30-Publishing Without Gatekeepers: Freedom, Risk and Reinvention, interviewing ingram spark
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1 hour and 6 minutes)
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You can listen above or on your favourite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Subscribe: Spotify | Apple | RSS | More
You can listen above or on your favourite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show notes
The conversation delves into the role of IngramSpark in indie publishing, the responsibilities of author publishers, bookstore access and discoverability, the significance of metadata, the importance of proofreading and quality control, and innovations in print on demand. Key takeaways include the need for indie authors to take an active role in marketing and promoting their books, as well as the importance of thorough proofreading and quality control in indie publishing. The conversation covers the themes of collaboration and community in publishing, as well as the global opportunities available to authors. It delves into the understanding of wholesale discounts, the comparison between traditional and indie publishing, the emergence of e-commerce and direct selling, and the impact of language translation and customisable books on the publishing industry.
Takeaways
Chapters
Takeaways
- Indie authors need to take an active role in marketing and promoting their books
- The importance of thorough proofreading and quality control in indie publishing Collaboration and community
- Global publishing opportunities
Chapters
- 00:00 Understanding the Role of IngramSpark
- 09:02 Bookstore Access and Discoverability
- 17:59 The Importance of Proofreading and Quality Control
- 24:53 Innovations in Print on Demand
- 30:07 Understanding Wholesale Discounts
- 41:01 E-commerce and Direct Selling
- 47:24 Language Translation and Customisable Books
Connect with Ingram Spark
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Madeline has worked at IngramSpark Australia as a Sales Support Specialist for nearly twelve months. As an independent author herself, she is passionate about all aspects of the book industry and values the opportunity to contribute to both the creative and professional sides of publishing. She enjoys helping authors bring their stories to life and is committed to supporting a positive and accessible publishing experience.
Chris Munnery has worked in the Australian publishing Industry for over 25 years including senior positions with publishers MacMillan and Lonely Planet. Currently the Senior Key Account Manager at IngramSpark Australia, Chris is based in Melbourne’s Southeast at the Australian print-on-demand headquarters, where the state-of-the-art facility services the Australian book industry for both wholesale orders to booksellers and libraries in Australia-New Zealand, and publisher direct orders to authors and publishers. https://www.tiktok.com/@ingramsparkbooks https://www.instagram.com/ingramsparkbooks/ https://www.youtube.com/user/IngramSpark https://www.facebook.com/IngramSpark |
Transcript of episode
Amra (00:33)
Today I'm joined by two insiders from IngramSpark, part of the global powerhouse Ingram Content Group. And if you're an indie author trying to get your book beyond Amazon, this is the conversation you need to hear. So Chris Munnery has worked within the Australian publishing industry for over 25 years, including senior positions with publishers Macmillan and Lonely Planet. He's currently the senior key account manager at IngramSpark Australia.
is based in Melbourne South East at the Australian Print On Demand headquarters where the state of art facility services the Australian book industry for both wholesale orders to booksellers and libraries in Australia, New Zealand and publisher direct orders to authors and publishers. IngramSpark is the print on demand self-publishing arm of Ingram Content Group and it gives titles there's over 45,000 global book distribution and networks.
And they reached into bricks and mortar bookstores and libraries, which is a wonderful opportunity. So the vision is to make indie publishing more powerful and connected and rewarding. And we've also got Madeleine who has worked at IngramSpark as a sales support specialist for nearly 12 months. She's an independent author herself and passionate about all aspects of the book industry. and values the opportunity to contribute to both the creative and professional sides of publishing and to help authors bring their stories to life, which is what I have been doing with IngramSparks. So thank you so much.
Madeline Bush (01:58)
Thank you so much, Amara, for having both Chris and I. This is really exciting.
Amra (02:02)
I know I'm so happy because I'm sort of delving more into the different facets of publishing and the different facets of the creative industry. so, you know, having Ingram Spark as someone who is a distributor that a lot of authors use and sort of demystifying and providing information is just wonderful. I think before we begin, we had an initial conversation when we talking about the fact that most people misunderstand
the role of IngramSpark and in terms of, you know, that you're not a publisher but a distributor. So I was just wondering if one of you could give that background a little bit.
Chris Munnery (02:38)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely Amra and yeah, that's echoing Maddy. So thanks so much for having us on board. But yeah, we're largely a printer and distributor.
Although things are constantly evolving, it's such a powerful team behind Ingram that we kind of get little previews of things that are coming in the marketing sense and further kind of avenues, I guess, to explore for our author publishers. There's always really smart people working on things in the background, but yeah, largely that is the confusion where we do have
some authors, you know, new in their journey that are saying things like, you know, it's like I've loaded my book and, you know, I'm not getting any sales. What have you done to help this? And it's like, have to kind of go back to square one and just try and educate them a little bit that they need to be proactively doing a lot of that marketing themselves.
Amra (03:38)
And that's the thing, like, you we, provide that distribution channel where it can, like, I look at my dashboard and it's just amazing to see a sale in Germany, in UK, in the US, you know, all these places where I'm like, my gosh, people are actually buying my book there. And so there are these distribution channels that are available, but really as authors and in this capacity using IngramSpark, we are also publishers.
⁓ And we are the ones that need to drive that. We need to drive that marketing, drive those connections. And like, you know, obviously there are organic sales that happen where you've got partners and distributors that are, you know, getting access to these books. But if you want to maximise, it is the author slash publisher who really needs to put that. ⁓
Chris Munnery (04:25)
Absolutely, we, Maddie and I, we call our, whether it's a single author or it's an author services business, which popping up more and more, little IngramSpark author services businesses that might have 20, 30 or more authors working underneath them or within their account. But we, whether it's single author or one of those, for us, we call all of our authors author publishers, because you are a publisher.
Madeline Bush (04:29)
Yeah.
Amra (04:51)
Yeah, and that's also a really good point because, you know, the indie publishing scene is really taking over and...
I don't know, really contributing to the publishing, you know, output and opportunities for publication as an indie author. I'm finding it a very viable way of, you know, taking control and earning income. And so it's just great about that, that there are people who are providing those services and also people who are sort of banding together and using the one account or the one umbrella to publish multiple books in order to just maximize that,
networking opportunities, the marketing opportunities. So I know of one of them, which is Hambury Publishing. Do you have any others that you sort of, you know, and things that you're seeing that they're doing that are good that others could learn from?
Chris Munnery (05:40)
Yeah, look, I think a lot of them get started by just, you like Hambree, like Jess from Hambree is by publishing their own book. And then they'll go through that experience and, and, know, it can be a bit of a challenge. know, as you know, just doing your first book and, know, app tools, our online tools and things are getting better all the time for helping. you know, I know we'll chat about metadata and things like that later on. And some of those words, you know,
Amra (05:55)
Yes.
Chris Munnery (06:09)
we have to remind ourselves even that's a you know it can be scary words for someone just getting going and it's like you know if you just kind of say it's all your metadata sorted and you know we can't expect them to know exactly how that works and why it's important but ⁓ but these author services you know there's there's one that we work on work with and will be sponsoring later this year and that's under
So it's Laura Felbman does children's writing. So she works specifically with children's writing and she's now got courses going. She'll have an event later in this year in October for people, authors that are trying to get into that space. And Laura is another classic case of published her own book, really active in the
community all of these other people started reaching out and saying I've got an idea or you know I really want to and some of them might just want to have publish a book for their own children and then others go further and further and then they start to get sales and then they want to do another book and they they kind of bring them under under that umbrella so there's kind of two two methods I guess one is that a full kind of mini publisher
House that will bring the titles under their account and within their own kind of umbrella. And then there's other lots of other author services that will...
educate the client, probably get them to the stage where their book is in Ingram pricing set, its distribution's enabled, but then set them on their own way. So then it's like, okay, you we've got you to this level, now we'll transfer the title of it to your own account and you're underway with your own book and your own marketing, your own journey after that.
Amra (08:00)
And I mean, that's the thing that we're seeing a lot in this indie world now where unfortunately people are uninformed about the reality of what is going on. They get themselves in opportunities where they think they're dealing with a publisher and that they are being published, but it's basically someone who is providing services.
and is overselling themselves and taking their rights. Whereas if you're having someone support you in showing you how to do it, do it all yourself, it's your book, it's still all yours, you know, they've just got that initial support. So in terms of bookstores, you know, that's one of the things that IngramSpark provides. What makes bookstores say yes to an indie title?
Chris Munnery (08:39)
Well, you know, it's a really important point, you know, in question you make because...
The bookstores that are with us, and there's over 45,000 globally now, and in Australia, know, the ones that are familiar to people will be, you know, your Booktopia and Dimmick's and the Nile and Readings in Carlton, Abbey's in Sydney, those, you know, iconic kind of bookstores, Glee Books, and right down to little small bookstores in country towns. They have access to the Ingram Catalog.
not
just because they have access to the catalog, it means that they, yes they can go in and order your book, but the, I guess the learning for someone new in the journey is that it doesn't mean that you're going to walk into DIMIX and see your book on the shelves. So you are going to be competing against a lot of other books as well. And so know, bookstores will make their decisions based
Amra (09:28)
Yeah.
Chris Munnery (09:38)
on what they think is going to sell. And so ultimately, you you can influence that. And certainly we find that they're very supportive for, particularly for local authors, Amra. So, you know, if you have a bookstore in your area, they will love having a local author book there. ⁓ But...
Amra (09:40)
Mm.
Yes.
Okay.
Chris Munnery (09:59)
Having said that, it will need to be, you know, you need to have a professional looking book. You want to be kind of presenting the best version of your product, of your content that you can. And even if you're a local author and you come in and if the cover looks, you know, ⁓ unprofessional, if there's typos, if it's messy formatting, if it's a strange size, you know, because we offer lots of sizes from a little four by six pocketbook.
Amra (10:12)
Okay.
