More on D2D / Smashwords merger

[cecilia_writer]

(Not sure if this is the right place to post this, sorry if not)
I accidentally found out only yesterday via Facebook, though I had forgotten following Smashwords there, that they are currently in the process of transferring everybody's books to D2D. I feel as if I've missed out on sone vital piece of information here as I've had no warning from Smashwords that this was already in progress, and from reading some of the details it looks as if the transfer of my own books comes into the 'difficult' category and has to wait until last. I've also got the impression that only the storefront will remain with Smashwords and all the actual publishing stuff will be via D2D.
Maybe this is a good thing anyway - I'm just slightly alarmed that I only saw this by chance on FB as opposed to receiving some kind of communication directly from them. Does anybody here have any further information about this?

[Sailor Stone]

I have been receiving e-mails from D2D for several months updating where they were in their transfer process.

[alhawke]

They've been working on this over the past year. I don't see anything wrong with the merger. I think it'll be easier for me to load books .

[Bill Hiatt]

Normally, I'd worry about their being fewer players in the game, but the D2D/Smashwords merger makes sense to me. They serve basically the same constituency and mostly use the same outlets for distribution. The additional services each one has that the other doesn't are logical extensions of their core business model. For instance, if I were Smashwords, I might have contemplated things like paperback and audio publishing, formatting services, and universal links. If I were D2D, I might have contemplated adding a storefront of its own. Merging the two makes sense as an easy way to get all the services under one roof.

[APP]

They've been working on this over the past year. I don't see anything wrong with the merger. I think it'll be easier for me to load books .

I have been receiving e-mails from D2D for several months updating where they were in their transfer process.

D2D has kept me informed of this process from the beginning.

[cecilia_writer]

Thanks for all the speedy replies, and I agree this will almost certainly be a good thing.
I am concerned about the lack of communication as I have accounts with both D2D and Smashwords and haven't received emails about this from either of them.Most of my books are on Smashwords (under my pen-name), with only a couple on D2D under my real name. I had actually forgotten about these two - I couldn't add them to Smashwords because it seemed quite difficult to have books there under more than one author name, I forget why.
It sounds as if I have indeed missed out on some important information so I had better contact them about my specific case.

[Lynn]

Looks like the merge is a disaster if you use different email addresses. I have a support request in asking if I should change my email address at one place or the other to make it happen in a better way, because as of right now, I'm about to end up with THREE D2D accounts for my two pen names because they won't merge either of my Smashwords accounts into the single D2D account I've had set up for years to manage both of those pen names.

Sigh. This is a mess.

[cecilia_writer]

Looks like the merge is a disaster if you use different email addresses. I have a support request in asking if I should change my email address at one place or the other to make it happen in a better way, because as of right now, I'm about to end up with THREE D2D accounts for my two pen names because they won't merge either of my Smashwords accounts into the single D2D account I've had set up for years to manage both of those pen names.

Sigh. This is a mess.

Sorry this is going to be difficult for you. I was sort of hoping the merge would make it a bit easier to use both names but it sounds from this as if it will be worse if anything. I had thought maybe I would make it simpler by removing the books I have on D2D under my real name but I've gathered from the FAQ that they don't want people doing that kind of thing. I got distracted by a medical problem just as I was about to contact them - I suppose I'd better do that.
It's quite annoying that this is going on just as my Apple and Kobo sales are building up. If I had any spare energy I might look into going direct with them instead.

[Lynn]

Yes, it is even worse than that. Their support is, well, to be polite, inadequate.

I've explained multiple times that I have two Smashwords accounts, and I keep getting responses back that my account has merged already. When in fact, my second Smashwords account hasn't even listed as eligible for the merge/transfer yet.

I'm going to end up with two new Draft2Digital accounts, one for each pen name, AND my original Draft2Digital account with books from BOTH pen names. It's ridiculous.

It's like they don't know how to read emails.

In the end, if I manually move all my stuff to my original D2D account, I'm probably going to lose all the links to the book's original published editions on Apple, etc that I had through Smashwords. They're really screwing me over here.

I'm so disappointed in them. I had really hoped for better.

[Lynn]

Maybe this is the push I need to get on Apple myself and stop using them to do it.

