Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing

Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing EP 053 - The Co-Founders of Draft2Digital

Dec 20, 2018

Ask episode

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

In this episode, Mark interviews Aaron Pogue (President), Kris Austin (CEO) and Toby Nance (CTO), the co-founders of Draft2Digital about how they worked together and played off one another's strengths to create the company.

This episode is a bit of a response from a few listeners who heard Mark mention that he recently joined the D2D team, but they weren't familiar with the company.

They asked if it might be possible to share a bit of information about what Draft2Digital is all about.

If you're not familiar with Draft2Digital, this will provide a decent introduction. And if you think you know Draft2Digital, perhaps there'll also be some deeper info and insights for you to learn even more by pulling a bit of that curtain back on three gentlemen who usually prefer to operate behind the scenes at this author-friendly company.

Prior to the interview, Mark talks about the new announcement from this episode's sponsor, Findaway Voices . . .. . . which is called VOICES PLUS.

Mark then provides a personal update which includes his recent visit to Oklahoma City to visit the Draft2Digital office, his short story "The Ritual of the Drawing" which recently appeared in the anthology Amazing Monster Tales: Dawn of the Monsters.

Mark also mentions his recent appearances on a few other podcasts, including the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast and the Disruptor Podcast.

In their conversation, Mark, Aaron, Kris and Toby talk about:

How Aaron has been a writer since he was six years old and how his interest in self-publishing led to his desire to have a tool to make it easy to publish
The fact that the three of them became best friends in college
The initial "Google Doc to eBook" conversion tool that was a command line program that Aaron had requested Toby create for him
How that tool was the beginning of the collaboration between Aaron and Toby, and Kris to create a platform all authors could benefit from
The business proposal Kris put together that involved making a product that gave authors power in the industry
Toby's joking description of Aaron as both Draft2Digital's first user and least supported user
The company's goals to offer the best customer support of any of the other players in the industry
The importance of making the systems and systems easy for non-techical persons
The partnership of being there to help writers achieve their writing and publishing goals
The origin of Universal Book Links from looking in detail at author problems that everyone knows about but nobody has time to work on (such as allowing the author a single link to their book where readers can choose the retailer where they'd like to purchase that book)
How Books to Read links work better the more readers who use it (including the ability for users to set their own prefered store that Books2Read will automatically take them directly to
The recently announced Account Sharing Controls that allow for virtual assistants, for example, to manage some of an author's metadata and assets without having access to their more sensitive information, such as banking information
The things that they are each most looking forward to as we head into 2019

After the interview, Mark reflects on three things this conversation and recent trip to Oklahoma City made him think about: Personal connections in a digital world, collaboration and being open minded.

Links of Interest:

Aaron Pogue is the President and co-founder of Draft2Digital, a company offering online, author-assistance tools to enhance the business of publishing. Sporting simple but beautiful ebook formatting and conversion as well as easy distribution across some of the most powerful digital stores available, D2D is growing both its market share and its influence in the self-publishing world. Draft2Digital was founded in 2012 and enjoys continued growth and success. Before taking his post at Draft2Digital, Aaron worked as both a Technical Writer with the Federal Aviation Administration and a writing professor at the university level. He holds a Master of Professional Writing degree from the University of Oklahoma. He also self-publishes novels in the fantasy and science fiction genres. His books have sold a quarter of a million copies since his debut in 2010.

Kris Austin is the CEO and co-founder of Draft2Digital, a company offering online, author-assistance tools to enhance the business of publishing. Sporting simple but beautiful ebook formatting and conversion as well as easy distribution across some of the most powerful digital stores available, D2D is growing both its market share and its influence in the self-publishing world. Draft2Digital was founded in 2012 and enjoys continued growth and success. Before taking this post with Draft2Digital, Kris worked for a private information technologies firm, where he managed the IT departments of dozens of Oklahoma City businesses. He received a B. S., Computer Science from Oklahoma Christian University in 2004.

Toby Nance is the CTO and co-founder of Draft2Digital, a company offering online, author-assistance tools to enhance the business of publishing. Sporting simple but beautiful ebook formatting and conversion as well as easy distribution across some of the most powerful digital stores available, D2D is growing both its market share and its influence in the self-publishing world. Toby has been the head of development for Draft2Digital since its founding in 2012. Before taking this post with Draft2Digital, Toby worked at MSCI as a team lead writing custom workflows in LISP. He also worked on the Core Development Team, improving their tool support for LISP. Before that, he worked as Senior Design Engineer at Lowrance Electronics in charge of automotive mapping. He wrote a turn-by-turn routing navigation system and tides and currents prediction software and maps.

The music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0