Leveraging the top global retailer + aggregate platforms

I’ve done several videos on this over the years, but since I’m making this blog my primary platform, y’all get the most updated edition!

Two of these haven’t changed, but if you read my blog or saw the video on why I no longer recommend Lulu, you know Lulu is now off my list of recommended self-publishing platforms. So let’s get into it!

 

1. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)

If you’re subscribed to lots of publishing newsletters or follow author-publisher influencers like I do, you might hear people say not to rely on Amazon as your publisher. Bezos is evil, Amazon is stealing market share, and yada yada yada. And I get it.

But here’s the thing: most people still choose hard formats (hardcover, paperback) over ebooks and audiobooks, and most of them are shopping on Amazon. It’s convenient, and people are so busy they don’t always have time to pick up copies at bookstores.

Imagine how frustrating it can be to drive to a bookstore, maybe even pay for parking, and the book you want isn’t available there.

Customers all over the world can order a book on Amazon in seconds and get it on their doorstep. Within 48 hours—if they subscribe to Amazon Prime. Amazon also offers some of the fastest shipping for books, and all Amazon printers globally use vegan ink.

When I published my first book on Amazon KDP (it was called CreateSpace then), you had to contact customer service via a contact form. I’d get a response within a few days. I always revered Lulu for getting back to me via email within 48 hours.

But I’ve used Amazon’s customer service chat function twice in the last year, and chatting with an agent is almost instant. I got instant answers to my questions; thanks to them I found out why Lulu never published my book when I loaded a revised black and white version. You can’t beat that.

Royalties are competitive at 40–60% for print and 35–70% for ebooks. Note that image- and colour-heavy interiors can lower both your print and ebook royalties because of the cost of printing in colour and the bigger ebook file size.

Let’s not forget that Amazon’s category ranking system makes bestseller status more accessible for self-published authors vs. the traditional lists like The New York Times, which rely heavily on bookstore sales.

While expensive, you can set up ads on Amazon the same way you do on social networks to invest in the chance of marketing your book to readers who are purchasing similar books.

Also, Amazon owns Audible, which has the largest market share for audiobooks. Yes, its royalty sucks (40% for exclusive distro and 25% for non-exclusive, even less for readers who are on Audible Plus), but decide what’s best for you if you’re doing an audiobook. That means all 3 formats can be on the same Amazon sales page.

ACX, the platform that manages Audible, offers both connections to human narrators and AI-generated voices. It has translation capabilities in Spanish, French, Italian, and German, and more languages are likely coming (that does not mean these translations will be perfect). Voice cloning narration is in beta, and I imagine more indie authors will produce more audiobooks once this becomes available to them.

Finally, with Amazon’s Expanded Distribution, your book can be available to some retailers in the US and the UK. It’s nowhere near the capability of IngramSpark (and perhaps also Draft2Digital), but that might change. Some advise against using Expanded Distro as it lowers your royalty even more per book copy, which is the problem I had with Lulu.

Some say Amazon KDP’s print quality is slightly lower than other platforms, but I compared my updated Amazon proof to Lulu’s, and the difference is in the paper weight and whiteness. The average reader won’t notice this unless you really compare two different versions side by side.

The ink quality is the same and dare I say the cover is even more vibrant. But it makes the outer margin slightly bigger and the inner margin slightly smaller. You can adjust this if you’re bothered by this when you get your proof.

I also compared the price of author copies to Lulu’s. For a batch of 5 books, Amazon’s cost to me is roughly C$7.54 per copy vs. C$17 from Lulu, including shipping. Brutal! I want to cry thinking about all the copies I bought from Lulu and shipped out to people. 

Some still think Amazon’s cost is still too high for author copies, but I still get 70% per book if I sell it on my own (I mostly keep them on hand to give to clients).

Unlike other platforms, there is no fee to use Amazon KDP. You share royalties and pay a lower price than retail if you want to order author copies.

If you’re the type of author who just wants your book to be out there in some fashion for people to buy and don’t care about your book being absolutely everywhere, Amazon KDP is a safe bet. You can also use the platforms below to publish on Amazon, but you won’t have control over how your book appears there.

