IngramSpark Archives - Suns Golden Ray Publishing

Posted on January 29, 2018June 5, 2018 by Whitney Evans

Common Book Formatting Issues

Having formatted a number of books (and published a number more), we’ve seen a lot of book formatting issues along the way. Sometimes, it’s a simple derp error on our part, other times it’s a bit more complex. Many times, we forgot to check a button. But our derp is your gain. Here, we’ve listed some of the most common errors we get while formatting:

Kindle Look Inside Feature

This one is a sneaky one, and one that trips up a lot of authors if they aren’t paying attention. If you visit Amazon’s Look Inside feature, you might find your book formatting is completely different than expected. This is due to the Look Inside feature using a different software than the Kindle. In layman’s terms, Look Inside strips out a lot of the coding that makes a Kindle look pretty. This is most often the case when a user is using Scrivener 2.0 to format their books.

The best and most easy fix to this is to upload an ePub file to KDP. Or, if you have updated to Scrivener 3.0, they have fixed this issue with .Mobi files. If you’re using Vellum, they’ve also resolved this issue as well. The best course of action is always to check your file after it goes live to make sure you’re putting your best foot forward.

Smashwords Autovetter Errors

Smashwords is notorious for throwing all kinds of errors at people. From images to text to Tables of Contents, you can find reams of complaints about people fighting with it. Happily, there’s a real easy solution to this problem: If you direct upload an ePub file (vice a Word document), you won’t have to submit to the Meatgrinder.

Keep in mind that per Smashword’s own data, Kindle is the most-often downloaded format, and if you only upload an ePub file, you won’t get that .Mobi file for users of the Smashwords store. We wrote a whole blog on Smashwords, if you think you want to upload a Word doc instead.

CreateSpace and Ingram Errors

If you’re using CreateSpace and IngramSpark to publish your book, generally if one accepts your book format, the other will as well. The normal errors we get from IngramSpark relate to the color schema (as Scrivener exports PDFs in a different schema) and, on occasion, if we save the cover under the wrong Photoshop setting. Both of these issues are “non-blocking,” that is, Ingram will fix them for you. With CreateSpace, our most common error is the autovetter stalling when we upload the interior. CreateSpace will review the document and allow you to view the online version to check for any issues.

Any Other Errors

Do you have any errors popping up when you format? Something just not working? Sound off in the comments!

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Posted on December 4, 2017October 11, 2017 by Whitney Evans

Top Formatting Hacks Scrivener: Our Most-Used Tricks

Scrivener is a wonderful program many writers use to set up and manage their books, screenplays, and research projects. Nearly every aspect of the program can be customizable, from the drafting settings to the export format. But with so many options, many authors find themselves overwhelmed. To that end, we’re posting a blog series on our favorite features. While we could post fifteen blogs on the formatting features, today, we’ll just cover our top formatting hacks in Scrivener.

Note: The screenshots are for Scrivener 2.0. for Mac. We hear from our friends at Literature and Latte that version 3.0 is coming soon, and when we get access to it, we’ll update this post.

Hack #1: Scene Labels and Images

For our Madion War Trilogy series, we had the challenge of multiple POVs. We wanted to label each POV with the character’s name and a unique icon. To accomplish this, we added a Custom Metadata field to our project and called it POV. Then, in the Compile settings, we added the following to the Section Layout under Prefix:

<$img:<$custom:POV>;h=50>
<$custom:POV>

In the Compile setting, you’ll see that the POV is listed there under Level 2+ (we’ll go into levels a bit later).

When we compile the draft, we get the POV name along with the image.

Hack #2: Preserve Formatting

Sometimes within the text, we want to preserve formatting. That is, the rest of the book is Garamond 12, single-spaced, left aligned, and maybe this one section is a letter, and we want it centered and Times New Roman 13. In this case, we have two options: We can create a separate scene and select “Compile As-Is,” or, the better option, we can highlight the text and use the “Preserve Formatting option.” You can find it under the Format menu, under the Formatting sub-menu.