Chris Munnery (10:29)
to full know kids book size 11 11 by 5 by by 8 and so if you kind of have you know you think ⁓ I know I'll make my book stand out by having a really strange format size then you've got to remember that for bookshops you know they need to position that so if they're they are going to stock your book they need to position it on a shelf and if it's a if it's not a uniform sort of size you know it's like where are they going to put it so those kind of
practical things are really important. So they'll make their decisions you know based on all of that and of course good metadata all that information behind the book that really is your first point of marketing.
Amra (11:12)
Mmm.
Chris Munnery (11:12)
So that discoverability
by having really good metadata is also important. And we've actually just started adding some AI tools for metadata within the platform. Yeah, so this is all designed around making it.
Amra (11:23)
⁓ Do tell us, please.
Chris Munnery (11:30)
making metadata as easy as it can be for our author publishers. So it's like for someone starting from scratch that really doesn't know, you can use our metadata tool to kind of give you the base metadata level, which you can still go in and edit as much as you like, but it will just kind of set the best metadata and just, it's like a coaching type tool to make it easy for particularly for first time author publishers.
Thank
Amra (12:01)
And just to clarify for those people who don't know, when we're talking about metadata, we're talking about keywords, we're talking about the title, we're talking about, you know, the different types of blurbs that you want, affiliations that you might have, reviews that you might have. So it's all of the stuff that goes into the database that helps discoverability so that potentially someone could go into a bookstore and go, I want to murder mystery about, you know, Vietnam War. And that there could be a keyword that they put in the keywords and that they can find a list of books.
And so it's really important that back end.
Chris Munnery (12:29)
Yeah.
Absolutely it is. And you know it's also really important to you know if you are a local author to be incorporating that kind of information in there ⁓ and you know your your subject classifications so it's like where the book fits so you know it's if you picture of you know going into a library and it's like like we all do we go into a library and we're looking for a specific subject or genre and it's all about making it class
Amra (12:38)
Bye.
Chris Munnery (12:57)
so that it can be classified for discoverability and whether that's, even if it's online bookstore, so know something like Booktopia, know, it's about, they will then need to classify within their own search algorithms to be in a particular place. So it's, yeah, it's something really important. We have free tools on board that Maddie and I will share all of the time with our author publishers.
as well so we can send you you know the 2026 best practice metadata guide for example which will take you through your bisect codes but also your thema codes and and a lot more information and a checklist things like that are all available
Amra (13:41)
Well,
I'll get that and I'll put it on my website and flag it in the show notes. And that's the other thing, there is a lot of information that IngramSpark does provide to help support us in our journey. So, you know, it is about sort of doing those tutorials and finding all that information.
Chris Munnery (13:45)
Brilliant.
Amra (13:56)
because what we tend to do as indie authors is we launch into it and we think of things the hard way and we, you know, want to pull our hair out from stress because we do silly things like set a deadline for publication and then go, oh no, I haven't thought this through all the way. So yeah, it's really important to do that background work first.
Chris Munnery (14:04)
Yep.
Madeline Bush (14:08)
Thank
Chris Munnery (14:17)
It's...
It's
really true, Maddie, had, you know, we won't mention the author, but we've had one just recently, haven't we, that was set for her launch date, and I'll let Maddie go through the example.
Madeline Bush (14:32)
Thank
Amra (14:34)
Yeah.
Madeline Bush (14:34)
Yeah,
we've certainly had authors that they set a launch date or an on sale date and then right beforehand they were like, ⁓ can we, can we change the on sale date, which you can't change your on sale date once it's in global distribution. So once that's enabled on our platform, that on sale date can't change. And there's a little bit more parameters around that as well. But yeah, got.
three or four days out and was like, no, can we push it out? And just can't do that, unfortunately. So there is so much to learn with your first book. even after a few books, you still learn as you go on as an author. I don't know if you found the same, Amara, but I'm learning things with every single one.
Amra (15:14)
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah, and I'm learning now to like do a long lead and also because I'm doing my first series, I'm batching them where I'm like, you know, there's so many things to think about in the writing side of it. So, yeah, sometimes just because we can do it immediately doesn't mean that's the best thing that we should do. really, know, publishers do set very long publishing times and that's because they have a lot of books that they're working with. But, you know, there is something
like build in a few months. Do not try and do things within a very short, unless it's your 20th book and you're like, yes, I've got the readership, I've got everything sorted. But honestly, first few books really space them out and plan. Yeah, things will come on.
Chris Munnery (16:01)
And we want, you know, we want it to be the best experience for the, for these first time authors as well. So, you know, we, we don't, you know, we completely understand because we're taking an offering, I guess, what used to be a really complex publishing model and we're making accessible for everyone. So we totally understand that, you know, it's, it's all a learning process, but we're just trying to, we try and help, ⁓ mitigate the stress levels for,
Amra (16:17)
Yeah.
and
Chris Munnery (16:30)
for first-time authors if they've arranged a book launch you know within a few weeks and and they're still working on their cover or something like that it's kind of it's yeah we're trying to say well you know it really probably need to to set that back a little bit that launch or yeah
Amra (16:45)
Yes. Build
in Tom.
Madeline Bush (16:47)
lot of
authors don't realize how important that physical proof copy is as well. Do not skip the proof copy. Guys, absolutely order it. Make sure everything's nice. Your cover lines up properly, your spine's all correct. The internal design looks nice, because the last thing you want is to upload it and then send it out into the world the way it is, if you haven't really checked it through and are happy with it. So.
Amra (16:54)
Yeah.
Yeah.
And even when you're using tools like formatting tools and they always work and then suddenly something weird happens with the way dialogue is formatted or the way text is formatted. And if you don't read every single page of your proof copy, yeah, it's problematic because, you know, once you get that negative reader experience, then it's really hard to come back from that.
Chris Munnery (17:24)
Mm-hmm.
Amra (17:39)
⁓ because it is that global platform and that's the joy of it, but then, yeah, you can't kind of like, now I'm going to update it. And, those reviews are still there.
Chris Munnery (17:40)
up.
And because we have the downloads, so can have a look physically on your screen, but of course, digital screens are going to display differently. They're set differently to what ends up ink on a page. bright colors can look a bit dull and dark. Low res pixels, all of those kind of things are going to contribute.
And because our proof copies, we quite often get asked, Maddy, don't we? It's like, how much is your proof copy? And for us, it's like, it's ordering one book. So it's not like we're going to charge you anything extra for it's a proof. If it's 100 page, six by nine paperback, something like that, it might cost you $5 to print. So order a book, send it to yourself, have a look at it physically.
Amra (18:36)
Yeah.
Chris Munnery (18:42)
and things will start to jump out, you know, if there are any problems.
Amra (18:47)
And
look, I'm going to be honest here. This is a rookie mistake I made early on in my journey where I did not read every single page. I was like, I've looked at that enough and it did bite me. And now every single proof copy, I read it from beginning to end. I book myself in for like a four hour reading session because I like to do it in one go. So I've got it in my, that flow and that story as a last time.
And yeah, really important because ⁓ like I have human proofreaders, but then I have to go through and do it again. So I use a lot of AI assisted tools before I give it to a human, you know, my proofreader, but then I still have to do that final quality control. You know, yeah, so it's, this is where the advantage of the publishers, they do those multiple, multiple views because they do print runs of, you
Madeline Bush (19:28)
Yeah.
Amra (19:41)
thousand, three thousand copies so they want to make sure that they are as perfect as they can be, whereas with us we get a little bit complacent because we can just, I'll fix that and then I can just do it again. And yes you can but if you send it out there and people are reading it, yeah that's always the issue.
Chris Munnery (19:58)
Yeah, and you know it's something that will pop out and one of the favourite things Maddy and I do because we sit above our facility out here in South East Melbourne that at any time of the year we could be shipping thousands of books every single day all around Australia. So we'll just walk down, see the books that are coming through and it's quite amazing just to see the mass variety.
of subject and for me being a non-fiction reader it's like I'm only reading Ingram IngramSpark non-fiction because it's great for me because you know I get all sorts of categories but we see everything you know we're seeing a lot more children's books coming through and recipe books which you know has changed the last year or two there's there's more of those coming through with the high color options and things
Amra (20:35)
you.
Chris Munnery (20:54)
like that too. But yeah we will see books that kind of jump out jump out to us a little bit. It might be a little bit of formatting inside that doesn't quite look right ⁓ and you know we want the authors to have their best possibility and their best experience and we also want the catalogue to to reflect well as it goes through to to our retailers our channel partners.
Madeline Bush (21:04)
Mm.
Amra (21:21)
the thing you actually have like when I was doing my first book and I couldn't figure out how to do your covers and I had the person like you're not doing it properly and I could not understand what they were saying but I was like you know just that there is someone there going no this is not right you can does not you know your cover is not doing the wraparound thing that it should and it's not looking good because yeah it is it is important for everyone concerned and
In one sense also as representatives of the indie publishing world and of this amazing world that we're in where everyone can get their story out there and connect with readers, we sort of want to have the best quality to show, yes, look at what we can do. Yeah.
Chris Munnery (22:00)
Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ And you know, some of the, you know, tools that are coming that we kind of know are coming, are later, later this year, hopefully. I know I'm always a bit cautious when I promise, promise dates.
Amra (22:15)
dates. No dates.
Chris Munnery (22:17)
No dates, but I think it's close. I've seen kind of, you know, some beta versions of it and it'll be like auto conversion tools, which will mean authors that have just had an ebook can convert to paperback within the system itself. Or if you've got a paperback, you can do an auto convert to hardback.
So yeah, format conversion all done within the platform itself. And at some stage, you know, we would like to see audio book conversion as well. And we think that could be coming at some stage, you know, perhaps next year.
Amra (22:46)
Yes.
That's the thing when you're wanting to do those multiple formats, the time that it takes to do that adjustment and to figure it out. And then the different platforms have different requirements and you're having to do a different cover for Ingram and a different cover for KDP. And so yeah, it's all so time intensive. And when you're just one little person, you kind of feel that pressure.
