Ingram's making me looney

[alhawke]

Anyone else have problems with their applications when publishing a book? I find it a confusing mess and am now running into trouble with them for the second time. The first issue was last year when I hit the ebook distrubution button. That little button caused complete chaos with Ingram sending my book out to all distributors (I do use aggregators, but I like to distribute direct --particularly Amazon, obviously). They fixed it, but it was a major pain.

The newest has to do with approving a proof. It's hard for me to be certain half the time if I'm pressing the right buttons. This time, I want to change the proof. Why can't I just change before publishing it? Why does it have to go through another 4 day review?

Anyway, not looking for answers just venting. I'm seriously considering publishing my paperbacks direct through B&N and Amazon and bypassing Ingram altogether as that's where I get most of my sales anyway.

Edit: to be fair, all retailers have to review changes, but the process is very delayed with them and they might charge me. I dunno at this stage in their process?

[Eric Thomson]

The new Ingram website is, quite frankly, a steaming mess of garbage dreamed up by someone who doesn't have a clue about publishing. I'm preparing to push out a paperback and hardcover this week and have done the preliminary work. Ugh. What trash.

Hi IngramSpark! If any of you are reading this, get your bloody act together. The site worked before. Now it doesn't. That means the upgrade is a FAILURE. Now do something, FFS

That is all.

[Anarchist]

This is one of the reasons I stick with publishing paperbacks on Amazon.

Yeah, there are benefits to Ingram. But there are also hurdles and headaches.

And I hate headaches.

[Eric Thomson]

This is one of the reasons I stick with publishing paperbacks on Amazon.

Yeah, there are benefits to Ingram. But there are also hurdles and headaches.

And I hate headaches.

Ingram was fine until this Spring, when they let incompetent developers have their way. I published 38 titles via IS and I've only had issues setting up the ones coming out this week.

[Anarchist]

This is one of the reasons I stick with publishing paperbacks on Amazon.

Yeah, there are benefits to Ingram. But there are also hurdles and headaches.

And I hate headaches.

Ingram was fine until this Spring, when they let incompetent developers have their way. I published 38 titles via IS and I've only had issues setting up the ones coming out this week.

That's great to know. I may investigate Ingram further down the road. But every time I see a thread describing a problem with Ingram, I shy away.

I sell a lot of paperbacks each month, and I'm hesitant to throw a wrench in the works.

[Eric Thomson]

I hedge my bets. I do paperbacks two ways: KDP Print for sale on Amazon only and expanded distribution paperbacks as well as hardcovers through  IS.

[alhawke]

I await their reply and I'll let you guys know. Hopefully things will smooth out, but this definitely is delaying my release outside Amazon. For positives, I can say that they've been super nice in the past with correspondence. They just really need to work on streamlining their process and creating a more user friendly platform.

[TimothyEllis]

Any reason why this is not in the Ingram area? Or is this wanted to be kept away form public view?

Moving the thread. If anyone has a problem with it being in public, msg me.

[Mark Gardner]

I hate so much about Ingram. Their predatory fees, their blase shipping policies. The problem is that the quality of KDP books is such garbage.

[alhawke]

The problem is that the quality of KDP books is such garbage.

But I must say that the paperbacks through KDP are getting better and better. With my first book, Ingram had the best cover. It was more vivid. My more recent books are on par in quality, IMO.

(still waiting for a response from Ingram, which is why I started my gripe in the first place. I know this is a waiting game now and I'm guessing I'm going to be publishing about two weeks late through them. I would have liked my paperback being released with Amazon at launch. The delay could hurt sales wide outside Amazon, ironically through Ingram).

[alhawke]

I never heard back from Ingram after my email.

For kicks, I checked the site again to see if I could push the files and ... voila the files could be updated again. It's unfortunate that the program is working now as I just lost the week for sending the book out. I await their second proof to approve. That will be another two days according to the system.

The wait for proofing is okay. Amazon asks for time to proof too. But why did I have to wait the week to upload new files? This seems to be a major glitch in their program and is costing me wide distribution through Ingram.

[alhawke]

Ingram got back to me. My book is being distributed just in time for release.

I mentioned the software's buggy. Hopefully they can do something to improve new releases.

Also to add: Currently, to order a proof, the system states it will be up to 22 days to print a book! It may not just be the software. It sounds like Covid is seriously impacting production and management of their paperbacks--possibly more so than Amazon ??

[notthatamanda]

22 days is crazy. I have always gotten my proofs in a week and a half and that's with the cheapest shipping method.

[alhawke]

Yeah. It's gotta be the pandemic, I'm thinking. I couldn't believe it either.

This doesn't bode well for any of our paperbacks outside Amazon right now if printing is this lagging.

[notthatamanda]

I'm selling a couple of paper books a week. I wonder what the lead time is for those? Amazon still says 1 to 2 day lead time for my paper books. (Those go through Ingram as well.) Maybe it is a lot of orders for school related books as school is starting up in various forms now?

[alhawke]

This is what Ingram is posting for proofs (for my book anyway): Economy Service - Usually prints in 22 business days. I can't see where to order outside of Economy Service. Again, this could be the software. It's difficult to make heads or tails of their program (as ^^).

Just to check, I looked up one of my books for shipping time at Target and Walmart (where I know it's through Ingram). Target had a 10 day order time, Walmart was 7 days. So order time is not what I'm seeing for my own author copies. But maybe these books have been printed and are already ready to ship? I don't know.