Publishing A Multi-Author Anthology

Hi! I'm Marie, a Filipino spec fic author currently based in the UK. My friends and I just released Among Thorns and Stardust, an anthology of sci-fi fairytale retellings, and I'm here to share my learnings and findings about the process — mostly in regard to working with Draft2Digital.

DISCLAIMER: This is not a paid endorsement. The aim of this post is simply to help other self-published authors. 💚

Background

In this post I will sometimes refer to myself as the Publishing Author, while the others will be called Contributing Author/s, though that might not necessarily be their only role. (For example, Dawn is the overall in charge, while Amy is our interior formatter, and I handled the initial fund.)

Anyway, we are 7 authors in total for this anthology: 4 in the US, 2 in the UK, 1 in Canada. This is particularly relevant because the primary reason we decided to go with Draft2Digital is because of their royalty sharing / payment splitting scheme.

From D2D's FAQ:

Can I split payments on print and ebook projects?

Yes. Or you can split payments on just your ebook. Or just your print book. We offer both options and let you decide.

Does D2D offer payment splitting or royalty sharing?

Yes, Draft2Digital supports payment splitting for collaborative projects, omnibus, or boxed sets! We launched our payment splitting tool in November 2020. The collaboration organizer and all collaborators must have a Draft2Digital account, a payment method, and a completed tax interview to get paid.

While royalties are lower in some instances (more on that later) and we're not able to enroll the anthology in Kindle Unlimited (more on that below), we thought that in the long run, everyone's lives would be easier if we didn't have to worry about the money. We're all friends now, sure, but let's be real: we can never tell what happens when money starts becoming an issue. This way, no one will be able to say they're being cheated on their royalties, have to worry about delayed payouts, etc.

I was also personally just not willing to take on the burden of managing tax reports and royalty payouts for the rest of the anthology's life.

Wide vs KU

Self-published authors always have to contend with this decision. When people say they're "wide," it means their books are available everywhere; when they say they're "on KU," it means their ebooks are exclusive with Amazon.

Kindle Unlimited (KU) is Amazon's subscription program where customers can read ebooks and keep them as long as they want, for a monthly fee. For books to be included in KU, the author must meet the KDP Select requirements and enroll the ebook in KDP Select.

KDP Select requirements according to KDP's FAQ:

KDP Select is for Kindle eBooks only. You can also enroll pre-order Kindle eBooks. To be eligible for enrollment:

1. You must have exclusive rights for the primary content of the Kindle eBook. Content that is public domain is not eligible.
2. Your Kindle eBook must also be exclusive to the Kindle Store for the KDP Select enrollment period.

During the 90-day enrollment period, the Kindle eBook can only be distributed through KDP. However, you can continue to distribute print, video, audio, or other formats of your title elsewhere. See the KDP Terms and Conditions for more information.

We chose not to enroll our book in KU because of the payment splitting / royalty sharing. I also have no prior experience with KU as my books have always been wide, so I'll talk more about that instead.

Draft2Digital is associated with being wide as it is an aggregator, handling distribution services for authors whose books aren't exclusive to Amazon. Instead of uploading your "wide" ebooks over and over again to sellers like Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo, you only have to upload them once, and Draft2Digital takes care of the rest. (More on Kindlepreneur, if you like.)

These are the retailers Draft2Digital works with:

• Amazon
• Apple Books
• Barnes & Noble
• Kobo (including Kobo Plus)
• Smashwords Store
• Tolino
• OverDrive
• Bibliotheca
• Everand
• Baker & Taylor
• Hoopla
• Vivlio
• BorrowBox
• Odilo
• Palace Marketplace
• Gardners

For my solo books, I publish them directly on Amazon myself (ebook and paperback) then use D2D to distribute the ebook to all the other retailers. (I learned this technique from a more experienced author.) We didn't do this for the anthology because, again, of the payment splitting / royalty sharing. We just let D2D handle everything, even if we'd lose out on some royalties especially on Amazon (more on that later).

Book Setup

I won't go through the steps, but I just would like to highlight why there must be an appointed Publishing Author (or Book Coordinator, as D2D called it in their email to me) for anthologies and other collaborative works. That person will handle the setup on D2D. More than doing the work, however, only the Publishing Author will be able to see the book on their My Books dashboard, which looks like this:

The Contributing Authors will only get royalty statements via email and through their Reports dashboard.

Preorders

D2D allows the setting up of preorders BUT different retailers have different rules. Everyone except Amazon will accept a preorder set up without a final manuscript. You just have to choose a future date in the release date section. If you include Amazon in your selection, you will be unable to proceed AT ALL without uploading a final manuscript.

