IngramSpark works, just not perfectly

A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion is the third book I’ve helped to get on IngramSpark.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the platform, IngramSpark is one of the few book aggregate platforms, meaning it can make printed books and ebooks available to other online retailers such as Amazon, and physical retailers such as Indigo in Canada.

Note: It makes book your available to them; it does not mean they are going to buy copies of your book.

Since it’s a good idea to have control over your own Amazon listing (which I didn’t do when I launched my second book), a lot of indie authors choose to do both Amazon and IngramSpark. That’s what Sarah Edmondson and Nippy Ames did when they launched A Little Bit Culty in 2026.

Their publishing agency made the book live on Amazon in March, and they started making revenue right away (if you call the delayed payout from Amazon “right away”). Then they hired me to put the book up on IngramSpark.

All the metadata I used was pretty much the same as on Amazon, but I noticed there’s a slightly different book category system that Europe uses that isn’t the same as BISAC‘s or Amazon’s.

Tip #1: The lower the wholesale discount, the higher the retail price

The book went live on IngramSpark in April 2026. I started approaching potential local bookstores in late May since Sarah and Nippy were going to travel to Vancouver in the summer. IngramSpark recommends a 55% wholesale discount on its platform, but the authors chose something lower. They also set a no-returns policy, which, IMO, is a must for self-publishing authors.

The first local bookstore that responded said that IngramSpark was selling the book for C$36.99 to the bookstore, far higher than the C$27.99 retail price set on both Amazon and IngramSpark. Luckily, they were allowing the authors to bring in their own copies for a potential event, even though they normally don’t buy self-published books.

It’s worth mentioning that readers can buy directly from IngramSpark, which shows the correct retail price.

Another bookstore confirmed that the same price was appearing on their end, so they would have to charge C$45.50 per copy to cover their time and costs of hosting a book event with the authors. While signed copies do have a higher value than retail, and retailers are well within their right to mark up a book compared to Amazon’s price, a 60% markup for the customer is a little steep. Even my colour paperback was never that high!

The authors brought 25 books from their printed stash in Atlanta to Vancouver and ordered another batch from Amazon for the four events they had booked (three in bookstores, one self-hosted). They considered ordering from IngramSpark, but didn’t trust that the books would arrive in time since they weren’t being shipped from within Canada.

While IngramSpark’s quality is slightly higher than Amazon’s, Amazon has printing facilities in the countries it operates in. So sometimes speed > quality.

I still don’t understand why there was a higher-than-retail price showing to retailers since the point of IngramSpark is to sell wholesale to bookstores.

We contacted customer service, and this was the response almost two months later, after we contacted them a second time about another issue, which I’ll talk about next.

We recommend updating the wholesale discount percentage of your title to the trade standard 52% – 55% if you would like to maximize your title’s availability. Some retailers will refrain from stocking a book on their shelves if the wholesale discount is below a certain threshold.

As for the pricing, please be advised that retailers may offer your book at a higher or lower retail price to be more competitive in the marketplace. You are always paid the compensation listed in your account regardless of what a retailer sets the price to on their website. Pricing listed on retailer websites is at their discretion.

Based on this feedback, the authors increased their wholesale discount percentage to the recommended 55%. One Indigo location in Toronto bought 50 books for a forthcoming launch event, so perhaps the book cost had lowered after doing that. The next time I work with an author whose bookstore partner orders from IngramSpark, I gotta ask them what it looks like on their end.

Tip #2: Availability varies for retailers

Since the authors were getting interest from Indigo, I hopped online to see if the paperback was appearing for sale there, and it was, but not until June 30. Sarah got a similar response from a bookstore she visited in Ontario that was interested in carrying the book. Weird!

So we took to customer service again. This was their response:

Ultimately, how retailers and bookstores lists a title and the availability status on their website is up to them. Retailers and bookstores uses a proprietary algorithm to help with purchasing decisions. In choosing to stock titles or even show products as available on their sites, retailers and bookstores considers many pieces of information about your book. Every retailer has its own method for determining what the availability status of a title is on their website and, as a retailer, they are free to do so.

Factors in deciding to stock a book may include the wholesale discount offered, whether a book is returnable, product page views, and past sales history. Even print-on-demand books may not show an ‘in stock’ message at retailers and bookstores.

It is important to remember that although a website may list your title as unavailable or display an extended available time, retailers can still order your book. Because your book is print-on-demand, your book is always virtually “in stock” and available to order from IngramSpark. We strive to provide retail channels timely updates with current information so they have the potential to show available IngramSpark titles as “in stock” to their customers. With this in mind, we recommend that you refer your readers to the retail partners who show your title with immediate availability.

We print distribution orders that we receive from Ingram usually within 1-2 business days of receiving the order.

Canned response. We didn’t give them a good service rating after that.

The authors arranged a last-minute signing with one Indigo location in West Vancouver. After selling a few books at the signing, the Customer Experience Manager said the book’s publisher was listed as “Ingram Content Group” instead of consignment or self-published and is non-returnable (which was intentional).

The manager said this makes it impossible for stores to order it and that they couldn’t physically send a request to purchase them for the store. They suggested to make it returnable for Indigo so books can be ordered ahead of future signings (which, to my knowledge, is not possible to do for single stores). Or, remove “Ingram Content Group” as the books’ publisher so Indigo could reload it into their system as consignment.

Obviously, when I loaded the book to IngramSpark I put in their publisher name, not ICG. So I’m not sure why that appeared for this store manager nor why they had a problem with ordering from IngramSpark while the Toronto store did not. Obviously the Toronto store was okay with the books being non-returnable.

Just last week, I received an email from the head buyer at Indigo Canada, who had heard about the authors coming to Toronto for their book launch. They also recommended a higher wholesale discount (higher than 55%) to bring down the retail price, and setting the book as returnable but also with the destroy vs. deliver setting so that Indigo wouldn’t be charged to ship back unsold books.

Folks might not be okay with a “destroy” setting since it’s wasteful (and an insult to the trees who died to make these books!), but I don’t think most authors are okay with issuing refunds either.

If you don’t accept returns, it might mean a deal-breaker for a big Indigo order.

Since the authors made a substantial print order of their book from China, they’re more keen on hosting their own book launch events and selling books direct vs. sharing profits with bookstores.

Final thoughts

While the stuff that happens on IngramSpark isn’t always great and is mostly out of your control, I’m not saying not to use it. It is, after all, your best shot at getting exposure to bookstores if you’re an indie author without a book deal.

Because of these issues, some bookstores gave helpful information for making the book more available—and a better profit margin, since the authors get 60% per copy on consignment vs. whatever they’d be left with on IngramSpark.

• One bookstore pulled entries from a Canadian site called Bookmanager on its own retail site. While A Little Bit Culty was listed, the cover was not visible, so they suggested the authors start a profile there. Bookmanager is similar to Bookshop.org in the USA, making books available where people live.
• The same bookstore suggested the authors approach a local book distributor, Dempsey Canada, to see if they would accept the title and consider distribution, which would result in another avenue for bookstores to order the book from the authors.

Had we not approached the bookstore or had the issues with IngramSpark, we would not have known about both of these sites.

Another minor advantage with IngramSpark is that I don’t think it shows that it printed the book, whereas if you use Amazon’s printers, that will show at the back. So if you negotiate a consignment deal with a bookstore, readers who buy the book will see that it was printed by Amazon and might wonder why they didn’t just buy it for cheaper online, because bookstores will always mark it up to compensate for their efforts.

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