Smashwords Affiliate Marketing Program is ending; Introduction to Draft2Digital’s Program
April 24, 2024 — As you may know, Smashwords stopped accepting new affiliate marketers in August 2023. We have since decided to retire the Smashwords Affiliate Marketing Program altogether as of May 15, 2024. If you are signed up as a Smashwords affiliate marketer, any outstanding commissions you earn on or before May 15, 2024 will be paid out normally in our next monthly payments.
Why is the program ending?
Although we are proud of the Smashwords affiliate program’s industry-leading features, payout rates, and flexibility, usage among affiliate marketers has been too low to justify continued investment. We have decided to refocus our development resources on higher-priority projects that do more to help our authors and publishers reach more readers.
The migration of Smashwords author and publisher accounts into the Draft2Digital system is one example of a higher-value priority. For authors and publishers, once the migration of your accounts to Draft2Digital is complete, all your publishing, distribution, book management and reporting functions will move to your Draft2Digital dashboard. Smashwords reader accounts will remain unchanged.
The sunsetting of the affiliate program will also allow us to streamline the Smashwords site so we can focus on building out more customer-centric features for readers. We have exciting plans for the Smashwords store, the nearest term objective of which is to introduce preorder functionality so customers can place preorders in our store!
Does Draft2Digital have a Referral program?
Yes! While the Smashwords’ affiliate program rewarded authors, readers and professional affiliate marketers who pointed book-buying readers to the Smashwords store, Draft2Digital's affiliate program is different.
Draft2Digital’s program, called “Refer-a-Friend,” rewards those who point new authors to Draft2Digital. After the author signs up at Draft2Digital and publishes books, the referrer earns a small cut of the author’s book sales for a period of two years. Unlike the Smashwords affiliate program, the Draft2Digital affiliate cut comes out of D2D’s cut, not the author’s. You can read more details on the Draft2Digital Refer-a-Friend program here.
If you have any questions, our friendly support team is here to help. Just click on the “?” button at the top of any Smashwords page or the Support link at the bottom of any page.
Thank you for your partnership. We’re committed to making Smashwords the best online bookstore for indie authors and the readers who love them, while continuing our mission to ensure Draft2Digital is the easiest way for authors to get their books into the hands of more readers.
The Draft2Digital Team