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In Part 2 of our 3-part POD series, we clear up common misunderstandings about publishing POD books. While POD files are technically digital book files, how POD books are brought to market and sold is different than ebooks. Knowing these differences can save you time, money, and frustration. Part 1 of this series covered the virtues of POD publishing.
This issue of The Indie Advantage originally went out to our authors in December 2024!
Learning the Ropes of Print-on-Demand (POD)
As we wrote in last month’s issue, POD is a game changer for indie authors. While brick-and-mortar bookstores can’t physically stock every book, a bookseller at a physical store can check for the POD availability, or the customer can purchase the print book online. In both cases, the book is printed after it’s purchased.
Just like with ebooks, D2D Print makes it easy to create a POD book, and easy to achieve global retail distribution to all major online stores in a matter of hours or days.
Read on as we explain how POD publishing, distribution, and retail sales vary from what most indie authors are familiar with in the ebook world.
Unlimited Updates for Ebooks vs. Change Tokens for Print
Ebooks are digital files that take up zero physical shelf space, don’t weigh anything, and can be duplicated and sent around the world in a flash. That’s why we offer free unlimited updates on your ebook files whenever you need to make changes to your metadata or to the manuscript itself.
With POD files it’s different, because now we’re dealing with a physical product. And while you can make as many changes to your manuscript as you like before the book is published, once it’s published D2D incurs a cost when updates are made that would change the interior or cover of the published book. Since these costs are imposed by our printing partner, and because we support thousands of indie authors and publishers, absorbing these costs ourself is not feasible.
To mitigate any potential costs for our authors, we offer one free change token every 90 days once your book is published. If you absolutely, positively must make a change after your book is published and before the 90-day window, you can purchase a change token for $25.
Retail Distribution
Ebook distribution helped to level the playing field for indie authors. At D2D, it’s a snap to pick and choose which digital stores, subscription services, and library platforms you want your ebooks to reach within our global partner network. A day or so later (sometimes within hours), you can find your books for sale on major digital storefronts!
POD doesn’t work like that. With POD, D2D works with a single global print distributor whose catalog is accessible to both online and brick-and-mortar bookstores around the world, from the largest retail chains to the smallest neighborhood mom & pop stores.
Does this mean your print book will end up on physical store shelves? No, not necessarily, but it does mean that online and physical bookstores who have access to our global print partner’s catalog can order your book when a customer requests it.
Note that bookstores are not obligated to order a title, even if a customer requests it. Read on to understand why a retailer may not order a POD book.
Returnable vs. Non-Returnable
Most brick-and-mortar bookstores will only purchase physical copies of books to stock their shelves if those books are made returnable by the publisher. Returnable means they can return it for a full refund if they can’t sell it. This is to protect the bookstore from the financial burden of having to dispose of unsold books. It’s smart business for the bookstore, because if they ordered 100 copies of a book from a publisher but only managed to sell one copy, they can send the remaining books back to the publisher for a full refund.
Should you offer your POD books as returnable or non-returnable? This is an important question to ponder. Unless your books have a strong, consistent sales track record and you have an established reader base, the prudent business decision for you may be to keep your books listed as non-returnable.
At Draft2Digital, our D2D Print service does not offer “returnable” as an option for authors. This is on purpose. The last thing we’d want is to have an author on the hook for potentially thousands of dollars’ worth of unsold books, plus shipping costs! In other words, we don’t want you owing more money in returns than what you’re earning in book sales.
Will D2D ever add “returnable” as an option for D2D Print? Perhaps someday in the future if there’s strong demand. For now, since indie POD books don’t usually earn shelf display, it’s not a highly demanded feature.
When does returnable make sense? Offering your books as returnable makes sense if you’re trying to break into new stores in new markets, but only if doing so is a calculated, justifiable risk that wouldn’t result in a catastrophic business expense if you had to refund the retailer(s) for unsold books. For established publishers and bestselling indie authors, the risk is more justifiable.
It’s also worth pointing out that when a print order is made, let’s say for 10 books, the author is paid for all 10 books when those books are printed. Sometimes authors forget that they were already paid for multiple books, and they will submit a complaint that they were not paid, when indeed they were. Keeping with this same example of 10 printed books, if months later the retailer was only able to sell a single book, the author would get a bill for “returnables.”
Some indie authors have established relationships with local bookstores who’ve agreed to stock their non-returnable books, but only if the author agrees to physically remove any unsold inventory when asked. The wonderful thing about POD books is that it doesn’t burden the author, the publisher, or the bookstore with excess inventory. Retailers simply order a book when it’s purchased by a customer. With an ebook, the retailer makes a digital copy and instantly delivers it. With POD books, the purchase triggers a process that involves on demand printing, packaging, and physical shipment to virtually any customer in the world.
Wholesale Discounting
If you’ve only published ebooks, the practice of wholesale discounting to physical bookstores might sound confusing at first. When placing an order from a distributor, brick-and-mortar bookstores expect a wholesale discount of 40% off list (retail) price, which is industry standard. Currently, D2D Print can only offer wholesale discounts of 15% as determined by the volume-base tier system of our print distribution partner.
Why is D2D’s wholesale discount only 15%? D2D Print is a relative newcomer in the POD space, having just come out of beta in March 2023. Even as a newcomer, our growth trajectory is remarkable, with more than 23,000 authors who’ve produced over 73,000 books. We believe this growth is thanks to our innovative service, backed by our excellent customer support team. As we scale the business and grow the volume of published POD books, we get closer to the next discount tier.