Chris Munnery (23:15)
Absolutely,
but it's also, you know, it's so exciting for us when we'll walk through the facility and see publishers, author publishers that are pushing the envelope with what they can do with print on demand. And this happened, you know, recently in the last year or two with Printed Edge. which is all of...
Amra (23:35)
Yes, so tell us about that because
now Ingram can do that because that was sort of other printing companies were doing that and couldn't do it through Ingram. But now that's happening.
Chris Munnery (23:43)
Yeah, well, you know, yeah.
Yeah, that's right. know, well, even now, you know, authors are printing and sending it off to third parties to get sprayed edges and then getting getting it back. Whereas for us, we just saw these printed edge books coming through the facility. And I'm speaking to the facility, to one of the facility people and just saying, was that printed? And he was like, well, it was here. And so I was like, went straight up and had a look at the ISBN, had a look at this author, and it was
was
the author publishers themselves that worked out how to do this and started doing it. And now it's available through, you can go to somewhere like printededges.com, which is a third party that will format your book to suit Printed Edge on Ingram. And now we see so many of them, Maddy, don't we, particularly in the romance genre and...
Amra (24:17)
No.
Chris Munnery (24:35)
that have got these beautiful designs on the printed edge and the best part is it's no extra cost. It's just manipulating the bleed to wrap around onto the edge. yeah, some fantastic initiative from some of these author publishers just working out how to do this themselves with print on demand.
Amra (24:43)
Yes.
That's what I love about this world. Like it's just constantly learning. There's no such thing as, I've learned everything I need to know. It is honestly just a constant journey of learning and just so much a excitement and enthusiasm because people just, they do things, they figure it out and then they share it with everyone. And they're like, hey, I figured this out. I can do this. You can do this. And it's like, ⁓ ideas, ideas.
Chris Munnery (25:18)
Absolutely, know, Maddy can talk about, know, some of the, because we also work with the Romance Writers of Australia, there's a lot of their authors will use our platform and about the collaboration, Maddy, with some of these communities.
Madeline Bush (25:33)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, both events and authors, we're seeing them do anthology collections, particularly in that romance space. One I know that I can sort of plug is a friend of mine, Alana Roberts, she has the Sweet Treat anthology, and that has beautiful printed edges on it. But we're seeing more collaborations happen within their author friend groups, their writing groups, if they're part of a writing club in their area, that kind of thing.
but we're also seeing it happen from events and author signings. So ⁓ like our RWA conference last year, for example, they just took the first sort of chapter of all the attending authors books, collaborated it into one, and then they put like a QR code that took them straight to either the authors online shopping website or maybe their socials, that kind of thing.
So it took them right to that place where they can go and purchase the book to finish reading in full. But it gave them that teaser in that book all in one. So we're seeing a lot of this stuff happen. And we're also seeing authors come up with this clever little idea of like four by six size pocket books. So whether that's full of more character information, maybe some world building stuff, maybe a sneak peek into a new book, that kind of thing.
And they're just selling it at events, maybe $10, $15, or not even, they might pop it in a swag bag, that kind of thing. But it just gains them a new readership as well, maybe for upcoming series, they're teasing it, that sort of thing. So they are always surprising us.
Amra (27:04)
Yeah, well, that's that's giving me some good ideas because I have tried your little pocketbooks for my bonus content. And I love how I have like these these little books of bonus content. But you just said world building and I'm like, can I do with that? So, yeah, that's.
Chris Munnery (27:10)
Mmm.
Madeline Bush (27:11)
Yeah.
Yeah, would be awesome to
Chris Munnery (27:20)
Hahaha
Madeline Bush (27:22)
see some of our fantasy authors maybe give a little bit more insight into the world they've built, maybe the thoughts behind it, characters, that kind of thing. Because I know I write fantasy and there's a lot that goes into it for creating that whole world.
Amra (27:40)
Well, that's the thing. like when you're a reader, we get so connected. We like love the characters and love the world and just kind of, I do it even with movies where I watch a movie and I'm like, what was real? What wasn't real? What's the, you who directed it? Like you just, yeah, you just want to know more about the stories and immerse yourselves, immerse ourselves more into it. I love those ideas. I love it. I'm putting my thinking hat on. This is giving me a lot of food for thought. I'm loving it.
Madeline Bush (27:45)
Okay.
Yeah.
Amra (28:09)
I just wanted to talk a little bit about because you have one of the big misunderstandings about IngramSpark is the wholesale discounts and the way that discounts work. And you see a lot of that from new writers who are like, oh, so I was just wondering if one of you could sort of provide that context and that information for new writers to know what the purpose of those are.
Chris Munnery (28:33)
Yeah, absolutely Amr. So, you know, if you, think if we talk about say, say you've just written a book that you're going to retail for $30. So for bookshops to sell that book, they're going to expect over 50 % discount on that book to be part of that whole kind of transactional process to the end reader.
and that's just kind of an expected margin. your $30 book, you know, minus that, say, 55%, so usually 53 to 55 % is the sweet spot. And that means that you're more likely to get really good favorable algorithms with through that bookshop sales, and also they're more the ones that would like to purchase and stock your book are more likely to do that because of that kind of margin. If you go under that, means
in the trade it'd be called something, you know, like it's like a short discount. And it means if you are a really high profile author and the demand is massive, you can probably afford to go a little bit less. But in reality, you know, that 50 to 55%, that takes your $30 book straight away down to say $13.50. And then if that book costs six, $7 to print, then what is left over?
is
your publisher compensation. So you know, you might end up with that $30 book, you might end up say five or six dollars. And for people new to the industry, it's like, oh, you know, I've got a $30 book, but I'm only getting five or six dollars. And we try and kind of explain how that process works for the book trade, through the book trade, but also that in a traditional publishing sense, you know, we, you may be getting less, you know,
may be getting yeah and of course Amri you you you know you I'm sure can speak to to that side of it too but but
Amra (30:22)
That's it.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not that much like you think that a lot of people have a misconception about the traditional publishing world that there's more money there for authors and they might be if you're one of those big breakout authors with the huge success. But you know, if your book is being sold for $25 or $30, you're getting 10 % of that sales price. Whereas as an indie author, you know, you've got that bigger margin that you're getting.
Chris Munnery (30:57)
Yeah and as you were saying earlier, it has its benefits too of course and for some people that is their dream. Their dream is to be picked up by a big trade publisher and of course they'll have some other advantages if they do that such as an advance and not having to worry so much about that metadata and the proofing and all of those other things because it'll be kind of
taken
care of. what we're hearing more and more, because we quite often you know doing events where there's a mix of indie authors and traditional authors and some traditional that are putting their backlist with self-publishing or they've got their rights back to certain books and they're being republished and what we're finding is that they'll kind of say to
that they're being told to do just as much marketing for traditional as well. So it's not like you just sit back and wait for the sales to happen. It's like they want you out there doing events, doing social media, doing all the things that we recommend as an indie author. So the two worlds are kind of starting to overlap more and more I think.
Amra (32:13)
Yeah, well,
I've even read an article about traditionally published authors using their advance to pay for a publicist where publishers are no longer even having in-house publicists who do the marketing and who, you know, do that work. Now, as an indie author, I did pay for a publicist and that's okay because I'm an indie publisher and I'm, you know, promoting my own writing and I'm happy to do that. But
Yeah, if you're selling your rights to a publisher, they should be providing the infrastructure to do some of that work. And yeah, like at the end of the day, the author has to do a lot, but if you're only getting 10 % versus a much bigger profit margin, obviously as an indie publisher, you also have to pay for things. You do have to pay for formatting, for the covers, you know, for all of the production costs.
Chris Munnery (33:01)
Yep, that's right.
Amra (33:06)
and then with the time that you have to invest. So there's pros and cons to both and I've been in both worlds and I loved my time in both worlds and I'm not saying no to ever doing traditional publishing but yeah, you really need to be aware of where and what you're doing.
Chris Munnery (33:21)
Mmm.
I think so and there's some of our authors we know are writing specific books to pitch to traditional publishers and they'll be keeping some of their other series with indie. So it's this whole kind of operating as a business that we're seeing more and more with some of these astute kind of indie authors that are getting picked up by traditional. So they'll make
their splash, you know, some of them have gone viral on TikTok as an indie author and then, then of course, you know, traditionally knocking on their door saying, you know, we'd love to pick up your title and
And so it's still a great story for us for when that happens because it's kind of like they got their start through the platform and then they moved on and they're getting to their dream of working with a traditional publisher. But they still have options for their other content too to manage as they want.
Amra (34:23)
That's the thing, when you're a writer or a creative, you really have to look at how do you exploit all your intellectual property, all of the skills and the things that you have and how do you try and make that viable income and that earning. I just also wanted to talk about the returns. So usually with bookstores, if you're doing that discount, then there has to be that they can return any stock.
that is not bought. And so as in view authors, we have the opportunity to say, yes, we will allow returns. No, we won't allow returns. And that yes, we will allow returns, but instead of sending them back to us, that they are destroyed. What information do you have in terms of how that influences bookstores and discoverability?
Chris Munnery (35:08)
Yeah, look, it's quite different the way Australia operates in that sense, most of the book shops will order through us through the Ingram ordering system through iPage. And iPage is firm sale. So it means that when one of these Australian book shops are ordering, whether the client has returns or no returns listed, like they're buying it as
firm sale, print on demand title that won't come back. But we find it's particularly, probably more relevant and more important in the US market. So, you know, that's where it'll be heavily influenced with, you know, by putting, a return and destroy, then you're going to have more traction through those US channels.
And of course, know, everyone's probably, you know, once you've started talking to other authors and...
it probably hurt some of the return horror stories that where you know an author gets all excited at the start but then three months later you know it's like 70 percent of the books come back and so to be honest though those kind of things are extremely rare you know it's not saying that it can't happen but it doesn't likely happen not with kind of the you know the way purchasing
works through the retail channels now. But in Australia, definitely, most of our sales are firm. But there's also the option for authors to reach out to bookshops. we're not exclusive the way we operate in our platform.
