Written by Alexa Bigwarfe; est read time: 8 mins

What Draft2Digital Fees Mean for You (And What to Do About It)

Draft2Digital announced this week that, for the first time in company history, they’re introducing two new fees: a $20 one-time activation fee for new accounts, and a $12 annual maintenance fee for accounts earning less than $100 per year in net royalties. Understandably, this has caused a lot of concern in the indie author community (for a whole slew of reasons, including the attacks against authors who will be subject to this fee!) so let’s look at it from a purely business breakdown of what’s actually happening, why, and some steps you can take.

The Quick Facts

Straight from D2D’s announcement:

• The $20 activation fee applies only to new accounts. If you already have a D2D account, you will not be charged this fee.
• The $12 annual maintenance fee kicks in only if your net earnings (what D2D actually pays you, after their commission) total less than $100 over the preceding 12-month period. Earn $100 or more? No fee.
• Maintenance fees begin May 14, 2026, based on your individual account anniversary date. D2D has stated they will notify you in advance before any charge.
• You can check your billing date by logging in and going to Account → Account Status.

You can read D2D’s full announcement here: Understanding D2D’s Activation and Maintenance Fees

Why D2D Is Doing This

The short version: bookspam.

Between 2022 and 2025, the number of new titles published annually more than doubled — and the vast majority of that growth has been low-quality, often AI-generated content flooding retail channels. D2D reportedly declines as much as 70% of uploads in a given month.

The problem is that spammers have figured out how to game the system. Instead of uploading 50 books to one account (which gets flagged for review), they open 50 separate accounts and upload one book each. That’s much harder to detect — and it’s been happening at scale.

The fallout has hit all indie authors. Retailers and libraries increasingly struggle to distinguish legitimate indies from spammers, and trust in indie titles has been eroding across the board. D2D’s stated hope is that these modest fees will make the spam-farm model economically unviable without placing a meaningful burden on working authors.

As D2D put it in their announcement: this onslaught from automated content farms threatens reader trust in indie titles, and a modest fee can make a real difference in keeping the platform focused on genuine authors.

What Actions Should You Take?

If you’re actively publishing and earning: Likely nothing. If you’re already clearing $100/year in net royalties through D2D, the maintenance fee won’t apply to you. The $100 threshold translates to roughly $167 in retailer sales, since D2D takes a 15% cut.

If you’re close to the $100 threshold: Now’s the time to shore up your listings. Optimize your blurb, double-check your metadata and categories, make sure your cover clearly signals genre, and take advantage of D2D’s promo newsletter (you have to fill out their promo form to be considered). Strong backmatter—a link to your next book and a newsletter signup—can meaningfully lift sales. (These are all things we teach in our program Book Launch in a Box.)

If you have inactive titles but want to keep the account: You don’t need to close anything. Just unpublish your titles from distribution before your billing date. You can leave the titles themselves sitting in your dashboard, ready to reactivate later. No distribution = no fee.

If you have both a Smashwords and D2D account: The account-merging tool is in beta and expected to go live before May 15. If for any reason it’s not ready in time, D2D has said their support team will waive the duplicate fee for this year — just reach out.

If you want to close your account entirely: Contact D2D customer service directly. Keep in mind that if you ever want a new D2D account later, you’ll pay the $20 activation fee at that point. For most authors, unpublishing titles is the lower-risk option.

How the fee gets charged: The $12 is debited from your D2D Account Ledger— the same place royalties are credited. If your ledger goes negative, you have 30 days to bring it back to zero, either through incoming royalties or by paying via credit card.

Don’t let anyone make you feel badly if you aren’t making this money yet. Selling books is hard work! If you do the work, you’ll get there!

The Bigger Picture

None of us love paying new fees. But the alternative scenarios are worse: per-title upload fees (which some retailers are reportedly considering) would end hobby publishing and make indie publishing from developing nations nearly impossible. A royalty-rate increase would hit every author’s bottom line without actually deterring spammers, since profitable spam operations would stay profitable.