Here you can also find the Copy and Paste Formatting options, which allow you to take the formatting settings from one scene to another. Generally, though, you shouldn’t do too much in-line formatting in your final manuscript. And make sure if you’re using Preserve Formatting that you’ve got your formatting exactly as you want it.

Hack #3: Compile a Section

If you’ve taken our advice and kept all the books in a series in one Scrivener file, then you’ll need to know how to Compile just a section. Luckily, this is pretty easy:

In the Contents section of Compile, use the drop-down menu to select the grouping you’d like to export. Under Compile Group Options, you can select to either include the container (generally you don’t want to do this), and treat selected group as entire draft (generally you do want this).

You can also use a Filter based on a particular label. So, for example, if you were compiling a preview of an ebook, you could tag specific chapters with “Preview” and compile only those.

Hack #4: Compile Levels

A lot of folks are confused by the idea of Compile Levels. We’re happy to announce that in Scrivener 3.0, they’ve changed Compile Levels to a much more user-friendly version. As it stands now in 2.0, your Compile levels work like this:

Part (Folder) -> Level 1
- Chapter (Folder) -> Level 2
  - Scene -> Level 3
    - Subscene -> Level 4

Each level can have its own formatting. So your Part would be different from your Chapter, and so on. In Scrivener 3.0, they’ve gone back to the drawing board. Instead of assigning formatting by level, you can now assign formatting by type. So if you’d like your Part and Chapter to share formatting, you can. And if you have a certain set of scenes with particular formatting (like a dream sequence, for example), you can set individual scenes.

As formatters, we’re looking forward to this new feature!

Hack #5: Getting a Clean Manuscript

Our last hack has to do with getting so-called “clean” manuscripts from Scrivener to editable formats like Word. If you’ve drafted your book in Scrivener, then you’re probably already mostly there. In the Compile Format feature, you can add additional so-called “presets,” or settings that you can re-use. This is especially helpful when you’ve got several books in a single manuscript, or if you need to export to hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and more. For exporting a “clean” manuscript, create a project preset using the formatting standards your editor requires. Usually, that’s 12pt, double-spaced letter-sized pages.

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Posted on July 24, 2017August 2, 2018 by Whitney Evans

The Matter of Things – All About Front and Back Matter

When coming to the end of a book, you’re often feeling a jumble of emotions. If it’s a romance, you’re feeling the Happily Ever After. A dystopian, probably a little misery mixed in with hope. Across all books of all genres, there’s one thing in common: That all-important book back matter and front matter.

Your book’s front and back matter is, essentially, the stuff that bookends the actual text of the book. The title page, your copyright information, and table of contents goes in the front, your acknowledgements, your also by, and your biography go in the back. If you’re a self-published author, all of these components make for yet another sales avenue.

Front Matter: The Basics

For indies, you’re going to want to have at least three main components to your front matter: Title Page, Copyright, Table of Contents. You could go for the gold and have all the components (half title, series page, title page, copyright, dedication, epigraph, table of contents, etc). However, keep this in mind: Nobody’s buying a book to read the front matter. Especially when it comes to eBooks, where you can display up to 20% of your book to potential customers, you don’t want 10% of that taken up by front matter.

Our general formatting recommendation goes like this:

Print Books:

Title page with author and publisher logo (if applicable)
Copyright information:
- Editing by [Editor’s Name]
- Art design by [Artist Name]
- © [Year] [Publisher]
- All rights reserved.
- ISBN: [ISBN]
- ISBN: [ISBN:13]
Dedication Page
(Blank Page, so TOC lands on the right)
Table of Contents
(Blank Page, so start of book lands on the right)
Start of Book

Our eBooks run about the same way, although we don’t add the blank pages. Per the Smashwords formatting guide, we also make sure to add the appropriate text so we pass muster on the Meatgrinder.

A note on Amazon and Front Matter

Amazon’s Look Inside feature allows users to view the interior of an eBook prior to purchasing. For a lot of consumers, that’s how they decide to press that Buy button. Recently, however, Amazon pushed a new standard for eBooks in the Look Inside feature that effectively broke a lot of formatting, especially as it relates to images and text alignment. All of our books, formatted through Scrivener, were victims of this change. If you’re a Scrivener user, try exporting the book to ePub instead of Mobi.

