When a self publisher falls…

As Bowie so eloquently put it… Ch- ch- changes!

As a self publisher, one has to be on Amazon’s Kindle store, and for the more discerning, Apple’s Bookstore as well.

Another one that was kind of a given for small, indie and self publishers was Smashwords, started in 2008 by a guy called Mark Coker, who seemed like a thoroughly upstanding gent (I interviewed him years ago for a story on self publishing in my day job as a reporter).

The site seemed like a bit of a labour of love. It was never as slick or corporate as the ebookstores of Amazon or Apple, but it did promise agreements with a thousand smaller ebook suppliers you’d never heard of, so you never knew where your book might end up.

It was such a cute little platform I actually published two or three short erotic stories there too, under a pen name I won’t reveal here in case Falling ever does make me famous.

Then, a couple of years ago, Coker/Smashwords announced it was ‘merging’ with an ebook platform called Draft2Dgital. Reading between the lines, I figured he’d sold it to them in return for a bit of control, less day-to-day involvement and what I hope was a decent chunk of change for what he built.

It had been over 15 years now, after all, and while I’m not suggesting he ran it all himself (although very large websites have been handled with far fewer staff and far more automation than you’d imagine), I’m sure the guy wanted a rest or a change.

A few years in everything seemed fine. Draft2Digital even got me a few handfuls of ‘purchases’ in the form of their annual sales drive, during which I usually discounted Falling’s retail price by 100% (hence the quote marks above).

Then, Cory Doctorrow’s famous enshittification hit like a truck. The other week, Draft2Digital announced they’d be charging publishers to keep their accounts open. A pittance – $12 a year, if I remember – but not even a little bit worth it when you look back and do your sums and realise you’ve made approximately (bangs clumsily on calculator, Juice Media style) …fuck all.

I went to their contact page and saw the not-unexpected message apologising for taking longer than usual responding to user requests. The communication I was about to send was going to be part of what was already an angry flood, it seemed.

I got a boilerplate response back from whatever customer service drone they’d quickly roped in to from a Hyperabad call centre sweatshop to handle all the extra enquiries, who duly told me;

Thanks for reaching out. We understand that recent fee-related changes may lead some users to consider closing their accounts, and we want to make sure you have the full picture before you decide.
If you do not have any books currently published with us, you will not be charged the Annual Maintenance Fee simply for keeping your account open.

Well, that was a relief, all I had to do was unpublish Falling and I wouldn’t be charged!

So it was goodbye to the ghost of Smashwords. It was a cool little space online and I’ll miss it. But I’m not going to pay twelve bucks a year to celebrate its rotting corpse.

If you want to buy Falling you’ll now have to go either to the Amazon or Apple store for it. If you and enough of your friends and colleague do so and I start to make a fortune out of it like I wanted, I might go back to my now-empty Draft2Digital account.

Oh no, I can’t. With no reason to even have the account I TOLD THEM TO CLOSE IT!

Postscript: While the above might suggest I consider Draft2Digital’s decision stupid, it couldn’t be further from the truth. What better way to weed out all the losers who never sell a single title and leave your platform only with ‘successful’ products? Good luck to them.