On April 14, I received a mass email from Draft2Digital’s CEO Kris Austen.

His message informed me that they are:

• “Introducing account activation and maintenance fees.”  
• “Applying an annual maintenance fee of $12 (USD) to accounts whose earnings from book sales total less than $100 over the preceding 12-month period.”
• “Offsetting a portion of the steadily rising costs we pay to maintain those accounts, including compliance, security, and infrastructure upkeep.” 

Why would they do that? Well, as the email states, legit indies are being punished because of AI slop:

Like many platforms, we’ve seen a significant increase in automated and low-quality account creation in recent years. This onslaught from automated content farms threatens reader trust in indie titles and risks indies being associated with low-quality “slop.” A modest activation fee can make a real difference and allow our team to stay focused on supporting genuine authors like you.

So, enshittification has infected both book production (people using AI tools to write very quickly) and book distribution (Draft2Digital being asked to distribute the slop and then finding it produces no money).

Indie authors like me who don’t produce slop but also haven’t achieved massive sales are the bystanders caught out by this decision.

Being listed on Draft2Digital gave me access to Bookshop.org, Apple, Smashwords and a swath of other book retail distributors in one place. Yet, for reasons I don’t understand, I’ve never sold a single copy of Chaos Calling through their platform. All my existing ebook sales are via Amazon and Kobo.

I was looking forward to changing that pattern one day, but Draft2Digital has forced my hand. To make staying with them worth it, I’d have to sell between 50 and 75 copies every year.

The math just doesn’t make sense.

I’m sad to leave a place that made my work more accessible to libraries.

I sent my designer a message this morning to get the buy buttons affected pulled from my home and book pages. They either aren’t working or will break shortly.

Will Chaos Calling be available on Apple & Google Books?

The short answer is no, not right now.

Apple requires me to have a US tax ID, publicly listed address and phone number on my website.

Google Books wasn’t included in Draft2Digital’s distribution but I found their backend so confusing I just gave up.

I have to ask myself: am I in the business of a) optimizing to sell books or b) write them? B is the clear winner.

I don’t write for a living. My attention is always divided between creative work and the work that pays my bills. Having to think about ebook distribution is not a priority right now, and it’s a pity Draft2Digital forced this decision.

I’ll revisit down the road when I have more books available, but Chaos Armor is my focus right now.

Can I buy an ebook directly from you?

The good news: My ebook files exist in all formats because I use Vellum to make them. Which means, if you want a copy of Chaos Calling in a format other than Kindle or Kobo, you can send me a DM on Instagram and we’ll work something out.

Creating an online store is something I’ve avoided since it takes energy away from writing. I’ll consider it in the future when I have more of a backlist. That’s why the Draft2Digital decision is so disappointing right now.

Thanks for understanding!