But you didn’t follow their every instruction. You admitted to skipping the learning curve because you wanted a streamlined experience. I have had issue with Ingram, but why complain about $49? You aren’t paying for the interface, as you stated, you are paying for distribution. I would be fine with “Everybody will have their own experience” if you approached things more objectively. Sorry, but it’s silly to grouch about Ingram’s issues when you didn’t take time to learn it (everything takes more time at first)… THEN (if I recall your words correctly) you want to switch to KDP? KDP does not have the worldwide distribution Ingram does, and most importantly if you want to be a serious author and be taken seriously, bookstores will NOT want to work with you if you walk in boasting about having your book on Amazon. That means nothing to them. Ingram on the other hand allows you to choose the proper bookstore discount as well as other things. I can’t imagine someone complaining about $49 after NOT taking the time to learn how to use something different, THEN limiting yourself to only selling on Amazon because its easy…? What???

The same thing has just happened to me, Sue. I am gobsmacked by this- as you say, you’re prompted to make your books returnable when uploading the titles. And then… it’s completely out of your control how many books will be returned that you’ll then have to pay for. I’m leaving the title “on” for now, while I’ve unchecked the returns box, but wondering if it’s not safer to go with another company altogether. Or do they all do this?

I was in absolute shock over the returns, which seems one step away from fraud. Thank you for validating my experience. I have one tiny wee book out, no business to back it up, and was recently charged $500 for returned books. IS’s “help”? “Yes, you have to pay that.” It seems unfathomable to me.

Hi! I want to shut down my account too. Can you tell me how to delete it? I searched elsewhere, but all I could find was how to delete a title from IS.
Thanks!

Stephanie

I have not used Amazon or IngramSparks but have been considering either or both. My experience with my first book has been through a Christian publisher, Xulon Press. I found some of the same problems. Paid a lot to get my book published, doing most of the work myself, and virtually all of the editing. One delay after another due to their technical mistakes. Had to take my issues to the top person in the company to get a resolution. He seemed reasonable and fair. However, there is a lack of accountability for sales. I published my own Web site for the book and pushed prospects to the places where they could purchase a copy (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart (later)). I was getting over 20 potential customers/day over the process of a year and received virtually NO RECORD of any sales. I contacted them and did get one e-book sale and one softcover sale in the last couple of months. I knew some sales were made, but the sales I have seen may have been made from the secondary market or from larger orders placed by some who purchased in small bulk (20 copies). Some copies were returned and the royalty for those books was deducted from what I was paid. My publishing package included book returns (where I didn’t pay for shipping, just royalty reversed.)

It is very disheartening to have invested a year of your life into writing a book, investing several thousand dollars into getting it published, going through substandard customer service, having no foolproof way to assure you are getting royalties for all books being sold. It seems like the whole “self-publishing” industry is rigged so that everyone but the author makes the money.

So we each seek a way forward and seek to find peace on how to resolve our challenges. Thanks, again, for all here who have contributed to our knowledge base so we better understand “the beast” – the challenges confronting those who want to self-publish, AND make a profit.

Thomas, book returns are a huge problem for small authors, and in my opinion, returns are the dirty little secret known only by IngramSpark and their largest accounts. I have perhaps a dozen books published through IngramSpark, which accounts for about 10% of my sales. Initially, since I was chasing distribution within a large national bookseller chain, I checked the box that allowed that bookseller chain and other book stores to return my books, since it only seemed fair at the time. However, what I then learned over the course of two Christmas seasons is that book sellers large and small, knowing they can return the books, will order in heavily during the holidays so as to give customers an “impressive” selection of books in their stores, but then dump ALL of those books back to the author through IngramSpark’s return process at the end of the year. As a result, the booksellers generate revenue by ordering and displaying more books than they need during the holiday season, and then they, as well as IngramSpark, generate EVEN MORE revenue when they return the over-ordered books at a cost of $4.00 each to the author. In this scenario, you as the author are taking on the risk of your business, AS WELL AS that of a large national bookseller. In my case, for two Januarys in a row, a handful of boxes would suddenly show up on my doorstep with 300 books in them, and then IngramSpark would ding my credit card for $1,200 for the returns PLUS the royalties I had made on the initial sale of the books. That’s not the worst part however. The unethical slap in the face is that the booksellers would then turn around and reorder the same books within the next month or so. Meanwhile, I’m out $1,200 plus my royalties, I now have 300 books that have been manhandled at retail and in distribution, and IngramSpark’s attitude…while holding my money… is one of complete indifference. I no longer publish new titles via IngramSpark because of this, and I unchecked the “Returns Allowed” box on my existing titles on their site, so my “sales” are down considerably, but at least I’m no longer a victim of this unethical behavior. The good news is that the booksellers recognized that my books do sell, so they now overlook that they aren’t returnable. Either that, or I’m only receiving bookseller orders now from those who have a conscience. I want to like IngramSpark, but they make it nearly impossible to do so.

This is well and truly helpful, thank you very much! I’m OBLIGED to go with IngramSpark at the moment because they’re the only POD publisher who accept the rare language I write in, so I’m pretty much stuck with them and collecting every scrap of advice I can find.

If this is any help, the only file type that IngramSpark accept is PDF/X. You just can’t upload a regular PDF file, you’ll keep receiving that “fonts not embedded” message even if they ARE embedded. You need to find a good PDF to PDF/X converter and use that for IngramSpark.

Brenda you are correct about the return policy. But I disagree that self published authors are not welcome in bookstores. I currently have a self-published book in all the major bookstores including Barnes & noble as well as independent book sores and no on consignment. It depends on the book and the look of the book. If it is equal to a traditionally published book, they are fine with it but the requires working with a professional designer, editor, etc. The main reason for going with Ingram is they distribute to over 7,000 places including libraries. It costs $85.00 to get into their advance catalog which goes to all of those places. Cheap advertising for usre. No other source can match that.

Since i can’t give Ingram 0 stars or minus, i will give 1 star, but it doesn’t reflect the reality.
Zero Customer Support ( like i don’t think that they read your email to the last word or they understand English, you came with a problem, they answer for another problem or with a standard message, a robot or something) Zero IT infrastructure, the site is full of bugs but this is not why i give Ingram 0 Stars.
We are like almost or maybe over 2k people who got they’re accounts closed with 0 warnings, but they refuse to pay the money to this people and me. They sold our property, they did money on our products and now they refuse to answer the emails to provide us our unpaid invoices and the date when they will transfer our money. Hope they will resolve this soon or will be very bad for them, too many people want to lawsuit them for this and for sure they will get in trouble.
So if you wanna make money with ingram, my opinion is to take 180 degree and go amazon or other trusted platform, coz this IS NOT A TRUSTED PLATFORM ! ( i say this and other 2k people or more from different communities ) !

Have a not nice day Ingram !

P.S : Don’t come with that stupid standard message with your bull*hit catalog team , that’s not a team, a team with 7 kids can do more .