After this step will be a few others as required by Amazon, including rights confirmation. There is an email template that D2D provides, which you have to send to them. D2D will also ask for "contracts that have been signed by your co-authors and you that show their agreement to allow you to publish their written works to Amazon and that specifically states they do not object to your edition. We will need this to prove publishing rights to Amazon."

And then there is yet another catch with Amazon: submitting as a preorder via D2D, even if your file is ready for publishing and everything, will not actually result in your book being greenlit for preorder. D2D's support team confirmed to me that, "Amazon does not accept preorders from aggregate service accounts prior to the release date."

You will also NOT be able to see your Amazon preorder numbers until after release day. They will end up mixed with your sales for that day, so as of this writing, there's no way to tell how much of your first day sales are preorders and how much are new sales. (I said "as of this writing" as I'm still clarifying with D2D. I'll amend this when I have the updated info.)

Amazon clearly doesn't like playing with others.

D2D, however, is working to improve this process, so this might change in the near future. 🤞

D2D Print

D2D Print is D2D's in-house Print on Demand (POD) service. D2D Print books are made available to Amazon and all the other distribution channels served by Ingram, including Barnes & Noble and most independent bookstores in the U.S. (More on D2D Print Basics here.)

D2D's FAQ also has this to say:

Do I have to distribute to all of Draft2Digital's partner stores?

Print books published through D2D Print are made available to Amazon and to all distribution channels served by Ingram, including Barnes and Noble and most independent bookstores in the US. It will also be available for physical (“brick-and-mortar”) stores to order. If you currently sell a print book with Amazon KDP Print Expanded Distribution or Ingram Spark, we do not recommend you list with D2D Print. If you currently list your books with KDP Print without Expanded Distribution (Expanded Distribution disabled), D2D Print will be a good fit to help expand your reach.

NOTE: Your books will not be automatically ordered and placed on shelves in physical locations. You may want to contact individual bookstores or libraries to ask that your book be included in their inventory, at the discretion of store management.

I have read about self-published authors in the US getting their books stocked in B&N and even having signings, which D2D seems to make possible based on what they're saying on their website. Some of our authors are looking into this — I'll write a separate post when we have more information!

Print Availability

An issue we had was the Amazon paperback not showing as available to order in certain countries even on and after the release date. Now, we're not sure if that was because we uploaded our final file only 2 days before the publication date. Their FAQ does say:

How long does it take before my book is for sale after I publish?

Print books have longer listing times— somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 weeks.

UK was available though, but we're also not sure if that had anything to do with the fact that I was the first among us to order author copies (and I'm in the UK). So I went and asked D2D, and this is what they said:

It is a timing thing, mostly. But each retailer has their own set of criteria to determine live books and availability, driven by a proprietary algorithm, which influences their decisions on which books to stock and display. This is such a common complaint from authors that Ingram has had to put out a press release warning authors that Amazon may OR MAY NOT list content as available on their site. https://www.ingramspark.com/blog/ingramspark-title-availability

Key factors in Amazon’s decision-making process include the trade discount offered on the book, with higher discounts often being more favorable. The returnability status of the book (our books are not returnable). The level of customer interest, as measured by product page views and sales history, often making new-to-the-market books inadmissible based on their algorithms.

Amazon will often put new-to-market books up as a preorder to judge interest. Unfortunately, this isn't something we have any control over. It is not indicative of any failure or oversight on the part of Ingram. They have fulfilled their role in distributing your book for global availability. However, the final decision to list and stock the book on Amazon’s platform is entirely at Amazon’s discretion and is influenced by factors beyond our control or Ingram’s control.

B&N did not have such issues.

Author Copies

Only the Publishing Author will be able to place order copies.

Here's what D2D said in our correspondence, quoted verbatim:

Unfortunately, for now, only the account that holds the book can order author copies. In the beginning, when we first started BETA testing print options, we received overwhelming feedback from anthology authors, editors, and coordinators that this was how they wanted it to work.

They didn't want their co-authors to buy themselves copies of the book and sale them without splitting the shares of those sales equally among every co-author. I mean, how would you know if your co-author purchased 100 print copies and sold 100 print copies and pocketed all the money on those sales? Author copy sales are not going to show up on your charts at all as they are not marked up and will not have royalties earned.

But then after releasing print to all authors, we got another round of feedback from many that DO want their co-authors to have buying power over author copies and they would just not worry about such sales happening behind the scenes. We've been sort of left not knowing what authors want! Personally, I put in a vote to offer it to the book coordinator (account holder) and let them decide for their specific payment split group how they want to handle it. Our Development team is still looking into if they can make that happen.

For now, buying author copies is only an option to you, the account holder that the book is published on. You would have to buy them and ship them to your co-authors addresses. And collect money from them to reimburse you for the cost of the books.

