Episode 215: KDP Print vs Ingram Spark For Indie Authors

In this week's episode, we take a look at the pros and cons of KDP Print and Ingram Spark, and see which one works best for helping indie authors make excellent print books.

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 215 of the Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is August 23rd, 2024 and today we are looking at KDP Print and Ingram Spark and seeing which is the better choice for indie authors seeking to make print books.

Before we get to our main topic, we will have an update on my current writing projects and the Question of the Week. My current main project is Shield of Conquest and I pleased to report I am 74,000 words into it, which puts me on Chapter 16 of 23. It helps that I had a 10,000 word day for it this week and another 10,000 word day for last week, which of course really moves the needle forward. I am also 37,000 words into Ghosts in the Tombs, which will be my next book after Shield of Conquest. Then after Shield of Conquest will come Cloak of Illusion and I am 7,000 words into that. So good progress all around.

In audiobook news, recording for Half-Orc Paladin is almost done. Hopefully that should be wrapped up next week and then that will be available in audiobook before too much longer. So that's where I’m at with my current writing projects.

00:01:10 Question of the Week

Now let's take a look at Question of the Week. I haven't had time to do Question of the Week since July, so let's do one now: If you enjoy reading about history, what is your favorite historical period to read about? No wrong answers, obviously. We had a range of responses to this one.

Our first responses from Justin who says: My favorite historical periods are Roman (both Republic and The Empire) and American French and Indian War through The Civil War. The US was blessed to have the leaders that founded it. They were not perfect, but they were very good indeed.

What's interesting about that is if you read any biographies about George Washington, you'll find out what he probably wanted more than anything in life was prestige and recognition and I think deep down, he very much would have liked to have been, you know, King George The First of The United States, but at the moment of crisis, he was able to refuse the crown and be only president, be only Mr. President, instead of a king. So that is probably one of the reasons the United States has lasted as long as it has.

Our next response comes from AM who says: The 1964-965 World's Fair in New York is a moment when the American corporate optimism of the ‘50s came crashing into the aftermath of Kennedy's assassination and growing civil unrest (some of which was caused by the fair organizer’s policies and decisions as an urban planner in New York City). It introduced both video calls and Belgian waffles to the General American public. It also had a massive impact on pop culture and several of the attractions Disney created for it still exist today: The Carousel of Progress, It's a Small World, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, and the pieces of Ford’s Magic Skyway that are still viewable via Disneyland’s railroad.

Our next comment is from Sue, who says: for me, definitely Medieval/Tudor history, although I love all history. I was one of the few of my year at school who chose to study history rather than geography. Maybe that's why I get easily lost in a new place, lol.

William says: I have had the feeling that I should read more on the Holy Roman Empire, but all those princedoms and rulers with complex family names makes it a bit daunting.

He is entirely right about that. The history of the Holy Roman Empire is indeed quite complicated.

Catriona says: I have two. The English Civil War and Medieval British history pre-Norman invasion. Although truth be told, I love history in all respects. I left the UK 20 years ago and have been in Asia ever since, and am in awe of Angkor Wat, the Great Wall of China, and the history here.

Andrew says: The US Civil War. My dad bought a war game in the early ‘80s and got me hooked, followed by Napoleonic Wars.

Jeanne says: I've been recently reading a lot on early British history, from the Roman period to the early Medieval period. The history of the British Isles is fascinating because it is made of so many different peoples, languages, and cultures that have all had an influence on modern Great Britain.

Barbara says: early English history for me. Anything from William the Conqueror to Richard the Lionheart and Prince John. Richard was popular at the time because of the chivalry, but John was a much better ruler even though he was hated.

And John says: Europe 1500 through 1700, also known as “Knights with Guns.”

For myself, it's hard to pin down since it will be whatever catches my interest at any given time. Like when I visited the battlefield of Chickamauga in 2022, I went on a long reading spiral about the US Civil War. When I watched Season Four of The Crown, I wound up reading about Thatcher-era Britain to see all the many details that the show got wrong. When I recently read Ghost on the Throne about the Diadochi, the heirs of Alexander the Great, I did a lot of supplemental reading about Alexander the Great and the Wars of the Diadochi as well. Back in 2010, I beat Medieval 2: Total War as the Byzantine Empire faction, so after that I did kind of a deep dive on Byzantine history.

All that said, I think two historical periods I read about the most are the second half of the Roman Republic, specifically from the 2nd Punic War to the victory of Augustus and the high Medieval period of Western Europe from about the Norman conquest to the Black Death. I had to laugh when the “how often does your boyfriend think about the Roman Empire?” meme was popular last year because I do actually think about the Roman Republic/Empire a lot, but mostly to mine it for inspiration for fantasy novels. Obviously, the High Medieval period also provides a lot of potential ideas for fantasy books.

That said, those two historical periods offer a lot of examples of a fascinating riddle that has no answer: can a good person also be an effective leader who acts in the best interests of his people? Like, Caesar Augustus and King Henry I of England were in questionably very bad men who did a lot of very bad things, yet they're rated among the more effective Roman emperors and English kings because they brought peace and order to their respective realms, whether their realms wanted it or not. Monastic chroniclers at the time said that in King Henry's day, a virgin girl carrying a bag of gold could travel unharmed across England, and while this is obviously a political exaggeration, Henry did in fact impose peace and order on England during his reign.

