But do you want to? Plus, you’ll have the added hassle of handling sales taxes (which is getting more and more complicated and costly) and shipping. Think selling your book direct to customers will give you more control over the print quality and shipping care issues? That can be even worse than using a fulfillment program such as Amazon Advantage! Sure, you’ll be able to handle and control every aspect of the printing, order, and fulfillment. You may end up making very little profit, compared to self-publishing and selling through KDP. That means more cost to you, on top of the cost of the actual book printing. You may never recoup your printing investment, and you could be stuck with boxes of books in your garage.Īlso, if you print on your own, you’ll have to use a fulfillment program such as Amazon Advantage to sell through Amazon.
Remember that self-published books may only sell a couple hundred copies in their entire lifetime. Plus, you usually have to meet a printing minimum for them to even work with you. If the mistake is due to your error, you’ll be paying to redo it because printing companies suffer no newbies. You’ll make rookie mistakes that could cost you up to thousands of dollars or more, depending on the project. The learning curve for buying printing is huge. If you’re a first-time self-published author, I would strongly discourage you from getting your books printed on your own. Whether they’re unrealistic with their print quality demands or spooked by potential or real complaints about print problems, some self-published authors think that contracting printing of their books with a commercial printing company will help them get the perfection they hope for. Should I Just Print It on My Own and Offer Through My Website or Fulfillment?
These things can happen to any print book or product on Amazon. Be comforted by the fact that if you use KDP, you have Amazon’s massive support system handling your customer service issues. If indeed a KDP-printed book is received by a reader in a damaged or defective condition, Amazon will handle the return with their usual efficiency, offering either a refund or replacement. So they’ll buy and read it, say it’s damaged and then seek a refund. I have to wonder, too, if some readers may just not want to pay for the book. The defective nature may be the author’s or reader’s opinion of how the look of the book matches their expectations. Some of the variations would not be considered “defects” by printing standards. And with copies being produced at several locations, each location’s equipment, conditions, and operators could create slight variations in how the final printed output of the same book appears. Even such things as humidity can have an impact. But, in general, they would not want to tie up warehouse space for self-published books that may have spotty sales activity.įrom my experience with printing, I know there can be a variety of factors affecting how a printed piece ultimately turns out. It’s possible that Amazon/KDP may have a couple of copies on hand if they anticipate there may be more sales coming quickly. However, if you look at your print book’s product page, you might see that X number of copies are left.
It’s printed when it’s ordered and there is no stack of your books waiting to be sold. They are not all printed in one place! Nor are they warehoused in one place if they are warehoused at all. If you use KDP’s POD program for your paperback books, the books will be printed in a facility that is closest to the buyer’s shipping address. Books Are Printed at Different Facilities One author said that she had heard about printing “defects” from people “around the world.” Let’s address that here, too. In all the years I’ve been self-publishing, I’ve never received even one such complaint. First off, how are the authors getting reports of these alleged damaged books? Customer reviews on Amazon? Are they ordering checking copies themselves at retail price? Personal contact from readers which may just be comments from picky, petty family and friends? And how many reports are being received? I’m curious about all that.
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