So just like, you know, you could go to traditional and you can send an email saying, please take this title out of distribution. just been snapped up. And, you know, we can do that within 24 hours, 48 hours. But the same thing with bookshops is authors can make their own arrangements. And, you know, if you want to do a a book launch at your local bookshop, then feel free and make your own arrangements to take, you know, you might want to take 50 or a hundred books there.
Make your own arrangements with the bookstore for anything that doesn't sell to come back and become your stock. So that's all open to authors as well.
Amra (37:24)
And like, you know, it does require hustle and it does require authors doing that work and that connecting with bookstores and creating those relationships and getting them on consignment. So I think, yeah, I just wanted to sort of talk about some of the new things that Ingram has got going on. So we've covered the sprayed edges, which are so exciting. There's gonna be those wonderful tools to help support us with creating covers, which is one of the
difficult things that we struggle with at the moment but there's some other new things going on.
Chris Munnery (37:53)
Well, you know, it's one of the things and this is definitely I don't want to over promise and under deliver with the date, but e-commerce is the really big thing. And it's been, there's a product called Share and Sell that's been in the US now for available to our US customers for 18 months, two years. And it's direct selling to consumer. It's been launched in the UK this year and it's now operating in the UK and Australia's next in line.
I am fingers crossed hoping for this year ⁓ Q3, Q4, I can't help myself saying dates because I think I do believe, genuinely believe that's when it will be launched here. But what that means is that you can, any of our author publishers on the platform can generate a URL or an embed link that you can put on your own website,
Madeline Bush (38:22)
That's good.
Chris Munnery (38:46)
off the website.
or you can add to your email signature or put on your socials and it will essentially be a buy button. it's like, so you could have, for example, at the end of your, you know, in your LinkedIn or some of your other socials, you could have, my new book here. You have a link and the end user will click on it, go to a landing page in the platform, pop in their postal address, pay for the book.
all of the transactional
exercises is completed by Ingram and it then automatically calculates the postage and the customer buys the book, it handles the proof of sale and triggers our facility then to manufacture and ship that book direct to the end reader. So this is something even for our authors and you know I think we're particularly in Australia I think the proportion of our author publishers that are
really have really a really digitally savvy digital savvy they have great websites that they may even have their own e-commerce going but they this way they can have this fulfilling that these product these order sales all the time
So whether it's at 3 a.m., whether it's when they're on holiday, and it will just, but not only will this be available for Australia, it'll be a global e-commerce. So it means that...
Amra (39:56)
⁓
Yeah.
Chris Munnery (40:08)
Let's say for one of our authors has done a book on steam engines or something like that, then they can directly market themselves to various steam engine groups all over the world and say, you can buy my book here. If it happens to be in Cornwall in England, then the end user will go in, make the transaction. It will trigger our UK facility to manufacture and ship the book. And you get a prompt in your account saying you've just had an
comments so so
Amra (40:37)
Yeah. I guess what this
advantage now is that, you know, I've got my own website where I'm selling my books. If I'm selling them in Australia, I have to include the price of postage because there's no way for, then for, you know, sending from Australia elsewhere is not great. Postage is so expensive. So for example, when I do my Kickstarter, I say you're going to get an unsigned copy and I'll send it direct from Ingram and it will be printed in the U S.
and they will pay the local postage, the US postage, and therefore they are not being disadvantaged in terms of the price that they're paying. And that's what's halting us currently in terms of being able to take advantage of those connections that we make with readers all over the world and trying to do that direct selling, especially with so many authors now doing these beautiful books that they want to sell as collector items and really take advantage of.
Chris Munnery (41:09)
you
Madeline Bush (41:29)
Yep.
Chris Munnery (41:32)
Yep, yeah, absolutely. yeah, getting back to, know, your ⁓ printed edge. So if you're doing a special edition printed edge book might be a hard cover and might have a jacket because you know, you can do all of those things with print on demand. And you can just have that special edition purchase link that can go anywhere. And it will just be happening in the background. Like at the moment we have other author publishers like you were saying, Amra, that will
drop ship their books to their customers say in the UK or the US. They'll go into their account and manually put in an order and print it from our UK or US facility and send to the end reader. this will all be automatically happening in the background, which means the fulfillment. Some of these e-commerce costs we find can be prohibitive for some authors new to the industry as well.
So this will be a way that they can step into the world of e-commerce without having to set up Shopify or something like that on their own website.
Amra (42:31)
Yes, the fees,
you know, I had a Shopify account, I got funding to open it, but it's the monthly fees. So now I've got a pay hip account because that's only you pay as there's sales. Just support that a lot more because, you know, when we're doing this ourselves, having to fork out money all the way along. Yeah. And I'm just going to take advantage of both of you now.
Madeline Bush (42:52)
Yeah.
Amra (42:58)
I am doing my first international, my first translation. So I have translated my book into Bosnian using AI technology and then using my husband who is a Bosnian speaker as my proofreader. And so that's the other thing. There was actually Bosnian as the option in the IngramSpark list of languages that I could do. And I'm preparing for that launch and stuff, but...
Madeline Bush (43:02)
You think?
Amra (43:22)
What are you seeing in that world with people publishing now that we've got that international, know, where we can translate into various languages and publish into different parts of the world, into their languages? How is that impacting?
Chris Munnery (43:35)
I think where it's really taken off the last year or two to the point where we have whole teams now that are working with this and internationally, so the whole language conversion has been something that we feel the industry has barely scratched the surface and it's just going to get bigger and bigger.
⁓ There's a lot of fantastic content out there that could do really well when translated into different languages. So yeah, so I think that's another exciting part of having the autonomy of your own kind of business as an author publisher, your own account, that you can do multiple languages. You can also...
Amra (43:57)
All
Chris Munnery (44:19)
do customizable books is another thing that's we're seeing more and more. And for that, it's like, say our business publishers that are on the speaking circuit doing business presentations, they might be going to do a speaking opportunity at BHP or something like that. And they will just have their business book, but they will go in and make a customized version and do it for them.
Amra (44:43)
Yes.
Chris Munnery (44:44)
And by just taking this, same book that's in the system, adding a page, perhaps, if they're working with a designer, can put BHP hats on the illustrations, those kind of things. And just starting to use these as like enhanced business cards in a way, these books, on the speaking circuit. But yeah, languages is something that I think in the next year or two is going to
to really take off.
Amra (45:13)
Mm.
And Madeline, on your end, what are some things that you're seeing or you're wanting to give advice about or you're wanting to give a shout out about?
Madeline Bush (45:22)
Yeah, just following back off the language thing, I know I've seen some articles online and stats and that sort of thing of some of the languages that are in demand within the indie publishing community. So some of those languages are traditional Chinese, German, Spanish. I've seen a lot of Arabic languages and dialects come through. we're seeing a lot of that being translated even just before.
this podcast recording, went downstairs and found three or four different translated titles that are being printed and it's nice to see them coming through more popularly now. Kind of a good question about what else I'm seeing come through. I mean, we kind of covered the forced edges or the edge bleeding printed edges, kind of all different names for them, but
just what people are doing with it. We've seen beautiful color designs, beautiful black and white designs, but we're also starting to see some authors get really, really clever and manage to incorporate two different designs, having one design on the left page of the bleed and another one on the right page. So when it's actually put together, it gives a little bit of a holographic effect. So that's another one that I don't know how that magic works.
but it's awesome and I love seeing every single one of them that comes through the facility. Yeah.
Amra (46:41)
I
know it's just, it's such an amazing, yeah, like just the world is sort of open in so many ways. And even if we look back, like I started this indie journey three years ago and just the way that it has changed and all the new opportunities. Yeah. Well, is there any last words that you wanted to say?
Chris Munnery (46:46)
you
Madeline Bush (46:57)
yeah.
Chris Munnery (47:02)
The only other thing I wanted to say, as Maddy said, some of the beautiful books that come through, but also the way that Print On Demand and having access to this is doing really important things in the broader community. Like we have a beautiful book that's from Wingaru Education, ⁓ indigenous publisher based up in Sydney, and their book is a beautiful children's book and it's based on the Daruglu
language in the Western Sydney basin and it's a means of preserving this language. with, if you think of, you know, all of the 250 odd dialects of different languages, indigenous languages around Australia, and some of these are in danger of disappearing. so, books are a great way of preserving this language by once that book is in, in a file, in a digital
file it's it will exist forever so so beautiful things like that we see Amara which is yeah which which yeah which is really you know encouraging and a great use of I guess all the tools that are available
Amra (48:01)
Yes.
Yeah.
And I think just to go back to what you were saying, Madeline, in terms of Arabic, Ingram Spark also has the option because Arabic is read from right to left. And so you've actually got the option where you choose that it gets printed in that way. So just those nuances also in terms of the global distribution, global culture, global publishing.
Madeline Bush (48:22)
Yes.
Amra (48:34)
You know, there's so many things that do make it easy and that do support that, which is really wonderful.
Madeline Bush (48:41)
Yeah, and I mean, we've constantly got the platform evolving. We listen to all the suggestions that everything like on online forums, social media, that kind of thing. The team in the US are always adapting and changing things and
So having buttons like the right to left content, or there's also another button that's like, ⁓ look inside the book, which allows retailers to provide like a little sneak peek on their retail websites, that kind of thing. It all really, really helps in the indie space. I know from author experiences personally, I would have loved to have some of that stuff when I first started publishing would have made that journey a lot easier to begin with. ⁓ you obviously know what that journey's like.
Amra (49:25)
Yeah.
Madeline Bush (49:27)
But yeah, all those little things that we have now, I absolutely love for our first time indie authors. And it's not just the first timers, it's the ones that get to experience new tools after their fifth, sixth, tenth book, that kind of stuff as well.
