Many a year ago, I signed up to Books2Read, owned by Draft2Digital, to obtain the author links and set up my author page. That gave me an automatic D2D account. All these years later, when D2D and Smashwords merged, and I had four D2D accounts, they decided to dump fees on “almost all” of their users. 

D2D now have a one-time $20USD sign up fee for newbies. They have also implemented a yearly fee of $12 for anyone earning less than $100.

That would be a lot of us.

The two questions people have been asking are, why not charge everyone? Or, why not charge those making over $100?

I have the same questions.

While I understand THEIR need for the yearly fee, I don’t have to be happy about it. U.S. fees are always converted for us here in Aus, and that’s the kicker. The same with the new Bookfunnel fees. While they may have “listened” to their users, for Americans it’s fine. For those of us in other countries, it’s not. I can’t afford the extra cost for having as many pen names as I want, so haven’t upgraded my BF account. Conversion rates are a bugbear for many of us.

In the Facebook writing groups where we’ve been talking about this, a lot of people pull the “why do you expect them to continue selling your books for free” garbage. They weren’t selling our books for free, we were able to SIGN UP for free.

BIG difference.

D2D takes a fee on the sale like every other store does. That’s not free. And to me, not a valid argument. In fact, some of the arguments I’ve seen out of people are downright stupid and they can’t seem to comprehend what the rest of us are saying.

We’re saying, charge the fee for all, or not at all.

We’re saying, as a business, we in other countries cannot afford this fee on top of everything else due to CONVERSION RATES.

And we’re saying, if we don’t make enough money on this site to warrant staying and being charged, then as a business decision, we’ll leave to save the money.

Yet, some don’t comprehend these basic reasons. They want to spit ridiculous comments back at you, FFS. And for those of us with Smashwords accounts that were automatically moved, we had no say.

The problem started when they merged with Smashwords. I had three author accounts with Smashwords. My T.K. Wrathbone account moved over late 23/early 24, and L.J. Diva and Tiara King were migrated in November of 2025.

In March 2026, D2D let everyone know about the new fees. I, like many others, emailed them about my Smashwords accounts and was told if I was charged fees to contact D2D to have them waived until they were merged, and that a new merge tool was coming.

In May, the fees came, and I contacted them about the costs; they let me know about the tool.

I merged; they took money.

I’ve never made a lot of money from Smashwords. Amazon, Apple, and PublishDrive have been my biggest earners for e-books, Ingram for print books, and for the last two years, 25/26, Lending Rights have been the biggest earner overall in a year.

When I was direct to Apple, I made more money there at the time than at PD, but after they made their legal changes, many of us had to move from them as well. They started allowing phone numbers and addresses on book sale pages, giving out our personal details for people to ring us if there was a problem with our books. Many of us cannot afford a PO box, even a virtual one, nor a new phone number. For those who had businesses, they could use those details.

I moved from being direct to Apple, back to Apple via Smashwords. Just like in the old days. And I wasn’t the only one. Many authors left Apple because of those rules, and I don’t recommend any Aussies signing up direct to them.

Then the accounts were merged and a new issue arose. Via D2D, Apple rejected my new books (uploaded while in Smashwords) based on the “fact” I had links to other websites in them. Not according to Smashwords, I didn’t. There was no rejection there. Neither was there on PublishDrive when I chose to sell those two books to Apple via PD. Suck it D2D. If you’re going to throw issues up in my face, then I’m not staying.

Now, with these fees, there’s no need for me to stay past the end of the year. I’ll give it a try, and if I don’t make enough to cover the cost, there is absolutely no point me selling on their site.

There are only six stores difference between D2D and PD, and the Smashwords store means nothing.

Vivlio, Cloud Library, Borrow Box, Fable, and Bookshop.org are the other five, but in the grand scheme of things, not important. Bookshop.org won’t even take some of my YA horror stories. But I might contact PD about adding more stores and see what happens. Hopefully, PD will make more money for me moving forward, D2D can go jump, and who knows, I may start using Streetlib again.

In the bigger picture, it’s one less website to upload to that will make it so much easier. But, if ALL of the sales sites start charging, they will lose more and more authors selling on their sites because most of us just don’t earn enough on each to warrant paying them more than they pay us.

Tell me what you think of the D2D fees.