You might also try Vellum, which is another eBook formatter (Runs around $200 for eBook only).

Either way, it’s important to check your Look Inside feature every couple of months to make sure everything looks as it’s supposed to.

Back Matter: The Basics

Right after the last page of the book, you need to try to hook your reader to take an additional action, whether it be purchase the next book in the series or signing up for your newsletter, or even leaving a review. The more pages a reader has to sift through, the less likely they’ll hang around, so put your high priority up front.

For paperbacks/hardcovers, we go with the following:

Last Page
Our heroes adventures continue/conclude in [Book Title]
Also By, with a short blurb about each book
Acknowledgements
About the Author

For eBooks, which can include hyperlinks, we switch it up:

Last Page
Our heroes adventures continue/conclude in [Book Title], followed by the following:

As always, thank you, dear reader, for going with me on this adventure. As an indie author, I rely on my awesome folks like yourselves to help share the word about my work. Please consider leaving a review on your favorite book retailer*. I am so excited to hear what you think—even if it’s a short review!
*Smashwords has particular issues with naming other eBook stores in their books, so keep it generic

Free Anxiety Dragon Book, with the following:

Sign up for the S. Usher Evans newsletter and get a free copy of Empath, a standalone fantasy novel about a girl and her anxiety dragon.

Also By with links to each book in the backlist, and a notice if the book is also a free download.
Acknowledgements
About the Author, with links to social media

The Importance of Back Matter

If it’s not completely obvious, your back matter is one of the best ways to retain new fans and increase sales of new books as they come out. Whether it’s through finding you on social media or signing up for your newsletter, giving fans a one-click option to get more of your stuff is always important. Especially if you’re giving the first book away as a freebie or newsletter gift, you want to give yourself every possible chance to keep your hard earned fans.

We also recommend linking back to your own website, versus trying to do store sites. In the first place, if you’re using Smashwords or other distributer, you won’t be able to upload a different book for each store. But most importantly, it lets you link to books that might not be out yet. So if you’re planning books 3 and 4 later in the year, you won’t have to update your backmatter when they come out.

That also means that every so often, you should be updating your back matter with information about your new and upcoming books. If you’re a habitual releaser of 4-5 books per year, you can probably get away with once a year for heavy lifting. It’s also a good time to sweep across your paperbacks and hardcovers to make sure everything looks good, too.

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Posted on July 17, 2017April 3, 2018 by Whitney Evans — 1 Comment

Book Release Strategies – Tips and Tricks to Maximize Success

So you’ve built your audience, you’ve established your presence on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more. You’ve been building your newsletter and your media kit is built. Most importantly, your manuscript has been reviewed by beta readers or a content editor, a line editor, and has a professional cover. Now, it’s time to talk about actually releasing that book! The book release strategies outlined in this post aren’t a one-size-fits-all, and some have worked with one book and haven’t with others. At a minimum, they’ll help you put together your own plan for success.

Six Months Out

Yes, really.

Right about when you finish that first draft, you should look half a year out and pick a publish date. This will give you plenty of time to go through the editing process outlined above, plus enough time to get everything ready. Keep in mind this is purely for planning a book release; you should be building your platform long before this.

When building your book release strategies, start with taking an inventory of all your assets. This includes your number of social media followers, street team, and other advertising revenues. Why? Because it will help inform the rest of your plan.

Your next step is to establish a budget. Take a realistic look at what you can spend to promote the book, recognizing that you’re investing in a product, versus just spending money. Include everything in this number–cover design, editing, and advertising. If you’re giving away books, count on shipping (international can run you up to $30). If you’re doing a street team competition, make a budget for prizes and shipping.

Then, put together your vision, objectives, and goals for the book. This planning method is one part thought exercise, and one part schedule-building. By starting at the 10,000-foot-view, you understand what you really want out of your release. And intention is key.

The book release vision can be something general (I want to release Book X on X date) or it can be specific (I want to increase sales/reviews/reach from the previous book).

