How to self publish a book?
Book publishers please note the information is according to my experience publishing children’s books up to 36 pages.
Amazon/KDP for paperback and eBooks is user friendly; free to set up, upload and revise with no upfront costs. Customer service is great.
With Kindle version you have the option to receive 5 free promotional days with the exclusivity for your eBook to be display with KDP only.
Ingram/LS/Lightning Source it been a rough challenge, their customer service is extremely poor, it takes them a long time to respond and when they do it is often not related to what you have asked. Most of the time they just attach a link for you to read.
If they do respond, the representatives are not knowledgeable and one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. No phone service.
Cost is high including title yearly fee, upload fee, revised fee, and shipping for proof copy.
The print is good quality.
IngramSpark is a service operated by Lightning Source. I have moved one pending title from Ingram/LS due to the poor customer service and their high fees. I was hoping that IngramSpark would be easier to work with. Transferring the title took over 2 months (they mentioned about 30 days). I couldn’t complete the setup of the title because after the transfer I found out that they don’t allow for two accounts to be open at the same time! This was a huge waste of time and caused much frustration. To resolve it I needed to transfer all titles from Ingram/LS to Ingram spark and then close the Ingram/LS account.
Transferring the other two titles from Ingram/LS was faster the second time–It took about a week.
The IngramSpark representative was also able to close my account with Ingram/spark since they are essentially the same company.
Their costs are cheaper than Ingram/LS and include the upload fee and revision fee.
There is no title yearly market access fee.
If you are also self-publishing with KDP upload first to KDP so you can review the book and work out any revisions if needed for no additional fees and then upload to IngramSpark.
