MH Thaung (@mhthaung.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy)

Very short story #82 – gown – and a bookstore heads-up “Hey, it’s me. Got all your stuff for tonight?” “Sure.” “Gown?” “Yep.” “Gloves?” “Yep.” “Mask?” “Yep.” “Blade?” “Yep. A nifty little scalpel.” “Huh. I’m taking a rapier.” “Rap—What kind of dress-up party is this?” ## Bookstore changes **TL:DR My ebooks will soon become unavailable to buy, temporarily for the Kobo store and permanently for most other stores. Ebooks on Amazon Kindle will be unaffected. (Feel free to rush off and make some last-minute purchases!)** ## The longer explanation Currently, I use a book publishing service called Draft2Digital (D2D). When I publish a book via D2D, they make that book available in over a dozen stores (Kobo, Apple, Tolino, B&N…). It saves me the hassle of maintaining an account on each store individually. In return, D2D get a cut of my royalties (after Kobo etc take their cut). I don’t get many sales on all these stores (most of my sales come from Kindle, where I publish directly), but it’s nice for readers to have a choice about which store they use. A few days ago, D2D announced they’re going to charge authors an additional fee to keep using their services, unless we make more than $100/year in royalties (after D2D, Kobo etc take their own cut). In a few weeks, they’ll charge me $12 because I didn’t make $100 over the last year, when this charge didn’t even exist. I’m fortunate that $12 isn’t much for me. Writing is a hobby rather than a profession. (So I don’t feel bad about putting far more money in than I get out 😳 ). $12 isn’t much to pay for convenience. However, I’m irritated by low-earning authors being targeted and concerned about future fee increases. So this is my prompt to stop using D2D and publish directly to stores. This move will take some time (weeks? months?). I’ll need to unpublish on D2D before I can (re)publish directly. As I haven’t done this before, there will no doubt be hiccups on the way. So I expect my books will disappear for a bit, other than on the Kindle store. If you already own my books, you should be unaffected since it’s only new sales that will stop. Many other self-published authors are going through this as well, of course. Some will stay with D2D while others will move. Some may give up selling books altogether, which would be a shame. Hope that all makes sense. (And this is all my opinion etc etc). If you have any comments or advice, please share! ### Share this: * Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Like Loading... https://mhthaung.com/2026/04/19/vss82/