Are You Paying Too Much for Book Distribution? Watch Out for These Kind of Offers

Do you like paying crazy amounts of money for things that should cost 10% or even less of what you've paid? Of course not. Nobody does. And that's why it makes me sick when I see companies misleading authors with what they're selling. If you want to make sure you don't overpay for distribution when you self publish your book, well, this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers, four time author and your host here at Book Launchers TV and my latest channel. No boring book reviews. As part of our work at Book Launchers and just my presence here, we get a lot of people reaching out for help with various issues they encounter with other companies. And one such situation. What did you say? And last month something happened where this person was having some issues with a company. They had paid $1,000 for distribution. So I asked to see what was supposed to be included for his $1,000 payment, and what he sent me shocked me and actually kind of horrified and upset me all at the same time. Now, I am calling this a scam, but honestly, it's not really a scam because they fulfill on what they're promising. The person had hit some issues with what they were doing. But if they fulfill, it's not technically a scam. But after I break this down for you. Well, tell me in the comments if you think I'm being unfair calling it a scam or not. No matter what you call it, I think it's gross. So you might agree with me there. Now, before I reveal why it's awful, let me show you what they sent him. I removed branding to protect the not so innocent, but also to protect the identity of the person that sent this to us. Here is basically what it says. Following our phone conversation, we highly recommend opting for our global publishing and distribution plan for your books. Our goal is to provide you with a seamless and successful publishing experience, ensuring your book reaches a worldwide audience through our services. With our extensive network and dedicated support, we will manage every aspect from account creation to global distribution. And then it goes on to outline the services that they offer with their global distribution, including that your book will be published on a vast network of 40,000 platforms, including online stores, ebook retailers, libraries, and this will be for print and ebook distribution. And of course, it will be accessible in both formats, reaching readers wherever they prefer to purchase and read books. Then they outline some of the people, or rather companies in their distribution network like Barnes and Noble, Nook, Hummingbird, Redshelf, Kobo, Scribd and take a lot and others. So my savvy friends, does anyone recognize what this is? Well, they promote it as global book publishing with an American publisher on sale from $1,799 for $999. What a bargain. You're saving $800. But it also goes on and talks about print on demand technology and how their print on demand technology ensures that your book is printed and shipped efficiently, reducing overhead costs and ensuring timely delivery. And then it talks about the locations all over the world, us, uk, Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Poland. And they talk about custom pricing and market availability. You're allowed to set your book's pricing, which they say allows you for maximum sales and visibility. It talks about the extensive global reach, effective distribution. They also promise comprehensive support, which is what ultimately had this person reaching out to us because they were not hearing back and they were not getting support and updates. But they do say they're committed to helping you achieve your publishing goals and ensuring your book reaches a global audience. So where have I seen this before? Do I Hear you yelling IngramSpark? Yes, you are correct. Check this out. Hitting up the IngramSpark website. Well, the wording is not identical and my guess is that this company hasn't updated their material to say 45,000 because they said 40,000. But Ingram has expanded. But when you self publish with Ingham Spark, you're plugged in to one of the publishing industry's largest global book distribution networks, including access to over 45,000 independent bookstores, online stores, ebook retailers, libraries and universities. Look familiar? Then when you look at their ebook distribution, you'll notice all the outlets here. And while there were only a few listed on the document, there were some key ones here that make it pretty clear they're using the Ingram ebook distribution network. It can be useful to get help with upload and distribution setup. We do it for our full service clients at Book Launchers. It's a lot of details and it's overwhelming, but unless there are major issues with your files, this should take a couple of hours maximum. So should you pay someone $1,000 for that? And at no point have they mentioned Ingram. They call it their POD service and through their service they reach these places. And if in fact they are using Ingram's ebook distribution service for this, they're doing you a disservice because it's not that good. We never upload ebooks to Ingram. We always go through Draft two digital or we will also recommend you use Publish Drive. We love Ingram for bookstore distribution and pre launch. We use them to sell print books on Amazon. But for everything else. Nope, nope, nope. And if you think the companies may be saving you money on Ingram's fees while taking a load off of you, nope, nope, nope. They're not saving you. Ingram charges nothing. It's free for book uploads now. So even worse than paying $1,000 for a company to do something that you could do yourself in a few hours or hire someone else to do for a few hundred dollars maximum is that they aren't doing the optimal setup for you. And the accounts are probably going to be in their name, not yours, so you have to go through them for everything going forward. And in the case of this person, the company wasn't even responding to him on his questions. Distribution is tricky. I get it. It's always our most attended session when we run our deep dive training sessions on it. Which by the way, you can join them for free. Just go to booklaunchers.com newsletter and you'll get the invite. So I do not fault this person at all who hired this company for hiring this company to take it off his hands, but I fault the company for misleading promotions to reiterate the issues here in my mind. Anyways, again, tell me in the comments if I am overreacting, but the publisher is now the account holder and so the person doesn't have their own Ingram account so they can't log in and easily make changes or see their sales. They can't check their royalties or what they should be getting paid. And even if they are given their own account, which was not the case as far as this person person could determine, this is just not the optimal setup for a book and so it makes it not good value when we do uploads for our clients. We've also done keyword category and pricing research. We've had pricing meetings. We are setting up the accounts in their name and having them own the accounts so they can make changes in the future. We set it up so their distribution is optimized for their goals and needs, which is usually Ingram for print, KDP for Amazon, and then some sort of an aggregator for wide ebook reach like Draft two Digital or Publish Drive. And then if they have an audiobook, well then we're looking at ACX Authors, Republic or Findaway Voices. Yes, it's a handful of accounts, but it's optimal. And once it's set up you don't have to do much except for verify details for annual tax forms. But I mean, tell me do you think this is okay? Or do you agree that this is a scam and authors should probably know that it's not a good use of their money? Oh, and while I'm talking scams, here's another one to watch out for. They are popping up under all kinds of Amazon related names, but they're all the same crummy company and they are not Amazon related. And well, this is the video YouTube thinks you should watch now, so check out the one that's best for you and comment when you get there.