Shipping is via UPS for the UK and USPS for the US. Canada I'm not sure yet as I don't have the tracking information as of this writing. But these were the costs of the most basic shipping option - sorry the numbers aren't comparable, we all ordered different quantities, haha!

Also, please note that our anthology is a chonker at 482 pages.

• US - 1 book - $5.60 before sales tax
• US - 5 books - $10.05 before sales tax
• US - 10 books - $15.61 before sales tax
• US - 15 books - $21.18 before sales tax
• CA - 2 books - CA$20.42
• UK - 1 book - £4.70
• UK - 3 books - £5.08
• UK - 7 books - £8.33

The orders are estimated to print within 10-14 days, while the cheapest shipping option provides a timeline of 3-7 business dates from the shipping date. This kind of timeline is actually to be expected; with Amazon, for example, author copies are printed in the downtime between other print runs. They put customer orders on the machine first, because they make money on that compared to author copies that are at cost. (Thanks to Meri for this info!)

Author Listing

At some point one of our authors informed me that not everyone was listed on the book's page in Amazon.

So I went to D2D to ask, because there was nothing I could do about it. I had everyone listed when I set up the book. I even added the non-author contributors.

This was D2D's reply to me:

Some sites give space for many author name fields, others do not. We make sure of every field available to us, but the limitation is determined by the vendor.

On Apple, they give us two fields for author names. If you and one other person publish, then both your name and your co-author are visible on Apple listings. But if you and more than one other are co-authoring a book, they list the first person followed by "and others."

B&N gives us 5 spots for author names, so if you have more than 5, only the first 5 will show.

In paperback publication, Ingram gives us three fields for names, so you'll see that the paperback version of books only show three names, even on sites like B&N, who take 5. Ingram allows three contributor names which controls the paperback version on the various store sites.

Kobo gives us unlimited author name fields, or at least we think it is unlimited. We've tested up to 42 author names on a single project and all 42 were on display on Kobo's website.

Royalties

I'm not here to provide comparative data as our decision to go with D2D was not driven by this. I also don't have that information at the moment. But here's what D2D's FAQ says about royalties:

Draft2Digital has no up-front charges for any of our services (formatting, conversion, distribution, and sales tracking). We make a percentage of each of your books’ sales, so we don’t get paid unless you get paid.

The short answer is that our fee is approximately 10% of the price you set for your book (list price). That means most of our stores take about 30%, Draft2Digital takes about 10%, and you keep about 60% of the list price of your ebook.

For print books, you will make about 45% of the list price of your print book, minus the base printing cost.

The long answer is that each store has their own specific policies and taxes are specific to your location. We inform you fully on the page where you set your price. Draft2Digital shows estimated royalties on a store-by-store basis based on your list price. If you change your list price, these estimated royalties will live update to show you a best estimate of your take-home cut for each sale you might make at each specific store.

You will clearly lose a bit more if you go via D2D instead of publishing directly to Amazon, for example, since they will still take another cut after the retailer. (To compare, you earn 35% from Amazon ebooks and 60% from print, at least via standard distribution.)

Reporting

Our book was released only last week, March 12th. As mentioned above, as the Publishing Author, I'm the only one who can see the book on my dashboard. I'm also the only one who can see the sales reports.

I will update this section after the end of the month as this might change. I might also have additional information — like how Kobo Plus reads are reported. (Can confirm, we have one reader going through the book on Kobo Plus now.)

Conclusion

My opinion might be different if I were only a Contributing Author. I'd have only worried about the books not being available to order when they should have been, the delayed shipping times, having limited visibility on sales and royalties, and being unable to order author copies whenever I want or am able (and having to pay extra because I, the appointed Publishing Author, am in the UK and transact with D2D in British Pounds).

But as the one coordinating the publishing? I'm here for D2D streamlining the payment splitting and royalty sharing. 🙌

I plan to continue using D2D for my future books, and even put them on D2D Print so I can have my paperbacks on Barnes and Noble and other places too. Though I might dabble in KU for a bit For Science™️, and report back here with my findings 😉

For any questions, please feel free to leave them below! I'm still in touch with D2D for some questions and I'm happy to ferry additional queries while I have their ear.

If you've found this post helpful, please consider buying me a coffee 🩷

References

Apologies if I failed to attribute everything I copy/pasted, but here are the articles and posts I quoted for reference:

• Draft2Digital FAQ
• Amazon KDP Help Center
• Draft2Digital Review: Read THIS Before You Sign Up on Kindlepreneur
• Understanding IngramSpark Title Processing and Availability
• Amazon KDP Digital Book Pricing Page
• Amazon KDP Print Book Pricing Page