Amra (49:43)
Yeah, and it's just really important also, like, you when you have been around for a little while to have those workflows that go easier and just make it easier. So spending less time on that administration and all of those things, because you know, marketing is like 50 % of your time, then you're trying to do writing because yeah, it's the whole access of it.
Chris Munnery (50:02)
you
Amra (50:08)
So it's wonderful. Well, thank you so much to the two of you for being so generous, coming on the podcast, sharing all this great information, but also so many wonderful opportunities for indie authors. And I will get information from you and I'll put it up on my website and people can go in and access it. But also all this information is available on the Ingram website. you know, there's all these people are really generous in sharing their.
information and their learning journeys. ⁓ And so, you know, the way I figured out the covers was finding someone on YouTube who was like, and this is the thing that you need to do. I was like, gosh. So thank you very much.
Madeline Bush (50:47)
That's okay. Thank you so much for inviting us onto the podcast. It's been such an enjoyable time speaking with you. And I'm sure I say that for both myself and Chris, but we've really appreciated it.
Amra (50:57)
Thank you.
Chris Munnery (50:57)
Thanks, Emerit.
Amra (50:59)
All
Today I'm joined by two insiders from IngramSpark, part of the global powerhouse Ingram Content Group. And if you're an indie author trying to get your book beyond Amazon, this is the conversation you need to hear. So Chris Munnery has worked within the Australian publishing industry for over 25 years, including senior positions with publishers Macmillan and Lonely Planet. He's currently the senior key account manager at IngramSpark Australia.
is based in Melbourne South East at the Australian Print On Demand headquarters where the state of art facility services the Australian book industry for both wholesale orders to booksellers and libraries in Australia, New Zealand and publisher direct orders to authors and publishers. IngramSpark is the print on demand self-publishing arm of Ingram Content Group and it gives titles there's over 45,000 global book distribution and networks.
And they reached into bricks and mortar bookstores and libraries, which is a wonderful opportunity. So the vision is to make indie publishing more powerful and connected and rewarding. And we've also got Madeleine who has worked at IngramSpark as a sales support specialist for nearly 12 months. She's an independent author herself and passionate about all aspects of the book industry. and values the opportunity to contribute to both the creative and professional sides of publishing and to help authors bring their stories to life, which is what I have been doing with IngramSparks. So thank you so much.
Madeline Bush (01:58)
Thank you so much, Amara, for having both Chris and I. This is really exciting.
Amra (02:02)
I know I'm so happy because I'm sort of delving more into the different facets of publishing and the different facets of the creative industry. so, you know, having Ingram Spark as someone who is a distributor that a lot of authors use and sort of demystifying and providing information is just wonderful. I think before we begin, we had an initial conversation when we talking about the fact that most people misunderstand
the role of IngramSpark and in terms of, you know, that you're not a publisher but a distributor. So I was just wondering if one of you could give that background a little bit.
Chris Munnery (02:38)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely Amra and yeah, that's echoing Maddy. So thanks so much for having us on board. But yeah, we're largely a printer and distributor.
Although things are constantly evolving, it's such a powerful team behind Ingram that we kind of get little previews of things that are coming in the marketing sense and further kind of avenues, I guess, to explore for our author publishers. There's always really smart people working on things in the background, but yeah, largely that is the confusion where we do have
some authors, you know, new in their journey that are saying things like, you know, it's like I've loaded my book and, you know, I'm not getting any sales. What have you done to help this? And it's like, have to kind of go back to square one and just try and educate them a little bit that they need to be proactively doing a lot of that marketing themselves.
Amra (03:38)
And that's the thing, like, you we, provide that distribution channel where it can, like, I look at my dashboard and it's just amazing to see a sale in Germany, in UK, in the US, you know, all these places where I'm like, my gosh, people are actually buying my book there. And so there are these distribution channels that are available, but really as authors and in this capacity using IngramSpark, we are also publishers.
⁓ And we are the ones that need to drive that. We need to drive that marketing, drive those connections. And like, you know, obviously there are organic sales that happen where you've got partners and distributors that are, you know, getting access to these books. But if you want to maximise, it is the author slash publisher who really needs to put that. ⁓
Chris Munnery (04:25)
Absolutely, we, Maddie and I, we call our, whether it's a single author or it's an author services business, which popping up more and more, little IngramSpark author services businesses that might have 20, 30 or more authors working underneath them or within their account. But we, whether it's single author or one of those, for us, we call all of our authors author publishers, because you are a publisher.
Madeline Bush (04:29)
Yeah.
Amra (04:51)
Yeah, and that's also a really good point because, you know, the indie publishing scene is really taking over and...
I don't know, really contributing to the publishing, you know, output and opportunities for publication as an indie author. I'm finding it a very viable way of, you know, taking control and earning income. And so it's just great about that, that there are people who are providing those services and also people who are sort of banding together and using the one account or the one umbrella to publish multiple books in order to just maximize that,
networking opportunities, the marketing opportunities. So I know of one of them, which is Hambury Publishing. Do you have any others that you sort of, you know, and things that you're seeing that they're doing that are good that others could learn from?
Chris Munnery (05:40)
Yeah, look, I think a lot of them get started by just, you like Hambree, like Jess from Hambree is by publishing their own book. And then they'll go through that experience and, and, know, it can be a bit of a challenge. know, as you know, just doing your first book and, know, app tools, our online tools and things are getting better all the time for helping. you know, I know we'll chat about metadata and things like that later on. And some of those words, you know,
Amra (05:55)
Yes.
Chris Munnery (06:09)
we have to remind ourselves even that's a you know it can be scary words for someone just getting going and it's like you know if you just kind of say it's all your metadata sorted and you know we can't expect them to know exactly how that works and why it's important but ⁓ but these author services you know there's there's one that we work on work with and will be sponsoring later this year and that's under
So it's Laura Felbman does children's writing. So she works specifically with children's writing and she's now got courses going. She'll have an event later in this year in October for people, authors that are trying to get into that space. And Laura is another classic case of published her own book, really active in the
community all of these other people started reaching out and saying I've got an idea or you know I really want to and some of them might just want to have publish a book for their own children and then others go further and further and then they start to get sales and then they want to do another book and they they kind of bring them under under that umbrella so there's kind of two two methods I guess one is that a full kind of mini publisher
House that will bring the titles under their account and within their own kind of umbrella. And then there's other lots of other author services that will...
educate the client, probably get them to the stage where their book is in Ingram pricing set, its distribution's enabled, but then set them on their own way. So then it's like, okay, you we've got you to this level, now we'll transfer the title of it to your own account and you're underway with your own book and your own marketing, your own journey after that.
Amra (08:00)
And I mean, that's the thing that we're seeing a lot in this indie world now where unfortunately people are uninformed about the reality of what is going on. They get themselves in opportunities where they think they're dealing with a publisher and that they are being published, but it's basically someone who is providing services.
and is overselling themselves and taking their rights. Whereas if you're having someone support you in showing you how to do it, do it all yourself, it's your book, it's still all yours, you know, they've just got that initial support. So in terms of bookstores, you know, that's one of the things that IngramSpark provides. What makes bookstores say yes to an indie title?
Chris Munnery (08:39)
Well, you know, it's a really important point, you know, in question you make because...
The bookstores that are with us, and there's over 45,000 globally now, and in Australia, know, the ones that are familiar to people will be, you know, your Booktopia and Dimmick's and the Nile and Readings in Carlton, Abbey's in Sydney, those, you know, iconic kind of bookstores, Glee Books, and right down to little small bookstores in country towns. They have access to the Ingram Catalog.
not
just because they have access to the catalog, it means that they, yes they can go in and order your book, but the, I guess the learning for someone new in the journey is that it doesn't mean that you're going to walk into DIMIX and see your book on the shelves. So you are going to be competing against a lot of other books as well. And so know, bookstores will make their decisions based
Amra (09:28)
Yeah.
Chris Munnery (09:38)
on what they think is going to sell. And so ultimately, you you can influence that. And certainly we find that they're very supportive for, particularly for local authors, Amra. So, you know, if you have a bookstore in your area, they will love having a local author book there. ⁓ But...
Amra (09:40)
Mm.
Yes.
Okay.
Chris Munnery (09:59)
Having said that, it will need to be, you know, you need to have a professional looking book. You want to be kind of presenting the best version of your product, of your content that you can. And even if you're a local author and you come in and if the cover looks, you know, ⁓ unprofessional, if there's typos, if it's messy formatting, if it's a strange size, you know, because we offer lots of sizes from a little four by six pocketbook.
Amra (10:12)
Okay.
Chris Munnery (10:29)
to full know kids book size 11 11 by 5 by by 8 and so if you kind of have you know you think ⁓ I know I'll make my book stand out by having a really strange format size then you've got to remember that for bookshops you know they need to position that so if they're they are going to stock your book they need to position it on a shelf and if it's a if it's not a uniform sort of size you know it's like where are they going to put it so those kind of
practical things are really important. So they'll make their decisions you know based on all of that and of course good metadata all that information behind the book that really is your first point of marketing.
Amra (11:12)
Mmm.
Chris Munnery (11:12)
So that discoverability
by having really good metadata is also important. And we've actually just started adding some AI tools for metadata within the platform. Yeah, so this is all designed around making it.
Amra (11:23)
⁓ Do tell us, please.
Chris Munnery (11:30)
making metadata as easy as it can be for our author publishers. So it's like for someone starting from scratch that really doesn't know, you can use our metadata tool to kind of give you the base metadata level, which you can still go in and edit as much as you like, but it will just kind of set the best metadata and just, it's like a coaching type tool to make it easy for particularly for first time author publishers.
