amazon.COM for Aussies

Just a very quick update about the paperbacks that were, then weren’t, and now are still on Amazon [in case other Aussie authors are in the same boat].

Firstly, this post applies to Aussies who refused to give up their amazon.COM accounts – i.e. refused to move to amazon.com.au – AND use Ingram Spark instead of Amazon’s ‘Expanded Distribution’.

1. Don’t panic – your paperbacks are still available in overseas Amazon marketplaces – e.g. US, UK etc. It’s just that you may not be able to see them.
2. Double don’t panic – your paperbacks are also still available in Australia, but you have to search for them via amazon.com.AU. In other words, you have to go to the Australian Amazon website to see them.

As an Australian with an amazon.COM account, this is what I see when I search for my paperbacks on the US site:

But when I go to the amazon.com.AU website, the paperback is right there:

I’m sure there is some weird and wonderful reason for this mismatch, but at this point I’m just relieved that my paperbacks are still available in Australia and that there isn’t some horrible problem with IngramSpark. The thought of having to sort out that kind of mess makes me shudder.

So thank you to all my wonderful friends who checked their US and UK amazons. Your feedback eased my mind considerably. As people much younger than me would say…”You rock!”

A much relieved,
Meeks

KDP pricing vs IngramSpark pricing

I’ve just been speaking to IngramSpark [Australia] and discovered that Ingram only charge for the actual print cost of a paperback!!!!

-dance-

No idea why that’s such a big deal?

Allow me to explain. 🙂

When you print [and sell] your paperback through KDP, your royalty is calculated as the difference between the sale price of the book and two things:

1. the print cost
2. the cost of distributing [i.e. selling] through Amazon

Amazon’s distribution cost will always be 40% of the List Price [the sale price], but the print cost will vary depending on what, and how, you print. For example, black & white costs much less than colour.

To explain how distribution and print cost affect royalty, I’m cheating a bit and taking the next bit straight out of my KDP how-to book:

Royalty = (List Price – 40% [to Amazon]) – Printing

Or to put it another way, when your paperback sells on Amazon:

1. Amazon takes its share – 40% – from the total sale price,
2. This leaves 60% of the total sale price.
3. From this 60%, Amazon takes the actual print costs.
4. Whatever is left over is your royalty.

To illustrate this point, let’s say the List Price of a book is $10 and the print cost is $5.

1. From that $10, Amazon takes $4 – i.e. 40%.
2. That leaves $6.
3. From that $6, Amazon takes $5 – i.e. the cost of the printing.
4. That then leaves $1 as the royalty owed to the author.

 [10 – 4] – 5 = 1

Note: back when you had the option of selling your paperback directly through CreateSpace, the cost of selling through CS was 20% rather than the 40% owed to Amazon, but there was still a charge.

Knowing how Amazon and CreateSpace calculate royalties, I assumed that IngramSpark must have a distribution cost factored in there somewhere as well. But they don’t, and I couldn’t be happier! IngramSpark will distributre your paperback worldwide without charging for the distribution. All they charge is the print cost. Suddenly, the setup fee and the revision fee don’t feel so bad any more.

Until I see exactly how Amazon and IngramSpark function together, I won’t be completely sure of my figures, but I am now itching to try it and see. And of course, you’ll be the first to know what I’ve learned. 😀

cheers

Meeks

 

New cover, image 1

The second KDP how-to is almost ready to go. This one is for a tiny marketplace of those who want to publish memoirs and other graphic heavy non-fiction books. Soooo…I’ve been playing with images. 😀

I found the original image on freeimages.com and it looked like this:

It was a great beginning but I wanted the image to tell the story of the book. So I added some images that are unique to my writing.

Anyway, I had fun. Oh! And the very first IngramSpark print book arrived today! I have to say that the quality is excellent, and I’m now ready to get all my books printed in Australia. More on that in a future post.

It’s been a good day, and I hope yours was enjoyable too. 🙂

cheers

Meeks

p.s. no comments as this is just a little post.

KDP, CreateSpace, Fate and Me

I know the title sounds a bit pretentious, but as I begin yet another round of editing on the KDP how-to, I can’t help feeling that Fate is looking out for me. How else to explain the fact that the IngramSpark review result came back just one day after KDP swallowed CreateSpace whole?

To give you an idea of the timeline, I approved the KDP how-to for publishing by CreateSpace just one day before the announcement of the merger.