Your objectives are the big rocks:

Have finished book ready for upload by X date
Obtain additional preorders by doing X
Continue to grow social media presence by doing X
Test (particular advertising service or marketing ideas)

Your goals are the specific achievements. There may be a little overlap for the objectives, but it’s better to keep them separated. Generally, we like to add actual numbers to the goals to have something to shoot for:

Book X will be released to editor on X date
Write 12 blog posts about the book
Grow reviews on Goodreads to 50
Increase Twitter to 2,000
Grow Facebook to 1,000
Preorder Goals: 100 on Kindle, 15 on paperback, (etc.)

Finally, put together a list of tasks for each goal. This is where your asset inventory and budget come in handy, because you’ll have a list of tools readily available. For increasing preorders, you can create a task to seek out 10 book bloggers for a cover reveal tour, using your Twitter or Facebook followers to ask for help. To increase Twitter following, set a task to find and strike up a conversation with five people per day, etc. Make sure you’ve got space for contacting people, especially if you’re setting up a blog tour or asking for guest posts.

Use a GTD system like ToodleDo to put your tasks in order and add a completion date to them. And now you’ve created a project plan!

So go execute that plan.

Three Months Out

As we chatted about a while ago, Amazon will only let you upload a book 90 days away from your publication date. Therefore, we like using that as our official “marketing kick-off” date. Here are some of our favorite ways to celebrate this milestone:

Conduct a cover reveal blog tour: Include:
- The cover (obviously) but also a short snippet of the book
- Your own social media and author photo
- A giveaway on Rafflecopter with entrants signing up for your newsletter and following you on social media
- Links to preorder the book. We recommend sending users back to your website, as you may not get access to Amazon’s link until a day before the blog tour goes live.
If you’re doing physical books, you can get early copies from Ingram. Find a few Instagram bloggers and see if they want to feature your book for a cover reveal.
Start your weekly blog posts. We’ve found the sweet spot for daily blog posts is about 6 weeks, but at 12 weeks, you can start sharing one day per week. Ideally, you should have all this content written and scheduled ahead of time.
- Start soliciting guest blog posts from authors in your genre
Encourage your street team to spread the word, as well as your followers. People will be more willing to share new information than older information
Create a light schedule of social media posts with links to buy your books. It’s better to have secondary content (blog posts or Instagram photos), but the occasional tweet about the book is fine.
Start a Goodreads Giveaway
Announce the cover to your newsletter subscribers
- If your book is 100% ready to go, you can grow subscribers by offering a sneak peek at the first chapter by signing up. Recommend that you align this sign up form to a new list so existing subscribers can get access, too.
If you’ve got a little money to spend, or you’ve got some know-how, put together a book trailer and post it to YouTube
Make your book available on NetGalley or send it to reviewers and your street team

For the book itself, if you really want to encourage preorders, set it at a special price of $0.99 until release day. You’ll have to determine if the lower profit is worth it, but we’ve seen three times as many preorders at that price, versus full.

Six Weeks Out

Now is when you kick your blogging from weekly to daily. We like to have a mix of content, including posts written by and about others:

Mondays – A topical blog post about something related to the book
Tuesdays – Sharing a snippet of the book for #TeaserTuesday, either on the blog or on Amazon
Wednesdays – Guest blogs from other authors in our genre
Thursdays – Character profiles
Friday – #FridayReads, sharing a short review (positive) about other books in the genre

For the blog posts focused on the book, make sure to end each blog post with the cover and how to buy. Use a program like CoSchedule or Buffer to promote the blog posts, and use all your assets in your inventory.

At this point, you should start seeing some reviews come in from your street team and book bloggers. Feel free to share these as appropriate. It goes without saying you will probably receive some lower ratings, although some bloggers don’t share these until after release. Don’t engage or respond to them. Just share the higher rated ones.

You can also use the six week mark to start a Street Team competition, encouraging your team to post their reviews and/or comment on your social media for points to win prizes.

Six weeks is also where you should be setting up all the channels you want to utilize on release day. If you’re doing a book blog blitz on release day, now is when you solicit bloggers. If you want your book included in new release lists, reach out now.

