These are not competitors in the way the question assumes. KDP is a store. Draft2Digital is a distributor that reaches other stores. Most authors who ask which one to use end up using both, and the interesting question is what you give up if you do not.
What each one actually is
| Amazon KDP | Draft2Digital | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A store you upload to | A distributor to many stores |
| Reaches | Amazon | Apple, Kobo, B&N, Google Play, libraries |
| You keep | 70% at $2.99–$9.99, minus delivery | ~60% of retail, after its ~10% |
| Paperback and hardcover | Paperback, via its own print partner | |
| Upload | One per store, by hand | One file, everywhere |
| Exclusivity | Optional, via KDP Select | None |
| Cost to start | Nothing | Nothing |
Neither charges up front. Both are paid out of sales, which is the right shape of deal when you do not yet know whether the book sells.
The royalty arithmetic
On a $9.99 ebook, per hundred copies:
| Channel | You keep, each | Per 100 |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon, direct | ~$6.90 | $690 |
| Apple or Kobo, via D2D | ~$6.00 | $600 |
| Apple or Kobo, direct | ~$7.00 | $700 |
| Your own site | ~$9.20 | $920 |
Draft2Digital's ~10% buys you one upload instead of six accounts, six tax forms and six dashboards. Whether that is worth roughly a dollar a sale depends entirely on how many sales those stores produce for you — and for most authors the honest answer is few enough that the afternoons matter more than the dollar.
Selling direct is the row nobody optimises and the one with the best margin. Where to sell your ebook covers why the answer is almost always more than one channel.
The exclusivity decision
This is the only part of the question that is genuinely a fork.
KDP Select enrols your ebook exclusively with Amazon for 90-day periods. It enters Kindle Unlimited, where subscribers read it free and you are paid per page read, and you get countdown deals and free days. In exchange the book cannot be sold anywhere else — not Apple, not Kobo, not your own website.
| Exclusive (KDP Select) | Wide | |
|---|---|---|
| Kindle Unlimited | Yes, paid per page | No |
| Apple, Kobo, libraries | No | Yes |
| Sell from your own site | No | Yes |
| Promotional tools | Countdown deals, free days | Whatever each store offers |
| Suits | Genre fiction, series, binge readers | Non-fiction, professional, back catalogue |
The honest version: for genre fiction with a series behind it, Kindle Unlimited is often where the money is, because the readers who binge live there. For practical non-fiction sold to a professional audience it is usually a poor trade — those readers are not browsing Kindle Unlimited, and you have given up the right to sell your own book on your own website.
Exclusivity applies to the ebook only. A KDP Select title can still be sold as a paperback anywhere, which is the exception most authors miss.
What Draft2Digital is genuinely good at
- Libraries. OverDrive and Hoopla are hard to reach alone, and library reads are readers you would not otherwise have.
- One update. Fix a typo once and it propagates. Going direct to six stores means six re-uploads and six review queues.
- One payment. Instead of several small ones on different schedules and thresholds.
- Universal Book Links. One URL that sends each reader to their own store — useful in a bio or at the end of a book.
- Free formatting. Adequate, and worse than doing it yourself; see below.
What to watch
- Do not distribute to Amazon through it. Upload there yourself.
- Consider going direct to Apple once it produces real sales. Apple is large enough that the 10% starts to be a number, and its dashboard is worth having.
- The free formatting is a convenience, not a standard. It produces a clean, generic book. If you care how the pages look, make the file yourself and upload that.
- Check the payment threshold before planning around a date.
What both of them want from you
The same package, and getting it wrong once means fixing it in several places later.
- A reflowable EPUB. Both accept one; KDP also accepts
.docxand its own.kpf, and the EPUB is the file that travels — how to turn a Markdown file into a Kindle book and Markdown to EPUB. - A cover that survives a thumbnail, around 1,600 × 2,560 — ebook cover dimensions.
- Metadata written once: title, subtitle, author, description, categories, keywords — book metadata.
- An identifier. Both can assign one; whether you want your own is a shorter question than expected.
- A price, decided before a store suggests one — how to price an ebook.
Because both channels take the same EPUB, the sensible thing is to produce it once from a source you can re-export rather than formatting twice. bukpress takes a Markdown manuscript and exports both the typeset PDF for direct sales and print, and the reflowable EPUB that KDP and Draft2Digital both accept — so a correction is one edit and one rebuild rather than two formatting sessions that slowly stop matching.
The answer for most people
Upload to KDP yourself. Use Draft2Digital for everywhere else. Sell direct from your own storefront alongside both, because that is where the margin and the email addresses are.
Take exclusivity only if you write genre fiction with a series behind it and you have worked out what you are giving up. If you cannot say what that is, you are not ready to choose it.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use both at the same time? Yes, and that is the normal setup: KDP for Amazon, Draft2Digital for everything else. Just switch Amazon off in the Draft2Digital channel list.
Does Draft2Digital cost anything up front? No. It takes about 10% of retail on sales it makes and charges nothing otherwise.
Is KDP Select worth it? For genre fiction and series, often. For non-fiction sold to a professional audience, usually not — those readers are not in Kindle Unlimited and you lose the right to sell the book yourself.
What about Smashwords? Smashwords and Draft2Digital merged, so it is one company now. Treat them as the same distributor.
Should I use Draft2Digital's free formatting? It works and it is generic. If the interior matters to you — and it should for print — make the file yourself and upload that instead.