterer, Id Biscuits, Barefoot in the Sanctuary, Armor Against The Dawn, Dragonfly Tomorrows & Dog-eared Yesterdays, Resting on My Laurels, The Cafe of Dreams, Midnight Strike, This Festival of Dreams, Heaven is Portable, and Earthen Rovings.

If you see anyone listing Paradise Collectors, Wanderings 2.0., Cavorting Havoc, or Fighting the Solar System as an ebook, it is most likely a scam website. My anthology titles that I edited are also only available in paperback. I have done my best to list legitimate retailers on this page. It is not a complete listing, but some are accessible via app only and not on the open web. Some retailers take months to review submitted ebooks, so please be patient if your preferred service doesn't have a book yet.