Week Of Release

At one week out, you can increase your social media advertising, both paid and unpaid. You also have six weeks (or more) worth of content to re-share at this point, so reuse the best-performing content.

The night before release, we like to do our Twitter Chats. If we’re promoting a series, this is the time when we do a cover reveal for the next book in the series. If we’ve got it available, we’ll also share the preorder links.

Release Day

This is where your asset inventory really comes in handy. On release day, make sure you’re utilizing every tool and channel in your arsenal, from YouTube to your street team to your personal Facebook page (be careful with this one; Facebook is persnickety about selling from your FB page).

Encourage your Street Team to share photos about the book on Instagram, and tweets with #bookbirthday on Twitter.
Release a newsletter with buy links and information about the next book (if applicable)
Use that same content on your blog, and set up a one-day release blitz with other bloggers
Re-share your best performing, non-blog content (Instagram photos, videos, reviews, other blog posts, etc)
Send an email to the bloggers who have left early reviews on Goodreads first thanking them for doing so, and then gently reminding them to cross-post their reviews to Amazon
Set up eBook advertising for sites that will accept new books
If you’ve set your eBook at $0.99, remind your followers that the price is increasing soon

Post-Release

First, congratulations! You’ve worked very hard up until this point and you deserve an adult beverage of your choosing.

The main difference between indie releases and traditionally published ones is the release curve. For Trad pubbed kids, your sales look more like a bell curve. There’s a big boost at the beginning, and then (for most), it dips significantly. For indies, the curve looks more exponential. Even with all this work, you may release your first book to lackluster sales. But that’s why you have ten more waiting in the wings, right?

Our experience is it takes a minimum of three books for a series to take off. So if the first book doesn’t sell well, don’t panic. The old adage goes: Your frontlist sells your backlist. Besides that, you’ve created a whole lot of content that you can use and reuse for the release of the next few books. You’ve built your network more by connecting with more reviewers and growing social media. All of this work you’ve done will pay off, but it make take two or three books to get there.

To keep up the momentum, set up a regular schedule of eBook advertising. We’re big fans of focusing on one book every three or four months, getting about $30 worth of eBook ads, and letting them do the work. Occasionally, if we have other books on sale (like the second book in the series), we’ll also share on our social media. The “tail” of sales lasts for about 90 days, and then it’s time to do it again.

But by then, you should be ready to release your next book, right?

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Posted on June 26, 2017May 17, 2018 by Whitney Evans — 1 Comment

How to Set Up Book Signings – An Author’s Dream Come True

When most of us sit down to dream about “life as an author,” many of us envision rolling up to a Barnes and Noble for our book signing and seeing our books on the shelf and fans streaming out the door. Unfortunately, the mere act of setting up a book signing doesn’t always conjure up this reality. But, with a few tips and tricks, you can fulfill your lifelong dream of having your very own bookstore book signing.

The Fine Print

A few weeks ago, we had a long discussion about the merits of CreateSpace vs IngramSpark. Here is where IngramSpark pulls ahead in the horserace. Because of Amazon’s policy of making all books printed through CreateSpace nonreturnable, most bookstores will not allow you to sign in their store. This protects the bookstore from having a glut of books that won’t sell, but it also limits your options.

Now, this generally applies to larger chain bookstores and established indies. Some bookstores will let you bring your own and work out a consignment deal (usually 60-40 with you getting the larger chunk). This is an ideal situation, but lacks the funness of walking into Barnes and Noble and seeing your books already there.

Speaking of the B&N, our experience is that it usually takes 3-4 months to get on their schedule. They generally limit their signings (our local store only does one per month). So if you’re planning on doing one in conjunction with a release, plan ahead. Each store has an event coordinator on staff (they may have a few stores in their purview) that you’ll work with.

Getting the Word Out

One of the big differences between a bookstore book signing and, say, a comic book convention, is that with the latter, there’s usually more of a draw. People are coming to a comicon see Steven Amell and all the Doctors, and you just pluck them off as they walk by. At a bookstore, you are the draw. Which can be a blessing and a bit of a curse.

