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Comparing POD companies: Ingram Spark, Amazon and others

This week I asked my professional editor colleagues for their views and experiences in using various Print-On-Demand companies. These colleagues are, like myself, qualified editors living in Australia, and quite experienced in producing self-published books.  I’m more experienced in using traditional printers and have used a POD company to do the printing and self-publishing part only a couple of times; and my editor colleagues who participated in my research have a lot of experience in using Print-On-Demand companies. So I have relied mainly on my colleagues’ views and experiences when comparing the different POD companies, deciding which company to recommend to a client, and sharing this information with you.

Thank you to my professional editor colleagues for providing me with the below quotes for this article.

Negative reviews of POD companies – Books.by, Xlibris

“I didn’t find any truly positive feedback about Books.by – mostly negative and warnings. I also found their website a bit obscure too – it’s impossible to see who actually owns the company.”

Another editors says: “I haven’t heard good things about books.by and their website raised a few red flags when I did some digging last year.”

“A client of mine had a very bad experience with Xlibris [previously owned by Author Solutions]. They were charged a lot of money and the resulting book that Xilibris had errors, the cover design looked DIY. Also, the quality was very poor, considering there were lots of photos  that would have come up beautifully had the paper quality been better. For the price paid you would have thought they would have spent a bit more money on both the design and the printing.” See other negative views of Xlibris  here.

Comparing Amazon KDP and Ingram Spark

“I have books produced from the same files from Amazon KDP and Ingram Spark. Ingram’s quality was better, particularly the covers.”

“I use both Ingram Spark and Amazon. The printing is a similar quality on both. But I get lots more sales on Amazon than Ingram, and a better payout per sale.”

“Ingram Spark’s distribution is much, much wider than Amazon KDP’s. I have been keeping my eyes open for an alternative for new clients (I help people self-publish, as a freelancer). But I’m still struggling to find a better solution than Ingram Spark.”

“I’ve researched a lot of POD companies and used a few as well. Personally I’d stick with Ingram Spark or at worst go with Lulu – they have a working relationship with Ingram and I’ve seen some good reviews for them.”

“I’ve seen covers of books produced by Ingram Spark and they were pretty cheap-looking. I’d prefer to use a traditional printer for a higher quality book.”

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The below comparison has been provided by a colleague who has used both Ingram Spark and Amazon KDP a lot over the years.

“I have used Ingram Spark (Lightning Source – their publisher platform) from 2016 onwards – initially while working for a publisher, then as a freelancer. Ingram Spark offers a better variety of books, and has better print quality for the most part, than KDP. When I’ve had a problem, IS are usually pretty quick to fix it. And Ingram Spark has better (wider) distribution than KDP. Based on my experience with both companies, I do prefer Ingram Spark over KDP, and will continue to recommend Ingram Spark to my author clients.”

Amazon KDP (KDP)

If you publish an ebook with KDP they only pay you once you’ve hit the $100 mark in whatever market you’ve sold in, so you could earn $99 via the US store and never get paid, plus $99 in the AU store and never get paid, plus GBP99 in the UK store and never get paid, and so on for their other 13 or so marketplaces.

Over many years, my company published around 600 books with KPD, and it took us 12 years to get paid for sales in India . KDP paid us every couple of years for sales in France., and about twice a year for a couple of other markets. KDP paid royalties on a regular monthly basis only for sales in the UK, US and Australia. KDP hung onto a lot of authors’ funds for a long time for some  marketplaces (e.g. Japan, Brazil, Mexico), because the books sold in those countries rarely  hit the $100 mark.”

Ingram Spark (IS)

IS: if you publish an ebook with IS you only get 35% royalty, rather than the higher royalty KDP pays. However, I’m pretty sure KDP pays you once’ve you hit $25 or GBP25, in the US, UK, Australian and “Rest of the World” markets, so you only have 4 different channels you need to hit the target on.

Note by Sally-Anne: while the conclusions of this comparison point to Ingram Spark being the recommended option, neither ourselves nor our colleagues are sponsored by Ingram Spark or any other print-on-demand provider.