IngramSpark Premium Colour Hardback book

To give authors an idea of the print quality of IngramSpark’s hardbacks, here are several images kindly supplied by Louise Nash.

This is a hardback without a dust jacket. The interior is printed at premium colour setting. Here’s a summary of the quality levels:

1. Black & White: The most economical option. Uses inkjet technology on crème or white paper. [1]

2. Standard Color: Standard quality, printed on white paper using inkjet technology. Best for books that feature occasional color elements. [1]

3. Premium Color: Uses higher-quality inkjet printing on white paper to produce vibrant, crisp colors. Ideal for children's books and image-heavy publications. [1]

4. Ultra-Premium Color: The highest quality level. Printed with laser toner on white paper, it provides a satin finish, light sheen, and highly vivid colors. Best suited for photography or coffee table books. [1]

Too Good To Be True: Books.By

Kindlepreneur does a deep dive on book startup Books.by. Reddit also has quite a long thread with author feedback. And the overall picture is not pretty. Limited and expensive print options, a re-tread of an earlier website, dodgy reviews, highly yearly charges and more. There is definitely a space in the print on demand market for a service that leaves more money in authors’ pockets, but unfortunately books.by might not be the one.

Draft2Digital: a good idea for independent authors?

Draft2Digital offers a very cost-effective distribution route for ebooks (print on demand also, but that service is still in beta, for various reasons). Its sale channels cover all of the large ebook retailers. It has a very simple and attractive service proposition:

We are Self-Publishing with Support. Your book is your priority. Our priority is you. We build tools and services that let you focus on writing while we take care of layout, publishing, distribution, print-on-demand paperbacks, and more. Keep writing. We’re here for the rest.

In a long and very informative blog post, author services firm Reedsy describes them as “The gold standard for self-publishing aggregators, Draft2Digital distinguishes itself with excellent customer service and a user-friendly interface. They’re the best way to sell your book with dozens of retailers without tearing your hair out.”

Kindlepreneur also has a largely positive review that dives into the details of uploading a new title and how the royalty payments and update fees work.

Users discuss vcry specific pros and cons of the service on a reddit thread. Important note: the 10% Draft2Digital fee is charged on retail price, not on profit, and comes on top of the share taken by the end seller.

Writers Weekly has published a number of very negative user reviews that indicate some administrative problems.

• Plenty of users had complaints about the non-payment of royalties.

• Draft2Digital books cannot access Amazon advertising or other Amazon sales tools.

In summary, a service that will be useful to many authors, but go in with your eyes open and aware of the moderate drawbacks, especially the Amazon advertising issue.

Anatomy of a Fiverr / Amazon KDP Advertising Campaign

If you are interested in running an Amazon campaign for your title/s on that platform, but would prefer to use a third party to manage the process, here is one author’s results and associated comments:

Fiverr allocated “bestbooks2020” who is managing my Amazon advertisements. They ran the first campaign in the Australian market only. That campaign ended yesterday. At the same time, I went onto Kindle Unlimited for 90 days.

Here are the results as of today:

Since launch;

Sales = 30 – <title 01> = 22 Kindle, 7 paperback. <title 02> = 1 Kindle. Royalties due = $145.75.

KENP READ (Kindle Edition Normalized Pages Read)

<title 01> = 6,988 in Australia, 175 in the USA = 7,163

<title 02> = 138 in Australia, 1 in the UK = 139

Total = 7,302

As I’ve had it explained, KENP READS can be from actual downloads or from reading the first few pages.

I have initiated two more AD Campaigns through bestbooks2020 for the UK and US markets. So it will be interesting to see how that goes.   Two, three-day Ads in each market cost me circa $157 each. I was initially going to run AD campaigns for all three books simultaneously in both markets, but that would cost me $900+ (maybe another time).

Update

KindleUnlimited

KEDP READS = 12,874 (11,522 for <title 01>, 1,352 for <title 02>, 0 for <title 03>). Amazon’s technical team are looking at <title 03’s> results to find out what is going wrong.  Given the nature of the beast, it’s impossible to have 0 results for <title 03>.

 Sales:

A total of 39, being 31 x Kindle and 7 x paperback.

The Amazon AD campaign Fiverr ran in Australia only resulted in 61 clicks for the first three-day blitz and 84 for the second, and a bill today from Amazon for $177.01.

The Amazon AD Campaigns start this Thursday in the UK and USA, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.  Given the cost for Australia, I’m now nervous about how much that will cost me, albeit I can pull the plug on it at any time.  I will monitor daily.

Amazon and the Big Publishers

An interesting piece explaining how some of the world’s biggest publishers have learned to live with and profit from their Amazon presence. The ongoing decline in real world bookstores (especially in the US) has made that more of an existential necessity than an optional extra. Remember when the Internet was going to bring diversity and choice? It certainly hasn’t worked out that way in browsers, search, social, ecommerce or just about any other field. Without some kind of regulatory restriction, it seems the natural evolution of any online business sector is towards aggregation and domination by one player.

POD Book Sizes from KDP and Ingram Spark

Most independent authors opt to upload their print-on-demand book files to Kindle Direct Publishing (formerly Createspace) or to Ingram Spark/Lightning Source. Hence, designers tend to choose book sizes that conform to the standard sizes supported by these two providers (the sizes are very similar between the two platforms. The pages that detail the standard sizes for KDP are here, and for Ingram Spark here. For a head to head comparison of the two services, check out this article. Others argue for using both services at once.

Createspace Versus Lightning Source

For self-publishers, choosing between Amazon's Createspace print on demand service, and Ingram's Ingram Spark/Lightning Source service can be difficult. Both services have their pluses and drawbacks. For fence-sitters, here's an article that argues uploading to both services is a good idea. An author client recently indicated this approach was working well for him, and we'd be happy to hear opinions either was other print on demand using authors.

Finding your BIC code when setting up an Amazon account

When authors set up accounts at Createspace/Amazon for print on demand or via Kindle for ebooks, they are confronted with a request for their BIC code. This is a unique identifier code used for international money transfers, and is also known as a swiftcode. To look up the BIC for your bank, go here.

Lightning Source versus Createspace

One of the benefits of digital printing combined with online bookselling is the capacity of printing books as they are ordered, rather than pre-printing and warehousing. This massively reduces costs for small presses and self-publishers. Two major players dominate this field — Createspace, owned by Amazon, and Ingrams Spark (Lightning Source in Australia). The two services offer a very similar level of functionality, but there are differences in pricing, approach, assistance and sales channel availability. Check out these interesting articles discussing  the relative merits of each service, and identify which one better fits your particular use-case.