How to Publish a Book on IngramSpark [5 Steps to Fortune]

Last Updated on August 21, 2020 by Jordan Alexo

“I can make a ton of money with IngramSpark? How is that even possible? Like for real, it’s hard to believe.” Those are probably your thoughts right now. Yes, I am a certified psychologist so, I can see what you’re thinking. Hehe… Don’t run into shock just yet. I’m just kidding.

Anyway, InsgramSpark is what we are here to talk about. So all your doubts, like a fog, will be cleared off. I’m going to show you how you can make more money from your kindle publishing business by publishing on IngramSpark. In this post, I would lay out all the strategies and spoiler alert- the hacks to make a fortune with IngramSpark.

If you follow this guide, in a few days, you will be making more money. Jordan is here for you, baby. Always! Let’s put this case to rest once and for all, shall we?

How To Publish A Book On IngramSpark [Watch Video]

 

What Is IngramSpark?

IngramSpark is a place for authors, publishers, and anyone else into book publishing. This platform is one where you can publish your books as e-books and as prints. So it’s not just paperbacks. It’s just my own decision to stick to publishing only paperbacks.

What IngramSpark basically does is promote your books (e-books and prints) to over 39,000 stores online and offline. Big, big market! It’s no doubt you’d make heavy bucks one way or the other.

I would describe IngramSpark as a phenomenal and fabulous platform. Mehn, I love IngramSpark. It is one of the avenues I use to publish books, and it has made me some of the best earnings in my publishing business.

Am I saying Sales on Amazon is Crap?

Of course not! Why would I say that when I use and talk about Amazon literally all the time? It makes no sense. Kindle Publishing is like the number one for every publisher. IngramSpark is just an alternative to Amazon.

In fact, I would suggest you publish your books-paperbacks and e-books on Amazon first; This is to make sure that your book formatting looks good. When you want to publish on Amazon (unlike IngramSpark), you can preview your paperbacks and see how it looks like before it goes into the market. That way, you are less likely to have issues with your book formatting on IngramSpark.

#Hack 1: Before you publish your books on IngramSpark, publish them on Amazon.

Also, there is a slight issue worthy of note with Kindle publishing on Amazon. We must talk about this as it affects what you do on IngramSpark. On Amazon, if you publish your book in the Kindle format and enroll that book in the Kindle program, you can’t publish that book outside Amazon. Why? It’s merely one of their terms and conditions, and you agreed with those terms to get your book published in the first place.

The good news is you don’t have that restriction on your paperbacks published on Amazon. So, immediately you publish on Amazon, go straight to IngramSpark and publish your paperbacks. There’s the guarantee you won’t run into any problem.

Which of Your Books Are Best on IngraSpark?

Actually, all of your books can (and should) be published on IngramSpark. Don’t waste your time trying to choose or decide on which one is likely to make the sales. There is nothing like the best book for IngramSpark! You can’t tell which would be your lucky charm.

#Hack 2: Just throw all your books there.

The question now is, ‘What do you have to do?’

Now that you have a grasp of what IngramSpark is about, the next thing is to go to their site www.ingramspark.com and create an account with them. See, simple and straightforward.

HOW TO CREATE AN IngramSpark ACCOUNT

Creating an IngramSpark account is not a big deal. You have the standard stuff where you input your contact name, email address, create a password, validate the password, and so on. Create your account now, www.ingramspark.com. It’s for your own good so, do it now.

Before we move to other parts of the process there’s something I need to let you know on real quick;

#Hack 3: It is good you have another tab with the book you want to publish from Amazon open.

You know why? You can easily copy all of the relevant information from your already published books on Amazon. That’s lazy, I know. But man has gotta move, no time to waste time. If you now feel like you want to change the information for your IngramSpark book (or you just want to go through the long process of putting words together), then that’s also fine.

Another thing that you need is an ISBN. Oh yeah, we are back to our topic of discussion.

What Is An ISBN?

This number serves to identify each separate book. The implication is the ISBN varies with every single book. This allows for easy search of books in bookstores, for example. So you need to get ISBNs for your book.

Before you start wondering, books published on Amazon get their ISBNs from Amazon directly. That’s why nobody talks about getting ISBNs for books to be published on Amazon.

There are two websites you could get your ISBNs from:

1. BOWKER @ www.myidentifiers.com
2. ISBN Services @ isbnservices.com

If you’d like to get 20-50 ISBNs, ISBN Services is the way to go site. Their rates are way cheaper than Bowkers’. On the contrary, Bowkers offer ISBNs at a lower cost than ISBN Services for a large number of ISBNS, e.g., 100, 200, and all of those kinds of numbers.

However, people in Canada get ISBNs at no cost.

Like we said earlier, you’d need to get these ISBNs to publish your book on IngramSpark. After getting your ISBNs, you can now delve into the IngramSpark world.

THE 5 STEPS TO PUBLISHING YOUR BOOK ON IngramSpark: ULTIMATE FORTUNE STEPS.

STEP 1) Add a Title

On your clean IngramSpark page, you would see the ‘Add Title’ option or bar on your left-hand or right-hand side, respectively. Click on it, and you would be redirected to a page with ‘Select One’ There would actually be a series of questions to answer.  Below, I’d highlight them in the order they are displayed.

