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Everything I know about self-publishing and selling books in January 2026

This is a 4,000+ word post that's exactly what it says on the tin. I want to put it up on Medium, but first I figured I'd share it here in case people have feedback or follow-up questions that help me revise a bit. (Also, I post to Tumblr multiple times a day, so posting here shortcuts whatever psychological barrier keeps me writer's-blocked on Medium.)

Update: Here's the full post (now 5,000 words!) on Medium.

In October, I shared my first post in this series about small-scale publishing and book sales options and the best ways to support your favorite small presses and independent authors. To be honest, that first post was a bummer – mostly about how censorship from payment processors has made it hard to distribute writing about sex through most e-commerce platforms. Today’s post is more optimistic! (At the same time, I worry that even as I write it, parts are becoming dated—the world of publishing changes fast. I’ll give the most current information I have, and may add updates throughout 2026!)

Technology has opened up many options for publishing—so many it can be bewildering. Different sites have different content guidelines, file format requirements, and royalty rates. Some—especially Amazon—have huge numbers of buyers browsing them. Others, like IngramSpark, need authors to point their readers to them.

Some indie authors focus only on Amazon, while others “go wide,” distributing to other websites and bookstores. I’m in the latter camp for both practical and political reasons. Jeff Bezos has enough wealth and power. I’m also, after the experiences described in my previous post, wary of putting all my ebook eggs in one distribution basket.

For going wide, the easiest one-stop-shop is Draft2Digital (which has now partnered with, or absorbed, the publishing arm of Smashwords).

Draft2Digital with Expanded Distribution (Meatgrinder No More!)

A few names here, all managed by the same entity: First, readers and writers may be familiar with Draft2Digital from its Books2Read Universal Book Links, where you can share nearly every bookstore that offers your title with a single click. You can use these even if you don’t publish through Draft2Digital.

Smashwords used to be an ebook distributor (sometimes mistakenly called a “publisher), but now it is only a storefront through which ebooks are sold. It has a competitive royalty rate—recently decreased, but still higher than Amazon—and some of the most inclusive content guidelines, so long as books are clearly labeled. You can sell books on Smashwords, and elsewhere, by uploading your files on Draft2Digital and clicking some buttons to distribute them.

Draft2Digital’s website is where authors enter a book’s metadata—uploading files of the cover art and story text, typing in keywords and story description, and so on—and where the conversion from a text file into an .epub or .mobi happens. Compared to Smashwords’ converter, known as the “Meatgrinder,” D2D is a lot simpler, though also less flexible. It’s like bowling with the bumpers up. If you, like me, have spent hours of your life troubleshooting a manuscript that just won’t convert right on Smashwords, hearing Draft2Digital say “We guarantee that anything we produce will pass Epubcheck, meaning it meets the technical standards for all our digital stores” is a relief.

Draft2Digital offers a few formatting options for headers, scene breaks, and drop caps (big letters at the beginning of a scene or chapter), which you can select and preview in the “Layout” tab of their ebook workflow. If you want more custom designs, this is possible but can require some knowledge of HTML and CCS. If you don’t have that and don’t want to hire someone, accept that your visual style for the ebook will be limited. (Just now, I tested the options for my ebook A Spell of Passion or Fear and found they didn’t have any that matched the ancient world or steampunk setting. So I’ll continue with the formatting I used when the book was initially published through Smashwords, which D2D carried over.)

Here's Draft2Digital’s guide for how to set your file up for a successful conversion.

The nicest thing about D2D is that they allow you to download the .epub file they generate and use it anywhere else—e.g., if it fits Gumroad or Ko-fi's guidelines, you can upload the .epub there to sell.

But you don’t need to upload files anywhere to sell your ebook widely. In D2D’s publishing workflow, you can just check the boxes for where you want your book distributed and it will send the files and metadata for you. This means you don’t need to set up separate accounts for the Barnes and Noble Nook store, the Apple Books store, or Kobo. It saves a lot of time, in exchange for a small percentage of your earnings. For example, the royalty rate on a book published through Draft2Digital and purchased in the Nook store is 60%; if you'd gone directly with Barnes and Noble Press, you’d have earned a 70% royalty. But you’d also have spent the time setting up a Barnes and Noble Press account, learning their formatting guidelines, and uploading the book. This may be worth it if you enjoy the process and/or make a lot of sales to Nook readers. For many authors, avoiding those additional steps is worth 10%.

In terms of earnings per sale, your favorite author is probably happiest when you buy their book from Smashwords (if it’s not available through direct ecommerce). But let’s be real: we’re never unhappy when you buy one of our books anywhere. Thank you!