Thank
Amra (12:01)
And just to clarify for those people who don't know, when we're talking about metadata, we're talking about keywords, we're talking about the title, we're talking about, you know, the different types of blurbs that you want, affiliations that you might have, reviews that you might have. So it's all of the stuff that goes into the database that helps discoverability so that potentially someone could go into a bookstore and go, I want to murder mystery about, you know, Vietnam War. And that there could be a keyword that they put in the keywords and that they can find a list of books.
And so it's really important that back end.
Chris Munnery (12:29)
Yeah.
Absolutely it is. And you know it's also really important to you know if you are a local author to be incorporating that kind of information in there ⁓ and you know your your subject classifications so it's like where the book fits so you know it's if you picture of you know going into a library and it's like like we all do we go into a library and we're looking for a specific subject or genre and it's all about making it class
Amra (12:38)
Bye.
Chris Munnery (12:57)
so that it can be classified for discoverability and whether that's, even if it's online bookstore, so know something like Booktopia, know, it's about, they will then need to classify within their own search algorithms to be in a particular place. So it's, yeah, it's something really important. We have free tools on board that Maddie and I will share all of the time with our author publishers.
as well so we can send you you know the 2026 best practice metadata guide for example which will take you through your bisect codes but also your thema codes and and a lot more information and a checklist things like that are all available
Amra (13:41)
Well,
I'll get that and I'll put it on my website and flag it in the show notes. And that's the other thing, there is a lot of information that IngramSpark does provide to help support us in our journey. So, you know, it is about sort of doing those tutorials and finding all that information.
Chris Munnery (13:45)
Brilliant.
Amra (13:56)
because what we tend to do as indie authors is we launch into it and we think of things the hard way and we, you know, want to pull our hair out from stress because we do silly things like set a deadline for publication and then go, oh no, I haven't thought this through all the way. So yeah, it's really important to do that background work first.
Chris Munnery (14:04)
Yep.
Madeline Bush (14:08)
Thank
Chris Munnery (14:17)
It's...
It's
really true, Maddie, had, you know, we won't mention the author, but we've had one just recently, haven't we, that was set for her launch date, and I'll let Maddie go through the example.
Madeline Bush (14:32)
Thank
Amra (14:34)
Yeah.
Madeline Bush (14:34)
Yeah,
we've certainly had authors that they set a launch date or an on sale date and then right beforehand they were like, ⁓ can we, can we change the on sale date, which you can't change your on sale date once it's in global distribution. So once that's enabled on our platform, that on sale date can't change. And there's a little bit more parameters around that as well. But yeah, got.
three or four days out and was like, no, can we push it out? And just can't do that, unfortunately. So there is so much to learn with your first book. even after a few books, you still learn as you go on as an author. I don't know if you found the same, Amara, but I'm learning things with every single one.
Amra (15:14)
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah, and I'm learning now to like do a long lead and also because I'm doing my first series, I'm batching them where I'm like, you know, there's so many things to think about in the writing side of it. So, yeah, sometimes just because we can do it immediately doesn't mean that's the best thing that we should do. really, know, publishers do set very long publishing times and that's because they have a lot of books that they're working with. But, you know, there is something
like build in a few months. Do not try and do things within a very short, unless it's your 20th book and you're like, yes, I've got the readership, I've got everything sorted. But honestly, first few books really space them out and plan. Yeah, things will come on.
Chris Munnery (16:01)
And we want, you know, we want it to be the best experience for the, for these first time authors as well. So, you know, we, we don't, you know, we completely understand because we're taking an offering, I guess, what used to be a really complex publishing model and we're making accessible for everyone. So we totally understand that, you know, it's, it's all a learning process, but we're just trying to, we try and help, ⁓ mitigate the stress levels for,
Amra (16:17)
Yeah.
and
Chris Munnery (16:30)
for first-time authors if they've arranged a book launch you know within a few weeks and and they're still working on their cover or something like that it's kind of it's yeah we're trying to say well you know it really probably need to to set that back a little bit that launch or yeah
Amra (16:45)
Yes. Build
in Tom.
Madeline Bush (16:47)
lot of
authors don't realize how important that physical proof copy is as well. Do not skip the proof copy. Guys, absolutely order it. Make sure everything's nice. Your cover lines up properly, your spine's all correct. The internal design looks nice, because the last thing you want is to upload it and then send it out into the world the way it is, if you haven't really checked it through and are happy with it. So.
Amra (16:54)
Yeah.
Yeah.
And even when you're using tools like formatting tools and they always work and then suddenly something weird happens with the way dialogue is formatted or the way text is formatted. And if you don't read every single page of your proof copy, yeah, it's problematic because, you know, once you get that negative reader experience, then it's really hard to come back from that.
Chris Munnery (17:24)
Mm-hmm.
Amra (17:39)
⁓ because it is that global platform and that's the joy of it, but then, yeah, you can't kind of like, now I'm going to update it. And, those reviews are still there.
Chris Munnery (17:40)
up.
And because we have the downloads, so can have a look physically on your screen, but of course, digital screens are going to display differently. They're set differently to what ends up ink on a page. bright colors can look a bit dull and dark. Low res pixels, all of those kind of things are going to contribute.
And because our proof copies, we quite often get asked, Maddy, don't we? It's like, how much is your proof copy? And for us, it's like, it's ordering one book. So it's not like we're going to charge you anything extra for it's a proof. If it's 100 page, six by nine paperback, something like that, it might cost you $5 to print. So order a book, send it to yourself, have a look at it physically.
Amra (18:36)
Yeah.
Chris Munnery (18:42)
and things will start to jump out, you know, if there are any problems.
Amra (18:47)
And
look, I'm going to be honest here. This is a rookie mistake I made early on in my journey where I did not read every single page. I was like, I've looked at that enough and it did bite me. And now every single proof copy, I read it from beginning to end. I book myself in for like a four hour reading session because I like to do it in one go. So I've got it in my, that flow and that story as a last time.
And yeah, really important because ⁓ like I have human proofreaders, but then I have to go through and do it again. So I use a lot of AI assisted tools before I give it to a human, you know, my proofreader, but then I still have to do that final quality control. You know, yeah, so it's, this is where the advantage of the publishers, they do those multiple, multiple views because they do print runs of, you
Madeline Bush (19:28)
Yeah.
Amra (19:41)
thousand, three thousand copies so they want to make sure that they are as perfect as they can be, whereas with us we get a little bit complacent because we can just, I'll fix that and then I can just do it again. And yes you can but if you send it out there and people are reading it, yeah that's always the issue.
Chris Munnery (19:58)
Yeah, and you know it's something that will pop out and one of the favourite things Maddy and I do because we sit above our facility out here in South East Melbourne that at any time of the year we could be shipping thousands of books every single day all around Australia. So we'll just walk down, see the books that are coming through and it's quite amazing just to see the mass variety.
of subject and for me being a non-fiction reader it's like I'm only reading Ingram IngramSpark non-fiction because it's great for me because you know I get all sorts of categories but we see everything you know we're seeing a lot more children's books coming through and recipe books which you know has changed the last year or two there's there's more of those coming through with the high color options and things
Amra (20:35)
you.
Chris Munnery (20:54)
like that too. But yeah we will see books that kind of jump out jump out to us a little bit. It might be a little bit of formatting inside that doesn't quite look right ⁓ and you know we want the authors to have their best possibility and their best experience and we also want the catalogue to to reflect well as it goes through to to our retailers our channel partners.
Madeline Bush (21:04)
Mm.
Amra (21:21)
the thing you actually have like when I was doing my first book and I couldn't figure out how to do your covers and I had the person like you're not doing it properly and I could not understand what they were saying but I was like you know just that there is someone there going no this is not right you can does not you know your cover is not doing the wraparound thing that it should and it's not looking good because yeah it is it is important for everyone concerned and
In one sense also as representatives of the indie publishing world and of this amazing world that we're in where everyone can get their story out there and connect with readers, we sort of want to have the best quality to show, yes, look at what we can do. Yeah.
Chris Munnery (22:00)
Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ And you know, some of the, you know, tools that are coming that we kind of know are coming, are later, later this year, hopefully. I know I'm always a bit cautious when I promise, promise dates.
Amra (22:15)
dates. No dates.
Chris Munnery (22:17)
No dates, but I think it's close. I've seen kind of, you know, some beta versions of it and it'll be like auto conversion tools, which will mean authors that have just had an ebook can convert to paperback within the system itself. Or if you've got a paperback, you can do an auto convert to hardback.
So yeah, format conversion all done within the platform itself. And at some stage, you know, we would like to see audio book conversion as well. And we think that could be coming at some stage, you know, perhaps next year.
Amra (22:46)
Yes.
That's the thing when you're wanting to do those multiple formats, the time that it takes to do that adjustment and to figure it out. And then the different platforms have different requirements and you're having to do a different cover for Ingram and a different cover for KDP. And so yeah, it's all so time intensive. And when you're just one little person, you kind of feel that pressure.
Chris Munnery (23:15)
Absolutely,
but it's also, you know, it's so exciting for us when we'll walk through the facility and see publishers, author publishers that are pushing the envelope with what they can do with print on demand. And this happened, you know, recently in the last year or two with Printed Edge. which is all of...
Amra (23:35)
Yes, so tell us about that because
now Ingram can do that because that was sort of other printing companies were doing that and couldn't do it through Ingram. But now that's happening.
Chris Munnery (23:43)
Yeah, well, you know, yeah.
Yeah, that's right. know, well, even now, you know, authors are printing and sending it off to third parties to get sprayed edges and then getting getting it back. Whereas for us, we just saw these printed edge books coming through the facility. And I'm speaking to the facility, to one of the facility people and just saying, was that printed? And he was like, well, it was here. And so I was like, went straight up and had a look at the ISBN, had a look at this author, and it was
was
the author publishers themselves that worked out how to do this and started doing it. And now it's available through, you can go to somewhere like printededges.com, which is a third party that will format your book to suit Printed Edge on Ingram. And now we see so many of them, Maddy, don't we, particularly in the romance genre and...
