How to Effectively Use a POD (Print On Demand) Publisher With Robin Cutler

Welcome to the Real Fast Results podcast!  Robin Cutler, from
IngramSpark, is here to share her secrets on print on demand (POD)
publishing.  So, without further ado, let’s welcome Robin… Our
promise today is to talk a little about print on demand and what
your options are as an author as well as the different platforms in
which you can make your book available.  Most importantly
IngramSpark, but also CreateSpace and some other options that you
might have.  What we plan to do today is to bring
clarity and to offer you some real solutions for how you might move
forward with your self-publishing plans. Defining Print on
Demand Publishing Print on demand, as a technology, has been around
for, actually, about 20 years.  It really started at Ingram 20
years ago, when Ingram started a company called Lightening
Source.  That was actually done by John Ingram 20 years ago,
and Lightning Source is now the state-of-the-art print on demand
company of the world.  Print on demand is just like it
sounds, where instead of an author or publisher having to stock
inventory, through print on demand, you can actually print as you
need to and pay as you go. What’s so great about
print on demand is that it allows you, as an author and as a
publisher, to bring your book to the marketplace and reduce the
risk of doing so.  We aren’t actually printing until
we actually get orders for those books, and those orders can go
directly to the customers in many cases.  The minimum order in
a true print on demand model, like what we offer through Ingram
Spark, is one copy.  So, isn’t that phenomenal? To me, this is
the heyday for self-publishers.  They have as much, and as
many, the tools at their disposal as the traditional publishers
have always had.  You know, they have access to IngramSpark,
which is the world’s largest book distributor.  You can put
your content out into the marketplace very easily and
inexpensively, through print on demand, and just see what happens
without having to sell the family farm, which was not always the
case in the old days. How to Start a Print On Demand
(POD) Project First of all, you need to have worked with an
editor to create a published book. You should work with a designer.
Although, if you have the skill to design yourself, that’s
fine.  Most people don’t, however, so you would
probably need to work with a designer to actually format your book
in a trim size that can actually be printed as print on
demand. Book Trim Size There are some limitations on what
you can do when it comes to print on demand. 
You will want to check and make sure that the trim size
that you and your designer have selected is one that actually can
be manufactured through your print on demand
process.  There are a lot of choices, as far as what
those trim sizes are.  The smallest is 4x6, and it goes all
the way up to 8.5x11.  There’s color, there’s hardcover,
paperback, and a couple of different options in bindings that are
available now.  Even in hardcover, you can have a
cloth-printed look to your hardcover book with a jacket on it. 6x9
is the one that’s most heavily chosen by all publishers. That size
is the one that’s most commonly seen on most bookshelves, and
5.5x8.5 is another one.  For children’s books, we’re starting
to see sort of a square trim size.  There’s an 8x8 and
8.5x8.5, and also 8.5x11.  But, what’s great about a squarer
kind of trim size is that it gives you a lot more flexibility in
terms of your illustrations.  Most illustrations will fit on
that sort of format.  We are always adding, and I think we’re
about to launch a 10.5x10.5 square trim size through Ingram here in
a month or so.  You can always check and see if we’ve
added anything recently. There’s just a lot that’s
available. An author, as they are writing their book, they tend to
have an image of what they think that finished book should look
like.  Often times, that image or vision that they have is a
non-standard trim size because they think that makes their book
unique in the world and on a bookshelf.  Unique isn’t
necessarily a good thing, in terms of cost, and also, how you
distribute your book.  In fact, you want it to be
standard and part of a format that booksellers can sell easily. So,
I say, don’t get hung up on the format.  Make sure it’s
standard.  Make sure, especially as a new author, it
fits a print on demand trim size.  You can go onto
the IngramSpark site, and I’ll give you this information. 
There are also other places you can check out what various print on
demand providers offer.  So, I would say that’s Step
#1. I think that it is smart to look at similar books in your
genre.  Not only the trim size, but you also want to look at
the pricing of your competitors and books in the marketplace.
