Go direct where you will use what direct gives you, and use an aggregator everywhere else. Draft2Digital keeps about 10% of retail, taken after the retailer’s own cut, and charges a $20 one-off activation, then $12 a year unless you earn $100+. For that you get one upload, one dashboard and one payment. Going direct keeps the whole retailer royalty and gives you each store's own promotional tools. It also puts each store's contract directly between you and the retailer, obligations included. Most wide authors go direct to the two or three stores that sell for their genre and let an aggregator reach the rest.
An aggregator such as Draft2Digital sits between you and the retailers. You upload once, tick the storefronts you want, and it delivers the book to each one, collects the money and pays you in a single payment.
It takes no rights and requires no exclusivity. Every storefront is opt-in and can be switched off at any time. The formatting tool is free to use, including preview, with no distribution required, and every book published through the system gets a free ISBN.
Two things, and the first is the one that adds up.
A share of every sale. Draft2Digital's share is about 10% of retail, taken after the retailer’s own cut. That order matters: the retailer pays its royalty through to Draft2Digital, and Draft2Digital's share comes out of what is left, so the difference from going direct is the whole of that share. Draft2Digital says the exact figure varies by store and book type.
Not every aggregator charges this way. PublishDrive charges a flat monthly subscription on its paid plans instead of a share of each sale, which changes the arithmetic once a catalogue sells steadily.
Account fees. Since April 2026 Draft2Digital charges a $20 one-off activation, then $12 a year unless you earn $100+. For an author with several selling titles the maintenance fee never applies. For a single slow-selling book it is a real share of income.
The retailer's royalty, undivided. What each store pays is covered in How much do Apple, Kobo and Google pay per ebook?
The store's own tools. Promotions, merchandising requests and store-specific dashboards are mostly offered to direct accounts. For wide authors this usually matters more than the royalty difference, because Kobo and Apple promotions are where books outside Amazon find readers.
The contract, and its obligations. A direct account means you sign the store's own agreement, and some of those agreements reach beyond the store:
An aggregator's free ISBN solves the identifier question in one step. Going direct means buying your own, which you need anyway if you want the same number everywhere.
Each direct account pays separately, and each has its own floor:
With a small catalogue, the same sales split across four direct accounts can sit under four thresholds for months. Through an aggregator they build up in one account.
Google Play is not among the storefronts in our Draft2Digital record, so with Draft2Digital a Google listing means a direct account. PublishDrive does list Google Play, so the answer depends on which aggregator you use. Google's agreement also settles who sets the price, and it is Google — the publisher recommends a List Price, and Google sets the final price to readers.
The one combination to avoid is sending the same book to the same store twice. Kobo states this directly: it asks that a book reach Kobo through Kobo Writing Life and not through a second distributor as well, so the store does not end up with duplicate listings. The same logic applies everywhere. If you go direct to a store, switch that storefront off in the aggregator.
Terms are quoted from the agreements as recorded in the AuthorAZ Publishing Database. Platform facts verified 4 September 2026.
Publishing Database
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