Amra (24:17)
No.
Chris Munnery (24:35)
that have got these beautiful designs on the printed edge and the best part is it's no extra cost. It's just manipulating the bleed to wrap around onto the edge. yeah, some fantastic initiative from some of these author publishers just working out how to do this themselves with print on demand.
Amra (24:43)
Yes.
That's what I love about this world. Like it's just constantly learning. There's no such thing as, I've learned everything I need to know. It is honestly just a constant journey of learning and just so much a excitement and enthusiasm because people just, they do things, they figure it out and then they share it with everyone. And they're like, hey, I figured this out. I can do this. You can do this. And it's like, ⁓ ideas, ideas.
Chris Munnery (25:18)
Absolutely, know, Maddy can talk about, know, some of the, because we also work with the Romance Writers of Australia, there's a lot of their authors will use our platform and about the collaboration, Maddy, with some of these communities.
Madeline Bush (25:33)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, both events and authors, we're seeing them do anthology collections, particularly in that romance space. One I know that I can sort of plug is a friend of mine, Alana Roberts, she has the Sweet Treat anthology, and that has beautiful printed edges on it. But we're seeing more collaborations happen within their author friend groups, their writing groups, if they're part of a writing club in their area, that kind of thing.
but we're also seeing it happen from events and author signings. So ⁓ like our RWA conference last year, for example, they just took the first sort of chapter of all the attending authors books, collaborated it into one, and then they put like a QR code that took them straight to either the authors online shopping website or maybe their socials, that kind of thing.
So it took them right to that place where they can go and purchase the book to finish reading in full. But it gave them that teaser in that book all in one. So we're seeing a lot of this stuff happen. And we're also seeing authors come up with this clever little idea of like four by six size pocket books. So whether that's full of more character information, maybe some world building stuff, maybe a sneak peek into a new book, that kind of thing.
And they're just selling it at events, maybe $10, $15, or not even, they might pop it in a swag bag, that kind of thing. But it just gains them a new readership as well, maybe for upcoming series, they're teasing it, that sort of thing. So they are always surprising us.
Amra (27:04)
Yeah, well, that's that's giving me some good ideas because I have tried your little pocketbooks for my bonus content. And I love how I have like these these little books of bonus content. But you just said world building and I'm like, can I do with that? So, yeah, that's.
Chris Munnery (27:10)
Mmm.
Madeline Bush (27:11)
Yeah.
Yeah, would be awesome to
Chris Munnery (27:20)
Hahaha
Madeline Bush (27:22)
see some of our fantasy authors maybe give a little bit more insight into the world they've built, maybe the thoughts behind it, characters, that kind of thing. Because I know I write fantasy and there's a lot that goes into it for creating that whole world.
Amra (27:40)
Well, that's the thing. like when you're a reader, we get so connected. We like love the characters and love the world and just kind of, I do it even with movies where I watch a movie and I'm like, what was real? What wasn't real? What's the, you who directed it? Like you just, yeah, you just want to know more about the stories and immerse yourselves, immerse ourselves more into it. I love those ideas. I love it. I'm putting my thinking hat on. This is giving me a lot of food for thought. I'm loving it.
Madeline Bush (27:45)
Okay.
Yeah.
Amra (28:09)
I just wanted to talk a little bit about because you have one of the big misunderstandings about IngramSpark is the wholesale discounts and the way that discounts work. And you see a lot of that from new writers who are like, oh, so I was just wondering if one of you could sort of provide that context and that information for new writers to know what the purpose of those are.
Chris Munnery (28:33)
Yeah, absolutely Amr. So, you know, if you, think if we talk about say, say you've just written a book that you're going to retail for $30. So for bookshops to sell that book, they're going to expect over 50 % discount on that book to be part of that whole kind of transactional process to the end reader.
and that's just kind of an expected margin. your $30 book, you know, minus that, say, 55%, so usually 53 to 55 % is the sweet spot. And that means that you're more likely to get really good favorable algorithms with through that bookshop sales, and also they're more the ones that would like to purchase and stock your book are more likely to do that because of that kind of margin. If you go under that, means
in the trade it'd be called something, you know, like it's like a short discount. And it means if you are a really high profile author and the demand is massive, you can probably afford to go a little bit less. But in reality, you know, that 50 to 55%, that takes your $30 book straight away down to say $13.50. And then if that book costs six, $7 to print, then what is left over?
is
your publisher compensation. So you know, you might end up with that $30 book, you might end up say five or six dollars. And for people new to the industry, it's like, oh, you know, I've got a $30 book, but I'm only getting five or six dollars. And we try and kind of explain how that process works for the book trade, through the book trade, but also that in a traditional publishing sense, you know, we, you may be getting less, you know,
may be getting yeah and of course Amri you you you know you I'm sure can speak to to that side of it too but but
Amra (30:22)
That's it.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not that much like you think that a lot of people have a misconception about the traditional publishing world that there's more money there for authors and they might be if you're one of those big breakout authors with the huge success. But you know, if your book is being sold for $25 or $30, you're getting 10 % of that sales price. Whereas as an indie author, you know, you've got that bigger margin that you're getting.
Chris Munnery (30:57)
Yeah and as you were saying earlier, it has its benefits too of course and for some people that is their dream. Their dream is to be picked up by a big trade publisher and of course they'll have some other advantages if they do that such as an advance and not having to worry so much about that metadata and the proofing and all of those other things because it'll be kind of
taken
care of. what we're hearing more and more, because we quite often you know doing events where there's a mix of indie authors and traditional authors and some traditional that are putting their backlist with self-publishing or they've got their rights back to certain books and they're being republished and what we're finding is that they'll kind of say to
that they're being told to do just as much marketing for traditional as well. So it's not like you just sit back and wait for the sales to happen. It's like they want you out there doing events, doing social media, doing all the things that we recommend as an indie author. So the two worlds are kind of starting to overlap more and more I think.
Amra (32:13)
Yeah, well,
I've even read an article about traditionally published authors using their advance to pay for a publicist where publishers are no longer even having in-house publicists who do the marketing and who, you know, do that work. Now, as an indie author, I did pay for a publicist and that's okay because I'm an indie publisher and I'm, you know, promoting my own writing and I'm happy to do that. But
Yeah, if you're selling your rights to a publisher, they should be providing the infrastructure to do some of that work. And yeah, like at the end of the day, the author has to do a lot, but if you're only getting 10 % versus a much bigger profit margin, obviously as an indie publisher, you also have to pay for things. You do have to pay for formatting, for the covers, you know, for all of the production costs.
Chris Munnery (33:01)
Yep, that's right.
Amra (33:06)
and then with the time that you have to invest. So there's pros and cons to both and I've been in both worlds and I loved my time in both worlds and I'm not saying no to ever doing traditional publishing but yeah, you really need to be aware of where and what you're doing.
Chris Munnery (33:21)
Mmm.
I think so and there's some of our authors we know are writing specific books to pitch to traditional publishers and they'll be keeping some of their other series with indie. So it's this whole kind of operating as a business that we're seeing more and more with some of these astute kind of indie authors that are getting picked up by traditional. So they'll make
their splash, you know, some of them have gone viral on TikTok as an indie author and then, then of course, you know, traditionally knocking on their door saying, you know, we'd love to pick up your title and
And so it's still a great story for us for when that happens because it's kind of like they got their start through the platform and then they moved on and they're getting to their dream of working with a traditional publisher. But they still have options for their other content too to manage as they want.
Amra (34:23)
That's the thing, when you're a writer or a creative, you really have to look at how do you exploit all your intellectual property, all of the skills and the things that you have and how do you try and make that viable income and that earning. I just also wanted to talk about the returns. So usually with bookstores, if you're doing that discount, then there has to be that they can return any stock.
that is not bought. And so as in view authors, we have the opportunity to say, yes, we will allow returns. No, we won't allow returns. And that yes, we will allow returns, but instead of sending them back to us, that they are destroyed. What information do you have in terms of how that influences bookstores and discoverability?
Chris Munnery (35:08)
Yeah, look, it's quite different the way Australia operates in that sense, most of the book shops will order through us through the Ingram ordering system through iPage. And iPage is firm sale. So it means that when one of these Australian book shops are ordering, whether the client has returns or no returns listed, like they're buying it as
firm sale, print on demand title that won't come back. But we find it's particularly, probably more relevant and more important in the US market. So, you know, that's where it'll be heavily influenced with, you know, by putting, a return and destroy, then you're going to have more traction through those US channels.
And of course, know, everyone's probably, you know, once you've started talking to other authors and...
it probably hurt some of the return horror stories that where you know an author gets all excited at the start but then three months later you know it's like 70 percent of the books come back and so to be honest though those kind of things are extremely rare you know it's not saying that it can't happen but it doesn't likely happen not with kind of the you know the way purchasing
works through the retail channels now. But in Australia, definitely, most of our sales are firm. But there's also the option for authors to reach out to bookshops. we're not exclusive the way we operate in our platform.
So just like, you know, you could go to traditional and you can send an email saying, please take this title out of distribution. just been snapped up. And, you know, we can do that within 24 hours, 48 hours. But the same thing with bookshops is authors can make their own arrangements. And, you know, if you want to do a a book launch at your local bookshop, then feel free and make your own arrangements to take, you know, you might want to take 50 or a hundred books there.
Make your own arrangements with the bookstore for anything that doesn't sell to come back and become your stock. So that's all open to authors as well.
Amra (37:24)
And like, you know, it does require hustle and it does require authors doing that work and that connecting with bookstores and creating those relationships and getting them on consignment. So I think, yeah, I just wanted to sort of talk about some of the new things that Ingram has got going on. So we've covered the sprayed edges, which are so exciting. There's gonna be those wonderful tools to help support us with creating covers, which is one of the
difficult things that we struggle with at the moment but there's some other new things going on.
