The Indie Author's Book Publishing Partner

Let us be very clear. If you choose the option to upload to IngramSpark, your book will be available to be carried by any brick & mortar retailer who opts to carry it. (You can also load your book to IngramSpark later. It doesn't have to be done immediately, which a lot of publishers won't tell you.) 

BUT...even if you upload through IngramSpark, your book likely will not be carried by any big box or brick & mortar retailer (Target, Walmart, Costco, etc.) unless you have a marketing team selling the book to those retailers (which is expensive). 

Retail shelf space is more coveted than ever, and traditionally published books are fighting for the majority of it. Add in the cost (which you bear) of books that are returned from brick & mortar retailers when they aren't purchased within 3-6 months, and the idea of having them carried there quickly loses its appeal. 

If you want to have your book carried in a specific brick & mortar bookstore, especially an indie shop, reach out to them and negotiate something! They're willing to work with local indie authors often (even Barnes & Noble, if you want to do a signing). 

Yes, we could get you more excited early on by saying, "Your book will be available at 39,000 retailers worldwide!" But if we did, we'd have a lot of unhappy authors before long. We prefer to set your expectations properly from the start so we can have a great relationship long-term! Retail stores are not the key to selling truckloads of books. 

Don't ever hesitate to ask us any questions you have about the distribution process!  

The short answer is no. But that's because saying no serves you best.

Book marketing is an area of expertise in and of itself. We know that buzzwords like "press release" and "website creation" might sound great but don't really help the author (at least, not enough to tack on an extra few thousand dollars to the package price). We provide you with a professionally published book, and you can hire someone whose lane is book marketing to help you promote. And if you need recommendations, we've got 'em! 

We love audiobooks! We often recommend that authors wait to release their audiobook until a few months after their initial launch. First, it's challenging to time the audiobook release with the release of other versions because audiobooks typically take more time to be approved by vendors. Second, having a new version available gives you a renewed reason to talk about the book a few months after initial sales have died down. Don't worry, we have GREAT audiobook producers we are more than happy to introduce you to if you'd like to go this route! 

No. Some hybrid publishers will publish a book at no cost upfront with a 50/50 royalty split, which sounds great. But the fine print clarifies that if a certain number of books (usually several thousand) aren't ordered from the publisher's website directly within a specific period of time, the author is responsible for that payment (which is usually in the 5 figures). 

We are very clear with our authors: we don't keep a percentage of sales, we don't upcharge for author copies, we don't have any minimum sales requirements. In fact, we won't even know what your sales numbers are! Because we load to distribution accounts you create (we show you how), once your book is published, it is 100% under your control.