D2D’s approach targets the specific exploit spammers are using—opening dozens of low-volume accounts (okay this is one very valid reason to hate AI)—while leaving legitimate, selling authors untouched. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a targeted one.

The Real Question: Are Your Wide Books Earning?

Let’s put this in perspective. According to the Alliance of Independent Authors’ 2025 Indie Author Income Survey, the median indie author earns around $13,500 a year —but that number hides a massive gap, with top earners pulling the average up while most authors sit well below it. On D2D specifically, authors typically earn $2.00 to $3.50 per ebook sold at typical price points ($2.99–$4.99), with many reporting monthly earnings anywhere from $200 to $5,000 depending on how well they promote (source: Codex Obscurus, “Draft2Digital Explained for Indie Authors and Publishers,” July 2025).

Here’s what that means for the new fee: to clear D2D’s $100 threshold, you need to sell roughly 30–50 ebooks over the course of a year — which may seem daunting to some of you. If that’s where you’re at, it’s not something to feel badly about, but you do need to work on making sure your books can be found. 

Should You Switch to PublishDrive?

This is where the math gets interesting. PublishDrive (another ebook distributor with very wide global distribution) has a Starter plan costs $13.99/month — about $168/year (source: SaaSworthy PublishDrive Pricing, January 2026). That sounds like a lot compared to D2D’s $12 annual fee, but it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. (You do get your first book for free with PublishDrive, because they recognize it takes time to build a reader base.)

In the longterm, D2D’s real cost isn’t the $12 fee — it’s the 10% commission on every sale. PublishDrive charges a flat subscription, then you keep 100% of net royalties after the retailer’s cut (source: Top Ten Publishers, “PublishDrive Review,” September 2025). That structural difference matters enormously as your sales grow.

Here’s the break-even math for a $4.99 ebook with a 30% retailer cut:

• Earning under ~$140/month wide? D2D wins. Their 10% commission stays smaller than PublishDrive’s flat $168/year.
• Earning $140–$170/month wide? It’s a wash. Either platform costs roughly the same.
• Earning over ~$170/month wide? PublishDrive starts saving you real money. At $500/month, you’d save over $400/year. At $1,000/month, over $1,000/year. Those savings compound as your catalog grows.

So the honest answer: if you’re a high-earning wide author already, PublishDrive is worth a serious look. If you’re still building toward that, D2D remains the better economic fit — and switching platforms won’t fix the underlying sales problem.

Your Action Plan

Whichever platform you land on, the path forward is the same: sell more books. And I don’t say that in judgement. I say that to encourage you to take a look at the reasons WHY your book isn’t selling as well as you’d like. Here’s where to focus:

1. Audit your metadata today. Your blurb, keywords, categories, and cover do 80% of the discoverability work. If any of those are weak, your book isn’t competing — it’s hiding.
2. Build a marketing engine, not a launch plan. One-and-done launches don’t sustain wide sales. Ongoing visibility does — newsletter swaps, promo stacks, seasonal price pulses, and consistent reader touchpoints.
3. Treat D2D’s promo newsletter as free marketing real estate. Fill out the promo form, submit to their promos every time you have a sale, preorder, or permafree — it costs nothing and feeds directly into retailer visibility.
4. Get help if marketing isn’t your zone of genius. This is exactly what our marketing programs are built for — helping wide authors turn a quiet backlist into a catalog that earns enough to make platform choice a strategic decision, not a defensive one.

If your books that are WIDE aren’t earning, you always have the option of enrolling in KDP Select and only distributing via Amazon. That’s free and through select, you have some options to help you build your reader base.

There’s a lot to unpack here as you try to make decisions. You have to make the choice that suits you best, but a more informed author makes better choices.

Our Book Launch in a Box program teaches all of these things as you prepare your book for market.

We’re currently enrolling and you can save $500 now HERE!

