#175: When Should Authors Use IngramSpark

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

As an independent or self published author, why should you use IngramSpark? That's what I'm going to share with you in today's training. Hi, my name is Shelley Hitz. I'm an author coach and the owner of authoraudienceacademy.com and I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. Message. It's time to let your light shine. And in this training I'm going to be talking about why and when you would want to use IngramSpark. So if you followed me for any amount of time or if you've read my book, self publishing books 101, you know I'm a huge fan of Createspace. I've been using Createspace since I published my first book in 2008 and it has worked beautifully. It's super easy to use. Their support is amazing. You can get them on the phone anytime. I love that.

There'S no upfront costs. You do now need to provide your own ISBN if you want to use your own imprint, which I do recommend. They do offer a free ISBN. I don't recommend going that route, but CreateSpace is amazing. I love it. They publish directly to Amazon and you can use their expanded distribution to publish to other places. However, ingramspark is also a printer that offers print on demand services that we can use. And so why would we Want to use IngramSpark? Why not just use CreateSpace for everything? Well, there have been a few different times I personally have used IngramSpark and I wanted to share with you why. The first is for more exposure. So wider distribution. And what I mean by wider distribution is that when you publish to IngramSpark, you are put into the Ingram catalog. This is the catalog that pretty much all bookstores use to order books. Most bookstores will not order your book or stock your book if you've published through CreateSpace only. And so this is huge. If you want to get into bookstores, then you really want to consider using IngramSpark. I did this with my book Broken Crayons Still Color.

