"Where Should I Self-Publish My Book?"

Going over the options based on my experiences

I've seen this question come up a lot and have had discussions with other authors about the different places to upload a book for self-publication.

It can be overwhelming and confusing when you first decide where to publish. There are a few options, and people can have pretty strong opinions on them, including me. Here, I will talk about my own experiences. Be sure to take other opinions and experiences into account. While my thoughts here are exhaustive, there is plenty more I could say.

There is also the matter that where you publish the e-book and where you publish the paperback can be different. For example, you can have wide distribution for the paperback while having the e-book exclusive with Amazon and enrolled in Kindle Unlimited (KU). Spoiler alert: I think this is probably the best option.

I will be covering KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing/Amazon), IngramSpark, and Draft2Digital. I want to preface this with the fact that I’m American, so options and results may vary if you live outside the US.

Under my old horror author name, I published my first two books with KDP and one in IngramSpark with the e-book as an Amazon exclusive and in KU. Under Morgan Dante, I published A Flame in the Night completely with Draft2Digital, so distribution to Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc. were all handled through Draft2Digital for both the e-book and paperback.

For Witch Soul, Providence Girls, King of Hell, and Unholy with Eyes like Wolves, both the e-books and paperbacks were handled completely in KDP/Amazon, and the e-books are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited/KU.

For my next book, The Saint of Heartbreak, I intend on making the e-book KDP-exclusive and enrolled in KU, publishing the Amazon-available paperback through KDP, and then using Draft2Digital to allow the paperback to be available in other places like Barnes & Noble. I will likely also go back and do this with my Amazon-exclusive books, so the paperbacks are accessible using other outlets. The only reason I haven’t is time. I also like having a lot of the book sales consolidated in KDP because I like the interface and report charts the most.

Of course, it’s important to note that there is no such thing as a “perfect” place to self-publish your book. These all have their drawbacks and compromises, but I do have my very strong biases that will become evident.

A complaint people have with KDP is the printing quality and interior errors. I haven’t had issues with this, although I have noticed a slight difference in the version of AFITN I have from a KDP printer and the one I have from Draft2Digital, mostly a slight difference in colors on the cover (last I checked, Ingram requires CYMK, whereas KDP doesn’t require a specific color profile, but it’s dependent on the printer used, which…varies) and the author name being a little higher toward the top of the KDP version for some reason. Apparently, this is just a thing with KDP covers—they are aligned where everything is moved higher up. I wish I knew why.

Draft2Digital (D2D) uses Ingram as a printer like, of course, IngramSpark does, so if printing quality is your concern, you can get Ingram quality through using D2D.

Copies of A Flame in the Night: KDP (left) vs. D2D/Ingram (right)

IngramSpark is often considered the most professional option to go through with the best printing quality. IngramSpark is the self-pub service of Ingram, which is the book printer for the American publishing industry; it’s trusted, and they offer a lot of options in terms of book design, distribution, return options, and wholesale discounts for bookstores.

KDP also has a downside of no paperback pre-orders, which inevitably has readers confused when you offer e-book pre-orders and no paperback pre-orders. They used to not offer hardcovers, but now they do, although I, as I’m writing this, haven’t bothered with hardcovers for my books, so I can’t attest to the quality. I have heard the options are limited. I may consider hardcovers for longer books, such as my behemoth vampire dark romance that I desperately need to finish. (Everyone pray that I never write a 130K+ book again.) However, I don’t see much of a point for shorter books.

What about bookstores? A common reason people vouch for IngramSpark over KDP is that it’s easier to get books into bookstores, which is technically true. There is a certain feeling of legitimacy at having your book in a physical store, rather than strictly online.

With KDP, you can allow expanded distribution, and bookstores can buy copies. I have had bookstores do this, so the idea that bookstores won’t buy through Amazon isn’t entirely true. However, Amazon doesn’t offer as much of a discount as you can provide through Ingram; booksellers generally expect a 55% discount. That said, as someone who mostly writes erotica and romance—with word counts that are sometimes novel-length but can dip down to novellas—I tend to prioritize e-books and Kindle Unlimited as my sources of income. This is because, looking at my lifetime sales, the paperback sales are important, but I sell roughly about seven times more of the e-book/Kindle versions. Your mileage may vary depending on the author, however. It is also worth mentioning that this counts the Kindle promos I have done, which are easy to implement and encourage people to buy the e-books.