At the beginning of 2026, the Smashwords store dropped its royalties for the first time in decades. It also simplified its payment formula—you used to earn a slightly different amount depending on how many other ebooks a reader was buying at the same time. But where Smashwords’ royalty rate used to be over 80%, it’s now 75% for books $2.99 and up, and just 40% for books under $2.99. That’s 5% higher than Amazon in both cases, but it’s a big pay cut for the under-$2.99 category. Worse, this cut may apply to books that are priced under $2.99 because they use a coupon code or are part of Smashwords’ twice-annual sitewide sales. Those sales have been a great opportunity for readers to stretch their book-buying budgets and discover new authors, but I’m not sure how much they’ll be used if they come with a sharp pay cut. We’ll find out in June or July 2026, I guess.

Draft2Digital pays monthly whenever your accumulated balance is over $10.00. Payments for Smashwords go into your balance right away; books purchased at other stores sometimes take another month or two to arrive.

As a reader, I like the flexibility of file format options offered through Draft2Digital and Smashwords. I sometimes read on my phone and I hate downloading apps, so the Smashwords’ “read online” option is fantastic for me.

Smashwords also has fairly open content guidelines, including for “taboo” erotic content, which has a particular label so it’s easy for readers to avoid (or find) if that’s their preference. I don’t want to digress too much here, but: many readers find fiction a safe space to engage with intense and even frightening ideas—sometimes to process past experiences or achieve catharsis, sometimes for no reason they can name—and they deserve ways to access that writing, just as writers should be able to share it. There are stories out there I would prefer not to read myself, or even to think about much. Which is why I want them to be well-labeled, easy for their fans to find, easy for me to skip, and furthermore for that labeling to imply no judgment or penalty for the author. Maybe that’s utopian of me.

A last word on Draft2Digital: They also offer print books. However, it’s still early days for that service, and some authors report delays and confusion. Most authors will be happy with more established print-on demand-publishers, discussed later in this article.

(If you'd like to give Draft2Digital a try after reading this post, I would be grateful if you use this referral link. It doesn't cost you anything to set up an account or publish through D2D, which is paid by a share of the royalties you earn. If, after using the referral link, you publish a book and sell copies over the next two years, Draft2Digital will credit me a portion of their earnings as thanks for spreading the word about them.)

Amazon: Thankfully not the only game in town, unless you make it yours

It’s big and I don’t expect it’s going anywhere. It’s so big that for some authors, it’s the only game in town: they go “Kindle exclusive.” At the cost of being able to distribute their books anywhere else, this has two benefits: one, admittedly it’s less work to upload just to Kindle rather than both Kindle and Draft2Digital.

The second benefit is that exclusivity to Amazon is required to join KDP Select (KDP = Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon’s self-publishing arm). This program gives you some promotion options and, most importantly, makes your book part of the Kindle Unlimited subscription program. KU authors earn money based on number of pages read by subscribers. It's not as much as you'd earn in royalties selling the book, but you do reach a wide audience with the voracious KU readers.

KDP Select requires you to let Amazon, and only Amazon, publish your ebook for 90 days. Print books can be available elsewhere. This period renews automatically if a box is checked, but you can un-check the renewal option box at any point and wait for the current 90-day period to expire. I know a number of authors and some small presses who use KU for the first 90 days to reach those readers, then leave the program and publish wide with Draft2Digital or other distributors. Their ebook remains available on Amazon, just not in Kindle Unlimited.

In fact, that’s the process I’m using on a novella I’m releasing in March:

Since I talked a lot in my previous post about trouble selling erotic ebooks on many platforms, I should talk briefly about Amazon’s content guidelines. The ones I’m most concerned with refer to erotic content—some material that would be allowed in the “thriller” or “fantasy” genres, for example, is not allowed in erotica. Basically, you can depict it, but god forbid it’s adjacent to getting someone off. This is Reddit's best knowledge of the current guidelines. Amazon is not very explicit, so this is built on guesswork. Also, it's a big site. Enforcement is spotty.

In addition to those content guidelines, authors in any genre may have books unpublished and even get banned from Amazon if enough readers complain they've provided a "poor reading experience.” That can include misleading marketing, bad formatting, or excessive grammatical errors that make the story unreadable (or just a few typos and a very complainy customer). There are occasionally other issues, such as apparent copyright infringement, that can lead to accounts being closed. If you are a member of the Authors Guild, they may be able to help you challenge wrongful account terminations (they can also help you issue takedowns of anyone pirating your own work).