On the day of the announcement, I logged back into the KDP website and discovered that I could no longer migrate my CreateSpace books over to KDP manually. The option to do so was gone, completely. The before and after screenshots below highlight the change in the KDP interface.

This is how the KDP interface looked before the merger:

If you clicked the button for ‘No’, you’d be shown the options for uploading new content. If you clicked the button for ‘Yes’, you’d be shown options for migrating your existing paperback from Createspace to KDP.

Now look at the same part of the interface after the merger:

As you can see, the CreateSpace option is gone entirely. I can only assume that KDP has decided to control the entire merger itself. On the one hand, this will make things easier for authors because the whole thing is now out of our hands. On the other hand, excuse the pun, it may also mean that we’re in for an almighty mess as thousands of books are moved from one system to the other, en masse.

Once the dust settles, I strongly recommend that all self-published authors check their books carefully. In particular, make sure that the ‘Print Options’ on the KDP interface correctly reflect the trim size of your book and the cover finish.

The shaded boxes are the default selections. One book I migrated manually had the cover finish shown as ‘Matte’ rather than ‘Glossy’. It was easy to fix, but it pays to be vigilant.

Getting back to my timeline, the change in the KDP interface means that I will have to take out an entire section of my KDP how-to: for the CreateSpace/KDP version, the KDP Textbook Creator version and…for the IngramSpark version.

And here’s where Fate stepped in. The review of the IngramSpark version did not arrive until one day after the announcement of the KDP-CreateSpace merger.

To understand why I’m so happy, you have to understand how the IngramSpark system works. The sequence of steps goes something like this:

1. You upload your book and cover.
2. You review a digital version of the book and cover.
3. You approve the book and cover for review by IngramSpark.
4. IngramSpark do a technical review of the book and cover and email you a report.
5. You can then make revisions to the book and cover.
6. When the book is as perfect as you can make it, you give final approval for the book and cover to be printed.

Note: there is no printed proof with IngramSpark, only the digital proof.

Now here’s the important part. Once you do step 6., any revision, no matter how big or small, will incur a $25 AUD charge.

To bring this point into context, I’ve already uploaded about 4 versions of the KDP how-to interior and at least 2 versions of the cover, all at different times. In dollar terms, that could have cost me $150 AUD. Luckily, I was still at step 4. above when the KDP/CreateSpace merger was announced. That means I can still edit the how-to, free of charge.

Coincidentally, this fortuitous timing also means that I won’t be approving the two original CreateSpace how-to’s for printing by IngramSpark at all [I have them uploaded but was waiting to get all my books approved, printed and shipped at once].

So there you have it, more editing but less frustration thanks to a helping hand from Fate. 🙂

I know a lot of you are self-published authors as well; how are you finding the changes? Pleased that you won’t have to move your books to KDP manually? Or a bit apprehensive?

cheers

Meeks

IngramSpark cover template builder

Just a very quick post about the covers for IngramSpark.

First, you can find the template builder on the IngramSpark website here:

https://myaccount.ingramspark.com/Portal/Tools/CoverTemplateGenerator

You won’t have to register with IngramSpark to use the cover generator, but you will have to type in an ISBN for the book plus other details like total page count etc:

IngramSpark will send you an email so you can download the template [two choices InDesign or PDF].

The template will look like this:

The cover has to fit over the entire coloured area, with particular attention to the text that goes on the spine. Then the WHOLE template plus cover image has to be saved as one, converted to whatever [for me it’s PDF] and that is sent off as the cover file.

Hope that makes sense.

Night all,

Meeks

Authors – were you satisfied with the quality of IngramSpark printing [in Australia]?

In the world of self-publishing, and small press publishing, CreateSpace, KDP and Lulu all offer printed proofs at cost price. These printed proofs equate to quality control. As the author, you get to check your own work and the quality of the printer’s product before approving the book for sale.

I learned the value of printed proofs with the paperback version of Vokhtah. Onscreen, the cover looked fantastic. Once it was printed, [by Lulu and KDP] I discovered that the cover was so dark, most of the fine detail was lost.

The reason for this discrepancy is that computer screens use RGB colour mode – i.e. digital colour – while printers use CMYK, and the two are not exactly the same. Added to that, the calibration of the computer screen may be off, all of which can result in a pretty dreadful end product. But I would not have known about those problems if I had not seen real, physical, printed proofs of Vokhtah.

