Podcast

Transcript

John Goodwin (00:05): Hello and welcome to the Writers and Illustrators of the Future Podcast. This is John Goodman, your host. This podcast is dedicated to aspiring writer and artists and provides inspiration and tips from top professionals in the field. The contest was created by L. Ron Hubbard in 1983 and has now been going on for over 42 years. And just this year we celebrated over 1,000 writers and artists published in the series. So that was quite a milestone that we achieved. So, if you’ve been listening to this podcast or new to it, I thank you.

And we’re here today in Portland, Oregon, at the Independent Publisher Booksellers Association Conference. Today’s guest is Paige Allen. Now, Paige has been one of those people I’ve been trying to get on this podcast for multiple years. And finally, when I went to her boss at Frankfurt last year, John Ingram, he said, yeah, Paige would be great. You should get her on there.

I used the authority tag to help me finally get her cornered in here. So we’re at a conference here and she said, okay. So I thank you very much for coming here. She’s the Director of the IngramSpark program. And rather than reading these three paragraphs I’ve got of her bio, we’re gonna talk about all these things and what the significance is of IngramSpark. I’ve had two of her other staff on here over the years, and I think it’s just really important, especially with the growth of independent publishing.

One thing that increased my desire to have her as a guest was I guess I met her either two or three years ago in San Diego at the IBPA conference and after the publishing awards she started singing and I was like, wow, okay if no other reason than the singing trade Madonna from Metro Nashville Chorus. Anyway, welcome Paige.

Paige Allen (01:57): Hi, I’m glad to be here.

John Goodwin (02:00): Maybe not as glad as you were before I started doing that intro. I earlier interviewed Dion McAdoo and Davina Powell about IngramSpark. So I guess a little bit about how you got into publishing yourself and at Ingram and then we’ll get into the program and why it’s so important for people who have books that they want to be able to show to the world.

Paige Allen (02:25): Well yeah, thanks again. In regards to how I got into publishing, so my publishing journey started actually prior to Ingram. There were sort of two key milestones. I used to work at Lonely Planet, but I was doing sales and business development there. So did a lot of work in taking their bespoke travel content and really repackaged it and was selling it into like tourism boards and things like that. So definitely not the logistics and manufacturing side of publishing that I’ve grown to learn. The other sort of key introduction in regards to publishing was with Jonathan Merck, who’s also on the IBPA Board of Directors.

John Goodwin (03:14): He was a guest last year on this podcast.

Paige Allen (03:18): He’s a dear friend of mine. I’ve known him since 2016. And I helped him launch Forefront Books. The logo work and the website and marketing work. And yeah, so my background is in content and brand marketing. And I was a COO of a few agencies in Nashville and so have a fair amount of experience in regards to how to build brands as well as understand the software and technology that happens in the background. And so I think, coming to Ingram and specifically leading IngramSpark, it was like the best of both worlds, right? Because IngramSpark is unique in regards to Ingram contents businesses because it operates and sort of thrives on its platform.

In having a space, a website and a portal in which independent authors and publishers can really manage their full catalog throughout that platform. So my technology background helps with that, but also being more of a consumer based business, my experiences within content and brand marketing also come into play on a day to day basis and what we’re trying to build IngramSpark into.

John Goodwin (04:41): Yeah. Okay, so now IngramSpark, there’s half a dozen, dozen different platforms that can help a writer launch their book, get it printed, get it into circulation. You’ve got KDP, which is probably the biggest I don’t know if it’s on par with what InghamSpark is, but it has its own drawbacks, obviously, because it’s just Amazon.

There’s several of them, but with respect to IngramSpark, what makes it unique as a platform for an author? I’m they’re shopping around, where do I want to go to launch? I’m I wrote a book and now I’m I wanna do something with it, I wanna do the best thing for my baby, you know. So why are you the best caretaker for their baby?

Paige Allen (05:29): Well, I would answer that by saying, yes, KDP, very big. Amazon as consumers, you know, beyond just being readers ourselves, but as consumers, Amazon is a part of our day-to-day lives. However, KDP is just for Amazon.

And so why IngramSpark is the best place for authors and publishers? Because IngramSpark and Ingram is also the best place for those author services companies. So a lot of the expanded distribution and print is for a KDP, for Draft to Digital, for Lulus, those that you would consider IngramSpark competitors rely on Ingram to handle their printing as well as expanded distribution because Ingram is the world’s largest book distributor.

We have the relationships outside of the Amazon.coms. We have the relationships for the entrance into the libraries and into all the big box chain stores. So if you want to actually see your books either on a Target.com or in a Barnes and Noble or at your nearest public library or independent bookstore, they source all of those books from Ingram and Ingram has those relationships with those retailers.

