Draft2Digital is a distributor: you upload once and it puts the book in Apple, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, the library platforms and the rest. What people ask me is whether its marketing tools are worth anything, and how they stack up against what Amazon gives a KDP Select author. Short answer: two of them are genuinely useful and free to anyone, the promotions are useful only if you sell wide, and none of them replaces a mailing list. The detail, with every fee and rule read from the vendors’ own pages on 16 September 2026, follows.
Reviewed by Robert Prime, 16 September 2026.
What Draft2Digital gives you
From draft2digital.com and books2read.com, read that day:
| Tool | What it is | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Universal Book Links (Books2Read) | One link that sends each reader to your book in the store they use. Amazon, Apple, Kobo and the rest behind one address. | Free, and open to any author, not only D2D authors. |
| Author pages and Book Tabs (Books2Read) | A simple page with your bio, a cover carousel and a “get it now” button per book. Custom URL. | Free. |
| New Release Notifications | Readers follow you on Books2Read and get an email when the next book goes live. | Free. |
| Scheduled promotions | Set a price drop or a free period once and D2D pushes it to every store it distributes to, on the dates you choose. | Included with distribution. |
| Smashwords coupons | Percentage-off codes that work in the Smashwords store only (D2D owns Smashwords). | Included. |
| Automated end matter | “Also by”, “next in series” and newsletter links added to the back of the ebook and kept current. | Included. |
| Payment splitting | Royalties split between co-authors or with an illustrator at source. | Included. |
| Affiliate codes | Add your Amazon or Apple affiliate tag to the Universal Book Link so you earn the affiliate cut on your own sales. | Free. |
What it costs
Draft2Digital’s FAQ, read 16 September 2026: a one-time $20 activation fee for new accounts, an annual $12 maintenance fee for accounts earning under $100 a year with active distribution (waived in the first year), and a commission of “approximately 10% of the retail price of every book sale” on ebooks. Formatting and conversion are free, and it lets you download the converted files even if you never publish through it.
So a wide author selling £1,000 a year through D2D pays about £100 in commission and nothing else. An author who earns £30 a year pays $12 for the privilege, which is D2D’s polite way of clearing out dormant accounts. The Draft2Digital vs KDP guide runs the royalty arithmetic store by store.
The comparison people actually want
| Draft2Digital | KDP Select (Amazon only) | Books2Read on its own | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who can use it | Anyone not exclusive to Amazon | Books exclusive to Amazon for 90 days | Anyone, including KDP-exclusive authors |
| Price promotion | Scheduled drop or free period across every store | Kindle Countdown Deal: one per 90 days, price frozen 30 days before and 14 after, UK and US only, up to 7 days | None |
| Free promotion | Set the price to zero on the stores that allow it, for as long as you like | 5 free days per 90-day term, no rollover | None |
| One link for all stores | Yes | No, Amazon only | Yes |
| Author page | Yes | Author Central, Amazon only | Yes |
| Reader follow and new-release email | Yes | Amazon’s “follow” button, Amazon controls the email | Yes |
| Cost | $20 once, $12 a year under $100 earnings, about 10% of sales | Free, but exclusivity | Free |
The KDP Select rules in that table are from KDP’s Kindle Countdown Deals and Free Book Promotions pages, read 16 September 2026. The KDP launch pricing guide goes through them in full.
My verdict, tool by tool
Universal Book Links: use them, whoever you publish with. A UK reader with a Kobo does not want your Amazon link. One Books2Read link on your website, your email signature and your social profiles is the single cheapest improvement most authors can make, and it costs nothing. Even if you are in KDP Select and every road leads to Amazon, the link routes readers to the right country’s Amazon store, which a bare .co.uk link does not.
Author page: fine as a stopgap, not a substitute. If you have no website, a Books2Read author page is better than nothing and takes ten minutes. It is not yours, it carries D2D’s branding, and search engines will rank it below a real site with your name on the domain. The author website guide is the longer argument.
New-release notifications: take them, but build your own list too. Readers who follow you on Books2Read are D2D’s readers, on D2D’s terms. It is worth switching on because it is free and some readers will only ever follow, never subscribe. It is not a mailing list, and the authors earning a living from this have a mailing list they own. BookFunnel or StoryOrigin plus a plain email tool is the usual set-up; the BookFunnel guide covers it.
Scheduled promotions: the real reason to be wide. This is the tool KDP Select authors cannot have. You pick the dates, D2D changes the price on Apple, Kobo and Barnes and Noble at once, and you can run a free first-in-series permanently on the stores that allow it. Amazon will usually price-match a book that is free elsewhere, which is how wide authors get a permanently free book one on Amazon without Select. It is not guaranteed and Amazon can take weeks, but it is the standard play.
Smashwords coupons: niche. Useful for handing a discount to a book club or a beta group. Not a marketing channel.
Where it falls short
D2D gives you no advertising. No Amazon Ads, no Meta, no promo newsletter placements. Those are separate, paid, and the Amazon Ads vs Meta Ads guide compares them. It also gives you no sales data from inside Amazon; your Amazon numbers stay in KDP, because you publish to Amazon directly and use D2D for everyone else, which is what almost every wide author does.
And it gives you nothing that helps a book be found in the first place. The tools above make an existing reader’s next step easier. They do not create readers. That is the same in every distributor’s toolbox, and it is why the book, the cover and the description do the heavy lifting no matter what you sign up for. The Sell More Books course is where I go through that end to end; it is my company’s course, so treat the recommendation accordingly.
Sources, read 16 September 2026
- Draft2Digital, homepage feature list: Universal Book Links, author pages, Book Tabs, scheduled promotions, end matter, payment splitting.
- Draft2Digital, FAQ: $20 activation, $12 annual fee under $100, approximately 10% commission, free conversion.
- Books2Read, homepage: free, open to any author, universal links, author pages, affiliate codes, new-release emails.
- KDP, Kindle Countdown Deals and Free Book Promotions: the Select rules in the comparison table.
