Getting your book into the world

A look at IngramSpark vs. Kindle Direct Publishing

In my work as a writing coach, editor, and self-publishing guide, my clients and I always come to an important question: how will they get their book out into the world?

More than half of the books in the world are sold by Amazon. You can self-publish your book through their Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform, which allows you to upload your cover and manuscript for ebook, paperback and even hardcover, and sell it on Amazon.

Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/

You can also upload your book onto Apple books, or other retailers.

Amazon and Apple are retailers. (As are Barnes & Noble, local independent bookstores, etc.) Amazon’s KDP is a platform for self-publishing your book.

You can also elect to publish “widely” and publish your book through a book distributor like IngramSpark. (Or another distributor like Draft2Digital, BookBaby, or PublishDrive.) But today, I want to just compare IngramSpark and KDP. And I admit, I’m barely scratching the surface and would love to have you add to the conversation in the comments!

So, should you publish via IngramSpark or KDP? That depends. But let’s dive in!

IngramSpark is a wholesale distributor. You upload your book via their platform, and they make it available it to a wide range of retailers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and even libraries and independent bookstores.

Both pay you royalties. IngramSpark pays a slightly higher royalty, but also charges more fees, including a $25 revision fee if you make changes to your book after the first 60 days. KDP authors get a 60 percent of the cover price (minus printing costs) royalty, where IngramSpark pays 85 percent of the net revenue they receive for selling the book. Note that these are percentages of different things.

IngramSpark also charges a 1 percent “market access fee” for every book. (They used to charge an account set up fee, but no longer do that.)

IngramSpark offers you the opportunity to get your book into “brick-and-mortar” stores—the industry term for physical bookstores. To do that, you have to agree to discount the cost of your book and agree to returns. This is a weird quirk of the publishing industry. Bookstores can order books, and if they don’t sell, the publisher will take them back and issue a refund. They also sell the books at a deep (like 50 percent) discount to bookstores (basically it’s the wholesale price so the bookstore can sell the books for cover price or slightly reduced). Here's more detail on discounting.

Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/

However, just because your book is available to a bookstore doesn’t mean they will order it. That’s up the individual bookstore. It often means the author has visited that bookstore or at least contacted them and asked them to stock their book.

KDP or IngramSpark?

Some clients just don’t like Amazon—the way they have such a huge market share, or whatever reason. That market share is also what, um, gets your book in front of a lot of readers. Still, I talked with one potential client this week who said she didn’t like Amazon and therefore wanted to self-publish through IngramSpark.

But here’s the thing: IngramSpark doesn’t sell to consumers, they sell to retailers. So they will distribute your book to Amazon who will sell it. You receive a royalty from IngramSpark, but a royalty is a percentage of sales revenue, which of course IngramSpark gets from Amazon. Amazon sells your book, takes their cut, and pays IngramSpark, who pays you.

If you publish on KDP, you don’t pay a set up fee. Amazon only gets paid when you sell a book. You create a free account, upload your manuscript and cover, and when someone orders your book, they print a copy and send it out. (This is called print-on-demand, and IngramSpark does it as well. But again, they are then sending the books out to retailers, not readers.)

On KDP, you can also make changes to your book at any time. Say you self-publish your book, and send a copy to an author you admire, asking them to write a review on amazon, or provide an endorsement you can use to market the book. They write such a glowing endorsement that you want to add it to the front pages of the book. Or, a reader points out that you have a typo somewhere in the book. (This happens, even if you edit very carefully.) In either case, you can make changes and upload a new version for free.

If you want to make changes (after 60 days) on IngramSpark, you’ll pay $25. So if you have an ebook and a paperback, that change will cost you $50.

IngramSpark is the right choice for authors who want to publish “widely” meaning getting their book to a variety of retailers. They are the right choice for authors who want to get their book into brick-and-mortar stores or libraries.

KDP is a better option for those who are content to have only amazon sell their books. This isn’t as limiting as it sounds, because of Amazon’s incredible market share. Amazon has a global network, so your book will be sold around the world.

Some authors choose to publish their ebooks via KDP (Amazon) and their print books via IngramSpark. (Just make sure you purchase your own ISBN.)

To chose, you’ll need to run some numbers, but also consider your goals.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov: https://www.pexels.com/

I’ve chosen to use KDP because having one platform to sell my books makes marketing easier. When I tell people about my self-published books, I have one link that I share with them: the link to that book’s page on amazon. On my website, I have information about my books, and my client’s books, with links to the amazon pages. If I want to update the cover or revise my book slightly, I can do so easily without paying fees.

If you’ve self-published, which path did you choose? If you researched your options, what did you find? What questions do you have about the process? Leave a comment!