IngramSpark, however, does not offer printed proofs. As I discovered today, I can order printed copies at cost, but only after approving my book[s]. And guess what? After I approve a book, any changes, any changes at all, will cost me $25 AUD a pop.

To highlight the enormity of this…’policy’ by IngramSpark, Vokhtah would have cost me a minimum of $75 in review fees, just to get the cover printed properly.

Do other Indies take pot luck with IngramSpark? Or do they fork out review fees without protest? Or is this one reason why most Indies use CreateSpace, KDP and Lulu to print their books?

Having tried all three, I was hoping that IngramSpark Australia would save me a boatload of money on shipping costs. Now, I’m not sure what to do.

Should I use CreateSpace or KDP to get the covers right and then print with IngramSpark?

I could, but that would still be a gamble as there’s no guarantee the IngramSpark POD facilities produce an equivalent product.

Has anybody out there had experience with IngramSpark Australia, in terms of quality? Would you recomment them?

If you can share your experiences in the poll below, I’d really appreciate it as I hate the thought of buying something sight unseen. 😦

Were you satisfied with the quality of the paperback printed by IngramSpark Australia?
(polls)

Meeks

I’m going to hit that deadline…yes!

I have until July 31 to submit ‘How to Print Your Novel with Kindle Direct Publishing’ to IngramSpark. Missing that deadline means having to pay $53 AUD for the setup fee, not something Scrouge McFlory wants to do, no, no, no…

Yesterday, I wasn’t sure if I’d make it coz the Word index was playing up. If any of you have used the Word index function, you’ll know that it creates a Continuous section break all by itself. That’s normal, but yesterday Word added a Next Page break just before the index. No, it wasn’t me. Anyway, headers and page numbers suddenly went crazy and the more I tried to fix things the worse it all became.

To cut a long story short, I bit the bullet this morning and stripped out all the section breaks, saved under a new filename [just because i was paranoid], redid all the breaks, headers and page numbers and…voila! It works.

To celebrate, I jumped on Corel and began playing with some images I’d downloaded from freeimages.com. These are what I started with:

I wanted to indicate visually that the book referred to KDP but wasn’t an ebook. As sometimes happens, the answer was ridiculously simple. This is just the visual image I came up with:

Now I just have to fiddle with the title and backcover stuff and it’ll be done.

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Meeks

IngramSpark for Australian Authors

Just finished a long conversation with a very nice lady from IngramSpark Australia, and I thought I’d share what I learned with other Australian self-publishers.

First and foremost, IngramSpark have a print facility right here in Australia. That translates to massive savings on shipping costs for Australian authors.

How massive? Roughly $4.90 for 1 to 28 medium sized paperbacks if you live in Melbourne. That’s because the IngramSpark print facility is located in Melbourne. Delivery charges to other states will obviously be higher. Nonetheless, I doubt those charges would come close to the cost of shipping books in from overseas.

Secondly, IngramSpark printing costs are a bit higher than CreateSpace but lower than Lulu. They also have:

• a full range of trim sizes
• hardbacks if required
• global distribution to countries not available through Amazon.

Amazon distribution has become a sore point with Australians as they cannot buy print books on Amazon Australia. In the past, they would have to order print books from Amazon US or UK and pay shipping costs that often doubled or tripled the cost of the book. Now that we’ve been geo-blocked from Amazon international, print books will no longer be available at all. Unless…

And this brings me to my conversation with IngramSpark today. I rang to clarify whether I could use IngramSpark to provide print books to Amazon Australia. The question was complicated by the fact that I wanted non-Australian Amazon markets to continue selling paperbacks printed via CreateSpace and KDP.

Aussie authors will be pleased to know that the answer from IngramSpark was ‘yes’. 🙂

Basically what happens is that my book[s] will be available for world wide distribution – to countries not covered by Amazon as well as markets already covered by Amazon. When someone buys one of my print books from Amazon US, UK or EU, Amazon will fulfil the order from their own ‘feed’. In other words, if they can supply from CreateSpace OR KDP they’ll do so.

But…for markets such as Australia, Amazon will source the print book from IngramSpark. That means my paperback will be available to Australian readers from Amazon.com.au, and it’ll cost readers a heck of a lot less in shipping.

Apart from availability and shipping, there is one more reason to print books with IngramSpark here in Australia, and that harks back to their distribution capabilities. If I can persuade a local bookshop to give my book[s] a try, the bookshop can order direct from IngramSpark at wholesale prices. Wholesale discounts range from 30% to 55%, which puts self-publishers/small publishers on a more even footing with large, traditional publishers.

