Is Ingram’s new Spark a viable alternative to CreateSpace’s Expanded Distribution?

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UPDATE: DECEMBER 13/2013: CreateSpace has removed their fees for Expanded Distribution, no doubt in direct response to the launch of IngramSpark. Ingram, the U.S. wholesale distributor and parent company of Lightning Source International, has launched IngramSpark, a self-publishing portal intended to give CreateSpace a run for their money. But will it, or is it a case of too little, too late? When I first began self-publishing in 2011, LSI’s attitude toward self-publishers could only be described as contempt. The application process was onerous, the staff often condescending in their communications Read More …

Is Canada the next battleground between Amazon and Lightning Source?

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In The Global Indie Author I write at length about the predatory practices Amazon/CreateSpace have exercised in the area of print on demand. Watching what’s going on with the Amazon Canada catalogue, I am of the opinion that CreateSpace is positioning themselves to supply the Canadian market directly. Why do I believe this? To answer that we need to look at bit at the history between CreateSpace and its main rival, Lightning Source International, a subsidiary of the giant U.S. wholesale distributor Ingram. Amazon had long been selling titles for Read More …

Print-on-demand’s dirty little secret

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[UPDATE: While the following deals with the problems created by CreateSpace’s Expanded Distribution, CreateSpace itself has increasingly been using third-party printers to fulfill publisher orders. I have had numerous problems with my print orders, losing usually on average about 10% of my order to everything from crooked pages to machine roller smears. Further to CreateSpace, for their E.U. (and likely soon for their Canadian operations), it is not CreateSpace who are printing the books but Amazon themselves at their fulfillment warehouses. With so many potential printers of your product, the Read More …