John Goodwin (06:51): Good. So on Spark then, ’cause it’s grown a lot obviously over the years and it’s grown quite a bit. I’m interested to see what’s changed and how you’re also evolving or changing with the landscape, changing because of AI or more specifically generative AI. So again, how is that evolving and what does Spark do to keep pace with some of these changes that are real issues that an author needs to deal with.

Paige Allen (07:26): Yeah, so IngramSpark we launched in July of 2013. I wasn’t with Ingram at that time, but I’ve been over IngramSpark now for six years. And so we made a lot of changes in that time and probably the most notable is we removed the cost for title setup. We used to charge $49 for books to be set up, so it’s now free to set up your books and enable them for distribution.

Also, it’s not just print books. We also provide distribution for ebooks, which is key. We’ve also moved into direct selling. and so we’re soon to launch IngramSpark Market, which will be really a bookstore for indie content, but a more curated experience. and then it also removes the distribution fee that most of us or our market fee that most of us are used to paying in order to get your book sold at wholesale, right? So authors and publishers end up making three, five times more on the sale of a book. So it directly supports independent authors and publishers. And that was a space that when I first came to Ingram, that we weren’t necessarily interested in entering, but we saw the need, especially with the rise of social media and how authors and publishers are selling directly. We wanted to make sure that we built a tool and built some features that help support that. So we basically help you sell your book, the print order comes in, we print it and we ship it on your behalf. And so there’s no inventory.

John Goodwin (09:10): Building also a database of consumers. It was like a hundred thousand.

Paige Allen (09:15): We have over five million email addresses that we’ve been able to collect. Yeah.

John Goodwin (09:23): Yeah, but that’s a lot more than it was the last time I talked to someone. I didn’t want to say you had over a million. And you said, No, we have five hundred thousand.

And there’s when you made one comment that it was free now to enter. I know that Draft to Digital just had a problem. They were free and they had to start doing a charge to it because they started getting all these AI books just being an inundation with that. So how do you deal with that so you don’t have the fake books first as the real books?

Paige Allen (09:52): Yeah, so I would say you know, our catalog is our strongest asset across Ingram. And so we take that very seriously. We have, you know, best in class catalog integrity team and solutions team. We’re looking for ISBN, and misuse for infringement for fraud. I mean, there’s no way to one hundred percent keep it out, right? But we’re constantly, on a daily basis, really scanning the catalog and then removing any titles from distribution that we call sort of that AI slop. We do understand that AI can be a tool for productivity and can assist in writing. And so we don’t expect for it not to be used.

It’s just we don’t necessarily want the full contents of a book to be completely generated through AI.

John Goodwin (10:56): Because it can’t be copyrighted. So that’s not a factor for IngramSpark. They have to have copyrights on the books ’cause an AI book can’t be copyrighted.

Paige Allen (11:09): So that’s why we’re searching the catalog for that. It doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be sold just because it doesn’t have copyright. But it also, right now there’s no big sort of banner that says this book is AI. So if you have to look at the contents of the book or look through the metadata to see if maybe it’s been identified as an AI book. But most of the time it’s going down to like actually reading the book to determine that. But AI has its benefits, we have utilized it and are building our own tools for metadata enhancement. We always preach that that’s sort of your first layer of good marketing of any book is having good metadata.

John Goodwin (12:02): Sure, and I can appreciate that too, that’s… ’cause that’s the dude (AI) that’s looking at the stuff there. So an AI is gonna be scanning it to know how to categorize it, then let him tell you what he’s looking for. Or her, however you view it.

Paige Allen (12:18): So we have a tool that helps enhance your metadata and provides you with BISAC recommendations, themas. You don’t have to use them. You can make edits to that, but like that’s a proper and good use of what I would say AI is for. And there’s future plans that we have around AI to better shore-up and speed-up our catalog integrity process and security.

John Goodwin (12:45): Yeah. So now for someone who’s okay, I’ve written a book and I wanna do something with it and it’s so… I’m addressing the people that now like I said, it’s their baby. They wanna trust it to somebody that’s gonna give it the best love they can get and help it have the best chance of success.

John Goodwin (12:45): You can just log on and it walks you through it. But I’m not logging on right now. I’m talking to you. I’m talking to the queen bee of Spark. The queen Spark. So what’s the basic thing that a person has to go through? And then some of the, you know, what you’ve observed are little hiccups that sometimes people have that okay, this is what you can do to avoid that.

