In no particular order, here are Draft-2-Digital’s responses to the questions posed in my last post. These are direct quotes from their email.

RE: Kindle Vella stories crossing over and potential problems with chapters being free on that platform.

“You would need to ensure that any content submitted outside of Kindle Vella will not cause any conflict with your Amazon KDP account. Our service does not perform any checks to determine whether the submission of your book violates Kindle Vella Terms of Service. We have not had any reports of our vendors having issues with books enrolled in Kindle Vella, but it should still be noted that the risk would be applied to your Amazon account, not the vendors who have the title.

“Depending on the situation, you should always confirm with Kindle Vella prior to submission outside of their service. Ultimately, we do not submit titles to Kindle Vella, which does mean we do not know the ins and outs of the terms of service regarding book submissions outside of their service.”

RE: The acquisition of Smashwords and whether they plan to offer more ebook interior style templates in the future or would allow us to use our own line art, as KDP does. 

​”We are always updating our system to allow for additional art styles and templates, and in time we hope to offer the Smashwords conversion system to D2D authors. Ultimately, if you wish to have a custom style within your book, you can always opt to provide your own ePub for distribution.” 

RE: The royalty question and whether they plan to offer their authors something similar to KENP reads.

​”At this time, our vendors do not have any systems implemented that pay per page. If a reader downloads your book from a subscription site and reads the book, you will get your full royalties.

“Only two systems currently would have a system that would be close to that format of payment systems, but neither offers a per-page system:

“Scribd shows a 20% preview of your file and once the reader borrows the book and reads past the preview, you would receive a full royalty payment (Minus Scribd’s take and D2D’s). For this store you would receive 60% of your listing price. 

“Kobo Plus has a complex algorithm that calculates the royalty on the book by taking into account the number of books listed in the service, the number of subscribers enrolled in the service and the amount of time spent listening to an audiobook or reading your book through this subscription model. All of our sites are optional and you are not required to list with any of the stores we offer. You have the option to choose the ones that you feel fit your publishing needs best.” 

So, there you have it. Pretty much what I’d been expecting, actually.

Will 2023 be the year for me to “go wide?” Partially, definitely. It’s worth experimenting with a few titles, anyway.