It is nice to have your book in a bookstore, and I’m happy and grateful when bookstores order through Amazon, but to be honest, it’s not a primary concern of mine. The landscape has changed, and I don’t think a book is lesser in quality or merit if most people buy it online rather than seeing it on shelves.

Speaking of availability, a problem with both D2D and IngramSpark is the infamous “out of stock” issue where the paperback will be listed as out of stock in a certain region or everywhere on Amazon. IngramSpark and D2D can put your book on Amazon on your behalf, and many like this because then you can have pre-orders on Amazon, but I would caution against this. The “out of stock” problem doesn’t happen to everyone, and it does tend to get resolved, but it’s a possibility that can lead to stress and lost/delayed sales in the first few weeks of a release.

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, Amazon wants you to use KDP to publish books on Amazon, big surprise; it doesn’t want you to use a third party. So, there are issues when you use a third party to publish on Amazon. With A Flame in the Night, I had the problem of Amazon telling Canadians that the book was out of stock, and Amazon would tell me it was D2D’s fault and to contact them, and D2D would tell me there was nothing they could do because ultimately this is just a thing Amazon does with third party distributors.

In fact, D2D advised me to publish a version on Amazon under a new ISBN that would be available to the affected regions, so that’s why there is a “Canadian version” of A Flame of the Night where, yes, Léon is an honorary Québécois because I said so.

IngramSpark has also had a recent issue of authors being charged hundreds or even 1,000+ of dollars in bulk returns in physical copies. This can put authors in a bind when they are suddenly charged $500+. KDP allows people to return a book, but it’s rare and tends to not lead to much of a consequence other than a small reduction of that month’s royalties; D2D has stated to lessen the risk for authors, they don’t allow returns.

How does this happen? These returns IngramSpark lists are often a very high number of books that don’t even account for bookstore purchases. In my experience, bookstores tend to buy 15–25 copies in one go, whereas these returns tend to be…80–100+ books. So, what is happening? This happened to a friend of mine, and he was asked to pay IngramSpark over a thousand dollars, but he’s not alone.

Rebecca Thorne recently posted on Tiktok about this happening to a friend of hers who was asked to pay $600. There’s speculation that the issue with massive IngramSpark returns is Amazon’s fault.

D2D and IngramSpark allow paperback pre-orders, and if you distribute to Amazon using them, you can get Amazon paperback pre-orders to work; this is often why people have used IngramSpark and D2D over KDP for paperbacks: to circumvent KDP not having an option to have paperback pre-orders. I had it pointed out with A Flame in the Night, uploaded entirely through D2D, that Amazon had paperback pre-orders for sale, which I hadn’t expected because I was used to the KDP model of e-book pre-orders and paperbacks on release.

You can choose not to let people return books, but a bookstore will often not buy a book if returns are turned off because it means they must sell every copy and accept the risk of having extra copies that don’t sell. If a book is returned, according to IngramSpark, the author is charged full price plus any handling fees.

They say (emphasis mine):

How Much Are You Charged for Book Returns?

As we mentioned above, many booksellers will not stock a book unless it is returnable. However, returns can be costly, and you should be financially prepared for returns. IngramSpark will charge the publisher for the wholesale cost of returns plus any applicable shipping and handling fees.

Before discussing shipping and handling fees, let’s talk about the wholesale cost of your book. If you set a retail price for your book of $20 and select a 55% wholesale discount, the result is a $9.00 wholesale cost, and the retailer will pay $9.00 to purchase your book. If the book is returned, we charge you back the wholesale price of $9.00 + the shipping and handling fees shown below. If you decide to change the price of your book, you’ll be charged at the wholesale price that’s active in our system on the date that the return is processed.

All of the paperback printing options I have spoken about are POD, print-on-demand. Whereas a trad publisher will print a certain amount of copies and store them in a warehouse to be sent out once ordered, the cost-efficient way for self-pub places like Amazon is to only print books that are ordered. So, five people order a book, five copies are printed and sent out, and there are no extra copies left over.