One More Question: What About Kindle Unlimited?

If you’ve been reading this whole post thinking “…or I could just pull out of wide distribution entirely and go all-in on Amazon,” that’s a legitimate path — but it’s a very different decision than switching aggregators.

KDP Select is Amazon’s exclusivity program. Enrolling an ebook in KDP Select means you agree not to sell that ebook anywhere else — not Apple, not Kobo, not Barnes & Noble, not your own website — for 90 days at a time (source: Books.by, “What Is KDP Select?”). In exchange, your book lands in Kindle Unlimited (KU), Amazon’s subscription reading service where subscribers can read unlimited books for a monthly fee.

Authors in KU don’t get paid per sale. They get paid per page read—currently around $0.004 to $0.005 per page, so a 300-page novel read all the way through earns roughly $1.30–$1.50 (source: Books.by; Kindlepreneur, “KDP Select or Not?” November 2025). That’s often less than a direct sale would earn, especially on higher-priced books.

When KDP Select Makes Sense

KDP Select genuinely works for some authors, but the fit is narrower than the hype suggests. It tends to be the right call when:

• You write in a KU-heavy genre. Romance (especially steamy subgenres), paranormal, urban fantasy, litRPG, and fast-paced thrillers dominate KU. Readers in these genres are binge-readers, and KU is where they live. If that’s your genre and audience, page-read income can add up fast.
• Your primary audience is in the US and UK. KU’s subscriber base is heavily concentrated in English-speaking markets. If your readers are in Germany, France, or Latin America, wide distribution through Tolino, Vivlio, or Kobo will serve you better (source: Reedsy, “READ THIS Before You Enroll in KDP Select!”).
• You publish frequently. KU rewards prolific authors. If you’re releasing 3–6 books a year in a hot genre, the algorithm tailwinds and page-read momentum can compound. If you release one book every two years, you won’t see the same benefit.
• You’re testing a new pen name or launching a debut. The 90-day enrollment is reversible. Some authors use KU for a book’s first 90 days to get visibility, then pull out and go wide.

When KDP Select Is the Wrong Choice

KDP Select generally isn’t worth it when:

• You write non-fiction, children’s books, or short works. Non-fiction readers tend to skim rather than read cover-to-cover, so page-read payouts are minimal. Short books and children’s books simply don’t have enough pages to generate meaningful income (source: Reedsy, October 2025).
• You price books at $5.99 or higher. On a wide sale, you’d earn $4+ per copy. On a KU borrow, you’d earn maybe $2 for a full read. The math gets worse as your price point rises.
• You want to build direct reader relationships. Amazon doesn’t share customer data. Every KU read is a reader you can’t email, can’t retarget, and can’t convert into a direct fan. Going wide — especially with direct sales — builds an asset you own (source: Books.by).
• You already have momentum wide. Pulling books out of Apple, Kobo, and library systems to chase KU means abandoning reader relationships you’ve already built. The switch is rarely worth it unless wide performance is genuinely poor.
• You’re risk-averse about Amazon. Exclusivity means all your eggs in one basket. Amazon can change KU payouts, adjust algorithms, or (in rare cases) terminate accounts. Wide distribution is insurance.

The Honest Bottom Line

KDP Select isn’t a replacement for wide distribution, it’s simply a different strategic bet. Wide authors build slow, diversified readership across multiple platforms and markets. KU authors bet on volume, velocity, and Amazon’s algorithm rewarding frequent releases in hot genres.

Neither is universally better. The right answer depends on your genre, your publishing pace, your market, and your long-term goals. If you’re not sure, the 90-day enrollment gives you an easy way to test—just make sure to turn off auto-renewal before you enroll, so you’re not locked in longer than you intended (source: Books.by).

And either way—KU or wide—the same truth applies: discoverability is the bottleneck, not the platform. A great book with weak marketing will struggle in both ecosystems. A well-marketed book will find its readers wherever you put it.