• The first one is to choose the type you want to publish: e-book, print book, or both. In taking you through the process, I’d be using myself as an example. I am going to select a print book for the reasons I stated earlier. You can always choose the ‘Ebook and Print Book” option if you like. Just make sure the e-book is not enrolled in kindle amazon.
• The next question is, ‘Do you have all your files ready?’ I am picking ‘Yes’ (the first box) because I have everything I need on my Amazon account. It’s just for me to paste them here.
• Following that, you would be asked what you would like to do with your book. Two options: ‘Distribute and Sell’ or just ‘Print Book,’ you are going to pick the first option because that’s why we are on IngramSpark in the first place. To sell your book and make some money!

Then press ‘Continue,’ which takes us to the next page.

STEP 2) Title Info

On this page, we are going to be doing grabbing a lot of things from Amazon to fill in most of the bars. Let’s also highlight the bars in the order that they appear.

Print Information

• Book Title: Copy and paste your title from Amazon. Mine, for example, is ‘Bitcoin’ I also add my subtitle in this bar.
• Language: The language you’d like your book to be published in.
• Print ISBN: Here, you would input one out of the pack of ISBN numbers you bought, from whichever website you purchased your ISBNs.
• Publishing Rights: You’d choose the first option ‘I own the copyright and own necessary publishing rights.’ It’s your book you want to publish, right? So that’s your option. A page automatically pops up once you choose this. The page is just for you to read some points and confirm that your book has no copyright issues.

Authors and Contributors

• Role: It could be the author or other contributors who helped produce the book.
• First name.
• Last name.
• Middle name.

Actually, it’s just the last name that must be compulsorily added in that section. There’s also a bar in this section that allows you to add other contributors. It’s not limited to just one role.

Categorize Your Title

• Select Imprints: Imprints are just like identifying the name of maybe a publisher on a product. It can also be the name a publisher uses to issue books. I use my name ‘Jordan Alexo.’
• Subjects: This is similar to selecting a suitable category for your book, like in Amazon. Since my book is titled ‘Bitcoin,’ I am going for bitcoin and cryptocurrency, education as my subjects.
• Audience: you have different options, e.g., Juvenile, College, etc. I am picking ‘Trade/General (Adults). It makes the most sense in this case.

Title Description

• Full Description: I have something like this for my book on Amazon. So I’m just going to copy, paste and edit. I have to edit because I must clean the HTML code in the Description from Amazon. You should edit too if need be. Another thing you can do is get the Description directly from your book copy. With this method, you probably won’t need to edit it.
• Keywords: You can copy this from your Amazon page too. I told you we’d be grabbing a lot from Amazon. LOL! Your keywords can be as many as possible. Make sure you use semicolons to separate all your keywords.

STEP 3) Print Info

On this page, as the heading says, we want to input details for the book printing.

Print Information

• The first is to ‘Select Trim Size.’  You need to define the length and width of your book pages. The standard dimensions are 6″ x9″ and 5″ x8″.  I chose 5″ x8″ for mine.
• After that, you ‘Choose an Interior Color and Paper’ for your book. Mine is a regular book, so I’d go with white and black. By the way, black and white color reduces your cost of production. Although, if you are going to publishing a cookbook, children’s book, and the likes, then you should choose colors. On IngramSpark, the difference in cost of production of colored and monochrome printing is not as huge as you’d have it on Amazon. You can still use colored papers and make a lot of profit on this platform.
• Then you need to pick one of the two types of binding. Here, I am going for ‘Paperback’ The ‘Hardback’ option is also cool. Just be mindful of the fact that you’d have to change your book formatting for it to fit the sizings of your hardcover.
• Cover Finish: I always choose ‘Gloss’ because I feel it just makes the book pop. Others are Textured and Matte.
• Page Count.
• Market: Choose a country.

#Hack 4: When your book-length is small, you might want to try out the 5 “x8” size; This makes your book appear thicker.

Print Pricing

• Retail Price: Once you pick a price for the U.S., they automatically adjust the others depending on their calculations. It’s somewhat annoying, but it is what it is.
• Wholesale Discount: I use 55% trade (retailer). This option is better because large stores want a good discount since they are going to be buying in bulk. You want your book to have a price that would be appealing to them hence, worth considering.
• Return: My choice here is ‘Yes-Destroy’ because I don’t want people to be discouraged by the fact that they can’t return the books if anything goes wrong. Also, I don’t want them delivered at my doorstep when they return.

Print Options

I only recommend the first option, which is ‘enable look inside the book’ as it allows for customers preview.

Print Release Date

You input the date that your book was released.

STEP 4) Print Upload

After all the selections you’ve made. The next is now to upload your book.  On this page, there are two requirements:

• Print Interior: For this, you upload the file containing your book content.
• Print Cover: You get your book cover from your files and upload it here.

Having done that, you click on ‘Continue’ for all of your data to pass to the validation stage.  At this stage, IngramSpark can draw your attention to an issue they have with a part of your information. Don’t get scared because it happens to almost everybody. All you have to do is take a deep breath and fix the problem.

STEP 5) Payment

My total bill for the book publishing is $49, which is quite ok. IngramSpark publishing fees are generally affordable. Should in case you want freebies, there is the option to use a promotion code. You can use SELFPUB as your discount code. After which you apply, and your book is published free of charge.

After all of this, IngramSpark would review your submissions, which might take a few days. If you are all set, they go ahead and publish. If not, they contact you to make some amendments, and as we established earlier, it’s not much of a big deal.

Moreover, all of that can’t compare to the money you will be making selling your books on IngramSpark.

Bottomline

I started with IngramSpark in 2019. A choice I have never for once regretted. In the first month, I made about $800, and I have been making $300-$500 in subsequent months. IngramSpark is just an avenue for you to squeeze out every last penny from books in your publishing business.

I love IngramSpark, and I want you to take advantage of this platform. Maximize your sales today!