Qityol vs. Draft2Digital
Draft2Digital routes your ebook out to other retailers and takes roughly 10% of each sale for doing it. Qityol sells directly to readers, at one computed rate.
Free to publish · No exclusivity · 80% of net on every sale.
Start publishing freeDraft2Digital doesn’t set most of the royalty you earn — each destination retailer does. D2D’s own commission comes out of that on top.
Retailer royalty − D2D’s ~10% cut
Your file goes to Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and others, each paying its own rate. D2D’s own knowledge base states its commission as approximately 10% of the retail price, taken on top of that.
One rate, one platform
Qityol sells directly to readers on its own app. There’s no intermediate distributor commission — 80% of net is the whole calculation.
For its first 14 years, Draft2Digital didn’t charge authors directly beyond its sales commission. That changed on April 15, 2026: new accounts now pay a one-time $20 activation fee, and all accounts pay a $12 annual maintenance fee — waived for any account earning $100 or more in net royalties over the trailing 12 months.
Qityol charges neither. Creating a Qityol Creators account is free, publishing is free, and there’s no annual fee at any earnings level.
On a $9.99 ebook sale
No separate account activation or annual maintenance fee, at any earnings level.
D2D doesn’t require exclusivity either — that part is genuinely comparable to Qityol.
D2D reaches more storefronts than Qityol does today — it distributes to retailers Qityol doesn’t sell on directly.
A distributor (also called an aggregator). Draft2Digital doesn't sell your ebook to readers itself in most cases — it formats your file and sends it out to retailers like Apple Books, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble (plus its own Smashwords storefront), each of which sets and pays its own royalty. Qityol is a direct platform: it sells to readers on its own app, with one rate.
Per Draft2Digital's own knowledge base, its distribution commission is approximately 10% of the retail price of every sale — taken on top of whatever the destination retailer pays out, not instead of it. Since April 15, 2026, D2D also charges a one-time $20 activation fee for new accounts and a $12 annual maintenance fee, though the maintenance fee is waived for any account earning $100 or more in net royalties over the trailing 12 months.
It depends on the destination retailer and price, and D2D doesn't publish one single blended percentage across every store it distributes to — its own Smashwords store, for comparison, pays 75% of list at $2.99 and up but only 40% below that, and other retailers set their own separate rates. Rather than guess at a number D2D itself doesn't state simply, this page compares the structure: a distributor's own cut, stacked on top of a retailer's share, versus Qityol's single computed rate.
80% of the net sale amount, calculated one way, with no distributor cut layered on top. For a $9.99 ebook, that's $7.52 — computed by the same fee module that runs at checkout.
No — Draft2Digital doesn't require exclusivity either, which is a real point in its favor and one it shares with Qityol. The difference this page focuses on is the fee structure: an aggregator's commission on top of retailer royalties, versus Qityol's single direct rate.
Free to start. No exclusivity, no activation fee, no annual maintenance fee. 80% of every sale goes directly to you.