You’ll know from Part 3 of my series on successful self-published authors that some authors who’ve had huge success on Amazon end up getting deals from some of Amazon’s traditional publisher arms, or from other publishers.

 

2. IngramSpark

With its printing and retail connections, IngramSpark is one of the top choices for self-publishing authors. Considered an aggregate platform (meaning it can publish your book to several retailers), it has access to 40,000+ physical bookstores, online partners, major online retailers, and libraries.

If you’re self-publishing and want your book to be at your local bookstores but don’t want to handle the consignment agreement, you can tell your bookstore to order your book from IngramSpark at the wholesale price you set.

The print quality is good, and there is more flexibility with size and paper quality.

IngramSpark’s parent company, Ingram Content Group, offers audiobook distribution to 18 retailers, but I have encountered no one who has used them for their audiobook distro—I wonder if you have to have a separate account with them vs. IngramSpark’s main platform where you can set up your print and ebook fairly easily.

There are some downsides to IngramSpark. I’ve managed it for a couple of clients, and the user interface is brutal. It can take minutes for things to update, so you wonder why nothing happens when you click “save.”

When it does a quality scan on your files and sends back errors it has rejected, the box containing the errors does not let you scroll down to view everything. So you have to keep loading your files and hoping the errors go away as you fix your files.

I have heard no updates about their ink being vegan (it wasn’t last time I contacted them in 2022). And there’s no tracking on your proof copy unless you pay for it to be shipped to you faster (I believe 2-3 weeks is the standard time to wait for receipt).

Unlike other platforms, there is no fee to use IngramSpark. You share royalties (45–70% for print, 40–85% for ebooks) and pay a lower price than retail for author copies.

If you choose the highest royalty for printing, that means a lower cut for bookstores, and the chances of them ordering your book to sell will be lower. That’s why you’ll see recommended pricing in the system.

Finally, you never know when you’ll hear back from customer service if something goes wrong or you have a question. This author explained why she’ll never use IngramSpark again.

Both Draft2Digital and Lulu use IngramSpark to handle their print distribution.

For some, the bookstore ordering capability will trump all the cons I’ve mentioned, but I say there is definitely room for more competition with IngramSpark if other aggregate platforms can figure out how to print and ship books to bookstores at wholesale price.

Pro tip: Using both Amazon KDP and IngramSpark together

I learned recently that you can get the best of both worlds with the same print book ISBN. I haven’t tried it, but what you’d do is load to IngramSpark first. Before you publish the book, set up your book on Amazon KDP so both platforms to log your ISBN. Then, de-select Amazon when publishing on IngramSpark.

On KDP, do not opt into Expanded Distribution as you’re using IngramSpark for that. Let me know how it goes if you try it!

 

3. Draft2Digital

Taking over the bronze spot where Lulu once was is Draft2Digital. Note: I have no experience with this platform, but am hearing good things. Like IngramSpark, it is also an aggregate platform (and in fact uses IngramSpark’s print distro).

Draft2Digital owns Smashwords, a well-known ebook retailer. So if I’m correct, its roots were with ebooks, but that’s changing. If you had created an ebook first and wanted to sell print copies, Draft2Digital can convert your ebook file into a PDF and create a wraparound cover for paperback out of your ebook cover. Cool, right?

Draft2Digital doesn’t do hardcovers though.

Draft2Digital’s partnership with OverDrive allows libraries to access ebooks and audiobooks, and I hear its customer service is good, but some have said their books were rejected for no reason and its nonfiction categories are limited, making it a better platform for self-publishing fiction authors.

It also has a partnership with Voices by INaudio, which I used for wide audiobook distribution.

I recently used Books2Read’s free master link function for my second book, which you can manage via Draft2Digital regardless of whether you use it as your platform.

Unlike other platforms, there is no fee to use Draft2Digital as there is a royalty split (45% for print, 30–75% for ebook). As with the other platforms mentioned, I imagine author copies will also be at a discount compared to the retail price.

Royalties are always changing, so they may be different when you actually use the platform, so let me know if that’s the case. I also have a Google Sheet summarizing the royalties, pros, and cons of all the self-publishing platforms I know of, so sign up for my course, How to Publish Your Bestselling Book, to get access to it.

 

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