Paige Allen (13:32):  So I mean what you need is to set up an account. You do wanna purchase an ISBN, especially if you’re in the US. We do provide free ISBNs as well upon setup and then you wanna have a completed manuscript. So not just a Word doc. We do have print guidelines that we ask our authors and publishers to follow. But when you do have your cover and interior file completed, you upload those. The next step is really metadata. And so that’s your title, your subtitle, your pricing, your short and long descriptions. And I mean, there are hundreds of metadata fields and we’re constantly growing those and making those more available, especially with the rise of GEO, which is important about how…

John Goodwin (14:25): Okay, explain GEO. I just covered it in my last interview, but just in a new time now this for people listening, this what’s GEO?

Paige Allen (14:31): Yeah, it’s Generative Engine Optimization. and it’s really what’s used for AI and LLM, Learning Language Models. It’s what they’re using beyond keywords, which really displaces SEO, right? That’s how you show up in Google search or Yahoo search. GEO is how your content then is sourced and shows up across these LLMs. So a chat GPT, a Claude, a co-pilot, something like that. And so it’s important because as these LLM firms are really expanding and growing and continue to train on more and more content, they are also looking to become entrants within e-commerce, right? So e-commerce is online marketplaces and shopping.

Open AI, for example, which is the owner of Chat GPT is partnering with Shopify. So not only can people prompt these LLMs for assistance. And, I don’t know, some people use these LLMs as their therapist or they use them for quick research or for homework, right? While you are in the process of prompting the LLMs, what they might render back to you is a buy this now. And it could be a book. So if you’re asking Chat GPT, what should I read after Kennedy Ryan’s close-up, for example, it might give you five more books that you would want to read next. And it also might give you the purchase links for those books. And so just as metadata helps retailers choose how they want to engage with your book, which ones to stock and store, which ones to display online and categorize them, GEO will help to make sure that your book is showing up in those spaces as AI becomes more adopted across consumers.

John Goodwin (16:37): I get it. So now you’ve got all these fields. You said you’ve got like dozens or hundreds or whatever it is, different fields to fill in.

Impress upon me the importance of filling in all the fields and what it means when they’re empty, what the effect it has with these LLMs.

Paige Allen (16:58): So, for example, it took us a minute as a world to understand SEO. And I think we finally understood that the words on a web page are what are needed, a big part of that is needed as well as the metadata behind it to help your ranking within how you show up within Google search, right? Metadata has the same function for book categorization.

And so metadata is what retailers use, as well as online search engines, as well as these LLMs, to then display your book product. So oftentimes metadata BISACs, which are categories for your book. So, like business and economics might be a category, or fiction and nonfiction might be a category. Retailers often use those types of categories when you’re going on like BandN.com, for example, they’ll have categories of fiction, and you want to make sure that when someone’s searching a fiction book, that your book is correctly categorized and labeled under fiction. And metadata has so many fields. As I said, there’s title, subtitle, pricing, all of these things, but it tells readers as well as retailers about your book.

And so just how retailers use it, LLMs would use it. Now LLMs go beyond. How they end up, you know, really rendering certain answers, right? It goes beyond just keywords. They’re also looking for authority. And so there are new fields around, you know, tropes for a book, this book is like, for example.

So it provides the Learning Language Model more context, which helps give them a more curated and targeted response back. And so we want to make sure as LLMs become more adopted and used, that we’re including GEO fields that these LLMs would use, so that your book can then show up either in a shopping experience or be utilized as a resource when the LLM is providing you an answer back to your problem.

John Goodwin (19:20): I get it. Yeah. So now for someone again, I got my book and I’m trying to, I’m going here to IngramSpark to upload my book and start selling it. So there’s a lot of fields there. How do those get filled? Do I have to go through each one or is it something that Spark takes or is it like a mutually shared experience?

Paige Allen (19:45): Yeah. So early this year we did release Spark Assist, right? Which is our metadata optimization tool. And all it requires is a description. So as long as you can write a few words about the book that you wrote, which I think most of us can, that tool can fill in all the rest for you. Now you can go in and edit it. If you’re not happy with the response back from the Spark Assist tool.

So what we do is we try and surface the most important metadata fields, which tend to be you get keywords, short description, long description, title, things like that. But we do have an area where you can see more advanced fields and complete those as well.

John Goodwin (20:33): So then now one thing I’ve learned too is that LLMs don’t like fluff. They don’t like the grandiose, the best and the greatest and the most wonderfulest, all that type of stuff there. So is there assistance on that too to make sure that, you know, where it beeps every time you put in those descriptive words that are like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Paige Allen (20:59): It does not. And you know, if you believe your book is the best, then who are we to tell you that it’s not, you know?

John Goodwin (21:01): So I’ve uploaded my book and now what?