Of course, a bad man can often be a bad leader as well, but I'm afraid one of the unfortunate realities of the human condition is that effective leadership does require a good deal of ruthlessness, and you see a lot of that in both the Roman and in the Medieval periods- bad men who were good leaders and bad men who were also bad leaders.

00:06:33 Main Topic: KDP Print vs. Ingram Spark

But this is not a history podcast. This is a podcast about writing and indie publishing, so let's move on over to our main topic, whether KDP Print or Ingram Spark would be better for indies to use to produce their print books.

There's an obvious question to ask first: why have print books? There's a couple of different reasons. Some people prefer print books (not as many as they used to), but some people still read print books over ebooks whenever possible. Some people enjoy books both as physical objects and collectibles, and some people enjoy giving books as a gift. Giving a physical book to someone is generally a more satisfying experience than emailing them a code to download the book off their favorite ereader. It is also easier to share print books between people. That way you can read the book and give it to a family member or friend who wants to read it as well without having to purchase an additional copy.

It is also an additional source of revenue for indie authors, not a huge source (with certain exceptions). Most indie authors will make more from their ebooks than they will from their print books, but there is potential revenue in print books as well. I checked right before I started recording this podcast and of the money I made from Amazon in 2024 so far this year, about 1.8% of it came from print books. You might say 1.8%, that's not that much. But in this economic climate, I don't think anyone who wants to stay in business should turn away an additional 1.8 percent of revenue.

Both KDP Print and Ingram Spark use what's called on demand printing, and we should explain what that is before we go any further. Printing books for self-published writers used to be kind of a nightmarish experience. You might, if you're familiar with the publishing industry at all, might have heard the old joke about how that if you self-publish, you're going to end up with a garage full of books and that did in fact happen to many people. They decided in the 2000s and before that they wanted to self-publish their own books. So they had a contract with the printer and the printer would probably have like a minimum order of like 5,000 copies or something. So you'd have to buy that, and then you'd have your garage full of boxes of books and you'd have to hand sell or find a way to sell all those books one at a time. It was a very unpleasant experience and I'm glad I never tried it, and that I'm fortunate enough to live at a time when the technology has improved quite a bit.

Print on demand works that basically it's like one copy is printed whenever you get one order; there's no inventory kept on hand. If you've bought indie books off Amazon, you might notice there's a bit of delay because the book first has to be printed and bound and then it gets shipped to you. This is by contrast to a traditional published book where if say, for example, Stephen King publishes a new novel, there will probably be an initial print round of like 100,000 copies or some equally large number, and then they’ll only print more if those initial 100,000 copies sell out. This is a very inefficient and cumbersome system, so you can see why ebooks and print on demand are much more economical and environmentally friendly, if you are worried about that.

That said, it doesn't actually have to be a choice of KDP Print versus Ingram Spark. They in some ways do different things, and as of today, August 23rd, 2024, you can use both essentially. They're not exclusive and you can do different kinds of print books through both. But we'll get to that in a little bit. Another important thing to be aware of as you're going to do print books is to have realistic expectations and mindset about it. I've noticed many new or younger authors have the dream they're going to get their book on a physical shelf in a physical store or library, but realistically that does not make a lot of financial sense for most people. Most authors (myself among them), will sell much more in ebooks than in the time it would take to chase down individual bookstores and individual libraries and try to sell print books to them. Bookstores and libraries are frequently overwhelmed with requests from indie authors, especially local indie authors, wanting to put their books in their stores. They may have created specific policies in response to that demand, and you may want to check their website before trying to get a local bookstore or a library to carry your book.

If you do want to get your book into a physical store, it is an uphill battle, and frankly, it's probably not worth the time it would take you to sell to fight that battle. Shelf space in bookstores is both limited and shrinking, especially as bookstores sell more things like toys or stationery/lifestyle items which have a bigger profit margin than books, and you don't have the resources as an indie author to compete against the Big 5 for space on those shelves. Bookstores usually expect a discount of around 35 to 45% off retail as well, which means the higher cost of printing on demand makes this very difficult and gives indies the big disadvantage of getting a book into a bookstore.

Now I know it sounds like I just was talking down print books quite a bit, but like I said, 1.8% extra revenue. So most of your print book sales will probably be online and probably from people who order directly, like your readers who most enjoy your book and want a physical copy for their collection or readers who will buy the physical book and give it as a gift to someone they want to give it as a present to.

I should note that I've been talking about applies to fiction, but the rules are slightly different when it comes to nonfiction. I should note that my nonfiction book, the Linux Command Line Beginner’s Guide across its entire lifetime, fully 25% of its sales have been in paperback. Because that is if people need specific nonfiction in print, especially if it's a technical nonfiction where they can refer back to it like my Linux book, then they will be more likely to order it in print. So that is something else to bear in mind as we now dive into the next section of the show, the difference between KDP Print and Ingram Spark. We will look at the pros and cons for both.