The idea of losing your ability to sell on Amazon because you’ve made a badly formatted ebook sounds pretty scary. I will say, I have found Amazon’s formatting much easier to manage than the Smashwords Meatgrinder. It is also much easier to check, with a preview made available right on the KDP page within minutes of you uploading the manuscript. Fixing issues, once you’ve spotted them, can take some trial and error—often I’ve found the fault is a hidden bit of formatting in the story’s text file. (There are services you can hire if you want to completely avoid the trial and error process, especially for longer or more complex works; I've done some such work and might hang my shingle out again, and there are people with a lot of expertise who can manage image-heavy files, complicated line breaks and indents for poetry, and so on.)

Because Amazon is massive, arbitrary, and difficult to fight, I don't recommend authors rely on it as their single source of income, however tempting KU might be. At minimum, make sure to collect reader's email addresses (voluntarily, by putting a note at the end of your book offering them a free story when they sign up to your newsletter) so if you ever have to completely migrate platforms, you can shoot them an email telling them where to find you next.

However, because Amazon is so massive, it’s difficult for writers and readers to avoid entirely. I myself don’t claim to. One feature many authors use is Amazon’s affiliate program, Amazon Associates. For readers, this doesn’t change anything, except you may notice a string of identifying text at the end of our links to books on Amazon. (Here’s an example, one of my links to one of my books. As of January 27, 2026, A Spell of Passion or Fear is the only one of my books I can make an affiliate link to; if this isn’t a fluke, it seems erotica and erotic romance titles are now “excluded from the Amazon Associates Program.” See my earlier point about Amazon being arbitrary and unreliable, etc.) If you buy a book after clicking this link—your purchase doesn’t have to be the book whose link you clicked on, but any eligible product within the next 24 hours after clicking it—the affiliate who made the link will receive a few cents from Amazon as a commission, at no additional cost to you. In fact, if there’s a particular writer or small press you really want to support, a nice way to do that is to click through one of their links whenever you want to buy anything from Amazon.

Amazon’s royalty rates are fairly generous on books priced between $2.99 to $9.99, which receive 70%. But for ebooks under $2.99 or over $9.99, the royalty is only 35%. Also, authors new to Amazon are sometimes surprised by the length of time it takes to receive payments: KDP sends them 60 days after the month of the sale. So at the end of December, I received royalties on book sales made in October. This can work out to a nearly 90-day wait for sales made at the beginning of a month.

One more benefit of Amazon is its rates for print-on-demand paperbacks, which are some of the most inexpensive available, and of acceptable and increasingly good quality. Print-on-demand (POD) is exactly what it sounds like: a reader orders a book and a copy is printed fresh off the machine. The author doesn’t have to worry about managing inventory or paying upfront for bulk orders—though traditional “offset printing” is much cheaper per copy. For many authors, Amazon is a reasonable choice for POD both because of the price advantage and because a paperback can be easily set up with a few clicks alongside the Kindle ebook, all on the same website. However, royalties earned on “expanded distribution” of Kindle paperbacks are low. I’ll talk about two alternative POD companies I’ve used, Lulu and IngramSpark, later in this article.

Next, I want to talk about a platform that isn’t for publishing books, but for selling them, because it’s set up as a response to many of Amazon’s flaws.

Bookshop.org: A happy alternative

Back in 2020, book lovers had some good news. Bookshop.org was established explicitly as an Amazon alternative for online book shopping, and better yet, it fights monopoly by donating 10% of each sale to local bookstores that are members of the ABA (American Bookseller Association). Bookstores can also set up direct sales pages on Bookshop.org—but you don’t need to be a bookstore owner yourself to benefit from Bookshop.org’s 10% affiliate fee.

Yes, 10%. That’s the highest affiliate share I know of (more than double Amazon’s 4.5% rate for books). Anyone—writers, small presses, book clubs, book reviewers, nonprofits, or individual booklovers—can sign up to be a Bookshop.org affiliate and create a store page curating titles.

Here’s my Bookshop.org affiliate shop. I “stock” books I’m published in, the New Smut Project anthologies, and some romance, erotic, and poetry titles I’ve enjoyed. My affiliate earnings, which are automatically paid when my balance gets over $20, are re-invested in my New Smut Project account to pay future anthology contributors and cover other expenses. Bookshop.org affiliates can also create links to books that aren’t in there store (for example, here’s an affiliate link to a book I recently enjoyed but haven’t had time to add to my shelves).

As with Amazon affiliate commissions, the fee doesn’t affect the price the reader pays for books. And as of January 27, 2026, erotica anthologies are still eligible for Bookshop.org’s affiliate program, which is a major boost in their favor from my perspective.

