This article is part of our Complete Guide to Royalty Management.
Draft2Digital is one of the most popular aggregators in independent publishing, and for good reason. A single account sends your ebooks and print books to Kobo, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, libraries through OverDrive and hoopla, and a growing list of other retail endpoints. That convenience comes with a royalty tracking challenge, though. One distributor, many retailers, multiple currencies, and a single report that bundles everything together. If you are trying to calculate what you owe your authors from D2D sales, the complexity adds up fast.
The good news is that you do not need to untangle it manually. Here is how to get your Draft2Digital sales data into royalty software so the calculations happen automatically.
Where to find your D2D sales reports
Draft2Digital provides sales reporting through its online dashboard. To download your data:
- Log in to your Draft2Digital account.
- Navigate to Reports from the main menu.
- Select the date range for the sales period you need.
- Download the report as a CSV file.
D2D’s reports include sales from every retailer they distribute to in a single file. You will see columns for the retailer name, territory, title, units sold, and earnings. This is different from a platform like Amazon KDP, where you get separate files for each marketplace. With D2D, one file covers everything.
Understanding D2D’s multi-retailer reporting
What makes Draft2Digital’s reports unique is the aggregation. A single monthly report might include Kobo sales from Canada, Apple Books sales from the UK, Barnes & Noble sales from the US, and library lending data from OverDrive — all in the same spreadsheet.
Each row typically identifies the retailer and territory, so the data is there. But if you are trying to break this down manually in a spreadsheet — filtering by retailer, splitting by territory, applying different royalty rates — you are doing a lot of repetitive work every month. This is exactly the kind of structured data that royalty software is built to handle.
Payment timeline
Draft2Digital typically pays on a monthly cycle with a relatively short delay compared to other distributors. Payments generally arrive within a month or two of the sales period, though the exact timing depends on when each retail partner reports to D2D.
This is noticeably faster than the 90-day delay you see with Ingram, but the timing still matters for your royalty accounting. You need to match sales data to the correct period and reconcile it against the actual payment when the deposit arrives. If you are importing from multiple distributors with different payment cycles, keeping track of distributor payment timelines becomes essential.
Preparing your file for import
This is the part where publishers most often create problems for themselves. You download the CSV from D2D, open it in Excel, adjust a column, re-save it — and suddenly the file will not import correctly.
Do not edit the file. When your royalty software natively supports Draft2Digital’s format, the raw file is the correct file. Download it, leave it untouched, and upload it directly. The software should recognize the layout and column structure without any manual intervention.
If you want to rename the file to include the sales month — something like “D2D-Sales-2026-01.csv” — that is fine, as long as you do it without opening and re-saving the file contents.
Step-by-step: uploading your D2D sales file
Once you have your report downloaded, the import process in Royalties HQ takes about a minute:
- Go to the main menu and click Add New Sales.
- Drop your D2D file into the upload zone (or click to browse).
- Royalties HQ automatically detects the file as a Draft2Digital report. Confirm the format is correct and click Continue.
- The system validates the file. If everything checks out, the status shows “Ready to import.”
- Click Import to bring in the data.
- Each row in the file becomes a sales line, grouped into one or more sales batches — typically organized by retailer and currency.
After importing, you will need to record a publisher income payment for each sales batch. This links the sales data to the money you actually received from D2D, which is what drives your royalty calculations.
Royalties HQ supports 12 native sales file formats from major distributors, and Draft2Digital is one of them. For a full list of supported formats and a detailed walkthrough, see the importing sales data documentation.
D2D alongside direct retailer accounts
Here is where things get interesting for a lot of publishers. Many use Draft2Digital for some retailers but maintain direct accounts with others. The most common setup is a direct Amazon KDP account — because KDP does not allow distribution through aggregators — paired with D2D for everything else.
If that is your workflow, you are importing two sets of sales files each month: one from KDP and one from D2D. The important thing is making sure you are not double-counting. Since KDP sales only come through your direct KDP account and D2D handles the other retailers, there should not be overlap. But if you have ever switched a title from D2D distribution to a direct account with Kobo or Apple, you will want to verify that the transition period does not produce duplicate sales lines.
Our guide to importing Amazon KDP sales data covers the KDP side of this workflow.
Tips for a smooth D2D import workflow
Download reports as soon as they are available. Even if the corresponding payment has not arrived yet, getting the sales data into your system early means less backlog when it is time to run royalties.
Keep a consistent folder structure. Organize your D2D downloads by month and year. When you need to re-import or verify data six months from now, you will be glad you did.
Reconcile against D2D payments. Because D2D aggregates multiple retailers into a single payment, it is worth checking that the total in your imported sales data aligns with the deposit you receive. Small discrepancies can surface from currency conversion differences or payment adjustments.
Review retailer breakdowns. After importing, use your sales reports to spot trends by retailer. You might find that a title performs well on Kobo but barely sells on Apple — useful information for marketing decisions and for conversations with your authors.
Building your complete import routine
Draft2Digital is one piece of the puzzle. Most publishers are importing from at least two or three distributors each month. The goal is a repeatable routine: download each report, upload it without reformatting, and let the software handle the matching, currency conversion, and royalty splits. Once that workflow is in place, a process that used to take days can be wrapped up in under an hour.
If you are still building out your royalty process, download our free guide for a walkthrough of what a modern royalty workflow looks like, or dive into the importing sales data documentation for the technical details.