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Draft2Digital is Adding Kobo Plus as a Distribution Option, But Not Smashwords

Kobo’s new subscription ebook service is currently available only in the low countries, and authors can only put their work into it via Kobo Writing Life.

That is quite limited, but I can now report that at least one of those details is going to change soon.

At the request of several authors, I asked several ebook distributors whether they planned to add Kobo Plus as a distribution option. I am still collating responses, but so far I have gotten one and a half responses from Smashwords and Draft2Digital.

Mark Coker of Smashwords told me that it would not be distributing ebooks to Kobo Plus: "I knew this was coming but it’s not something we’re planning to support with our titles at this time."

Draft2Digital was slightly more positive. I am still waiting for their complete response, but what I was told via twitter DM that "Technical details are being hashed out".

That was not a hard no, so I am going to put it down as a soft yes. (And when I have a statement from D2D, I will update this post.)

Here’s D2D’s statement:

We are still working on some of the technical parts of this, but here’s what we can tell you (and what you can share with your readers):

  1. The terms are similar to what KWL is offering for Kobo Plus, and we’ll take our usual percentage of net
  2. We’ve already worked with Kobo and authors with Dutch language books to manually add a few hundred books into the program
  3. The technical issues are mostly related to how the data will be reported. When these issues are settled, we’ll allow our authors to opt in just as they would any other sales channel

We’re very excited about this program and what it means for authors, and we’re even more excited to be a part of it from the beginning. We have always enjoyed a great relationship with Kobo, and it’s gratifying to see that they have the best interests of the authors at heart.

So if you are an author who wants to get your book into Kobo Plus without the extra work of also putting a title into Kobo Writing Life, you should start looking at Draft2Digital and not Smashwords.

And soon I would expect that authors will have other options as more ebook distributors announce new deals with Kobo.

If any distributor wants to announce your Kobo Plus deal, the comment section is open.

image by nadineheidrich

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Comments


Jim Heskett February 22, 2017 um 5:21 pm

thanks for doing the research!


Doris-Maria Heilmann February 23, 2017 um 10:44 am

Netherlands – not low countries… : )

Cheers, Doris

Nate Hoffelder February 23, 2017 um 10:46 am

also Belgium.


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