finally drew Elly's ingame skill icons. I swear it's important XD

Block anyone using AI, the less reach those fuckers get the sooner they go broke.

If you follow @ap.brid.gy to bridge your account to the Fediverse, we can interact with your posts and boost them - we only have a Mastodon account bridged to BlueSky, so we can only see and interact BlueSky accounts that are bridged to Mastodon / the Fediverse 🙂

The picture shows a pair of Egyptian sandals made of woven reed and palm leaves, the sole with bound edges and pointed toe. One sandal is completely preserved with ankle strap and toe strap.

#Egyptian flip flops: a pair of sandals made of woven reed and palm leaves. Dating around 1500-1400BC

On display at Museum of the University of Tübingen

📷me

🏺

If you follow @ap.brid.gy to bridge your account to the Fediverse, we can interact with your posts and boost them - we only have a Mastodon account bridged to BlueSky, so we can only see and interact BlueSky accounts that are bridged to Mastodon / the Fediverse 🙂

If you follow @ap.brid.gy to bridge your account to the Fediverse, we can interact with your posts and boost them - and users on Mastodon can discover your posts too and follow you from there 🙂

If you follow @ap.brid.gy to bridge your account to the Fediverse, we can interact with your posts and boost them - and users in the Fediverse (i.e. Mastodon) can discover your posts too and follow you from there 🙂

John T. Fuller John T. Fuller is from the North of England where he lives with his boyfriend and enjoys walking, real ale and classic rock music. You can find him on Goodreads, Instagram and Bluesky.

Unsurprisingly, this latest Draft2Digital bullshit means I'm pulling my books from there, so I'm going to sell even fewer copies than usual. I honestly don't have the energy to care.
If you want some really decent indie gay romance, all my ebooks are here for cheap: payhip.com/johntfuller
#mmromance

Draft2Digital to Penalise Low Performers Draft2Digital makes authors with the lowest sales pay, pretending it's to protect against AI slop.

So I wrote a piece on the new #Draft2Digital fees:

eroticmythology.com/draft2digita...

#indieauthor #writingcommunity #writerslife #NoAI #booksky

A photo of colourful chalk lined up with yellow on the far left, reds, blues, then greens on the far right.

Greetings, Myth Lovers! Join us for the theme: COLOURS. Which myths feature something with a distinct colour - a blue book? A golden apple? A green ribbon? Write out your story and use the hashtag #MythologyMonday for boosts. See you tomorrow! 🔮

🎨 stux […]

[Original post on wandering.shop]

fine print book 3

they are gods.

they are not human. for them emotions and concepts are a defining purpose that validates their very being

ans such even a wonderful thing like love becomes terrifyingly dangerous

If I had had the choice, I would have kept #Smashwords, dated design and all, over #Draft2Digital any day!

Me: Maybe #PublishDrive is an alternative to #Draft2Digital?

PublishDrive: Use AI to generate optimized descriptions, keywords, and covers based on market trends!

Me: 🫠

#writingcommunity #writerslife #genAI #booksky

Yes. Making a feature that will run our writing through an LLM requires our consent and if it's not opt-in, you just don't care about consent, possibly because you fear only very few people would opt in?

a screenshot of the contact form on the Draft2Digital website containing my message to them: Delete my account. Also, grow some balls. It's obvious the real reason for your "maintenance fee" is that you don't feel the money you make from lower-selling authors is enough to maintain our accounts in terms of server space etc. But instead of being honest about the expense of maintaning such accounts, you fed us a line about the expense of policing for AI slop. If that was really your reason, you'd charge everyong the fee. You're targeting the lowest-earning authors because you want us off your platform, plain and simple. So fine. Bye.

Now that #Draft2Digital has added an "Account Closure Request" option to their dropdown, I sent another request. I think I made my feelings clear, what do you think?

A painting of Lucifer tempting Jesus in the desert. Lucifer is INCREDIBLY naked, dirty, and lurid, rubbing up ons Jesus' robes from behind; his hand is open in offering and is placed in front of Jesus' crotch

I just re-found this painting, which was in a kid's bible I had growing up. I used to obssess over it, and I'm pretty sure seeing Lucifer here was the first time I thought a man was attractive? Over the years I'd think "it couldn't possibly be as horny as I remember it", but I mean come ON

The BAFTA Games Awards are starting soon! We're honored that HADES II was nominated for Animation as well as Game Design, and salute our fellow finalists!🏆

Draft2Digital has about 330,000 authors in its system. If 70% of those authors earn less than $100, that's 231,000 accounts that will be charged the $12 fee, which is $2.7 million in reoccurring revenue.
In two years it'll get upped to $14 to "fight spam".
This is staying and only ever increasing.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, we'd like to remind everyone that Kobo distributes to libraries via OverDrive, and it costs nothing to publish on Kobo. Come join us! #indieauthors #publishing

Draft2Digital to Penalise Low Performers Draft2Digital makes authors with the lowest sales pay, pretending it's to protect against AI slop.