For publishers and authors who seek retail orders of dozens or even hundreds of books, a 15% wholesale discount is a deal stopper and you’d be better served going with a service like IngramSpark. For the vast majority of indie authors whose POD orders are being placed one at a time when a bookstore customer requests a title, or via an online order, D2D Print’s 15% discount is a non-issue.
Vendor of Record (VoR) Error
If the ISBN you provide to your D2D Print book was previously used elsewhere for another version of the book, it’s likely to cause a “Vendor of Record” error. We advise authors to use D2D’s free ISBN as a sure-fire solution to avoiding such an error. Vendor of Record comes into play for D2D Print when an ISBN applied to a print book project has previously been used on a book with another service, like Amazon KDP’s expanded distribution. If you publish your print book through Amazon, and if it remains for sale only at Amazon, then you—the author—are the VoR. On the other hand, if you choose Amazon’s expanded distribution option, then Ingram becomes the VoR.
If you’ve previously opted in to Amazon’s expanded distribution, but later decide to use D2D Print (or another service), it can get a little more complicated because multiple VoRs will appear in Ingram’s system. Ingram will not distribute a title that has duplicate ISBNs.
In order to use the same ISBN for your print book with a different print distribution service (like D2D Print), the VoR on that ISBN will need to be released so another print distribution service can use it. The VoR is a completely separate entity from the ISBN owner.
As the rights holder of your content and owner of your ISBN, you must contact your original print distributor and request the release of your ISBN’s VoR, informing them that the ISBN will now be distributed through Draft2Digital (or other print distributor of your choosing).
In most cases, an email like this one will yield positive results:
Hello [PRINT DISTRIBUTOR],
Effective immediately, I will now be distributing the following print ISBNs through Draft2Digital’s print service. Please contact your Lightning Source Representative and let them know when the Vendor of Record for these ISBNs has been released and that they will be moving to Draft2Digital.
BOOK TITLE 1 – ISBN: 0000000000000
BOOK TITLE 2 – ISBN: 0000000000001
Please reach out with any questions.
Sincerely,
[AUTHOR NAME]
In the email above, Lightning Source refers to the Ingram business unit responsible for on-demand printing. Feel free to copy support@draft2digital.com on your correspondence with your previous print distributor. Once we have written confirmation that the ISBN has been released, we can contact our print partner and get your title(s) listed. For a deeper dive into the nuances of VoR, check out this blog post.
Distributing POD Files to Amazon
The best way to ensure your POD books appear on Amazon store shelves is to self-publish your POD book using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) service. Why would we, a distributor who can send your POD files to Amazon, advise you to use Amazon’s POD service instead? It’s because when a distributor, whether it’s D2D or another distributor, sends a POD file to Amazon, there’s no guarantee that it will indeed show up on Amazon’s store shelves.
Most POD books we send to Amazon show up just fine, but as far as we’re concerned, that’s not good enough. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a worthy explanation from Amazon or anyone else as to why some books appear and others do not, even if they’re coming from the same author or publisher. So again, your best bet to ensure your POD book shows up at Amazon is to use their KDP service.
Distributing Beyond Amazon
A common question we receive from authors is whether or not they should choose Amazon’s “expanded distribution” option. In a nutshell, it’s best to opt-out of expanded distribution from Amazon and use a different service, like D2D Print, to reach a wider audience and receive a higher royalty from non-Amazon stores. While retailers are not obligated to order a book if requested by customers, regardless of the POD service the author uses, a higher percentage of booksellers refuse to do business with Amazon. In addition, for non-Amazon store sales, Amazon’s royalty rate is only 40% compared to 45% you’d receive from D2D Print.
Whether you choose to publish your POD book through D2D Print or another service like IngramSpark, when a customer orders your book, the order fulfillment is handled by Ingram Content Group (aka Ingram), a global book distributor.
To get your POD book to appear at Amazon and everywhere else, here’s what we recommend: First, publish your POD book directly with Amazon KDP while making sure to opt out of Amazon KDP’s expanded distribution option. This will ensure your book will appear at Amazon. After you’ve opted out of Amazon KDP’s expanded distribution, then you can go to D2D Print to ensure your POD book can be ordered from physical and online bookstores beyond Amazon.
D2D Print will re-send your POD files to Amazon (via Ingram), but again, this ensures your POD book will be available to order from bookstores beyond Amazon. Ingram will only keep a single ISBN in their system, so you don’t have to worry about duplicate ISBNs gumming up the gears in Ingram’s system and stopping your book from being distributed elsewhere.
Pricing / 3rd Party Sellers / Delisting Problems
If you have experience publishing ebooks, you’re probably used to the simplicity of setting the list price for your ebook and then seeing that price displayed as you’d expect at online bookstores. This is referred to as the agency model, where you as the publisher set your price, and the retailer takes their commission and will not discount the price to consumers. The print world, by contrast, is based on a wholesale model. This enables a bookstore to order books based on a wholesale discount, the industry standard is 40% off list price, and set their own prices for consumers.
Third party sellers, who are prevalent on Amazon, can also sell your POD books at whatever price they choose. This can result in prices that are much higher than what you might prefer. Keep in mind that if you delist your POD book from Amazon, there may be physical inventory of your books that exist with 3rd party sellers. This means that even if you delist your POD book from Amazon, your book may remain visible and purchasable to give 3rd party sellers at Amazon a chance to sell it. It’s also possible that 3rd party sellers may not have informed Amazon that they no longer have your book in stock.
We hope the above helped to clear the air on POD. Now that POD is less mysterious, in the next issue of The Indie Advantage, we’ll close out our 3-part POD series by providing strategies and techniques to help you market your print books.
We hope you enjoyed the first issue of The Indie Advantage. There’s much more to come!
The Draft2Digital Team