Paige Allen (21:14): Once you’ve uploaded your book and you’ve filled out your metadata, you then have the option to enable it for distribution. And so enabling it for global distribution with Ingram. What that means is that your book then becomes available to 45,000 retailers and libraries across the globe. And so, what that means is within twelve to twenty four hour period, sometimes it’s even more immediate depending on the retailer and how many times they’re accessing our catalog feed, your book is on Target.com. It becomes available for retailers to then order. And once that’s done, you just sit back and wait. You are now published, you’re now distributed and you know, you sort of sit back and wait for the sales. That would be sort of the dream story as the sales start rolling in.

John Goodwin (22:11): Now we wake up from our dream and do a reality check. So say like, again, so I’ve got my book and I really want to get it into, be a little more humble beginnings here. So I got my favorite independent bookstore and they said, You just need to get it published. So that can I go to IngramSpark and I get it published. So if I work with Rick, the owner of the store, and he’s gonna buy the book as soon as they’re available, so then I can go there, do it, and say, Okay, Rick, it’s there. This is the ISBN or whatever I need to send to him and then he can then order the books and they’ll get he’ll get them and I can do my first bookstore signing and that type of thing. And I’m off to the races.

Paige Allen (22:52): As long as, and most bookstores are there, as long as you say to them that my book is with Ingram, most bookstores have accounts with Ingram and they’re purchasing, you know, wholesale or bulk from Ingram in order to stock their shelves and store.

John Goodwin (23:12): So if a person goes to Bookshop.org, which is the generic indie bookstore. So they go there. If I go through Ingram then Bookshop.org is also good? So then global. So now you said you’re that many retailers globally.

Paige Allen (23:26): We have a print facility in Milton Keynes in the UK. and then we have a print facility and DC (Distribution Center) in Melbourne, Australia. And then we also have what we call our Global Connect program. And so we have some print facilities, for example, Lightning Source France, and that’s in partnership with Hachette. So we have a print facility there in France in order to provide service to the EU outside of our UK print facility. But with Global Connect, what we have done is we find either printers or distributors that are in markets across the globe. So for example, our latest Global Connect partner is out of Turkey. We have a printer and partner in Singapore, in South Africa, in Japan. So this is how when you think about going, you know, global or going wide, it’s hard to stand up print facilities and DCs across the globe.

John Goodwin (24:48): Yeah, ’cause I had a winner a few years ago in my writing contest as a teacher, I had a winner from Nigeria, and then just this past year from South Africa. And I mean, the infrastructure there is really bad. And so, they’re like heroes. The media is just going crazy over it, just like ’cause it’s really good news. They’re flown to Hollywood for a weeklong workshop, they’re training with the top: Orson Scott Card teaches them, and Nnedi Okorafor, and they just have the time of their lives and it’s a Hollywood bash type thing. So the media is just, it’s really good news coming from South Africa or from Nigeria or we had from a European country for a really small country. And it’s just like, winner takes Hollywood by storm, these big things here. So it’s really good. But then for them to move forward in the next step, now the next book that they’re gonna do, because the publishing lines aren’t that established there, like in Africa, for example. So Ingram Spark could be a viable solution for them to get their launch going. And now that I’ve had these two winners, we have a lot more entries into the competition. And a lot with all the media happening, I’m getting more people writing to me saying, what can I do? How can I do this thing? How do I…, so it’s just one of those things and so is IngramSpark a viable solution, for example, in Africa?

Paige Allen (26:10): Yeah. We have people who set up accounts. Now sometimes there are difficulties with different countries have different consumer laws. So maybe not every country in Africa. But what’s really great is we’ve thought through the print and so we have, like I said, these global connect printers, but we also have distributors for global exchange, right? So these are distributors who are also in these markets that have these relationships with the local retailers, which is important. For sure.

John Goodwin (26:43): Sure. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. So I sign up and I get my book, I load it on IngramSpark. So now what are the different formats that are available to me now that I’ve uploaded my book?

Paige Allen (26:56 ): Yeah, so for IngramSpark today, you have paperback, hardcover, and ebook that are available. And we do print on demand for physical inventory, but we are the only POD and author services platform that has the most selections in regards to trim sizes and paper types. And soon, hopefully either by the end of the year or early 2027, we will also be offering audio.

John Goodwin (27:34): I was wondering if that was gonna be. That’s the word I was waiting to hear, ’cause in the earlier interviews was like, we’re not gonna talk about that right now. Nobody was willing to make that that forthright of a statement. ‘Cause that’s been the fastest growing segment in publishing is the audio book.

Paige Allen (27:52): And we don’t just want to offer audio. So I have a vision around omniformat. And what that means is you can come to IngramSpark with any format. You could start with audio, and we will use our own tools, proprietary tools, to convert for free from audio into e, e into physical, and vice versa. You know, so that way it really becomes a one stop shop and process for you to be able to get all the formats that you needed to go along with your publishing.