Making Changes In Your Book After It's Published Another
thing that I wanted to mention about the value of print on demand,
and this is a big, big thing, is that you can easily update your
book.  If you’re a published author, you know that
it’s hard to get it right initially.  Invariably, no matter
how good of an editor you have, or how good of a proofreader,
you’ll find something that you want to change.  And, it could
be something for the good. Let’s say that you won an award. 
That’s something that you would want to include on the cover of
your book.  Maybe you’ve gotten a great review.  Well, if
you’ve printed 5,000 copies, and they’re in your basement, and
you’ve gotten this great review or this great endorsement from
James Patterson, you’re kind of screwed.  You want to add that
to your book.  Print on demand allows you to easily do
that.  So, you just update your file, and everything that’s
printed after that is the new information on the book. You can also
easily update the metadata. There’s a lot of information out there,
especially in the self-publishing world, about metadata and the
importance of that.  So, POD allows you to easily
update all of the book information, the pricing, the description,
anything you want to update. Next Step: PDF You've
edited your book, picked the correct trim size and evaluated your
competition. Now, all you need to get started are the finished PDFs
of your book for print on demand. You need a PDF of
the cover and a separate PDF of the interior.  In creating
those PDFs, that’s why It’s really valuable to use a professional
who understands how to create a PDF for print.  Just a Word
version of a PDF, maybe, is not going to work.  It definitely
won’t work for the cover.  It may work in the interior, but it
definitely won’t work for the cover. IngramSpark offers a
cover generator template.  Once you decide your trim
size, you can use that template.  The cover gets placed on it
so that it will fit perfectly.  And then, you just create an
IngramSpark account, upload your information about your book, and
what we call the metadata.  Then, at the end of that, you
upload your files. We have this great validator
tool.  On the screen, this scrolling thing happens,
and it will show you if you have any issues with your files. 
If you do, you can go back and have your designer fix them and
re-upload them.  Once it goes through, you get a proof, you
look at it, and if you say, “Gosh, this looks fantastic,” you turn
on the distribution for that book.  What that means is that
your book actually goes out into the world via these data
feeds.  One of the primary ones is Ingram’s catalogue, and
from there it goes out to Amazon, and Barnes & Noble, Gardners,
and the UK.  You know, it goes all over the place.  So,
it’s really fantastic. Just to bring clarity, one of the
reasons why Ingram is so important for a self-publisher is because
booksellers and libraries want to purchase books across a multitude
of publishers from a single source.  They don’t want
to have to go directly to these publishers.  They want to just
have one or two vendors that they deal with, and so Ingram’s one.
Once your book is in the Ingram catalogue, it’s like your
book is right there beside all of the Random House
books.  There’s nothing that marks your book as being
self-published.  It just looks like any other book in the
Ingram catalogue.  So, when you are promoting your book to
libraries and to booksellers, it helps to elevate you into the
realm of professional authors. If you can say, “My book is
available from Ingram,” you don’t have to say that it’s
self-published.  You don’t really have to say a whole
lot more than about the book itself and where it can be purchased,
and you say that it’s available from Ingram.  When you say
that it’s from Ingram, it’s implied that it’s been vetted and is of
a good quality.  That brings up another point, and that is to
make sure that your book really is a good-quality book, which, by
the way, is not that expensive. I say spend your money in
creating, formatting, and marketing your book.  Don’t spend
your money on inventory.  You can always do
that.  If your book takes off, you have a lot of other
options, but especially bringing the book to market as a new
author, don’t invest in inventory.  Invest in creating your
book and bringing it to market. The Difference Between Ingram and
CreateSpace Just for full disclosure, I used to actually work at
CreateSpace.  I loved working for CreateSpace, and for Amazon,
and I feel really proud of the work that I did there.  I
mainly worked with publishers, not so much with authors, like I do
now at Ingram.  But, I have nothing but great things to say
about CreateSpace.  I will say, because this is probably the
#1 question that I get. Authors often ask, “What’s the
difference between IngramSpark and CreateSpace?”  So,
