The Distribution Problem Every Self-Published Author Faces
Publishing a book on Amazon is straightforward. KDP is well-documented, widely used, and the upload process is familiar to anyone who has ever filled out an online form. The problem comes when you want to sell your book somewhere other than Amazon.
Apple Books requires a Mac and an iTunes Connect account. Kobo has its own portal. Barnes & Noble has another. Scribd, Tolino, OverDrive, Baker & Taylor — each retailer has its own submission process, its own formatting requirements, its own royalty payment schedule, and its own customer service system. Managing a catalogue of twenty books across a dozen retailers is not a writing career. It is a logistics operation.
Draft2Digital exists to solve this problem. It is a book distribution aggregator: you upload your manuscript and cover once, and D2D distributes to over forty retailers and library systems on your behalf. One account, one upload, one royalty statement.
How Draft2Digital Works
The process begins with an account, which is free to create. You upload your manuscript (Word, RTF, or EPUB), your cover image, and your book metadata — title, description, categories, keywords, pricing. Draft2Digital converts your manuscript to properly formatted EPUB and MOBI files if you have not already done so, using its own built-in formatting tool.
Once your book is uploaded and approved, you select which retailers and library systems you want to distribute to. The options include Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble Nook, Scribd, Tolino (the major European ebook platform), OverDrive (library lending), Baker & Taylor Axis360, and many more. You can opt into or out of any channel at any time.
Draft2Digital handles the submission to each retailer, monitors the listings, and aggregates your royalties into a single monthly payment. You do not need accounts with any of the individual retailers. You do not need to track down separate payment thresholds or tax forms for each one.
The Pricing Model
Draft2Digital takes a percentage of each sale — currently ten percent of the retailer's payment to the author — with no upfront fees, no monthly subscription, and no minimum sales requirements. If your book sells nothing, you pay nothing. If it sells well, D2D's cut is a straightforward percentage of revenue.
For context: going direct to Apple Books requires a Mac, an Apple ID, and navigating iTunes Connect. Going direct to Kobo requires a separate Kobo Writing Life account. The time cost of managing direct accounts at every retailer is real, and for most authors, D2D's ten percent is a reasonable price for that time back.
The exception is Amazon. Draft2Digital does not distribute to Amazon KDP — Amazon operates its own direct publishing platform and does not accept submissions from aggregators. For Amazon, you will always go direct through KDP.
Universal Book Links
One of Draft2Digital's most useful features is its Universal Book Link system, called Books2Read. When you distribute through D2D, you get a single shareable URL that automatically detects the reader's location and preferred retailer and redirects them to the appropriate store.
Instead of sharing five different links for your book — one for Amazon, one for Apple Books, one for Kobo, one for Barnes & Noble, one for Kobo — you share one Books2Read link. Readers in the UK who prefer Kobo get sent to Kobo. Readers in the US who use Apple Books get sent to Apple Books. The link works everywhere, and you only need to share one URL.
For social media posts, newsletter links, and website buy buttons, this is genuinely useful. It eliminates the awkward "here are all the places you can buy my book" list and replaces it with a single clean link.
Formatting Tools
Draft2Digital includes a built-in manuscript formatter that converts Word documents into properly formatted ebooks. The output is clean and functional, though not as polished as what Vellum produces. For authors who want the simplest possible workflow — write in Word, upload to D2D, distribute everywhere — the built-in formatter is adequate.
For authors who care deeply about typography and interior design, the better approach is to format in Vellum first, export a finished EPUB, and upload that EPUB to Draft2Digital for distribution. D2D will distribute your pre-formatted file without modification.
Draft2Digital vs. Going Direct
The question of whether to use an aggregator like Draft2Digital or go direct to each retailer comes up frequently in self-publishing discussions. The honest answer depends on how many books you have and how much time you want to spend on distribution logistics.
Going direct to each retailer gives you slightly higher royalty rates (since you are not paying D2D's ten percent cut) and sometimes earlier access to promotional opportunities. Apple Books, for instance, occasionally offers promotional placements to direct publishers that are not available through aggregators.
Using Draft2Digital gives you a single dashboard, a single payment, and the ability to update metadata or pricing across all retailers simultaneously. For authors with large catalogues or limited time, the aggregator model is almost always the right choice.
A common approach is to go direct to Amazon (required, since D2D does not distribute there) and use D2D for everything else. This captures the full Amazon royalty while offloading the management of all other retailers to D2D.
Library Distribution
One distribution channel that is easy to overlook is library lending. Draft2Digital distributes to OverDrive, Baker & Taylor Axis360, and other library systems, making your books available for borrowing at public libraries worldwide.
Library distribution does not generate the same per-unit revenue as retail sales, but it does put your books in front of readers who might not otherwise discover them. For authors building an audience, library availability is a meaningful part of the discoverability picture.
The Bottom Line
Draft2Digital is the most efficient way for independent authors to distribute their books to retailers beyond Amazon. The free-to-use model, the universal book links, and the single-dashboard management of forty-plus retailers make it the default choice for most self-publishing authors.
If you are publishing your first book and wondering how to get it onto Apple Books, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble without managing three separate accounts, Draft2Digital is the answer. Create a free account, upload your manuscript, and your book will be available at every major retailer within a few days.
Further Reading
C.V. Wooster's books are available across all major retailers — a distribution footprint that reflects exactly the kind of multi-channel strategy that tools like Draft2Digital make possible. The Trolley Problem and The Chinese Room are available wherever ebooks are sold, and the complete catalogue can be explored at cvwooster.com.