John Goodwin (28:30): I get it. Is it gonna be like an ACX or is it strictly AI or is it an ACX type of a thing? So you can go through and select who you want for a voice and ask.

Paige Allen (28:41): So It would be called Spark Studio.

John Goodwin (28:45): That’s very exciting. I like that. That’s very good news on that. Cause it’s a great format. Yeah, obviously, and people have, now that it’s crossed that line where listening to an audio book equals reading, and reading a book it’s a great way for people to be able to enjoy books when they wouldn’t otherwise be doing that. So is there any point then where a person like maxes out on being able to be a member of IngramSpark or doing anything?

Paige Allen (29:19): No, I mean you can, it really just depends on the author’s needs, right? And so we can support one book up to hundreds of thousands of books. That’s the great thing about being able to scale. And then it again it goes back to the author’s needs. When we do see people choose to sort of step away from IngramSpark, it’s often because of the Cinderella story, being picked up by a trad publisher or something like that and no longer wanting to manage their independent journey themselves.

John Goodwin (29:52): We had Hugh Howey as an example. He was self and then he got picked up and then he said he didn’t like that, so he went back to being self.

Paige Allen (30:02): And you have like authors like a James Patterson who does both, you know. Given his existing trad deal, like they only like certain types of content from James. But he’s also interested in like children’s content and choosing self-publishing to do that. Some people will never go trad, you know.

They want to retain the rights themselves. They understand the value of content. And then they also don’t want to give that percentage away. They want to be able to grow and retain everything that comes along with all the hard work and the stories that they’re putting out into the market.

John Goodwin (30:46): Now the next area. So Social media, how to promote yourself, how to grow your name or your brand. Does Spark do anything with that or have any coaching or have any like tutorials or stuff like that?

Paige Allen (31:05): Yeah, so last year we launched the promote my book section of the Spark portal. And there are free discounted and paid or premium services that are available. Some of those include advertising to iPage, which is the ordering portal for booksellers and librarians. That’s what they use to order from. there’s also discounts for citations and review journals Kirkus SLJ (School Library Journal). There’s also Book Life and Indie Reader. So there are those services. We also have the title discovery program, which has two packages. One is $350, the other is $500. It includes us doing a full metadata enhancement for you on your on your behalf. It also includes inclusion in certain curated lists and weekly emails that go direct to retailers and libraries.

John Goodwin (32:06): And to people listening and saying that getting help on the metadata is really important, ’cause it’s not just metadata on your book, it’s also metadata on your website, on your social pages. There’s gotta be a continuity so that if the computer doesn’t see that, if the LLM doesn’t see that, it’s gonna get confused and it’s not going to provide you as a search result like it could if your book and website and your Facebook and your Twitter or X and all those things are consistent.

Paige Allen (32:37): Yeah, for LLMs, it’s all about authority. And so the best way to gain authority is through credibility and making sure that your metadata, your keywords are consistent across all your platforms that represent you as an author or your books. So yeah, we have a lot. We also have our premier title program, which is where we do a lot more in depth marketing for certain titles. It does require exclusivity in regards to 18 months exclusivity for those books because there’s a fair amount of investment that goes into PR and branding. And then we sell a lot of those books in directly to B&N and to BAM and often end up getting exclusive deals for books. You would have seen Books A Million did HM Wolf’s Daggermouth, which was a New York Times bestseller. That was thru Spark. We’ve also Chantel Tessier and her Chaotic Series. so yeah, we’re so with those books that are premiere titles, there’s a lot more sort of lead time and work that goes into those. And there’s A plus content design that we do for that, for those books. There’s Google ads, you know, giveaways that we organize.

We are not able to do that at scale across the full catalog, but you know, we do try and provide tools for authors and publishers, regardless of where they are in their journey, that can get them started in regards to good book marketing.

John Goodwin (34:19): Good, because that was an area the next thing I was gonna ask was exclusivity. So you know, KDP is KDP. Beginning and end of story. So with Spark, or even with some of the other platforms. So I’m giving my baby to you, can I have multiple parents? And at what point can I only have one parent?

Paige Allen (34:44): So with IngramSpark, there are no exclusivity terms, right? So oftentimes people will go direct to Amazon and use KDP. And instead of using expanded distribution through KDP, which is at a 60% you know, a 60% wholesale discount, that expanded distribution is the Ingram network. So we suggest to people go to KDP for Amazon.com if you want, or you can come to us for all of it. We also distribute to Amazon, but you’re able to set your own wholesale discount between 40 and 55% that then becomes available to retailers. And so again, no exclusive terms. You can do both. You can do many, you can do as many publishing platforms that you want to manage. I just say avoid some redundancy. So don’t go to KDP and use expanded distribution and then try and set that same title up with IngramSpark. That won’t work, right? Because it’s IngramSpark is the Ingram network. But the only time in which exclusivity is introduced is for a program like a Premier Title. Which has a lot of promotional and marketing dollars that are going into that. And so we do need some assurance just as in any distribution type of model where we’re investing and spending time and providing labor that we know you’re gonna be around, you and your books will be around for a limited time. We will be later this year launching IngramSpark Distribution. and so Premier Title is really the beginnings of that new business.

