Self-publish with Support
If you don't already know Draft2Digital, we're a digital publishing and distribution service that:
Visit our site now to try out easy self-publishing, or keep reading to learn more.
Our Background
Draft2Digital is a KBoards success story. We first launched in December of 2012 with a closed beta and a single post--this post--on the KBoards Writer's Cafe. It quickly became one of the most-viewed threads of all time in the Writer's Cafe, and single-handedly drove the early adoption and growth of our company.
That's been three years ago, now. To celebrate the anniversary, I decided to update the old thread and share some interesting statistics.
First, let me share a little bit of info about me.
Author on Board
I'm a self-published author. I started back in 2010 with a sci-fi mystery called Surveillance, and then hit the big time in the summer of 2011 with a fantasy novel called Taming Fire. I later signed a three-book deal with Amazon's imprint 47North, so they published my newest fantasy series, The Godlanders War. Across all three series, I've sold a quarter of a million books.
When I first started considering self-publishing, I kept hearing about the author community at KBoards. I became a regular lurker here, and did my best to assimilate the flood of great industry wisdom that this board has to offer. One conclusion stood out to me above all the rest:
Programming the Publishing Process
The document conversion software worked like a charm, but then I found new problems. I needed to keep track of all the different sales reports from all the different stores, and consolidate them into a consistent format so I could compare and track my books' performance. I needed to learn all the quirks and nuances of each of the different stores. I needed to buy a Mac, apparently....
For two years, we worked on this suite of custom software tools as hobby projects to support my publishing career. Every time I used those tools, I felt greedy for keeping them all to myself. Every time I used those tools, I ended up suggesting to my friends that we turn this whole thing into a service other writers could use.
In December 2012, we did just that. We built a website around the conversion and sales reporting tools and launched the beta of our service at Draft2Digital.com.
The Announcement
I sent out an email invitation to a handful of friends and family, and I posted a thread about it at KBoards. That was the full extent of our advertising and promotion efforts, but it worked. The authors here at KBoards loved Draft2Digital right out of the gate (you can read their reactions below), and within a month our catalog increased from ten authors and 30 titles to 332 authors and more than a thousand titles. Combined, those books generated almost $6,000 in royalties for our authors that first month.
Three years later, we now have 70,000 titles from 16,000 authors. Combined, those books now generate nearly a million dollars in royalties for our authors every month. And we're only growing!
Our Success Is Your Success
As I said, Draft2Digital is a KBoards success story. In so many different ways, it all started right here.
Thank you for providing a rich, informative community for all authors looking to understand a complicated industry. Thank you for taking a chance on another indie experiment and providing the feedback--both the compliments and the criticism--that we needed to turn Draft2Digital into the company you needed. And thank you for spreading the word.
Another Invitation
If you weren't one of those early adopters, there's still time to get in on this at the ground level. We've barely gotten started! (Just wait until you see what we have coming in 2016.)
In the meantime, you can see what got us this far. Sign-up is free, it only takes a few minutes, and there's no commitment. Go to the registration page, provide your email address, and you're in. Easy as that.
If you don't already know Draft2Digital, we're a digital publishing and distribution service that:
- Offers easy distribution to some of the most important digital stores (even for international users)
- Creates beautiful ebooks with our free conversion software
- Accepts and distributes user-provided epubs
- Provides industry-leading customer service (including free phone support)
- Consolidates the sales reporting, accounting, and payments from multiple stores
- Protects your privacy through robust support for pen names and publisher imprints
- Helps with catalog management (thanks to tools like our New Release Notifications, and store-specific links in our optional Automated End-matter pages)
Visit our site now to try out easy self-publishing, or keep reading to learn more.
Our Background
Draft2Digital is a KBoards success story. We first launched in December of 2012 with a closed beta and a single post--this post--on the KBoards Writer's Cafe. It quickly became one of the most-viewed threads of all time in the Writer's Cafe, and single-handedly drove the early adoption and growth of our company.
That's been three years ago, now. To celebrate the anniversary, I decided to update the old thread and share some interesting statistics.
First, let me share a little bit of info about me.
Author on Board
I'm a self-published author. I started back in 2010 with a sci-fi mystery called Surveillance, and then hit the big time in the summer of 2011 with a fantasy novel called Taming Fire. I later signed a three-book deal with Amazon's imprint 47North, so they published my newest fantasy series, The Godlanders War. Across all three series, I've sold a quarter of a million books.
When I first started considering self-publishing, I kept hearing about the author community at KBoards. I became a regular lurker here, and did my best to assimilate the flood of great industry wisdom that this board has to offer. One conclusion stood out to me above all the rest:
Lucky for me, I have some programmer friends who are way too generous. I discussed the problem with them, and before too long we were working on a program to convert my documents into ePubs for me.
Programming the Publishing Process
The document conversion software worked like a charm, but then I found new problems. I needed to keep track of all the different sales reports from all the different stores, and consolidate them into a consistent format so I could compare and track my books' performance. I needed to learn all the quirks and nuances of each of the different stores. I needed to buy a Mac, apparently....
For two years, we worked on this suite of custom software tools as hobby projects to support my publishing career. Every time I used those tools, I felt greedy for keeping them all to myself. Every time I used those tools, I ended up suggesting to my friends that we turn this whole thing into a service other writers could use.
In December 2012, we did just that. We built a website around the conversion and sales reporting tools and launched the beta of our service at Draft2Digital.com.
The Announcement
I sent out an email invitation to a handful of friends and family, and I posted a thread about it at KBoards. That was the full extent of our advertising and promotion efforts, but it worked. The authors here at KBoards loved Draft2Digital right out of the gate (you can read their reactions below), and within a month our catalog increased from ten authors and 30 titles to 332 authors and more than a thousand titles. Combined, those books generated almost $6,000 in royalties for our authors that first month.
Three years later, we now have 70,000 titles from 16,000 authors. Combined, those books now generate nearly a million dollars in royalties for our authors every month. And we're only growing!
Our Success Is Your Success
As I said, Draft2Digital is a KBoards success story. In so many different ways, it all started right here.
Thank you for providing a rich, informative community for all authors looking to understand a complicated industry. Thank you for taking a chance on another indie experiment and providing the feedback--both the compliments and the criticism--that we needed to turn Draft2Digital into the company you needed. And thank you for spreading the word.
Another Invitation
If you weren't one of those early adopters, there's still time to get in on this at the ground level. We've barely gotten started! (Just wait until you see what we have coming in 2016.)
In the meantime, you can see what got us this far. Sign-up is free, it only takes a few minutes, and there's no commitment. Go to the registration page, provide your email address, and you're in. Easy as that.