[Lynn]

It's official.

Hi there,

If your other account is not yet eligible to merge, please keep an eye on your email for the invitation. I would also not recommend making any changes.

This means, that you will have three D2D accounts to manage once the other Smash account is merged.

Please let me know if I can further assist.

[cecilia_writer]

It's official.

Hi there,

If your other account is not yet eligible to merge, please keep an eye on your email for the invitation. I would also not recommend making any changes.

This means, that you will have three D2D accounts to manage once the other Smash account is merged.

Please let me know if I can further assist.

Just as you feared. You'd think they could have merged them all together while they were at this. I agree this is very disappointing.

[Post-Crisis D]

Do they have something equivalent to how you used to be able to eMail Bezos at Amazon and your request might be handled by someone higher up?

It just seems very antiquated that, in 2024, they can't merge multiple accounts.

[Lynn]

I requested that Smashwords change my email to match my email address at Draft2Digital even though D2D has been telling me they can't merge them.  Smashwords support responded immediately and made the change for me without a problem.

Now I'm hoping that Draft2Digital will decide suddenly that they can do it.

In every message from them, they ignored my question about changing my email address and said only (repetitively):

Currently, without delisting your books from one account and relisting them to another, I cannot migrate these books into a single account.

It's a cut and paste response or something. 

I can live with two accounts. I had two at Smashwords. Three is ridiculous.

I'll just delist my pen name books from one account and keep the new account they already made for me. But I really, *really* do not want them to screw up my main pen name account from Smashwords. I have a lot of books and I don't want them listed in two different D2D accounts distributed to different places in each account. That's so stupid that it's infuriating me even thinking about it.

[Lynn]

https://www.draft2digital.com/blog/migration-updates/

It seems like they're trying to be more transparent about what's going on.

I had a few more email exchanges with them and came to realize that they always intended for anyone with accounts at both places to end up with duplicate accounts at least for a while.

I think, in the end, it was my misunderstanding. But I also think that they never made it very clear what was going to happen.

[TimothyEllis]

I had a few more email exchanges with them and came to realize that they always intended for anyone with accounts at both places to end up with duplicate accounts at least for a while.

That's actually nuts.

If I was the IT head being told to do that, I'd be refusing to do it. Someone's taking the cheap and easy way out.

They should have sent everyone a form to fill out to link accounts on both sites, and then used that to merge them into the existing D2D account.

As an ex-systems analyst, I have total contempt for anyone in IT going along with a multiple account option. That's just bad.

[Bill Hiatt]

Agreed! It doesn't seem to me as if it should be that hard.

[Jeff Tanyard]

Agreed! It doesn't seem to me as if it should be that hard.

Think about the Smashwords Meatgrinder and all the issues that authors had with trying to get it to work for them over the years.

Now assume the site's code has similar challenges that D2D must overcome.

Yeah, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the whole process to take longer than anyone might have anticipated.

[Bill Hiatt]

True enough, but perhaps most people don't need a straight merge. If people were distributing the same books through both, if I were the one running the process, I would have just removed the Smashwords references to those books, avoiding the whole duplicate title thing. SW may have code that doesn't merge easily, but it would certainly be possible to drop books from the SW side. That might cause problems with the SW store I suppose. But if it now lists as a D2D distribution option, it would seem as if automatic migration from the D2D listing wouldn't be that hard. It could be done in the same way D2D currently adds new partners.

That would only leave books distributed just through Smashwords as an issue. I'd almost be tempted to ask people in that situation to manually enter those books into D2D. For people who weren't with D2D at all, I would think a merger would be easier to execute. At least, you wouldn't end up with duplicate books at the end of the process, which does seem to be the biggest area of concern.

[Lynn]

The problem with doing as you suggest is that I have sales through apple on smashwords for books that are also in the account on draft2digital which has sales through hoopla, so I'm going to lose sales history and listings that I will have to recreate in the other account. Who really wants that?

Not to mention the lead time for getting your book on hoopla once you submit. It can take an extraordinarily long time to get accepted into their catalog. But of course you don't want to choose that one as the main one because then you lose your Apple listing, so choosing to prioritize the listing in the account with hoopla is not a good choice.