For authors and publishers, the books sold through Bookshop.org don’t earn the highest possible rate, because they go through distribution, which understandably costs money. As an example:

Paperback copies of Erato (printed by Amazon’s KDP) earn a 60% rate less print costs, or about $5.98 per book, when purchased on Amazon. When purchased anywhere else through wider distribution, they earn only 40% less print costs, or about $2.79. That includes books sold on Bookshop.org. But when a copy is sold through my Affiliate links to Bookshop.org, I also earn a 10% affiliate commission (about $1.60 in Erato’s case). And that same amount goes to Bookshop.org’s fund to donate to independent booksores, andnone of it goes to Jeff Bezos.

Bookshop.org also sells ebooks, and will be selling books distributed through Draft2Digital and IngramSpark in the near future. From my D2D account, I can’t yet spot a distribution option to Bookshop.org, but I’ll be keeping an eye out.

Independent Bookstores

Having a Bookshop.org page is one way physical independent bookstores can stock titles virtually, expanding their “shelf” space. Some larger and more established indie bookstores also sell books directly from their websites. And bookstores are often happy to make special orders of particular titles if a customer asks. Of course, there’s the physical space in their stores too; many indie stores dedicate space for local or independent authors. However, there’s never enough space for every author wanting to get in a bookstore, and some authors don’t make the attempt.

While, for an indie author, selling your book through a bookstore might not earn you the highest possible royalty rate, it has many other benefits, including a sense of physical connection to the literary community. And buying from bookstores helps keep these physical communities and spaces alive. Most bookstores offer literary events and activities.

Bookstores may stock an indie author’s books on commission from the author, or they may order copies of them through IngramSpark (especially when customers request special orders). It’s customary to offer a 55% discount rate to bookstores, meaning the author receives 45% of the cover price less printing costs. Some self-published authors offer lower discounts, like 35%, which makes it unlikely bookstores will ever stock you, though they still may special order your book if a customer requests it. In all honesty, while I have a 55% discount rate for Cunning Linguists through IngramSpark, I may decrease the discount over time, since physical bookstores have not been a major distribution option for us.

Other Options for Print on Demand:

IngramSpark

So, speaking of IngramSpark: I started an account when I released Cunning Linguists, the most recent New Smut Project anthology. At the time, I either paid a $25 fee to set up the title or took advantage of a promotion that waived it, but nowadays publishing through IngramSpark is free. Ingram makes money off a portion of your book sales, just as Amazon KDP does. You can also can pay for their ebook conversion service (at $0.60 per page, which would be $240 for a 400-page book). Keep in mind you can get an .epub file from Draft2Digital for free, or format your own with a little courage and troubleshooting in software like Calibre (my choice)—but if you don’t have a lot of time or energy, or if your ebook has complex formatting, this looks like a reasonable rate. Still, you might want to select a freelancer you can interview in-person rather than paying a faceless conglomeration for the service.

My other expense publishing through IngramSpark was buying an ISBN, or International Standard Book Number. This string of numbers identifies your book in a particular format—the paperback and ebook each get their own ISBN. Draft2Digital will give you an ebook serial number for free, but that number identifies D2D as the publisher rather than you. Amazon will give you an ASIN, an identification unique to its website, also for free. Buying your own ISBN, though it’s an up-front expense, identifies you as the publisher of your own books. ISBNs are much cheaper in bulk, so I actually bought the 10-number package from Bowker for $295. I have not yet used all of them (keep in mind, if you’re also applying your own ISBN to ebooks, the 10-ISBN package covers 5 books; if you’re doing ebook, print, and hardcover, the 10-ISBN package covers a trilogy with one number left over, maybe for an omnibus edition).

You enter your ISBN, upload your book files (the formatting requirements, particularly for covers, are slightly different for IngramSpark than for KDP, but I don’t recall this being nightmarish to navigate), and enter the metadata—author name, book description, genre categories/BISAC subject codes—and soon your book will be available on websites like Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org, and for ordering by indie bookstores. You’ll earn…well, if you have a 55% discount rate set, you’ll be earning no more and possibly a bit less than if you want through Amazon’s expanded distribution options. But you can make a much more attractive offer to bookstores. And now IngramSpark offers an option that lets you earn more than you would through Amazon, while readers can pay less: authors and indie publishers can make direct ecommerce sales through their website. You have to do all of the marketing lift yourself—so far as I can see, there’s no IngramSpark storefront that readers can browse. But if a reader wants to buy a book and wants to support the author as much as possible, these direct sales links are good to have. (For example, here’s the direct sales link for Cunning Linguists, with a $1 discount on the cover price, which earns me a few cents more per copy than sales on Amazon.)