You’ll want to start spreading the word about your signing early. This is a good opportunity for a Facebook Ad, especially as you can localize the advertising to a smaller area and interest. It’s also a good idea to put together a press release (we’ll have more on that next week) and submit it to your local news organizations.

You can also put up flyers in local coffee shops and restaurants. Maybe add an extra incentive if people say they saw the flyer, such as a signed bookmark.

Most importantly, use your local network! Tell your friends to tell their friends, tell your mom to bring all her friends. You never know who might be a secret reader of your genre, so make sure you spread the word far and wide.

The Big Day

If you’re doing the consignment deal, give yourself a few days buffer if you’re having the books shipped in. Also, keep in mind that books are heavy, so you’ll want to have help getting them inside. The last thing you want is to be sweaty when you’re in a bunch of photographs.

It’s also smart to bring takeaways, such as bookmarks, businesscards, or any other swag you have on hand. And don’t forget pens or Sharpies!

Arrive about an hour beforehand to make sure your table and books have been set up. You can also bring any banners that you’ve created to stand up behind the table.

And then… get to work!

The truth is, unless you’re a NYT bestselling author with a legion of fans who’ve all preordered your book (which may happen someday!), most people are going to be at the bookstore for some other reason. You’ll need to convince them why they should come visit you and your book. This is a great job for friends and family who’ve (presumably) already bought your book. Send them out into the store to find prospective readers and ask those folks to come visit.

And don’t forget to take lots of photos and enjoy this big day!

The After

For our money, book signings aren’t the best way to utilize our time. Especially ones where the bookstore purchases our books and then returns them if they aren’t sold.

If you do Barnes and Noble, about six months after your book signing, you’ll get a box in the mail with the remainders. Now, if you’re an author who does a lot of in-person events and conventions, you can sell them later. But if you don’t do a lot of events, you might be stuck. Additionally, IngramSpark will charge you the cost to print + $2 for each book they return. If we’re talking a box of 20 hardcovers at $16 each to print, this can add up quickly.

But, on special occasions, it is nice to get the star author treatment.

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Posted on February 27, 2017February 13, 2018 by Whitney Evans — 1 Comment

Why Preorders Sell More Books

Over the past few weeks, we’ve talked about how to set up your book in stores–from using Amazon’s KDP to Smashwords to which type of ISBN to choose when publishing the print version of the book. Now, it’s time to move into some release strategies. First up: Preorders and picking release dates.

Why Preorders?

Preorders are exactly that–books available for presale before publication date. Many times, we see authors implement a “write-edit-publish” strategy, meaning: as soon as the book is finished, it’s available for sale. This is a viable strategy for some authors, and we aren’t knocking it, but consider the following:

If you publish a book without building awareness early, you’ll be playing catch up.
Early reviews help build buzz
When talking about books in a series, readers will want to buy the next when they finish a book. Having preorders means you can capture that sale months ahead of release date

Setting Up Preorders

Depending on your distributer, you may have some limitations on when and how you can set up preorders. CreateSpace does not offer them at all, so if you’re looking to have your print books available early, you might consider IngramSpark instead. Amazon Kindle Direct only allows preorders up to 90 days in advance.

Smashwords and IngramSpark, on the other hand, offer 12 months advance preorders. Smashwords doesn’t even require you to have a manuscript, simply the metadata. (Ingram does require a manuscript).

When should you set up your preorders, then? We like to start the process around the same time we submit our manuscript for line editing. For our process, that means the manuscript is more or less the final length, which means we can start guesstimating cover wrap sizes.

Tips for Preorder Periods

Just like publishing your book to Amazon doesn’t automatically result in sales, neither does setting your book for preorder result in preorders either. In both cases, you have to do the work to increase both awareness of your book and trust that it’s a book to be paid for.

Since Amazon allows us to upload 90 days in advance, we generally call that the “Preorder Period,” and focus our efforts on raising awareness for a particular series. If we’re releasing the first in a brand new series, we’d actually recommend starting the awareness effort even earlier than 90 days, because you’ll be starting from scratch with your audience (yes, even if you have an established audience).

