Choosing the Right Self-Publishing Company: Something to Think About

After months and months of watching videos and long talks with my family, I finally decided to take the next step self-publish my first book with CreateSpace which was replaced by KDP a year later. Not only did KDP have the benefit of a worldwide audience, but most importantly at zero cost to upload it was the perfect no cost option.

I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with KDP. Overall, thanks to their bleed chart and cover calculator, uploading a book to KDP is a fairly easy process.

But after a while I thought that it was time to listen to the advice of not keeping all my eggs in one basket and spread my wings and try a new platform. Plus, from my childhood, when I first imagined what it might be like to become an author, I dreamed of having a hardcover book. And at the time KDP did not have a hardback option while Ingram did.

But unfortunately, unlike KDP, there is a charge for publishing with Ingram. You can create your book for free up to a certain point, but in order for them to set it up to publish on their site, it will cost you $25 for an eBook and $49 for a paper or paper and eBook. Worse yet, at least when I was first looking at them, anytime they had to go through this process there was a charge. With my zero-dollar budget this was a major issue. As much as I wanted to try this platform out and create a hardcover version of one of my books, there was no way that I could risk one, never mind potentially multiple $49 dollar charges.

I was ready to give up on the idea of publishing with Ingram when I found out that they were having a special where for a short time you could enter a code and publish for free. I quickly jumped on the offer and excitedly created my first book on the Ingram platform. The experience was not as intuitive as KDP, but except for a few mild hiccups the process was fairly smooth.

Words cannot express the thrill of joy as I opened the box and held the much longed for hard cover book. And to my surprise, in spite of not having the benefit of having the ability to run ads like you can on Amazon, last year I managed to sell several copies of my book via the Ingram platform.

With this small success in mind, I have been waiting for another special so I can publish on Ingram Sparks again. That was until I came across this video by Dale L. Roberts. It definitely caused me to make some changes to how my book was set up for sale. And if you are considering where to publish your first book or you are thinking about publishing your first book on Ingram Sparks you should watch this video first as it just might prevent you from making a very costly mistake when it comes to setting up discounts and allowing returns of your book on the Ingram platform.

For more valuable self-publishing advice from Dale Roberts check out his book The Amazon Self Publisher: How to Sell More Books on Amazon

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links from which I will earn a commission.