When I published this book, I knew I wanted to have wider distribution. There was potentially opportunities to do book signings and different things for bookstores and I just did not want to limit the scope of that book. So what I did was I published my book to Amazon through CreateSpace. I did not choose expanded distribution. And then I used IngramSpark to publish my book, the print book, to all the other retailers. What this did was it allowed me to get into the Ingram catalog and it opened the opportunity for book signings, getting into bookstores and so many other things that could potentially come. Now, to be honest, I haven't used that yet, but I didn't want to limit myself in case the opportunity came in the future. One thing you will have to do in order to use this option is you will need your own ISBN. Now, Canadians, you have it. Great, because you get free ISBNS from your country. In the United States, we need to purchase an ISBN from myidentifiers.com and I like to purchase them in bulk because I know I'm going to be publishing multiple books. And that way I always have ISBNS I can use. So I had to have my own ISBN, which I'm now using on CreateSpace. Anyways, you can have the same ISBN that you use for CreateSpace. You can use it for IngramSpark. The biggest thing is you cannot use the expanded distribution on CreateSpace. If you use that, then you are eliminated from uploading to IngramSpark. So that's option number one is wider distribution, especially if you want the opportunity to get into bookstores or to do book signing. The second is if you want a hardback edition of your book. So CreateSpace currently does not offer hardback versions of your book, whereas ingramspark does. I recently published a children's book, full color, and I wanted to have a hardback version. That's just what's done typically for children's books. So I used IngramSpark and I have now a hardback version. This is my hardback version. And what I did for this book is I also did the paperback version. I ordered a print from both CreateSpace and IngramSpark. To me, they weren't a huge difference. So the paperback version I did completely through CreateSpace. The hardback version is only through IngramSpark. And so now if you go to my listing for this book on Amazon, you'll see that it has different versions, has the paperback version, the hardback version. And then, you know, if I had an audiobook version, it would have that as well. And it has an ebook version. So that's the second reason you might want to use IngramSpark is for hardback versions. Now, I've heard a lot of people say that they think the quality is better for ingramspark, especially a full color or, you know, the paper quality. I personally have ordered proofs from both CreateSpace and Ingrespark for a variety of my books. And I really haven't seen a huge, huge difference personally in the quality. But one thing to keep in mind is ingramspark does have additional options. You can choose for paper quality and for different aspects of your book. So the third option is maybe if you want a higher quality book. Now just understand if you choose these higher quality options on IngramSpark, your profits are going to shrink. For instance, publishing a hardback book on ingramspark, I earn very, very little when I try to price it competitively. So it's really not a great income producer to have the hardback version on IngramSpark. But you know what? It was cool and I loved it and I love having that option available. So that's a really great thing to consider. A third option is if you're international. So sometimes for international authors, the royalties are better on IngramSpark. Now this is something everyone is going to have to research for yourself. So you'll have to research this for yourself. When I was publishing my children's book and broken crayons still color, I was comparing prices between IngramSpark and CreateSpace and it was interesting. You know, sometimes it was a little bit cheaper on IngramSpark, sometimes a little bit cheaper on CreateSpace. So it just depends on the book, it depends on the person, and especially depends where you're living. Because CreateSpace is really ideal for US based authors, but for international authors, I recommend checking it out and comparing and seeing what is the better option for you. Finally, I want to share that many times ingramspark will run specials. Currently you have to pay a fee to upload your files. I think it's like $49 for the initial upload of your files. And then you have to pay a fee every time you update your files. Unlike CreateSpace where you can just upload and upload and upload. You could proof it, upload it again, proof it, upload it again as many times as you want for free. IngramSpark charges fees. And so you need to know this. I did not realize that you had to pay every time you uploaded a new file. And I got charged for my broken cranstal color, the adult version, not realizing it was going to cost me to upload before I was approving my proof. So that's a really big difference and it can really add up in a hurry if you are making little changes, little tweaks. If you need to upload a new file, let's say next year, it's gonna cost you every time to do that and that really eats into your profits. So one thing to keep in mind is that IngramSpark does offer coupons occasionally for the initial upload fee. So they'll have coupons that will waive that initial $49 setup fee. Those come so I recommend getting on their email list if you're interested in publishing with them. But I have never seen a coupon that waives the fee when you re upload a new file, which is an additional $25. So that's going to be a fee you're going to have to pay no matter what. And if you have to upload your files and update them often, it just may not be the best option for you. Overall, ingramspark is a great option to give you wider distribution, to give you hardback vers of your books, to give you some different quality options. And potentially for international authors, I've been happy with the the books that I've published through them. I will say that the support in my opinion the support is much better at CreateSpace than it is at IngramSpark. They, they rave about their support and they say oh, everyone says we're so good. I have not had that experience. I have had a poor support customer service experience with IngramSpark and it has been very frustrating a few times. But overall it's a great company. It's a great option to consider in certain circumstances. However, for most of my books they're published and print or they're printed through CreateSpace only. So again, we're talking about print books here. Ebooks are a completely different training, a completely different topic, and actually the first, I think five podcast episodes of Author Audience cover publishing a Kindle book. So if you're interested in publishing a Kindle ebook, go back to the very beginning and you'll be able to listen to my procrastination to publication training. I hope you found this training helpful. All about why you would want to publish on IngramSpark. If you have questions, post them. Let me know what your questions are. And if you're an Author Audience Academy member, I have a step by step training with on how to use IngramSpark in the member area in the Publish module. It's there for you right now. If you're not an Author Audience Academy member, I invite you to join us. I have recently added back the monthly option so you can get started for as little as $39 a month. We'd love to have you join us. Get instant access to my IngramSpark training plus all of my training. It's all inclusive. You get everything that you need and plus you get a free, fun, active community in our private Facebook group. So I'd love to serve you inside Author Audience Academy. You can get started@authoraudienceacademy.com again. My name is Shelli Hitz and I'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Author Audience. I would like to invite you to attend one of my free trainings on three proven book writing formulas. Every nonfiction author needs to know. This is a fun and fast way to write a nonfiction book, but also a book that you're proud of. Plus, I will give you two free gifts just for attending. No credit card required. First you'll get my 10 nonfiction book title templates and you'll also get my ebook titled Brilliant brainstorming. It's a 28 page ebook and both of these bonuses are yours at no charge. Just for joining us for the training, you can sign up for my free training by going to shellyhits. Com formulas. This training and the two bonuses are free and I would love to help you write your next nonfiction book.