So I wrote a piece on the new #Draft2Digital fees:

eroticmythology.com/draft2digita...

#indieauthor #writingcommunity #writerslife #NoAI #booksky

"But $12 isn't a lot". It is when you're making less than $100. What if you only use Draft2Digital for library distribution and make $15 a year and this fee takes away $12, leaving you with only $3? What if you made less than $12 and now you're paying THEM? Fuuuck that.

Draft 2 Digital logo. Important Updates to Your Draft2Digital Account Dear For the first time in our history, we’re introducing account activation and maintenance fees. For many existing Draft2Digital authors, especially those with regularly selling books, these fees do not affect you. Here’s how they’ll work...

Activation Fee for New Accounts If you already have a D2D account (if you’re reading this, you probably do), the activation fee doesn’t apply to you. New accounts will include a one-time fee of $20 (USD). This activation fee, combined with our verification tools and human reviewers, will help us maintain a secure, high-integrity publishing environment. Like many platforms, we’ve seen a significant increase in automated and low-quality account creation in recent years. This onslaught from automated content farms threatens reader trust in indie titles and risks indies being associated with low-quality “slop.” A modest activation fee can make a real difference and allow our team to stay focused on supporting genuine authors like you.

Annual Maintenance Fee An annual maintenance fee of $12 (USD) will apply to accounts whose earnings from book sales, meaning your net proceeds after D2D’s commission, total less than $100 over the preceding 12-month period. If you earn $100 or more from your book sales over 12 months, you will not be charged this fee. Draft2Digital is primarily supported by earning commissions on book sales. For accounts that earn less revenue, a small annual fee helps offset a portion of the steadily rising costs we pay to maintain those accounts, including compliance, security, and infrastructure upkeep. Maintenance fees will start going into effect in 30 days, on May 14, 2026, and will be based on your account anniversary date. We’ll always notify you in advance.

The Bottom Line Our goal is to keep D2D a place where authors can publish with confidence. That means continuing to invest in our tools, maintaining strong relationships with retailers, and protecting the legitimacy of indie authors and the trust that readers place in indie books. If you have questions, additional details can be found on your Account Status page, or you can read our updated terms of service. You can also reach out to our support team via our contact us form at any time. We appreciate your trust in D2D, and we remain committed to developing and protecting opportunities for indies to reach readers. Sincerely, Kris Austin CEO of Draft2Digital

This is a disgrace. It will absolutely affect small indies (myself included), not help. Only the big fishes out there will be okay. It has quite an elitist feel to it. Also, I can't prove it, but my gut tells me it's part of the ruling class's worldwide stupidification campaign.

I notice that @draft2digital.bsky.social did not post about their new fees to their BlueSky account. Incheresting.

...$0.50 the first year I went wide is just cutting the first rung on the ladder for new authors and potentially locking them further into Amazon.
Hosting an eBook costs like $0.02 if they don't sell even once. Wouldn't it make more sense to limit the number of titles if the issue really is AI slop?

I pulled my books from Amazon Kindle Unlimited out of principle, not because I made more money. I mean, earnings on Amazon have also gone to shit due to AI slop, so maybe the difference is negligible by this point, but paying $20 + $12 for a platform that earned me...

... if you generate 1000 books in an hour you are much more likely to hit the $100 threshold than someone like me who can only sell their #erotica titles at a fraction of their distributors. Make the penniless writers pay, I guess.

It's not even like indie creators make more money from going wide.

I received an announcement by @draft2digital.bsky.social that they are going to introduce activation fees of $20 for new accounts and charge everyone(!) who doesn't make more than $100 / year a $12 fee.

I kinda get the activation fee as a hurdle to AI slop but...

#Draft2Digital #booksky

We gotta look out for each other. D2D took away our last major platform by locking Smashwords behind their participation fees. Our options were limited as it were. Fucking hell!

I've written up a blog post about the new Draft2Digital fees. Please give it a read if you'd like to know more about how yet another platform is harming indie authors.
#booksky