An IngramSpark distribution will be for independent our our IngramSpark Indie Catalog offered through IPS, which is Ingram Publisher Services, and that’s full service distribution. And oftentimes when we do see people leave, they’re either going to trad because they want the big name of a Big Five, or they want the distribution services that come with it. And so we understand that that’s been a big gap.

Paige Allen (37:03): And so we’re using IPS, which has its own network of sales representatives that then work with the buyers at these retailers to sell your book directly in. So it’s the traditional model, but it’ll be available to IngramSpark. And as you know, there are exclusive terms with distribution, full service distribution in the traditional sense. But it will be at a much lower distribution fee than going direct to some of these larger distribution houses.

John Goodwin (37:38): Okay, so now I’m coming to I got my baby again. I’m back with my baby coming to, I’ve been working on him for a long time, so I’m ready to launch it. But my dream, my vision is to see my book on the shelf in Barnes and Noble. So I don’t even care if it sells. I just want to get that picture of me standing next to my book in Barnes and Noble, which is not an uncommon request. So, how can that work with you and then how does that work? I know a manager Barnes and Noble.

Paige Allen (38:11): If you know a manager at Barnes and Noble, that’s great. You would go into that Barnes and Noble, say my book is now available through Ingram. Can you please order a few copies? And here’s why. And you sort of give them your spiel, give them the story. you know, it’s then up to that Barnes and Noble at that point. Barnes and Noble has all the means to be able to order your book because now it’s been enabled through Ingram. But yeah, it’s more about building those relationships and outside of your story, you also have to understand how to sell and market your book. It’s just asimple question. then it’s up to that Barnes and Nobles man.

John Goodwin (38:53): They don’t have to have somebody at corporate to flip the switch on that book to be able for that local store to be able to buy.

Paige Allen (39:02): No, once it’s enabled for distribution, it is available.

John Goodwin (39:06): Okay, no hidden person in the attic of Barnes and Noble Corporate in New York there. I’m not flipping this switch.

Paige Allen (39:15): It would be a very expensive person for every single transaction.

John Goodwin (39:22): So all right, so now what are some of your success stories and then some of the horror stories in publishing that Spark has helped to alleviate and handle.

Paige Allen (39:39): I think I’ve tried to share through this conversation what we’re finding success in and ultimately we want to make indie publishing easier. And I know that sometimes there’s this well, that’s the big Ingram, but we really do care. We’re advocates for independent content, and just for bringing books to the world.

And I have a special place in my heart for indie books, indie voices, because they are so diverse. They’re so you know, so unique. And so yeah, any we are trying to listen. I know we don’t always get it right, but with the things that we have coming out over this year as well as in 2027, we hope we’ll provide you know, alleviate some pain and provide you the tools and their conduits for success in the future. I would say what has always been a pain point and has become less so of a pain point since 2025 are returns. So returns are something that the publishing world, be it independent or traditional. I think maybe traditional just expects, perhaps plan for them or expect for them a little bit more and have certain reserve plans in order to be prepared, especially for the number of returns that might come through. They also have different infrastructures. So deeper pockets or whatever to take that hit. But we do understand that through the years that returns have been huge burden and pain point for indies, right? Because they don’t have those large infrastructures, maybe not as large as or as deep of pockets. And so it can really make or break an independent publisher. So there were some changes in regards to a specific retailer that I unfortunately I can’t mention. But how we sourced or how they sourced from us did change and it has definitely driven the number of returns down significantly. And that occurred in February of 2025. And so returns are less than one percent. I understand that there are seasonal things that happen, but that particular retailer had poor ordering practices and then would dump them back to the market and back onto publishers all in one time and it hurts. So we haven’t, knock on wood, we haven’t had that happen since that change last year.

John Goodwin (42:32):

Yeah. Thank you. It was solved by UK. So now libraries. So Ingram picked up most of Baker and Taylor when Baker and Taylor went under, I believe you got most of it at least. So getting into libraries, working with libraries

‘Cause we’ve been talking about bookstores, but not libraries ’cause that’s a huge market as well. And if you can get a librarian on your side and gives you a nice endorsement, that’s really sweet. So how does it work with libraries with Spark?