-dance-

Okay, I’ll stop high-fiving myself now and get serious again because there are also disadvantages to printing with IngramSpark. The two biggest disincentives are:

• the setup cost of $53 AUD per book, and
• the need to have an ABN [Australian Business Number].

If you’ve never run a small business before – for example as a sole trader – the idea of getting an ABN can be daunting. The truth, however, is that it’s both free and relatively painfree to apply for one.

For detailed, step-by-step information about getting an ABN see this post. And see this one about why you should NOT pay for that ABN [because it’s free].

Now for a word about the cost. $53 AUD is a steep price to pay when you’ve got more than one book to setup. I have 7 to-date, so that would have been an upfront charge of $371 AUD. Luckily, I managed to setup all 7 books during a free promotion run by IngramSpark.

I’m not sure exactly when or why IngramSpark runs these promotions, but from what I can gather, they seem to happen once, or maybe twice a year. I have two more how-to books in the pipeline, so I’ll have to pay the full setup charge for those, but at least the cost will be staggered for them.

Oh, and one more disadvantage – once a book has been approved [by the author] and is available for sale, any changes will incur a $25 fee. So…be very sure your book is as ready as it’ll ever be before you approve it for publishing/sale.

Okay, that’s it for now. I’ll be ordering proof copies of all 7 books in the next day or three. Once they arrive I’ll take pics and write an update on the quality, timing etc.

cheers

Meeks

 

 

Updated June 26, 2020 – self-publishing tips for absolute beginners

All the links now work, and a few tips have been taken out. They relate to Lulu specific info. that I can no longer check. Apologies for that but better no info. than out-of-date info.

1. Print-On-Demand [POD for short] is new tech that allows books to be printed one at a time instead of in the hundreds.
2. Print-On-Demand [POD] means authors don’t have to BUY 100’s of their own print books.
3. The 3 biggest Print-On-Demand printers are Lulu, IngramSpark, and Amazon KDP.
4. Lulu & IngramSpark have print facilities in Australia. Both are more expensive than KDP but Aussie authors save a lot in postage [and time].
5. Aussie authors wanting to print with IngramSpark must have an ABN and pay a $53 setup fee for each book [$49USD]. IngramSpark periodically has ‘free setup’ promotions.
6. Aussie authors wanting to get an ABN should read this how-to first: https://acflory.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/how-to-apply-for-an-abn-the-basics/
7. Print-On-Demand works with standard trim sizes only. For a table of trim sizes see : https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201834180
8. Trim size = physical size of book after pages glued inside cover & trimmed.
9. Page size templates for all trim sizes can be found on the KDP website: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201834230
10. Convert Word A4 pages to trim size pages via the Word Page Setup dialog box.
11. ISBN = 13 digit no. that identifies your book worldwide. Buy your own ISBN or accept the free one offered by KDP.
12. The downside of a free ISBN is that it can only be used with the company that issued it.
13. Aussie authors can buy ISBNs from Thorpe-Bowker: https://www.myidentifiers.com.au/
14. As a rule of thumb, print, ebook & audiobooks all need their own ISBN.
15. Books printed via KDP are listed on Amazon automatically.
16. To publish Kindle ebooks go to: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/
17. Amazon supplies ebooks with ASIN identifiers so ISBN not strictly necessary.
18. If you want to ‘go wide’ & sell with other retailers as well as Amazon, your own ISBN is a must.
19. Most POD printers prefer PDF files but will accept Word files.
20. Before converting from Word to PDF, ensure all Word fonts are embedded in the document. See:  https://acflory.wordpress.com/2020/02/10/exporting-your-document-to-pdf/
21. File/Export completed Word doc. to PDF [see 20 above]. Then upload that PDF to the POD printer of your choice.
22. With KDP print, royalty = List Price – Print costs.
23. With KDP, Print costs= Sales Channel % + Fixed Charges + Per Page Charge.
24. With KDP, Standard sales channel % = 40% of List Price, Expanded sales channel % = 60%.
25. Spine of [paperback] cover = trim size & no. of pages.
26. KDP cover template from:  https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/cover-templates  Select trim size from drop down list, enter page count & paper colour, then download template.
27. IngramSpark cover template from: https://myaccount.ingramspark.com/Portal/Tools/CoverTemplateGenerator
28. Barcodes for KDP – included at no cost.
29. Barcodes for IngramSpark – included at no cost.
30. When converting covers to PDF for KDP paperback, “Press Quality” and “PDF/X-1a” both work.
31. Total page no. of book = pages AFTER conversion to chosen trim size [not A4 Word pages].
32. Amazon deducts 30% withholding tax from each sale. Aussies can claim exemption to reduce tax to 5%.
33. Withholding tax exemption: US TIN = Australian Tax File No.
34. Aussie authors must deposit 1 copy of each published book with the National Library of Australia: https://www.nla.gov.au/legal-deposit
35. Aussie authors must also deposit 1 copy of each published book with their state library: https://www.nla.gov.au/legal-deposit/australia-wide
36. Aussie authors – for Legal Deposit FAQ see:https://www.nla.gov.au/legal-deposit-faq

