IngramSpark And Me By Heather Haven

Disclosure: the below is just my opinion and my particular experiences. I am not a seasoned IT person nor the grand poohbah of publishing. What I am is a writer. Let’s be clear, the problem is no doubt me but nonetheless, I share it. I’ve heard many positive things about IngramSpark. You can’t be as big and successful as they are without doing a lot of things right. It’s just that I can’t seem to get any of those things right for me.

I jot down this sad tale because IngramSpark and I have had, from the start, a tenuous relationship. I will elucidate. A few years back and hoping to sell more books, I uploaded the whole shebang into IngramSpark (which cost a pretty penny because it wasn’t free to upload books then as it is now). Instead of selling more books, I learned a valuable and expensive lesson. Here comes the elucidation. Shortly after the upload, 40 of my books were ordered by an assistant buyer at a bookstore where I was going to be doing an event. Even though there were 4 writers at the event, and the crowd was only going to be around 45 people, the buyer still ordered 40 of my books. 8 of them sold, which sounded pretty good to me until . . .

I found out the remaining 32 would be returned to IngramSpark and I was going to be charged full retail for the books. This was because stupid me had NOT said ‘no’ to any returns. This gets worse. Not only would I be charged full price, but once the books were returned to IngramSpark they would be destroyed. I threw myself on the mercy of this bookstore, even though I was really annoyed with them for ordering so many of my books to begin with. This bookstore, who will remain nameless, said I could buy the books for 30% off the retail price (everybody has to make a profit, right?) But let’s do the math. 32 X $17.50 less 30% is what I wound up paying. This little jaunt to the bookstore cost me around $600.

On the bright side, at least I had the books. If I had let them be sent back to IngramSpark, I would not only have been out 30% more money, but I would have had no books because they would have been destroyed. It was the lesser of two evils. In a snit, I withdrew my books from IS. IngramSpark should rethink the practice of charging full retail price instead of their cost and making a profit on a writer who is a double loser. The books are being returned because they didn’t sell, and then the writer gets charged up the ying-yang for the honor.

But years passed, times change, and once again I decided I needed to try having my books available to libraries and bookstores across the country. And I was lulled into a sense of security that IS has become more my style because they no longer charged for the initial process of uploading book covers and contents. Yes, they do charge for any changes after 60 days but that sounded reasonable.

So, I began reentering my books into their system. But I said a resounding NO to any returned books no matter the IS ‘words of wisdom’ about libraries and bookstores being less likely to order them if they can’t be returned. That lesson I learned. You are always going to find that knothead who will order 40 of your books when there’s 3 other writers at an event and only a crowd of 45 because what’s it to them if the books are returned or not? After all, writers are rich, right?

But back to IngramSpark being my own personal pain in the patootie. From the beginning I found them difficult to work with and, of course, I admit you could lay it at my feet. Still and all, I find their system isn’t user-friendly or intuitive. You need to know or have access to the minutest details of publishing a book, from A to Z. And I always seem to forget one letter of the alphabet. If you don’t do what they want exactly, you are going to learn the hard way that they ain’t puttin’ up with nothin’.

 For example, it took me 6 exasperating hours to figure out how to embed fonts from Word into PDF. I searched all over the Internet and did everything I could to find the answer. I gave myself until 5:00 PM to resolve this or I was never speaking to IS again. At 10 minutes to the self-imposed deadline, I found the answer. Somewhere, someone on the Internet advised to check under options in Word for this issue. Vague, but that was my only clue. There are about a dozen places you can find options in Word, but I finally found the right one. And IS finally took the file.

But they went on to say they did not like the book cover, something about the colors. I looked at the sample of my book cover they were not happy about and it looked just fine to me. In fact, it looked exactly the same. I said, well, phooey, take it the way it is, guys. So, I uploaded my 6-hour book. The next one took me 15 minutes to upload once I’d found out where this stupid option for embedding was.

I became giddy with success and decided to upload a  third one. Big mistake. Naturally, something went wrong. IngramSpark told me the ISBN number is already in use. Well, no it isn’t. Or is it? I had to go back to Bowker, spend a certain amount of time on hold, finally spoke to someone who did some research and found out that it was, indeed, my ISBN number. After an hour of dealing with this, I sent a text to IS telling them of the problem on their end. Below is what I received from IngramSpark. Be still my heart.

Hello Heather,
 
Thank you for contacting us.
 
This email is to let you know that the title xxxxxxxxxx was set up through Amazon Digital Services first and it cannot be set up from the beginning using the same ISBN number on our platform.  
 
A title transfer request would have to be placed with us, but it is not guaranteed that Amazon Digital Services will transfer the title. 
 
Please submit your title transfer request by using the link below: 
https://www.ingramspark.com/lp/title-transfer 
 
What happens next? 
– We will review your request. 
– We will reach out to the current publisher to inform them of the request to transfer the title to your account. 
– You will be notified via email when the title is transferred and available in your account. 
 
Please allow about 30 days for confirmation and transferal. 
Please allow us time to obtain approval from the current publisher and process orders before we complete the transfer of the title to your account. 
 
Since the title will be moving from one publisher to another, please consider purchasing a new ISBN or one of our free ISBNs. All past sales and returns information will follow the current ISBN, which means if the book is returnable, you could end up with returned books. Please see the following article for more information ISBN & SKU INFORMATION. You may need to be logged into your IngramSpark account to view this article. 
 
Let us know if you have any questions, and we’ll be happy to help. 
 
Thank you for choosing IngramSpark! 

Well, their last sentence was like pouring salt on the wound. If I had a choice, I would stay as far away from them as I could. IngramSpark is my Goliath, and I am David minus a slingshot. But when it comes down to it, I’m a fighter not a victim, so I persevered. The emails have been flying back and forth between IngramSpark and me for weeks now. I sent them the URL number of the website and an image of it on Bookwire several times. Didn’t work.

I checked with Amazon, and they agreed with me but say they can’t do anything about IngramSpark’s protocol (who I could never reach by phone). Furthermore, the Amazon representative told me that even though the book is expanded, it should have nothing to do with the ISBN number. Amazon says everything’s fine the way it is. IngramSpark says it’s not. IS maintains I need to request Amazon transfer the ISBN number over to IngramSpark even though Amazon says it’s not necessary. IS is determined. I am depressed.

After a large martini and a strong backrub courtesy of my husband, I began the process of transferal, knowing it will take a month to learn the outcome. A month of waiting, martinis, and backrubs. Hmmm, not all bad. But somewhere in the recesses of my mind lurks the question of whether or not I will wind up having to buy another ISBN number to satisfy the gods. And this only is the 3rd book. There are 15 more to go. That’s a lot of martinis. And I may need to hire my own personal masseurs.

Yes, yes, I could pay somebody else to do all this but reality check. It would probably wind up costing me thousands of dollars because I’m dealing with 18 books. And there is often this type of glitch that eats into the clock and you never know when it’s going to turn up. The gods can be so finicky. So, nobody’s doing this process but me. Arrrrg!

I want to go on record as stating I hate this part of publishing. And it would be lovely if IngramSpark were a little more accessible and worked a bit on their people skills, even though I’m sure they have very good business reasoning for being the way they are. But I would be over the moon if they stopped all this futzing around with my ISBN number.