For many professionals in the publishing world, being “indie” is a badge to wear proudly. The term doesn’t just apply to authors; certain publishers and even bookstores also celebrate the freedom that comes with being independent from larger players in the industry.
Draft2Digital, as one of the most popular publishing platforms for self-publishing authors across multiple distribution sites, was built with indie authors in mind. But its latest partnership with Bookshop.org will allow that support to spread to another category of indies. Through the partnership, authors published through Draft2Digital will be able to list their ebooks on the Bookshop.org site, which donates profits directly to independent bookstores, according to a joint press release by the companies. Authors still receive royalties from sales made through Bookshop.org as they would through any Ingram distribution channel.
“Indie authors publish high-quality books that stand shoulder-to-shoulder with traditionally published works,” Kris Austin, CEO of Draft2Digital, said in the press release. “All the major ebook retailers carry indie titles because they sell. Our partnership with Bookshop.org ensures independent bookstores can now participate in that success by enabling self-published ebooks to become a meaningful and permanent part of their inventory.”
Previously, authors with paperback books published through D2D Print were listed on Bookshop.org. Now, authors will have the ability to list their ebooks on the site as well, “extending authors’ reach beyond major ebook retailers and into the indie bookstore ecosystem,” according to the press release. Thousands of ebooks will be available on Bookshop.org starting today, with that number expected to increase rapidly in the initial weeks, according to the release.
“We’re so excited to be able to bring those authors into indie bookstores and allow indie bookstores to start selling those authors and build relationships with those authors,” says Bookshop.org CEO and founder Andy Hunter.
“Indie bookstores and indie authors—they make sense together,” he says.
A Boon for Local Bookstores
Hunter started raising money for Bookshop.org in 2018 as a way to help local bookstores sell online and compete with Amazon. Customers who visit the online store can select a local bookstore to support, then purchase books listed on the site as normal—the site supports print books, ebooks, and audiobooks through its audiobook partner, Libro.fm. Bookshop.org will fill and ship the order using the company’s distributor, Ingram, but “the full profit from your purchase will be sent to [the] bookstore you selected,” according to the company’s website. If a customer doesn’t select a store, proceeds from the sale will be added to the company’s profit-sharing pool, which is divided among all participating bookstores.
Hunter launched the site in January 2020, three months before the pandemic made online shopping a necessity for most independent businesses to stay afloat.
The timing couldn’t have been better.
The online storefront launched with eighty-eight bookstore partners. In the first six weeks of the global shutdown, the company had onboarded 1,200 stores. Since then, the site has kept growing, Hunter says. Today, Bookshop.org supports 2,900 stores and has donated $45 million to bookstores in the US, $54 million to bookstores worldwide. It also hosts an affiliate program to encourage influencers, authors, and others to link back to the site instead of to Amazon.
“I’ve always wanted to have parity with Amazon,” he says. “I don’t want an indie bookstore to not be able to do anything that Amazon could do.”
What It All Means for Authors
Draft2Digital currently distributes around 1.2 million titles from around 330,000 authors. Hunter expects the new partnership will bring more than six hundred thousand ebook titles to Bookshop.org.
The addition of a distribution channel isn’t Draft2Digital’s only new venture. In September 2025, Amazon confirmed authors whose titles were enrolled in KDP Select, which required Amazon exclusivity, could use sites such as Draft2Digital to distribute their ebooks to libraries. Before that, in March 2022, Draft2Digital acquired Smashwords, a publishing platform and bookseller that has since become a dedicated ebook store.
“We’re just going to always be there to open up any opportunity we can, because we want indie authors to feel like they’re the center of the universe,” Austin says.
To Hunter, the Bookshop.org partnership is a step toward a more independent market overall.
“Right now, you have Amazon selling over 80 percent of the ebooks in this country. They have complete market dominance on everything from policies to rates, how much people get paid to what books are discovered,” Hunter says. “If you have a diverse landscape where you have three thousand independent bookstores, all with their own opinions, selling and featuring different ebooks, it’s much, much richer a playing field for all authors. And it also creates more competition, which generally benefits consumers and generally will benefit everybody.”
He continues, “Just by being part of our platform and by linking to our platform and telling your readers about our platform, you’re going to be making a huge difference and a huge step towards a more democratic bookselling landscape.”
Authors published through Draft2Digital will have the option to opt their books into distribution through Bookshop.org as of today by logging into their author dashboard and selecting Bookshop.org as a digital store.