Thorne’s theory is that Amazon will order IngramSpark pre-order copies in anticipation of a successful release, and then use their POD model to print books on release and send back IngramSpark copies they don’t sell. IngramSpark then charges the author for this returned bulk order in one giant sum.

I cannot confirm that this happens, but I have seen more than one author hurt by this. At the end of the day, regardless of whether Amazon does this, because of this costly and stressful issue, as well as the “out of stock” problem I have mentioned that befalls authors who use IngramSpark and Draft2Digital to distribute on Amazon, my advice?

Upload paperbacks books you want to sell on Amazon using KDP and only KDP. If you want it to be available in more places, like Barnes & Noble, you can use D2D. I don’t remember IngramSpark’s options, but D2D has an option where you can select which places you want to distribute to. If I recall correctly, you need to send them a special email if you want them to sell a paperback through Amazon anyway. Don’t do this. Let them distribute to Barnes & Noble and so on, but not Amazon. Don’t use IngramSpark or D2D to sell books on Amazon to save yourself an allegedly Amazon-induced headache and possibly, in the case of IngramSpark, several dollars that may go past $1,000.

Thorne mentions there is a way to not connect an IngramSpark book to Amazon somewhere in the site. You can release a book on Amazon first and then IngramSpark later, and Amazon will list its copy first.

Unfortunately, navigating the IngramSpark interface is like trying to solve the Lament Configuration, but you’re being tortured by cenobites before you’ve even summoned them, and you’re still working to solve the puzzle. So, to keep it simple and not as stressful as being metaphorically flayed alive, KDP for Amazon paperback sales. The downside, as mentioned before, is no Amazon physical pre-orders, but you can have pre-orders in other stores like B&N.

If you haven’t noticed, between the difficult navigation, the bugginess of the interface, and the poor customer support, I don’t like IngramSpark very much.

Even when it comes to bookstore sales on Ingram, the amount of royalties an author makes on those is very small because of the discounts; it really is for a sense of legitimacy, which I completely understand. Many authors dream of walking into a bookstore and seeing their books on a shelf. That’s a completely valid want. However, with the returns issue and the pennies you make through IngramSpark bookstore sales, it isn’t worth the potential stress and effort to me.

Another downside of Ingram is the cost of revisions. Thankfully, they have done away with the $49 set-up fee. With KDP, it’s free to upload, and you have unlimited revisions and cheap author physical proofs. With Ingram, it’s $50 per submitted revision. With D2D, set-up is free; working with them has cost me zero dollars. I cannot remember the cost to revise (because I avoid doing it), but they offer free “change tokens” every 90 days. These tokens don’t stack.

Basically, you get one, and if you use it, you can revise your paperback cover/manuscipt for free. After, you have to wait 90 days or pay to make a revision. Also, if I recall correctly, whereas the proof from KDP is typically less than $10 (unless the book is very long) because it’s the cost of printing the book plus shipping and taxes, the D2D author proof is, if I recall correctly, $20. Which, no thanks.

So, Ingram and D2D offer cost-limited revisions, which means you often have to be sure you get the paperback right the first time before release. This can be hard with Ingram. When it comes to ease of use, KDP and D2D are best for uploading files and choosing options. Sure, they may be more limited, but they’re less of a headache. Ingram is, to be frank, a nightmare.

I am thankful that when I used Ingram a few years ago for a horror book, I had a special promo code that allowed for unlimited revisions because I had to submit…10+ times. And sometimes, the formatting of the file itself would be fine, but there would be an issue with Ingram itself, and their customer support is mostly non-existent. I have had other authors complain about struggling with Ingram’s upload system and working to get it fixed, only to be met with no response from support. D2D’s support, in my personal experience, is much more responsive, and again, they use Ingram to print, so the quality is the same.

What about e-book platforms? I haven’t spoken much about Smashwords, Kobo, Apple, etc. Many authors like using itch.io to upload e-books, and I have used it for A Flame in the Night. I like itch.io. and I like Smashwords and Kobo. My main thing is that I get a good amount of reads in Kindle Unlimited. If you use Kindle Select to enroll in KU, every time a KU user reads a page of your book, you get a certain amount of money. It’s not much for a single page, but it adds up. The catch is that the e-book must be exclusive to Amazon; the paperback, however, can still be sold widely.