Chris Munnery (37:53)
Well, you know, it's one of the things and this is definitely I don't want to over promise and under deliver with the date, but e-commerce is the really big thing. And it's been, there's a product called Share and Sell that's been in the US now for available to our US customers for 18 months, two years. And it's direct selling to consumer. It's been launched in the UK this year and it's now operating in the UK and Australia's next in line.
I am fingers crossed hoping for this year ⁓ Q3, Q4, I can't help myself saying dates because I think I do believe, genuinely believe that's when it will be launched here. But what that means is that you can, any of our author publishers on the platform can generate a URL or an embed link that you can put on your own website,
Madeline Bush (38:22)
That's good.
Chris Munnery (38:46)
off the website.
or you can add to your email signature or put on your socials and it will essentially be a buy button. it's like, so you could have, for example, at the end of your, you know, in your LinkedIn or some of your other socials, you could have, my new book here. You have a link and the end user will click on it, go to a landing page in the platform, pop in their postal address, pay for the book.
all of the transactional
exercises is completed by Ingram and it then automatically calculates the postage and the customer buys the book, it handles the proof of sale and triggers our facility then to manufacture and ship that book direct to the end reader. So this is something even for our authors and you know I think we're particularly in Australia I think the proportion of our author publishers that are
really have really a really digitally savvy digital savvy they have great websites that they may even have their own e-commerce going but they this way they can have this fulfilling that these product these order sales all the time
So whether it's at 3 a.m., whether it's when they're on holiday, and it will just, but not only will this be available for Australia, it'll be a global e-commerce. So it means that...
Amra (39:56)
⁓
Yeah.
Chris Munnery (40:08)
Let's say for one of our authors has done a book on steam engines or something like that, then they can directly market themselves to various steam engine groups all over the world and say, you can buy my book here. If it happens to be in Cornwall in England, then the end user will go in, make the transaction. It will trigger our UK facility to manufacture and ship the book. And you get a prompt in your account saying you've just had an
comments so so
Amra (40:37)
Yeah. I guess what this
advantage now is that, you know, I've got my own website where I'm selling my books. If I'm selling them in Australia, I have to include the price of postage because there's no way for, then for, you know, sending from Australia elsewhere is not great. Postage is so expensive. So for example, when I do my Kickstarter, I say you're going to get an unsigned copy and I'll send it direct from Ingram and it will be printed in the U S.
and they will pay the local postage, the US postage, and therefore they are not being disadvantaged in terms of the price that they're paying. And that's what's halting us currently in terms of being able to take advantage of those connections that we make with readers all over the world and trying to do that direct selling, especially with so many authors now doing these beautiful books that they want to sell as collector items and really take advantage of.
Chris Munnery (41:09)
you
Madeline Bush (41:29)
Yep.
Chris Munnery (41:32)
Yep, yeah, absolutely. yeah, getting back to, know, your ⁓ printed edge. So if you're doing a special edition printed edge book might be a hard cover and might have a jacket because you know, you can do all of those things with print on demand. And you can just have that special edition purchase link that can go anywhere. And it will just be happening in the background. Like at the moment we have other author publishers like you were saying, Amra, that will
drop ship their books to their customers say in the UK or the US. They'll go into their account and manually put in an order and print it from our UK or US facility and send to the end reader. this will all be automatically happening in the background, which means the fulfillment. Some of these e-commerce costs we find can be prohibitive for some authors new to the industry as well.
So this will be a way that they can step into the world of e-commerce without having to set up Shopify or something like that on their own website.
Amra (42:31)
Yes, the fees,
you know, I had a Shopify account, I got funding to open it, but it's the monthly fees. So now I've got a pay hip account because that's only you pay as there's sales. Just support that a lot more because, you know, when we're doing this ourselves, having to fork out money all the way along. Yeah. And I'm just going to take advantage of both of you now.
Madeline Bush (42:52)
Yeah.
Amra (42:58)
I am doing my first international, my first translation. So I have translated my book into Bosnian using AI technology and then using my husband who is a Bosnian speaker as my proofreader. And so that's the other thing. There was actually Bosnian as the option in the IngramSpark list of languages that I could do. And I'm preparing for that launch and stuff, but...
Madeline Bush (43:02)
You think?
Amra (43:22)
What are you seeing in that world with people publishing now that we've got that international, know, where we can translate into various languages and publish into different parts of the world, into their languages? How is that impacting?
Chris Munnery (43:35)
I think where it's really taken off the last year or two to the point where we have whole teams now that are working with this and internationally, so the whole language conversion has been something that we feel the industry has barely scratched the surface and it's just going to get bigger and bigger.
⁓ There's a lot of fantastic content out there that could do really well when translated into different languages. So yeah, so I think that's another exciting part of having the autonomy of your own kind of business as an author publisher, your own account, that you can do multiple languages. You can also...
Amra (43:57)
All
Chris Munnery (44:19)
do customizable books is another thing that's we're seeing more and more. And for that, it's like, say our business publishers that are on the speaking circuit doing business presentations, they might be going to do a speaking opportunity at BHP or something like that. And they will just have their business book, but they will go in and make a customized version and do it for them.
Amra (44:43)
Yes.
Chris Munnery (44:44)
And by just taking this, same book that's in the system, adding a page, perhaps, if they're working with a designer, can put BHP hats on the illustrations, those kind of things. And just starting to use these as like enhanced business cards in a way, these books, on the speaking circuit. But yeah, languages is something that I think in the next year or two is going to
to really take off.
Amra (45:13)
Mm.
And Madeline, on your end, what are some things that you're seeing or you're wanting to give advice about or you're wanting to give a shout out about?
Madeline Bush (45:22)
Yeah, just following back off the language thing, I know I've seen some articles online and stats and that sort of thing of some of the languages that are in demand within the indie publishing community. So some of those languages are traditional Chinese, German, Spanish. I've seen a lot of Arabic languages and dialects come through. we're seeing a lot of that being translated even just before.
this podcast recording, went downstairs and found three or four different translated titles that are being printed and it's nice to see them coming through more popularly now. Kind of a good question about what else I'm seeing come through. I mean, we kind of covered the forced edges or the edge bleeding printed edges, kind of all different names for them, but
just what people are doing with it. We've seen beautiful color designs, beautiful black and white designs, but we're also starting to see some authors get really, really clever and manage to incorporate two different designs, having one design on the left page of the bleed and another one on the right page. So when it's actually put together, it gives a little bit of a holographic effect. So that's another one that I don't know how that magic works.
but it's awesome and I love seeing every single one of them that comes through the facility. Yeah.
Amra (46:41)
I
know it's just, it's such an amazing, yeah, like just the world is sort of open in so many ways. And even if we look back, like I started this indie journey three years ago and just the way that it has changed and all the new opportunities. Yeah. Well, is there any last words that you wanted to say?
Chris Munnery (46:46)
you
Madeline Bush (46:57)
yeah.
Chris Munnery (47:02)
The only other thing I wanted to say, as Maddy said, some of the beautiful books that come through, but also the way that Print On Demand and having access to this is doing really important things in the broader community. Like we have a beautiful book that's from Wingaru Education, ⁓ indigenous publisher based up in Sydney, and their book is a beautiful children's book and it's based on the Daruglu
language in the Western Sydney basin and it's a means of preserving this language. with, if you think of, you know, all of the 250 odd dialects of different languages, indigenous languages around Australia, and some of these are in danger of disappearing. so, books are a great way of preserving this language by once that book is in, in a file, in a digital
file it's it will exist forever so so beautiful things like that we see Amara which is yeah which which yeah which is really you know encouraging and a great use of I guess all the tools that are available
Amra (48:01)
Yes.
Yeah.
And I think just to go back to what you were saying, Madeline, in terms of Arabic, Ingram Spark also has the option because Arabic is read from right to left. And so you've actually got the option where you choose that it gets printed in that way. So just those nuances also in terms of the global distribution, global culture, global publishing.
Madeline Bush (48:22)
Yes.
Amra (48:34)
You know, there's so many things that do make it easy and that do support that, which is really wonderful.
Madeline Bush (48:41)
Yeah, and I mean, we've constantly got the platform evolving. We listen to all the suggestions that everything like on online forums, social media, that kind of thing. The team in the US are always adapting and changing things and
So having buttons like the right to left content, or there's also another button that's like, ⁓ look inside the book, which allows retailers to provide like a little sneak peek on their retail websites, that kind of thing. It all really, really helps in the indie space. I know from author experiences personally, I would have loved to have some of that stuff when I first started publishing would have made that journey a lot easier to begin with. ⁓ you obviously know what that journey's like.
Amra (49:25)
Yeah.
Madeline Bush (49:27)
But yeah, all those little things that we have now, I absolutely love for our first time indie authors. And it's not just the first timers, it's the ones that get to experience new tools after their fifth, sixth, tenth book, that kind of stuff as well.
Amra (49:43)
Yeah, and it's just really important also, like, you when you have been around for a little while to have those workflows that go easier and just make it easier. So spending less time on that administration and all of those things, because you know, marketing is like 50 % of your time, then you're trying to do writing because yeah, it's the whole access of it.
Chris Munnery (50:02)
you
Amra (50:08)
So it's wonderful. Well, thank you so much to the two of you for being so generous, coming on the podcast, sharing all this great information, but also so many wonderful opportunities for indie authors. And I will get information from you and I'll put it up on my website and people can go in and access it. But also all this information is available on the Ingram website. you know, there's all these people are really generous in sharing their.
information and their learning journeys. ⁓ And so, you know, the way I figured out the covers was finding someone on YouTube who was like, and this is the thing that you need to do. I was like, gosh. So thank you very much.
Madeline Bush (50:47)
That's okay. Thank you so much for inviting us onto the podcast. It's been such an enjoyable time speaking with you. And I'm sure I say that for both myself and Chris, but we've really appreciated it.
Amra (50:57)
Thank you.
Chris Munnery (50:57)
Thanks, Emerit.
Amra (50:59)
All