IngramSpark E-Commerce Share & Sell: A New Opportunity for Authors

IngramSpark’s E-Commerce Share & Sell program is a brand-new and exciting program that enables authors to sell directly to their customers. But does it fit into your publishing plan?

Many authors use IngramSpark to set up online listings with retailers around the world. However, the steep wholesale discount required by these retailers means lower royalties for authors. If getting physical books in stores—the other main benefit of IngramSpark—isn’t part of your plan, that wholesale discount is a serious drawback with no obvious benefit.

E-Commerce Share & Sell launched on January 18, 2024, and it’s sure to make waves across the self-publishing community. In this post, we’ll go over everything we know about the program and what it could mean for you.

Topics Covered in “IngramSpark E-Commerce Share & Sell: A New Opportunity for Authors”

IngramSpark Offers More Benefits for Independent Authors
     Higher Royalties
     Price Updates Take Time
     KDP Has Its Limits
     Convenient Links the Share with Readers
IngramSpark’s E-Commerce Program: Part of a Well-Rounded Sales Strategy
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IngramSpark Offers More Benefits for Independent Authors

IngramSpark has been working on its E-Commerce Share & Sell program for a while, and it’s finally here! It’s brand-new (and, as of today, only available for a select group of beta readers), but from what we’ve seen so far, there are serious benefits that self-publishers can take advantage of.

Higher Royalties

Because IngramSpark is historically a distributor, a wholesale discount between 40 and 55% was required. This significantly cut into authors’ royalties (which is why we recommend authors publish directly to Amazon alongside IngramSpark). Now, according to IngramSpark’s E-Commerce page, your royalties per sale improve significantly: “You earn the price of your book, minus print cost and a $3.50 print surcharge fee.” Shipping and sales tax are paid by the buyer, and you take home the rest. 

We ran a few numbers and found that the print cost for a 230-page 6” x 9” paperback with a black-and-white interior is $4.50. As shown on the IngramSpark E-Commerce Share & Sell website, if you price your book at $16 but want to offer a discount of 25%, your math will look like this:

$12 – $3.50 (print service surcharge) – $4.50 (printing cost) = $4 royalty

Compare this to your KDP royalties for the same book if you were to manually change your list price from $16 to $12 through your KDP dashboard:

$12 – $7.20 (60% royalty) – $1 fixed cost – $2.76 ($0.012 x 230 pages) = $3.44 royalty

That’s right—for the first time ever, IngramSpark’s royalties are higher than KDP’s!

Price Updates Take Time

One of the sticking points of distributing through IngramSpark is adjusting the list price during promotions. Technically, as an independent author, you can update the price any time you want through your publisher dashboards. However, while KDP typically reflects price changes within 72 hours, IngramSpark updates can take weeks or even months to trickle through to the various distribution channels. This makes it difficult to use “price-pulsing” as an effective strategy.

With IngramSpark E-Commerce, authors can choose a sale price and create a link, and the book is available for sale immediately. They can even set dates for the link to be active and limit the number of books per order. Now, you can run promotions without having to worry about the timing of the pricing updates not working out.

KDP Has Its Limits

We always recommend that authors distribute to the Amazon Marketplace directly through their KDP account. This gives them important control over their Amazon book listings. However, not all book formats are available to publish through Amazon.

While KDP has impressed us in recent years with its high-quality color printing, IngramSpark is still the better option for case laminate hardcovers. And of the two companies, it’s the only one that offers dust jackets with embossed text on the spine.

Convenient Links to Share with Readers

IngramSpark makes it simple to share links with readers. Create a standard URL to link from your website, blog posts, newsletters, and emails, or create a QR code to use for business cards, flyers, and physical events. You can even create embedded HTML links that include your book cover and a “Buy Now” button.

IngramSpark’s E-Commerce Program: Part of a Well-Rounded Sales Strategy

IngramSpark’s E-Commerce program isn’t for everyone. So far, it’s only available in the US to a group of beta users. Even so, we predict it will be a valuable platform for authors to consider alongside KDP and IngramSpark’s global distribution network. As long as your book is set up through IngramSpark, you can take advantage of these direct sales to connect with your readers in a whole new way and earn more per book than ever before.

Understand that you won’t be able to see your buyers’ information—just the country and number of books sold. If collecting more information about your buyers is important to you, IngramSpark E-Commerce Share & Sell won’t be a replacement for selling books directly through your own website.

One final note: We don’t know yet how Amazon will respond to IngramSpark E-Commerce. We do know that Amazon requires its sellers to offer the lowest list price available. Amazon has dealt with this in a variety of ways over the years; authors typically rely on KDP to automatically adjust the Amazon list price to match the lowest price, but because KDP authors agree not to publish a book elsewhere for a lower price, doing so is technically a breach of that agreement.