The Ups and Downs of a POD Writer and Publisher

Is it really worth it?

In 2018 I wrote a book. A murder mystery set in NS Canada simply because I was tired of watching murder mystery shows and I love to write so wanted to see if I could do it.

Everything I needed fell into place which is amazing since it meant time off from work and the right materials and books to get me started (see early blogs for details).

Then I put it up with CreateSpace and got two proofs. Great! no problem. InDesign was a challenge to learn and Adobe was expensive for what you got but hey, it got everything done.

I was working on my next proof and after years of threatening, CreateSpace was merged into Kindle Direct which is great for Americans but not so great for us Canadians. There were forums where folks were suspecting not all sales were being reported (it really is the honour system...how do you know what is really being sold!?!?) and accounts where a great deal of money is owing to author has up and disappeared.

So I went searching and found Ingram Sparks. They had loads of support material and pod casts on Utube where they really seemed to care. I am an idealist, a terrible thing to be, however I was happy to find a company that was homegrown and willing to help the little guy.

Since that time however, especially with this pandemic, I fear this company, like when Sears was when alive or Paypal, Ebay, Etsey and  Amazon, etc, it has gone the way of the greedy money-making monster! 

There was one challenge really with Ingram Sparks set up; it timed out and if you didn't get all the info in immediately, you might have to start over, however it wasn't that bad and it had a good many convenient features like little red question marks that you clicked on to see what this box needed and so on. Very handy and convenient! 

Even the account number was all there up in the corner and I could use it immediately without opening any drop down menu.

Even better I could make the side bar disappear so I could see more of the screen and not have things cut off at the end which can be important when trying to fill it all in. On my Mac, I can't find for the life of me any what to make the screen smaller when on that site. Not even keyboard shortcuts seem to work.

Well, remember the old Word program?  It wasn't huge, full of spaghetti code that bogged down your computer and it was all explained, not streamlined so nearly impossible to use unless you did research? Or when you messaged someone on Facebook and you didn't find the person only found it 2 years later because they streamlined messages?

Well, I fear this site and company has gone the way of the bigger and more greedy companies who bring in their experts who are experts but have no clue how the average person uses the computer.

As a teacher's assistant who has sat in MANY classrooms over the years helping struggling students, I always find it amazing that the teacher that is great at math and loves it, is almost always the worst teacher! Not much different I find when experts come in to improve some site for the public!!! Ingram Sparks sadly seems to have gone down this road!!!

I fear by the time they get the bugs worked out of their new dash board, I will already run my car off the road! I cannot keep going into this having one frustration and set back after another! There comes a point when you wonder if any of it is really worth it? 

It isn't like the money from it is very much. They have changed and found ways to get more of that for themselves too! Used to be 50% was what was expected as a discount to get it into struggling book stores...now it is 55%!!!

And according to someone I was reading recently, that all doesn't go to the bookstore, some of that also goes into Ingram Sparks pocket on top of their print and distribution fees. Can't find any confirmation however who knows? Certainly their prices have gone up and they have watered down so much of it and made it so simple in so many ways, they have increased their profit margin I am sure by a huge percentage during this quarantine time. More folks ordering to the point they are maxed out on all their printing company sites and they have three world wide.

I am not professing to be the best writer, or the best publisher, however I do try, I do get proofs done and I have even changed my past tense to present tense upon the suggestion of someone I respect who you can tell loves the printed word in my murder mystery! 

So, I do three proofs, pour over everything with a fine toothed comb and shove it out into a market stream saturated with a zillion half ass, mass produced books that folks threw together because they always wanted to write a book? Lord knows, in the school system now, what is grammar? What is literature? What is punctuation or sentence structure? With texting and the internet, experts in their fields can already see a shift in the written word. They aren't saying it is good or bad, however, time will tell. Communication needs to work. If it is three letters for a word instead of six, fine if it is universal!!! 

I fear however as someone who teaches English as a second language, it is, ironically, those learning English who will end up speaking, and writing it better than the children being taught in English schools in North America! Oh well!

So you add to a saturated market right now, and the fact that Ingram Sparks is American and you run into another issue... right now the CAD is about .71 to the USD dollar! There is only a small margin of profit to begin with and now, with this, a small children's book of 32 pages would cost $20.00 to sell at least!

As a POD publisher, I know these children's book are priced so that every page, colour or not gets treated at the same price as a coloured page (plus they put their page in the back for the Barcode whether you have one or not!...do they include that in costing it out?!?!). So, the book is printed at a much higher fee than if a professional publisher wanted your manuscript! Right there the competition odds are stacked against you! Add to this, after getting a proof with their cheaper paper and colour process, well, newsprint would be thicker and the colours...Oh La la! Terrible!

So, I feel, like when the stock market is not at the right place to buy or sell, it could very well be right now, the timing is not right to put these books on the market. Indeed, with all the bloody glitches in their new desktop where I can't even scroll down a drop down menu list in a box that confines it too much, or they can't even keep an address correct (something REALLY important!), or change the number of pages of your book should you choose to, then what is the point of carrying on?

They never should have uploaded this new dash board like it is, but like so many, they wanted to strike while the iron was hot! They put in a chat menu however my internet has been so bad, it has been useless! And who cares if you have to spend almost an hour typing to someone to work out something that should (and could) have been worked out?!?!

I decided to do the children's books because after making this move to be a house sitter and have time, I did not have the internet I was told I would have and I could not do the work and writing the way I wanted to! 

The greatest problem for writers is distraction and this house sitting gig has been nothing but constant problems and distractions so the kids books were what I could do under the circumstances...to practice on!

I think, as a publisher I have to make another decision...is this the right time to be dealing with all these issues? Is these children's books worth it? Perhaps if I wait some time they will work out their coding issues with their new dashboard and it will function without so many constant issues.  

I have two weeks in Quarantine...mmmmmm two weeks to write again another murder mystery?  Hmmm!

Maybe it is time to leave this lousy house-sit and the glitches in Ingram Sparks new dash board behind.

I will never stop writing, however publishing? It may be that these are found after I am dead! lol!

Wouldn't be the first!

I wish anyone writing much success! Just because I am ready to give up, doesn't mean anyone else should!