Draft2Digital Reviews 202

They censored my books, blocked me access to my account, and stole my money. I had to contact my lawyer because they kept selling the books and collecting the money for an entire year (NEVER PAYING ME OR REPLYING MESSAGES) and would continue doing so if I didn’t take legal action against them. Today, they proudly stand as the worst book distributor in the United States, and their top employees are frantically seeking jobs online, just like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

The worst experience I have ever had, which made me feel ashamed that their bad service, as an Author, they sold eBooks and Paperbacks to customers and then after days and months passing by, they inform me of a copyright probation, then why would they not inform me about it beforehand so I would fix it? And when I told them to refund and return people's money, they said they cannot refund.
They took my profit too, which is not a problem because they conducted a lot before giving me the overall profit, but if they think such a move was not something I experienced before from a different company, being rejected and terminated, then they are wrong, been there and have been done that to me through Free Festivals.

Draft2Digital's website makes everything so easy. All the author has to do is upload their manuscript and Draft2Digital would take care of everything from formatting to printing and distributing your finished book. They do all that for ten percent of the book's profits and the author keeps the rest. Wow, what a deal! That is until you try fill up their form and you get to the Tax information page. They want your social security number (true, they're still in the Middle Ages) and your Tax Identification number, and many other tax stuff that makes you think you are dealing with the IRS rather than a publishing company. After you provide the required information, you are told the social security number is invalid. If you have a question, you have to fill out a form and mail it to them and wait. There are no humans to deal with author's questions. You feel that you'r dealing with a black hole. I have published a book with another digital company that assigned me an actual living, breathing person as a project manager who guided me throughout the project and responded to my questions within hours. I wanted to switch to Draft2Digital for my second book because of their purported wide distribution. I wasted several hours over two days trying in vain to fill out their tax form to no avail. I almost called my tax accountant for help.

I do NOT recommend this company and their so called "service".

My experience with Draft2Digital was nothing short of malicious and destructive to my author career. Without warning, they delisted my books based on false and unfounded claims that my work was “low quality” and allegedly contained PLR (Private Label Rights) content—an accusation that is as insulting as it is baseless.

When I challenged these lies, Draft2Digital doubled down with yet another falsehood. They claimed:

“However, the tone and language of your recent emails, including profanity, personal attacks, and disrespectful statements toward our staff have made it clear that we cannot continue our business relationship.”

This is an outright fabrication. While I was understandably upset by their baseless accusations and lack of transparency, I did not use profanity, make personal attacks, or disrespect their staff. Instead of dealing honestly with my concerns, they invented a false narrative to justify closing my account.

Their so-called “review process” felt more like a kangaroo court. They made accusations, acted as judge and jury, and then executed the sentence by permanently terminating my account—with no appeal, no evidence, and no accountability.

Draft2Digital presents itself as “author-friendly,” but my experience shows a company that will destroy years of your hard work without proof, fairness, or basic professionalism. If they can falsely label legitimate work as “PLR” and fabricate behavioral accusations to silence you, they can (and will) do it to anyone.

Authors, protect yourselves. There are far more ethical and transparent distribution options available. Don’t put your career in the hands of a company willing to smear your name, pull your titles, and erase your presence based on fiction.

Draft2Digital didn’t just mishandle my case—they proved that to them, authors are disposable. If you value your work, your rights, and your peace of mind, stay far away from Draft2Digital.

Avoid at all cost.

Be very careful. If you have any kind of dispute with this company, they can terminate your account and keep all of your earned royalties. It's a policy that puts all the risk on the author. Not a safe platform for your money.

Exercise extreme caution. Draft2Digital approved and published my ebook across all major stores. When I tried to publish the exact same book in print, their system flagged a minor technical error. I politely asked for help. In response, they blocked my book entirely and sent me a generic email with baseless accusations of using "recycled" or "public domain" content.

This feels like a retaliatory action for questioning their system. Their support is unprofessional and their review process is contradictory and nonsensical. They approved my book and are collecting money for it, while simultaneously accusing it of being worthless. Avoid this service.

I have been using D2D for a couple of years now as an indie author with pen names. They have been good about answering questions and the one time there was a question about a cover, a human answered my question within hours and we resolved the matter quickly. They provide a wonderful service that is author focused.

I've been using Draft2Digital since 2022, and they've been fantastic. I only use them for ebooks, and I'm able to get my books onto international retailer websites and into libraries, making my books extremely accessible.

The interface is easy to use, and they have a mailing list specifically for authors to receive promotional opportunities. For example, if you use D2D to get to Apple Books and they're running a promo in your genre, you can apply to be featured, and if accepted, you'll get a little increased visibility for your book.