How to make Word 16 embed all your fonts

Before I begin, if you don’t want to self-publish your own paperback, or if you don’t use a PDF file to do it, look away now.

Right, this is the task:

1. convert your manuscript from a Word 16 [13 and possibly 10] document to a PDF file, in order to print with
2. Lulu.com, CreateSpace.com or KDP [possible IngramSpark as well]

The problem:

1. after converting to PDF, you find that there are fonts in your PDF that are not ’embedded’,
2. yet after scouring your original Word file, you can find no trace of these non-embedded fonts.

How can you fix something that doesn’t seem to be there?

Before launching into the how-to, let me go back and explain the problem in a little more detail. It all starts with the Word fonts. While Word documents look great on screen and print without problems, sharing them with others can be tricky as they may not have the same fonts on their version of Word.

This is where PDFs come in. They take a picture of your Word file so that it can be shared by just about anyone. However…for PDFs to work properly, all those pesky Word fonts have to be embedded in the PDF. With me so far?

Okay, so how do you know whether the fonts have been embedded in your PDF file or not?

Easy. Download a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader. Install it onto your computer and use it to open the PDF file of your manuscript. Once the manuscript is open:

1. click File, and
2. select Properties from the menu

With the Properties dialog box open, select the Font tab:

On the Font tab you will find a list of all the fonts used in your manuscript. Next to each one you should see ‘(Embedded Subset)’. I’ve underlined it in green above. If you see a font name without ‘Embedded Subset’ next to it [circled in red above], that means the font is loose and may be replaced with some other font when the reader opens the document [or tries to read your print book].

Now, you could take a chance and shrug the problem off, but printers tend to take a dim view of non-embedded fonts. CreateSpace tags them as errors but allows you to continue anyway. I suspect Lulu will be a bit less forgiving, that’s why I went looking for a solution.

Unfortunately, the solutions offered on the lulu.com website are not particularly useful unless you have an app called Adobe Distiller which is needed to make another app, called Lulu Job Options, work. Guess who doesn’t have Adobe Distiller?

My first brilliant idea was to go back into my Word file and get rid of the unembedded font[s]. Fail. I tried doing an Advanced search for the TimesNewRomanPSMT font, but the search came back with no returns. Given that I never choose TimesNewRoman, I can only think that it’s lurking somewhere in one of Words many defaults.

So then I spent about three, increasingly frustrated hours online, trying to hit on the right combination of search words to find an answer to my problem. I won’t bore you with the failures because the answer, when I finally found it, was right there in Word’s damn defaults. You’ll find it in the File/Options dialog box:

1. With your Word manuscript document open, click the File Tab.
2. From the File navigation pane, select ‘Options’:

‘Options’ is where the default options that govern much of the behind-the-scenes stuff lives in Word.

Once you click ‘Options’, the Word Options dialog box opens up. This is the motherlode:

Click Save on the navigation pane as shown [circled in red].

This will open up the Save options, one of which includes the option to ‘Embed fonts in the file’ [circled in red].

Click Embed fonts in the file.

Last but by no means least, uncheck both ‘Embed only the characters used in the document’ and ‘Do not embed common system fonts’. TimesNewRomanPSMT is one of those ‘common system fonts’. -rolls eyes and pulls hair-

Finally, click OK, save your Word file and then convert it to a new PDF file, again.

This time, when you open the new PDF with Acrobat Reader and check its properties, you should see something like this:

And there it is [circled in red], the TimesNewRomanPSMT font…embedded at last!

Happy publishing,

Meeks