The way this happened is that I was originally on Smashwords. And I was happy at smashwords but draft2digital got some additional retailers that smashwords did not have. So then I added my books to draft2digital to get to only those that I could not get to through Smashwords.

[alhawke]

I can't get Smashwords to merge with my D2D account either. I emailed them and they responded that it wasn't straightforward enough for them to be able to merge via software. For me, it's not a huge thing because I only was using Smashwords for library retailers and Everand. My Apple account is through D2D.

[Lynn]

I checked my books today to make sure everything on this particular pen name is all right and discovered it was publishing the books with library prices set at 0.99. My books are 6.99 and I have never had library prices set that low.

So I think it's a glitch from the transfer and recommend everyone check their library prices at D2D after the transfer.

I fixed mine, but I'm still about to email them about it.

[Lynn]

I can't get Smashwords to merge with my D2D account either. I emailed them and they responded that it wasn't straightforward enough for them to be able to merge via software. For me, it's not a huge thing because I only was using Smashwords for library retailers and Everand. My Apple account is through D2D.

I really think most of us would have been a lot more understanding of having to maintain multiple accounts (as if Smashwords and Draft2Digital were still separated) if they'd only made it clearer that this was what was going to happen. I think we were mislead a bit into thinking it would all merge into one and that would be it. Then when it happened, it was just totally different than our expectations.

The really frustrating and sad part is that maintaining a large catalog is just easier at Smashwords. Their big publishing channel page might be an eyesore, but clicking a few radio buttons and then clicking save to move books in and out of certain retailers is a massively easier task than dealing with Draft2Digital's system.

[writeway]

Boy, the erotica authors are pissed about this merger. Anyone who writes erotica should pop over to the Erotic Authors Reddit site because they have several eye-opening threads about this.

[TimothyEllis]

Boy, the erotica authors are pissed about this merger. Anyone who writes erotica should pop over to the Erotic Authors Reddit site because they have several eye-opening threads about this.

Not going there, but what's happening?

[Lorri Moulton]

D2D has more stringent guidelines for erotica and erotic romance.  Not my area, but I've read a lot of comments about it in Facebook groups.

[Wonder]

Huh. I didn't realize they'd begun migration either. Thanks for posting. According to their site they've invited 72% of smashwords users to migrate, so far. I must be in that other 28% because I haven't gotten an email yet.

Granted, I sell pretty much zero on smashwords, and it wouldn't surprise me if they started with more active accounts. I'll be glad to have one less account to manage.

[alhawke]

Granted, I sell pretty much zero on smashwords, and it wouldn't surprise me if they started with more active accounts. I'll be glad to have one less account to manage.

Do you have a lot of books? My guess is it's volume. They probably are having difficulty if you have a large volume of books. ?? When I emailed them, they indicated that their software cannot do an easy transfer with my selection yet.

[Lynn]

It could be volume or activity, if I go by my accounts. The one that transferred hasn't had a new book on it in years and had only two books. The one that hasn't transferred is more active and has 39 titles.

[cecilia_writer]

I think it must be at least partly volume - I can't remember exactly how many books I have with Smashwords but it must be over 40 by now.

[Wonder]

Their status webpage (linked earlier in this thread) indicated that they started the migration with Smashwords authors who don't already have a Draft2Digital account. For those of us who have accounts in both places, the merge may be a bit more complex.

[Lynn]

Unfortunately, there was no way for them to know that I was using a different address for both accounts. I doubt my situation is unique, so they probably got a lot of authors who already had accounts caught up in the mess.

[TimothyEllis]

Unfortunately, there was no way for them to know that I was using a different address for both accounts. I doubt my situation is unique, so they probably got a lot of authors who already had accounts caught up in the mess.

But they could have sent out an email giving people the chance to change their email to the same on both sites, before the merge was due to be done.

Or as I suggested earlier, specify the accounts on both so they could be merged.

The fact they didn't is just bad systems analysis planning.

[Lynn]

Yes. I tried that but then found out it wouldn't matter since they couldn't actually merge accounts. Supposedly, tools are coming to let us merge things ourselves, but to be frank, I'm not sure what that's going to look like or if it's going to create even more headaches for those of us who attempt it.