I haven't met a single downside to making my books available on Draft2Digital.

No complaints!! I have used D2D for a few years now and have had very little trouble uploading and presenting my books. I just followed the instructions. Tax forms do need to be signed even though I have earned very little in royalties. I can’t blame D2D for that as marketing is up to the author. One can’t expect them to wave a magic wand and make one a famous author - writing is only the first stage - success takes hard work.

To fellow self-publishers, I urge you to think carefully before committing to Draft2Digital. While the platform may offer some convenience, its outdated design, lackluster formatting tools, and overall lack of professionalism make it a less-than-ideal choice. In an industry where first impressions matter, it’s crucial to partner with platforms that reflect your values and commitment to quality.

Instead of settling for a platform that feels stuck in the past, consider exploring more modern and user-friendly alternatives. Your work deserves better, and so do your readers.

The support service makes threats to terminate account when asking for clear answer.

How do I delete my D2D account? There's no info on the site.

Your welcome email from Draft2Digital will not include extremely vital information that you have 30 days to adhere to Know Your Customer (KYC) policies else your account will be permanently suspended. The email providing this vital information is sent separately from the welcome email at the time of account creation (I am wondering if my email service provider saw two emails arrive simultaneously and assumed one was spam). You have 30 days with a 15 day extension to get your account in compliance, and the timer starts on the day you create your account. Since I created my account late January, my account should have been suspended early March.

You do not receive any reminder emails about the 30 day deadline. When I was finally able to speak to a real person instead of an agent or bot sending canned responses, Draft2Digital confirmed they don’t send an email about the 15 day extension. If for whatever reason you do not see the one and only email about KYC and its corresponding deadline (whether that’s your own user error, it going to spam, your email service provider blocking it from your inbox, etc) you do not get any other kind of notification. No second chances.

Logging into your account will not show a KYC notification or that your account is at risk of being suspended. Or even that your account is suspended if you’re beyond the deadline.

You are able to access your account after the 30/45 day deadline. If you make an edit to anything associated with KYC and their third party system isn’t able to validate it, you will be told to contact customer service, but again, there's no warning that you already missed an important deadline and that your account is going to suspended. I updated my KYC info in May (when my account should have been suspended in March), but it failed third party validation, notifying me to contact their CS for assistance. Would my account still have been suspended if their third party system had been able to validate it? Unknown.

Your account will be suspended, and you will no longer be able to access it. Note, an email is not sent to you informing you of your account suspension. I had to find out on my own when I tried to look at the CS error again. The reason for my account suspension was sent to me in a reply to the original email I sent regarding the validation failure--I am unsure if I would have ever received an alert my account was closed if I didn't already have an outstanding ticket trying to become compliant. Essentially, I was not given any opportunity to be in compliance since I missed the 30/45 day timeframe.

Any appeal will be denied because you’re not compliant with KYC. They will say they cannot risk paying out people who are not in compliance. I did not have any books for sale and was trying to get my business accounts/numbers in order prior to selling so everything was above board and in order.

Overall, the customer service was extremely unhelpful. I was unsure if I was speaking to a bot or an agent using canned/macro responses. I was finally sent over to someone (that had a name in their signature), who finally told me what I did wrong, but again, that my appeal was denied because I didn't meet the timeframe--which, from what I can tell, I was only told about once in an email I never saw or received. There were no nurture or drip campaigns to help people stay on track.

People are saying I dodged a bullet but I can't help but feel that it didn't have to be this way and that people are set up to fail.

STAY AWAY FROM THIS SCAM OPERATIONS REALLY BIG SCAM SITE BE WARNED

If i could i would give -0 stars, they use now smashwords to distribute all your free eBooks to 3rd party websites and the websites then takes money from the free ebooks, be aware, you will not earn any money from draft2digital it is a scam,

Such a scam site they withheld no taxes on me nor did I make enough to even file taxes and they kept my royalties (after 2 years of being on there and paid) and closed my account because I had registered and entered my social wrongs and I had went in to fix it and they allowed it and I even had a full on conversation. With support about this a year before and they delete my account and keep my money-scammers had the nerve to say it was TAX FRAUD. like b**** where cause I ain’t filing taxes and all I made was not taxable so miss me with your racist b.s. avoid these scammers

I spent many hours setting up my children's books, only to find that there is no colour option for all my illustrations. I do hope that one day, they will have this option because after all my wasted time, it was not even mentioned in the process :-(

I have a large number of books published on Smashwords and always received monthly royalties. Not large amounts, but regular income. Since moving to D2D, I have no sales figures and no royalties. Mark Croker sold us out to a bunch of scammers. RIP Smashwords and D2D.