No Spark!
I Regret Using Ingram Spark
I really thought Ingram Spark would be a step up from Amazon KDP. I did some reading, did some research, and decided to spend the money to get listed with Ingram Spark, to publish with them after Amazon didn’t really do very much for me. I think I made a mistake!
Don’t get me wrong, they did exactly what they said they would do, well, mostly. My book is now available on many platforms, from Wal-Mart to Books-a-Million, and even on Amazon, but the thing they don’t tell you when you sign up, is that there is no inherent way to advertize. Amazon has built-in advertizing you can pay for, ways to actively promote your books. Ingram does not have that, and, when you end up with your exact same book listed on Amazon through IS, you can no longer use those ads, because you have no way to access the author dashboard, since they were published through IS.
I paid the extra to have my book featured in the Advance catalog, the catalog that goes to all IS customers worldwide, but I could get no official guildeline for when my ad would appear, when my listing would appear, and no way to get a link to the actual catalog to guage how effective this extra promotion might be. When I did finally get an email response from Ingram, they told me that no listing would appear for three to four months after I paid, but still no hard and fast date, and still no link to the…