Obviously, first you want to let your readers know that you have a book. Run a 1-2 day ad blitz using your newsletter, social media, and blog/website.
Expand your reach outside your own social circle by posting the book to NetGalley using a Co-Op or paid service for reviews (keep in mind schedules fill up fast)
Seek out book bloggers in your genre and ask if they’d like to read your book and/or participate in a blog tour. (Although by the time you’re here, you should have already been building relationships)
Schedule regular, fresh content about your book, from teasers to behind-the-scenes blog posts to character aesthetics.
Make sure your author website is up-to-date and all your links are working to the sales sites
Establish or check on your author page is ready on Amazon Central, and don’t forget to add the preorder book to your list of books (you’ll have to do that every time).

Later on this year, we’ll have a more in-depth discussion on how to use social media for book-brand awareness.

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Posted on February 13, 2017January 30, 2018 by Whitney Evans — 2 Comments

Getting Your Book in Print: IngramSpark

Last week, we talked about Amazon’s CreateSpace platform, and how we get our books into paperback. This week, we’re going to talk about the other tool: IngramSpark.

Ingram vs. CreateSpace

Ingram is the largest print book distributor in the world, and is what the big-dogs use to distribute their books. IngramSpark is their indie-publishing arm, which has lowered the barriers for small fries like us to get our books in the same places as the big pubs. Unlike Amazon, Ingram isn’t used to dealing with customers, so their user interface leaves a LOT to be desired. Once you figure out how to do the things you want, it becomes easy to navigate.

Getting Started

Once you’ve got your account set up, you’ll need to start creating your titles. Unlike with CreateSpace, if you go with Ingram, you’ll need to create an imprint name and bring your own ISBNs. Ingram does not offer ISBNs for free, and you will not be able to use a CreateSpace ISBN on Ingram.

Let’s repeat that:

If you create a book on CreateSpace with a CreateSpace ISBN, you will not be able to use that same ISBN on Ingram and will have to have two ISBNs for your book.

However, if you bring your own ISBNs to both CreateSpace and IngramSpark, you will be able to use the same ISBN. It’s a small distinction, but important when deciding how you want to approach ISBN acquisition.

IngramSpark also will allow you to create an eBook, although we at SGR-Pub prefer to go direct to KDP and use Smashwords. If you want to use Ingram for eBooks, you’ll need to remove them from other shops, like iBooks or Nook.

When you’re setting up your title, you’ll need to have the same information as with CreateSpace, like description, ISBN, and BISAC number. In addition, you’ll need to select your size, page number, and print type. You’ll want to make sure these match if you’re using CreateSpace and IngramSpark together.

The good news is that if you’ve been using CreateSpace to proof your book (and they share ISBNs), you can upload the same cover and interior for IngramSpark.

Preorders

One of the main reasons we use IngramSpark is they offer preorders for up to a year in advance. We’re firm believers that preorders mean more sales, and having a landing page on Amazon 3 or even 6 months ahead of publication date is a big leg-up. You’ll also be able to order books before the sale date in case you want to fulfill orders early. CreateSpace, on the other hand, doesn’t let you order books until you’ve approved the book, and made it available.

Creating a Hardcover

If you’ve gotten to the title stage, you’ll see that IngramSpark does, in fact, offer hardcover versions. Our view is: If you’re already formatting and creating for paperback, why not go for the gold? Having your book available in multiple formats increases the potential for sales. Keep in mind, you’ll need to create a new cover with a full-wrap (including those fun inner flaps). Also, Hardcovers are much more expensive to purchase, so you’ll want to consider your sales price.

Returnable Books: Pros and Cons

When you’re creating your book, IngramSpark will ask you to set the retail price and also determine returnability. What that means for you is if a store buys 40 of your books and sells none, they will ship them back to Ingram, and Ingram will either ship them to you or destroy them, while charging you for the cost to print and ship them. Or, you can set the returnability to “no.” This setting isn’t available in CreateSpace.