For KDP Print (that is Amazon's program for selling print books on their site), the pros are it's obviously the best option for selling print books on Amazon, and it's not uncommon for people to use KDP Print for selling paper books on Amazon and then some other service for selling paper books at other online stores. There are no setup fees and there is a window where you can make changes without a fee. The reporting is either real time or real close to real time and you can see print sales next to ebook sales stats. Like when I was referencing various sales figures throughout the recording of the show, I just paused quickly to check on my KDP dashboard and was able to pull up the figures with a couple of clicks. Pricing is an advantage. Amazon offers the most favorable rate for selling directly on Amazon.

In return, Amazon controls the minimum price for the book, kind of like they do for audiobooks, which is usually pretty similar to the cost of printing and shipping. When you set up a print book on KDP Print, Amazon will say based on its size, this is the minimum price. You have to sell at this price and you can't go any lower and then you can set the price however high you want. Usually it's best to set the price so that you get about $3 or so per copy or if you go into expand distribution, that you get dollar per copy of it sold. Expanded distribution, we're going to talk about right now in the con section of KDP Print. There are frequently issues with third party sellers. The problem is that KDP Print offers something called expanded distribution, where if you check that box, your book will be sold through Amazon on a variety of different sites like Barnes and Noble and other physical bookstores that have the online store for a reduced rate. So for example, if you sell a copy of your KDP Print book, you get $3 on Amazon, through expanded distribution you'd get like $1.00.

The problem with that is it doesn't always work right. Many of the stores don't always integrate properly with Amazon, so the book will show up, but the cover will be missing or the book just won't show up at all, or some of the stores only update like every month or even quarterly sometimes. So that can be a problem as well. KDP Print, like many print on demand services, does not offer the ability to make books returnable, which is something bookstores expect and want, and most physical bookstores will not take a book that is not returnable. There's a cultural component there as well. Most physical bookstores, especially most independent physical bookstores, do not want to order books from their biggest enemy, Amazon, and will flatly refuse if you ask. Some and even a significant number of libraries are unable to order print books from Amazon or it requires more paperwork or effort for them to do so, and therefore they don't really want to bother.

Now let's take a look at KDP Print’s main rival Ingram Spark, which is another print on demand service. The premise for this is that Ingram Spark is much better at Amazon at selling books at non-Amazon bookstores, which of course makes a lot of sense. It's also easier to sell to libraries from Ingram Spark than it is from KDP Print. You do have more freedom in pricing the book, which you have to be careful for because it is possible to set things up so that you lose money with every book sale, which Amazon KDP Print does not let you do for obvious reasons.

Opinions may differ, but some people do think the covers and interiors look nicer from Ingram Spark for than they do from KDP, and you can order bulk copies at wholesale prices, which you can't really do on KDP Print. You sort of can- you can order things at the author rates, but Ingram Spark has a bigger discount for that. You can also produce a bigger variety of books through Ingram Spark in different paperback sizes and different hardback sizes.

So all that sounds good, but there is a pretty significant list of cons as well. There are set up fees for each title, which there are not for Amazon KDP Print. Additionally, if you make any change to the book whatsoever after it is published, any change at all, whether it's a new cover, fixing a typo in the text, whatever, you have to pay a fee for any change you make in the book after it is published.

Unsurprisingly, it is harder to sell an Ingram Spark book on Amazon than it is anywhere else. Some people say (and I have no way of confirming this) that Amazon artificially increases the delivery times for these titles, but it's probably more likely is that Ingram Spark would have to print the book, ship it to Amazon, and then Amazon would have to ship it to the customer, which would add quite a bit of roundabout travel to the book, which is why some indie authors who are very into print sales tend to use KDB Print for any books that sell on Amazon, and they restrict those books to Amazon and sell their wide books at other bookstores using Ingram Spark.

So what conclusion can we draw from this? If you only have time to pursue one, go with KDP Print since Amazon is the majority of print sales, especially in the US right now. That's what I do. If I wanted to do more elaborate paperback books, I would probably go through Ingram Spark, but KDP Print is pretty good at meeting my needs. Unless something changes drastically, I will probably keep doing that for the foreseeable future.

However, if you have the time and the ability to do both, it is advantageous to do both. You will need separate ISBNs. You get an ISBN from Amazon and an ISBN from Ingram for the edition of the book you do through there. You could do books through KDP Print and have them just on Amazon and then have the books for the other stores, have those go through just Ingram Spark. This is a bit more work, but if you are an author who is very interested in print books or does a lot of business in print books, that may be advantageous for you to pursue.

So to sum up, KDP Print is the simpler, easier option and is probably good enough for most indie authors, whereas Ingram Spark offers a lot more options but is more expensive to use and probably requires greater knowledge to use effectively. But remember, if you are an indie author, you probably will still be making most of your money on ebooks so don't stress out too much about the paper books. And as I mentioned before, my Linux Command Line Beginner’s Guide, I got 25% of its revenue from its lifetime from the print book, but that means 75% of the revenue still came from the ebook.

So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.