Visiting the source of Sam

Yesterday I had a Grand Day Out at the Ingram premises near Milton Keynes.  Months ago – I forget how – I came across the interesting fact that Ingram (a book distributor and now parent company to IngramSpark, the print-on-demand service that I use for my Sam Plank books) runs open days.  You go along to their offices/factory and they give you a talk about their services, a tour of the printing bit and a sandwich lunch.  I really, really wanted to see the printing bit and my husband, being a production engineer, is always up for touring a factory, so off we went.  And I can highly recommend it as a day out.

The Ingram people we met were, without exception, extremely helpful.  The open day I chose was geared specifically to IngramSpark clients – they also do days for people who use their more commercial printing services – and we were a mixed bunch, from one chap who said at the outset, Manuel-like, “I know nothing”, to those of us who had been through the POD mill and were vaguely familiar with most of the steps.  That said, I did learn quite a few new things – for instance, I had always steered clear of IS’s Global Connect option but have now signed up, ready for the orders to come flooding in from India and China.  And the printing process is a marvel to behold, from the giant rolls of paper (they have stocked up, given Brexit…) to the wonderful Infinitrim machine that grabs a stack of books in its mechanical arm and then – whoosh! – trims them all with a guillotine blade.  (If I were the manufacturer I would have called it the Triminator and persuaded Arnie to advertise it.)  And exactly as promised, the books are indeed printing on demand: you see them coming out of the Infinitrim and each book is different – it’s not a “print run” in the traditional sense but the fulfilment of thousands of orders for individual books.  There is even a Tardis-like structure waiting to come into service to speed up sorting and packing the books after printing.  (No photos: we had to sign non-disclosure agreements and pinky-swear to secrecy.)  And the sandwiches are delicious.

Joking aside, I found the day useful for two main reasons.  Firstly, we were shown all the paper types and cover finishes and trim sizes, so now I know what’s on offer.  And secondly, we met the staff who will be the ones answering any IS queries – and they were so generous with their time that I feel confident that any POD problems I might have will be dealt with promptly and kindly.  In these days of webchats with robots and emails to help departments that go unanswered for days, that’s something to be celebrated.

Be careful what you wish for

Last autumn CreateSpace – which I had been using for my print-on-demand paperbacks for nearly a decade – was bought out by the Amazon behemoth and absorbed into its KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) offering.  Monopoly concerns aside, I was delighted for two reasons.  Firstly, KDP customer service offers a call-back service to anywhere in the world (CreateSpace would call only US numbers, so I never spoke to them).  And secondly, whereas CreateSpace POD paperbacks were printed in South Carolina and it took ages and cost a fortune to have them delivered to the UK, KDP POD paperbacks are printed in (it turns out) Poland, which is much closer and therefore quicker and cheaper for delivery.  With a spring in my step and a song on my lips, I placed an order for twenty copies of “Fatal Forgery” with KDP on 29 October 2018.  And then it all went wrong…

• 29 October 2018: Order placed for twenty copies
• 12 November 2018: Order arrives – and eleven out of the twenty copies are trimmed far too meanly, with the title disappearing off the edge of the cover.  Using the fab new call-back facility, I explain the problem to a nice person at KDP and they tell me to return the faulty eleven copies for a refund and then place another order – which I do.
• 18 November 2018: The replacement eleven copies arrive – with exactly the same poor printing.  I speak to another nice person at KDP and explain the problem, and they say that the matter will be escalated to a manager.  After about a fortnight – with several chasing calls and emails in the middle – the manager finally confirms that the eleven replacement copies I received were the same ones I had returned…  Apparently the stock system was delighted to find just the right number of copies on their return shelves to fulfil a new order.
• 16 December 2018: The manager places a new order for eleven copies, and says that I can keep the eleven dodgy ones (otherwise, if I return them – well, you can guess).
• 24 December 2018: Four replacement copies arrive.  I chase the remaining seven copies and am told that the manager ordered only four and not the agreed eleven – this nice person at KDP orders another seven.
• 9 January 2019: The seven copies arrive – with two of them packed so badly in the box that their covers have bent and they are not suitable for sale.  I speak to another nice KDP person – they are all charming and seem genuinely saddened by the poor service I have received – and they order two replacement replacement copies.
• 18 January 2019: The two replacement replacement copies arrive.

Et voilà – it’s as simple as that!  A mere 80 days after placing my order for twenty copies, I have them.  Didn’t someone manage to get all the way around the world in that time?  I begin to dream longingly of South Carolina….

Shades of Forgery

Matters are moving forward at a sedate pace in my quest to use IngramSpark as well as KDP for my print-on-demand paperbacks.  The cover of “Fatal Forgery” has been suitably tweaked to accommodate the slimmer spine of the IS edition (because IS uses thinner paper stock and over nearly 300 pages – 150 thicknesses of paper – it makes a difference), and I have today received my proof copy from IS and am happy with it.

I am now working out my next steps, which will involve (scarily) un-publishing my current KDP paperback and then republishing it with the new ISBN that I bought for the IS edition – all paperbacks of the same title, regardless of who actually prints them, must have the same ISBN.  This would be simply an administrative thing – unpublish then upload the files again – except that I am not sure what will happen to all the lovely reviews on Amazon that are associated with the current KDP paperback.  I certainly don’t want to lose them, so I’m investigating if/how I can get the reviews carried over to the “new” paperback.  It may be simple (if the reviews are associated with the title) or it may be awkward/impossible (if they’re associated with the ISBN).  Who knew that writing the darn book was by far the easiest part of the process?

On a related subject, it has been very interesting to compare the look of “Fatal Forgery” as produced by the different printing presses:

On the left is the original version, printed by CreateSpace in (I think) South Carolina.  In the middle is the version that I now get from KDP (who took over CreateSpace, and moved the printing for UK authors to Wroclaw in Poland).  And on the right is the IngramSpark version, printed in (I think) Milton Keynes.  They all use the same cover file from the point of view of colour – it’s only the trim dimensions and spine width (and spine print size) that are different.  And yet, how different they look!  The cover designer said this about the trio: “The one on the right appears to be slightly closer to how it was intended than any other.  Somewhere between the one on the left and the one on the right (but closer to the right) would be as intended by me.  The one in the middle is much too bright.”  Thankfully very few buyers will see the difference as they won’t have all three versions, but I thought you might find it interesting – and it certainly shows that being too precious about precise shades of colour when designing a cover might not be worth the fuss!