A sharp eye might’ve noticed some changes to the various outlets listed on the Books page, as other places where: Spectator Books in Oakland has been added, there’s a selection of zines on the shelves there now, so if you find yourself on that side of the Bay, head on over, say hi; and but also, Smashwords has been removed.
Which is rather a shame: I’ve been listed with Smashwords almost since I’ve had ebooks—they were the non-Amazon place I sold non-Kindle editions, aside from directly, myself. —But Smashwords was purchased by and integrated with Draft2Digital, and Draft2Digital has announced two new fees: a new account activation fee of twenty dollars, which is annoying on principal (pay us to allow us to take a portion of the sales you make through us, that’s never a good look) but wouldn’t’ve affected myself; and a maintenance fee of twelve dollars, charged annually to every account that didn’t sell a hundred dollars or more in the previous annum.
Draft2Digital insists the fees are needed to combat genAI slop, but that rationale crumbles at the slightest investigation—the new account fees, perhaps, but the maintenance fee’s a joke in that context: slopsters are going to clear a hundred bucks a year without blinking; that’s why they’re in the game, after all. It’s us handcrafted indie oddballs with no gusto for marketing that will end up paying—in all those years I’d been listed there, I’d yet to clear a hundred bucks total myself, much less per any given twelvemonth. The decision to decamp was easily made.
Ebooks will still be distributed far and wide via Ingram; the loss for me, here, aside from continuity, is some library access, but that can be somewhat remedied by signing up with Kobo, which I might’ve already done, some time ago, I dunno. Who can remember which among the infinitude of available accounts they’ve created as a byproduct of trying to get by in this benighted age. We’ll see.
Posted 14 days ago.