I think we can have a discussion that can help bring clarity to
authors that are sort of wondering the answers to that question.
The difference is that Ingram has much broader
distribution.  CreateSpace distributes just to
Amazon.  Although, CreateSpace has a program that they call
“Expanded Distribution”.  Guess what “Expanded Distribution”
is?  It’s Ingram.  It will put the book in the Ingram
catalogue, which is a good thing, but it actually puts the book in
the catalogue at a disadvantage to the author.  Your book is
listed with what we call a “short discount, non-returnable”. 
It doesn’t really get you what you need if you’re planning to sell
to libraries and especially to booksellers. By putting your book
into IngramSpark, you make your book available to Ingram and
everywhere that Ingram sells; which is about 40,000 retail and
library partners around the world.  Then, you control
and can specify how that book gets listed in the Ingram
catalogue.  You want that kind of control as an
author, and I would advise you to have that control.  You can
set up the same book, using the same ISBN, and we’ll talk in a
minute about ISBNs because I have a lot to say about that. 
But, you can set up the same book, with the same ISBN, that you
own, in both platforms, with the same files.  Then, you’ll be
pretty-well set. What’s great about having your book on CreateSpace
is that your book will always show up as being in stock within
Amazon’s catalogue, which is a great thing.  You want that as
an author as well.  What’s great about setting it up with
IngramSpark is that in the Ingram catalogue there’s no mention of
CreateSpace being associated with your book.  Booksellers
don’t like to see that.  If you walk into the store
with a CreateSpace book, you’re likely not to be warmly
welcomed.  So, you don’t want that. You just set up
your book under your own imprint in the IngramSpark catalogue, and
you’re good to go.  If I had to pick one platform,
because a lot of people just want to have one place where they keep
everything, I would suggest it be IngramSpark just because it’s the
broadest distribution. The Use of ISBNs To
distribute a book, you do need an ISBN, which is the international
book identification number.  You attain an ISBN from,
in the US it’s Bowker.  In Canada, the Canadian government
gives free ISBNs.  So, it’s kind of country-specific, but in
the US, you can obtain them from Bowker.  To me,
owning your ISBN is like owning your name.  It
travels throughout the life of your book, and there’s a different
ISBN for every format of the book that you have, and that
identifies the format as well.  So, you want to own it just
because you don’t want your book tied to any one distributor.
Anytime your book is given a free ISBN, your book is tied
to whoever gave you that free ISBN.  You never want
that for the life of your book, or even for a short length of
time.  You’ll regret it in the end, and it’s not a good thing
to do.  Just to be clear, CreateSpace does offer the
use of their ISBN in your book, but you can’t use that ISBN on any
other platform but CreateSpace.  In addition to that,
the publisher is then listed as CreateSpace, which is not
necessarily a good thing.  On Amazon it’s one thing, but off
of Amazon it’s a whole other matter. You should really use
the same ISBN on both your IngramSpark and CreateSpace
edition.  Otherwise, it creates confusion in the
marketplace.  For instance, you’ll suddenly get Barnes &
Noble interested in your book, and they go to the Ingram
catalogue.  Well, you’ve set up your book via CreateSpace
using your free ISBN, and you’ve turned on “Expanded Distribution,”
so they see it listed there, but you’ve also assigned your own ISBN
to the one that you set up with IngramSpark.  So, it takes
Barnes & Noble a minute to see that.  Then they’re
confused, and it doesn’t necessarily put you in the realm of a
professional author.  Instantly you will kind of have a mark
against you. You want to set up your book exactly with the
same ISBN that you have purchased and that you own. 
It will travel along the life and the format of that book on any
platform.  Like, you don’t want exclusivity anywhere.  We
don’t require exclusivity at IngramSpark, and I don’t advocate
exclusivity for the author.  I think you should be as broad as
you can and make your book available as widely as possible.
Print On Demand Tips Remember this process:

Use POD when you’re launching as a new author.  It’s
there to really make it easy and affordable for you.

Purchase your own ISBN.  Make that investment.

Make the investment in working with professional editors,
designers, marketers, and spend your money like that.

Set your book up, at least in IngramSpark and
CreateSpace.  If you’re only going to choose one, I would
choose IngramSpark.

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