At this exact moment, Detective Daddy and the Puppy’s Outing is available through Smashwords, which is now Draft2Digital. As you know, I didn’t bother publishing the other two completed ones, instead preferring to give them away for free.

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but recently D2D has decided to implement an account maintenance fee, one that only applies if you make less than $100 in sales per year. I’m pretty sure that encapsulates a huge number of D2D authors, including me. I sell maybe two or three copies of DDPO every year, and each one only earns me about 50 cents. It’s not about the money (it’s about getting people to read my work), but what does it mean when I have to pay $12 per year just to keep my one listing active? What’s my ROI there?

It’s not a lot, to be frank.

Look, I get it: D2D has to pay people to work for them, and they have to pay for hosting and administrative fees. It just seems wrong to charge the people least able to pay with the proceeds from their books (which, by the way — it has to be $100 in sales after D2D takes their agreed-upon cut). I understand why: if you make upwards of $100 after D2D takes their cut, then their cut probably pays for whatever they’re doing for you.

I have to decide soon whether or not to leave DDPO up on D2D or close out my D2D account altogether. I don’t want to close it — it costs $20 to open a new one now (I was grandfathered in before that fee became a thing) and I might need it someday. I do have one book that might not be the best book to put on Amazon, although there are books like it available on the platform. So I don’t know. I can afford $12 each year to keep my account open, but it’s the principle of the thing. Plus, I’m rather proud of DDPO; I think it’s an enjoyable book (novelette, really). I could risk putting it on Amazon and getting nailed by the algorithm when it sees the word “daddy”, but again, there are plenty of books on that topic available with a simple Amazon search. The last thing I want is to get kicked off the platform. Then I really would have to use D2D, and I’d have to find a service to print my paperbacks on top of that, and it would probably cost more in the long run.

Decisions, decisions.

Maybe if my readers bought a copy of DDPO on their favorite non-Amazon platform I would be able to offset the $12 cost. Just saying.