Unfortunately, with the sheer amount of books on Amazon and the increasing amount because of people pumping out low-effort AI books, the amount authors get for each page read keeps decreasing, so for some, it’s not worth it to enroll in KU. For me, it is, especially because my amount of page reads has been steadily increasing each month. And, frankly, I get very few sales from other e-book platforms that aren’t Amazon, even if the book is heavily discounted and even when I promote non-Amazon stores.

I feel bad because I know some readers say Kobo is more accessible for them than Kindle, and I have considered making some of the e-books wide for people who don’t want to use Kindle or can’t, but there’s just not a big showing outside of Amazon for my book that is wide, A Flame in the Night. With that one, currently, Amazon accounts for 99% of the e-book and paperback sales. Because of this, for e-books, I will probably stick with KDP and Kindle Unlimited.

The good thing about enrolling a book in KU is that when the enrollment period ends (90 days), you can take the book out and put it elsewhere if you want. Just be sure that you have truly taken it out of KU, since Amazon takes the exclusivity very seriously.

A lot of authors go wide across the board and are very happy! Personally, my advice is to go exclusive with KDP/Amazon with the e-book, as well as enrolling it in KU, and either go Amazon-exclusive with the paperback or use D2D for all the other paperback sellers except Amazon to avoid the “out of stock” problem, and then use KDP for the Amazon paperback.

“But Morgan, even though the other platforms have their own issues, aren’t a lot of the issues with using IngramSpark and D2D to upload to Amazon created by Amazon to dissuade authors from using a third party? So, by mostly using KDP, aren’t we playing into Amazon’s hands?”

Sure. I definitely see that as the case, and I understand people who, on principle, don’t like using Amazon. At the end of the day, even when I sale widely, people tend to buy on Amazon anyway. I am only one person and can’t hope to untangle a lot of these problems. I think it’s best for authors starting out to choose the option that is easier, accessible, and as low-risk as possible. If you change your mind, you can always switch.

That said, the very limited free revisions that IngramSpark and D2D offer are their own choice, and I understand why a business would make these decisions. But as a creator, I have to look out for my own best interests. KDP’s unlimited free revisions and cheap proofs are great, as well as the easy interface. D2D’s interface is easy to use as well, but their sales reports could use some work.

As a creator whose primary means of income stems from my book sales, as well as someone who is disabled and often fatigued, it is too much effort for me to try to wrangle a lot of these issue that are out of my control. It takes time I could be writing or revising to send emails asking for a problem to be changed—a problem that may be affecting my sales.

Also, KDP simply offers better royalty rates. I was shocked at the disparity in the Rebecca Thorne TikTok I linked at the differences between a KDP and IngramSpark royalties. At a price of $11.99, Thorne makes $2.37 at KDP for a paperback and, on IngramSpark, at the price of $15.99, Thorne makes $1.03 for the same book.

This is wild to me. D2D’s royalties aren’t as abysmal, but overall, KDP is the best for authors who want to make money off their books. I think it’s important, if you’re looking into being an author as your career, to value your work and recognize that it’s okay to make money while prioritizing your mental and emotional well-being. I’m assuming that a lot of authors are operating with limited funds, so it’s best to have an option a beginner can navigate with few risks. That’s why I recommend KDP. I think authors should use KDP for their first books even if they choose to branch out later. Testing the waters and all that.

Yes, I understand hating Amazon. I hate Amazon. However, even with AFITN, which is available widely, I tend to always provide an Amazon link for purchase because people don’t like to click through multiple links to find a book, and authors should always make it easy to buy a book. Most people buy on Amazon anyway, and if a book is published through KDP, it makes more money.

So, these are my experiences and the stories I have seen from other authors. What do you think? If you’re an author, what do you use? What is your experience?

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I’m Morgan, and I write romance, horror, and fantasy. I enjoy gothic lit and vampires. My newest book as of typing, The Saint of Heartbreak, a queer romance in Hell about Judas and the Devil, is available for pre-order. More about my books can be found at morgandante.com. My Patreon can be found here.