IngramSpark paperbacks are a bit more expensive per copy to print than they would be through Amazon, though unlike Amazon they offer discounts on bulk orders. However, if you’re able to sell through several hundred copies at a time, and manage storage and transport for them, you may find a better deal through an offset printer who specializes in large-scale print orders.

The biggest downside of IngramSpark for me is that its sales reports are clunky—and I say this as someone with only a single book out through them; if I had multiple titles to keep track of, I’d be even more annoyed. Save the reports that IngramSpark emails you, because they are significantly easier to read than the ones you can generate on the website.

Additionally, I’ve consistently had trouble getting the cover art of Cunning Linguists to load on Bookshop.org. I sent a message to IngramSpark’s help center about this, but their FAQ warns that “Pieces of information may appear, disappear, and reappear as [retailers] load the metadata feeds. We have no control over their process or how quickly they complete it.”

But even without a cover, readers have made multiple purchases of Cunning Linguists through my Bookshop.org affiliate links,so thank you all!

Lulu

The other POD publisher I regularly use is Lulu. In particular, I like to use Lulu for personal projects and gifts—for instance, I made a collection of my late partner’s science fiction stories and printed copies for their family. These are kept in “Private Access” and not made available in Lulu’s online storefront or any other stores. (This is not something you’re able to do on Amazon; while you can print proof copies without publishing the book, the proofs now have a ribbon reading NOT FOR RESALE across the cover.)

In general, I find Amazon paperbacks have the advantage in pricing/earnings, and IngramSpark is better for wide distribution than Lulu. Lulu does have a browsable bookstore on its website, though I’m not sure how many readers you’re likely to get this way. Content wise, Lulu’s terms and conditions forbid “pornography” from being sold on its website—defined as clearly as you’d expect, which is to say, not at all. There are erotica titles available in the store, and the store has an “explicit content” filter, which seems to imply a distinction where some adult content is allowable, but I don’t plan to spend my time setting up a title there to find out.

For a sense of how much more expensive Lulu’s printing is than Amazon’s, both charging by the page:

The gift book I made is 147 pages long and author copies cost $5.44 each from Lulu (not counting shipping).

My omnibus paperback Soft, Sharp, and Tender is 221 pages long and author copies cost $3.50 each from Amazon (not counting shipping).

However, if you publish on Lulu, take advantage of their newsletter, which sends regular promotional emails. I receive coupons for 10% or even 20% off orders a few times a year. These coupons apply to private access titles as well as publicly available books.

And it’s worth acknowledging here that Lulu’s higher prices likely reflect better ethics (in fact, they’re a certified B Corporation, like Bookshop.org, with ratings on things like financial security for employees. Which is more than one might say for Amazon).

Other Affiliate Programs

I’ll wrap this long post up by briefly discussing other bookstores that offer affiliate programs, in addition to Bookshop.org and Amazon.

The Apple Services Promotion Partner Program includes a 7% commission on Apple Books purchases.

Kobo has an affiliate program through Rakuten that offers a 6% commission on ebooks and audiobooks.

Smashwords used to have an affiliate program, but ended it a few years ago.

Authors may find setting up these accounts a bit finicky, taking up time for uncertain earnings. However, once you’ve got your affiliate codes, Draft2Digital’s Books2Read links will make life easier: there’s a page (the reasonably titled https://books2read.com/links/affiliate-codes/) where you can enter all your codes, then it automatically applies them when you generate each Universal Book Link.

Again, affiliate commissions earn authors and publishers a little extra money at no additional cost to the book buyer. If you see extra code at the end of a link to a book, this is often what’s going on (the affiliate should also disclose that they’re using affiliate links somewhere on their website or in their newsletter).

That’s the simple version

Well, this was a long post, and you may be feeling flatted by a barrage of information. At the same time, I’m sure there’s a lot I didn’t get to! Please feel free to share your questions in the comments.

One thing I definitely didn’t touch on (because I don’t yet have much experience) is serial publication through platforms like Patreon or Ream. And I recently looked at Ko-fi, and learned the limits of their adult content guidelines for ebook sales, but I do have some ebooks up for sale there, in addition to being open to editing commissions (including developmental editing packages, which can include discussing your publication options for a particular story). The world of publishing is big and always changing, but this post catches the highlights of my own experience.

In the next (and probably final) installment of this series, I’ll talk about things readers can do that their favorite authors and small presses will appreciate.

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