I Thought I'd Published Two of My Paperbacks with D2D (Dementia Setting In?)

It's kind of funny when I think about it, but also rather unfunny: When I published my two-book paperback collection of novellas with KDP, I deliberately checked "expanded distribution" so I could utilize Draft2Digital to reach retail outlets.

Turns out, I never followed through.

When I surfed over to D2D to pay my $12.00 maintenance penalty fee, I decided to take a peek at my books. With my two-volume set, it prompted me to create paperbacks. Wait! I thought I did that! Sure enough, when I searched the Barnes & Noble site by my author name, only one of my books came up. Well, damn...

I'm not delusional enough to think that anyone would buy them, but the chances are definitely 0% if they don't even exist.

Well, as luck would have it, earlier this year my old computer expired and I had to buy a new one. I'm not exactly thrilled with Microsoft's OneDrive, because every time I search for a document there, "no results found". Thus, my carefully formatted second volume has completely evaporated. I did, however, still have the formatted first volume, so I set about righting my scatterbrained oversight. (Still wondering where that second one disappeared to. Did I give it some funky name that I don't remember?)

I could undertake reformatting the second one, but it would involve a lot of work and frustration (and cursing), so the jury is still out on doing that.

Creating a paperback with D2D is relatively simple, but not without its quirks. D2D stubbornly abhors capitalization; thus, my chapter titles and even my table of contents consist of lower case words, even though my Word doc is formatted correctly. I couldn't figure out how to fix that, so I just went with it. I'll simply claim it was a stylistic choice. 😉 

I also learned via Google that retailers won't list a paperback published through D2D (at least Barnes & Noble won't) unless its price is at least $14.99. 

Retailer-Specific Minimum Price Filters

Even if Draft2Digital permits a low minimum price based on printing costs, its network partners may reject it if it falls below their store-wide floors. 

For example, Barnes & Noble Press enforces a strict minimum paperback price of $14.99 for listings on their store marketplace. If you price your Draft2Digital paperback below $14.99, it can still be distributed to other retailers in the Ingram network (like Amazon), but it will be excluded from Barnes & Noble.

Why wasn't I told that? Seems kind of important. So, my expanded distribution was a bust this whole time. Again, funny but not.

The good news is, I'm sticking with my new no-cost mindset. That doesn't leave a whole lot for me to do, but my bank account loves it.