Paige Allen (43:22): Yeah, so we have Ingram Library Services and they really own relationships with many public and community libraries as well as academic libraries across the globe. Not all countries, for example, you think about like UK. UK doesn’t necessarily have the same network of libraries like we have here in the US. So it just depends on the country, but libraries are still very much a thing here in the US and so ILS really focuses on bringing in new libraries and institutions and working with those librarians to curate their catalogs, assist with their distribution or any other of those library needs.

John Goodwin (44:14): So how does Spark then work with ILS and library services and libraries?

Paige Allen (44:19): So it all filters into the big “I,” which is big Ingram. So when I talk about those 45,000 retailers and libraries, those relationships that our ILS team, really manages, those libraries are also using, are also ordering from us from a wholesale perspective. So that’s a part of our distribution network. And so they all have access to the catalog feed.

John Goodwin (44:46): If I’m gonna put up my book there and I do my metadata, I gotta put in there whatever do libraries look for other data than a bookstore looks for?

Paige Allen (44:54): So with libraries, it’s really important in regards to reviews and citations. So I talked about in the promote my book section, you know, Kirkis, the Library Journal. Those tend to be too popular, ones that libraries have vetted and tend to like rely on. So including any of those professional reviews within your metadata is very important and can also bring attention.

John Goodwin (45:27): Now, it has been a datum in the past that in order for librarians to consider a book, it needs to have a pro review. Like you said, like LJ, Book List, PW, Foreword, any of those types of things there. Is that still a legitimate datum?

Paige Allen (45:44): I would say in most cases, yes. You know, there are or if your book pops, right? Like just a library, just like a bookstore or retailer, if a book is a New York Times bestseller, they’re gonna wanna have it, you know. And so they’re not going to stock their library shelves with a book that doesn’t have a Kirkus review if it’s popular everywhere, you know. So there are case there are those cases. But librarians, they tend to look to citations and journals that have really given a full professional review and give the book some authority and some credibility when they’re choosing to fill out their catalog.

John Goodwin (46:33): Now it’s still a thing it used to be that libraries and librarians would have these events, community events and stuff like that, and have an author come and talk. Is that still a thing? Is that tying in all with IngramSpark, or is that just something that filters down? That’s one of the things that’ll happen by having IngramSpark providing a book for a library if they want to be able to do these events.

Paige Allen (46:56): I think an author event at a local that’s not like IngramSpark is not managing directly our library relationship. That’s In Ingram library services. if you do have a relationship with your local library, there’s nothing similar, you know, in the example that we talked about, the manager for Barnes & Noble, there’s nothing stopping you from going and speaking to your local librarian and hosting an author event. What is important though is making sure that we get as many independent books in front of libraries and making sure that they’re not just relying on sourcing books from the big five or from university presses so that independent books with the books that are a part of the Spark catalog get the same type of equity and visibility. And so there are shows like ALA, like PLA as well. So what we do on the Spark side is we’ll send out a call to action and say if you’re interested in having your book displayed here, let us know. We’ll create curated catalogs. We are then displaying at those shows. We do have a selection process. So just because you submit doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a guarantee that you’ll be included. But we try and bring somewhere between, depending on the show, 50, 100, 150 books that we’re displaying at our booth.

Also making sure that your book is available within our catalog leave behind. And then for certain books, we’ll organize advanced reading copy giveaways for those librarians and we can speak about the book. And so all that does is just increase the percentage of visibility that a lot of books didn’t receive in the past.

John Goodwin (48:44): Got it. So now if someone wants this. This a paid service then that if a person wants to have their book on display at ALA or PLA or any of the other shows that then person can then can negotiate to get their book displayed and these different levels.

Paige Allen (49:01): So if you are selected, it depends on the show. I would say our standard cost is usually about a $150. And then we’ll work with you to say how many books would you like of Advanced Reader Copies would you like to print and we’ll we would bring on your behalf. So at that point, the author would just be paying the print cost of the book.