Why would you want books to be returnable? Most brick-and-mortar stores won’t stock books that aren’t returnable, although you can find occasional stores with exceptions to this rule. For them, it’s a low risk: they can purchase books and not have to eat the cost if they don’t sell. If your sales goals include these kind of stores, checking “returnable” is probably a good option.

Keep in mind that if you do get a big, fat box of books, you can still sell them on your own to make back the cost.

Buying in Bulk

As we said above, CreateSpace doesn’t let you buy books before they’re officially “on sale,” whereas Ingram does. However, apples-to-apples, Ingram is the more expensive Print on Demand service. For our purposes, we purchase direct from CreateSpace when we can, and when our books are only available for preorder or in hardcover, buy from Ingram.

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Posted on February 6, 2017January 31, 2018 by Whitney Evans — 1 Comment

Getting Your Book in Print: CreateSpace

It’s every author’s dream to hold their book in their hands, right? Well, just like KDP and Smashwords are platforms, CreateSpace is a tool you can use to help put your formatted PDF or .doc into a printed book. It’s kind of our favorite part of the process, you know?

CreateSpace vs. KDP’s New Paperback Program

Recently, KDP offered a new system whereby authors can turn their Kindle book into a paperback through KDP. They’ve continued to add features, such as offering printed proofs for authors, but still lack some of the better features of CreateSpace. Over time, this tool will replace CS and continue the consolidation of Amazon’s publishing platforms into a single entity.

For now, we’ll focus on CreateSpace and revisit Kindle’s paperback publishing when it becomes a robust tool.

Getting Started

CreateSpace is one of the few platforms that isn’t integrated with your Amazon single-sign on, so you’ll have to create a new account. Once you’re there, you’ll be taken to your dashboard. For first-time publishers, and for folks who like to see the process in a step-by-step fashion, we recommend doing the guided process.

Keep in mind that CreateSpace doesn’t support preorders, so don’t press that “Approve” button until you’re ready.

In order to publish, you’ll need the following:

Manuscript in .pdf (sized correctly, more on that below) or .doc (free-flowing)
Wraparound Cover in the right size
ISBN: We’ll have a discussion on ISBNs in a few weeks, as there’s pros and cons to using CreateSpace’s free ISBNs versus buying your own
Various other metadata like the BISAC code and Description

Formatting Your Book

Much like KDP and Smashwords have guidelines for uploading files, CreateSpace also has formatting requirements. The easiest solution is, of course, uploading a .Doc Word document and using the autoformatter. You can find more information here.

However, we prefer to have a little more control over what is uploaded, so we create a .PDF file and upload that. In this case, we have to make sure we have the right document size on the PDF (so 6×9 or 5×8). We’re the world’s biggest Scrivener fan, for drafting and also for formatting, so we’ve set up a template for each size, and use that for easy exporting. We can also format for you, if you just don’t want to fool with it.

Getting Your Cover Right

While we’re always proponents of DIY, when it comes to covers, this is one area where, like plumbing, unless you absolutely know what you’re doing, hire a professional. Your cover is your first impression. Along those same lines, your graphic designer will be able to calculate the width and sizing of your wrap-around cover. For our money, we use Ingram’s calculator, but we’ll talk about that next week.

ISBNs: Buy Your Own or No?

We’ll go into more depth about this in a few weeks. Bottom line: If you’re using a CreateSpace-provided ISBN, your book will not be available for purchase by mortar stores (for the most part). So if you think you’ll primarily be selling books on Amazon or at small bookstores that will allow you to bring your own stock, save some cash by using CreateSpace’s ISBN. If you’ve got aspirations of big signings at Barnes and Noble, then you might be better off buying your own.

But if you bring your own, CreateSpace won’t allow expanded distribution, so you might want to look into augmenting with IngramSpark.

How We Proof

For our own books, we use a hybrid approach between CreateSpace and IngramSpark, and have our own ISBNs. We use CreateSpace to create our proofs for final QA checks, then upload the finished manuscript to IngramSpark and make it available for preorder, then, on publication day, return to CreateSpace to approve the final draft. Purchases direct on Amazon go to the CreateSpace dash, purchases everywhere else go to Ingram. Our books also can be bought and stocked in bookstores, should they be requested.

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