John Goodwin (49:25): I get it, okay. So again, what we’re trying to do here, ’cause this podcast is going out to like over a hundred and fifty countries. So if you’re an aspiring writer or know someone who is and you’re not sure where do I take it right now, and I’ve been waiting for the Big Five to take my book here and publish it. And it’s just you’ve got the lead time too. Realize if you have a book that you want to do that, once you have an agent who’s gonna get it and sell it to a publisher who then gets it printed and then which can take two years easily. So now you’re talking two to three years from right now before you’re gonna see your book in print that can go to a bookstore, or you can take it, you can upload it right now and have it within a half hour or whatever. Or how long it takes you to create your metadata stuff. So even within a day, it’s up to you how much you’re willing to hustle, because if you do it yourself, you’re gonna have to hustle. But people don’t realize if you go through traditional, you still gotta hustle. You know, people don’t they think, Okay, I just wanna write the book and I want somebody else to take care of it for me. That’s not the world anymore. You know, unless you’re Stephen King, but even Steven King hustles. He does his radio, he does his TV, he does his print, he really sells his brand. So you’ve got that. And he’s also got movie studios selling his brand too. So that’s he’s very much a unique thing there. But if you’re going to be wanting to get a book out there and you don’t want to wait the three years for it to go through traditional line and you’re willing to do the work, you need to really consider the IngramSpark or one of these other avenues that exist. But I’ve talked to a lot of people and they like the really simple, you know, but I get confused easily. So like some assurances why you don’t have to worry about getting ripped off and being confused on doing this thing here and that you do handle some of those objections because you’ve been doing this now for several years. So when you started, you were the babe in woods. But now you’ve been around for a while so that the other babes can come to you and you can help direct them through it. So the various things that you’ve run into over the last six years, you’ve solved those problems.

Paige Allen (51:47): Try, I guess.

John Goodwin (51:48): Well, I mean, just from talking to you, I see you’ve addressed these things here, at least a lot of them. I’m sure there’s still more stuff. But so, again, just where a person goes, what’s the website? And then where do I put my credit card or don’t put my credit card or where do I put my social security number? Whatever type stuff they need to do.

Paige Allen (52:10): You would go to Ingramspark.com/setup. Or you can just go to IngramSpark.com and you can go to login or create an account. You can reach the website either way through those URLs. But, I mean we talk through about making sure that you have your files ready.

So we do have a book building tool where if you can start with a word file and you can select the format that you want, the trim size that you want, you can actually design and write your book within that tool. And then it will produce the finalized cover and interior files on your behalf. And that’s a free tool that we do offer as well. I would say we offer so many resources from our help center to our academy to videos.

We have new videos that are coming out on a weekly basis as well. So you know, the answers to your questions, if you do get hung up, we more than likely have answered it for you, but we do have a wonderful support staff as well that you can reach out to. There’s always a help widget in the bottom right hand corner of your screens that you can click on and you can choose to chat with someone.

We do also offer IngramSpark Connect, which is a paid, it’s about at $25. You can set up a 30-minute or hour virtual call with our support team. we you can share your screen. We can, you know, walk you through setup as well because we understand. what’s great about IngramSpark as well as just the world of self-publishing is that anyone at all ages, all walks of life can publish their stories. And so we know that with that range, there are people who are more computer savvy than others.

John Goodwin (54:24): And you like they got a great book, but they’re just like, I’m so intimidated by computers. I just I can’t do this. I just get all stressed out. And so I just want people to know that you thunk this through and you’ve got tools to be able to help you, even if you say, look, I still use my flip phone from you know from 1986, you know. And so that they can do this thing, and like if they don’t know what kind of word form I don’t know kind of format I’ve got. I just have my book. It’s in my computer, you know. That you can take a person with that amount of illiteracy computer wise and still successfully get you to have a book.

Paige Allen (55:07): Indeed. I mean, if I can get my dad to do it then anyone can do it.

John Goodwin (55:12): There you go, there you go.

Yeah, ’cause I just I was just sitting today with a lady who’s, she figured out how to do a book. She’s 87 years old, did a book on wedding flower child for carrying the flowers. You know, just that it was like it was great, but so I did my book, but now what? And so she came here to try to find out what she does, but she’s eighty seven. She says, I’m not so good with all this stuff here. But she has a book. She had a vision, a dream, you know.

And so it is an outlet for someone who has that dream and they’ve always wanted to have a book. So many people have that dream and now they’ve got a book now what?

Paige Allen (55:53): That’s what we’re here to solve. This is what we’re here to be, to help you bring your stories to the world.

John Goodwin (56:00): Absolutely. Well, I very much appreciate finally bending to my constant, incessant … every time I’d see her and she’d like see me and her eyes would get big It’s him again.

Paige Allen (56:12): No, this was fun. This was great.

John Goodwin (56:18): And I hope it results in a lot of people then coming to Spark. What makes it unique and different is that because you have access to the biggest distribution outfit on the planet. And so there’s a lot of value in that. That you can get your book anywhere. If you got somebody over there in Keokuk, you can get it there. In Keokuk, which you know, other places you can’t. And if you want to have that printed book that you can go and sign for Aunt Mamie, then boom, you can get that book there.

Paige Allen (56:47): Mm-hmm.

John Goodwin (56:47): And that’s really important there. All right, so anyway, thank you very much, Paige.

And thank you for listening. Writers of the Future and Illustrators of Future are contests created by L. Ron Hubbard to provide a means for the aspiring writer and artist to have a chance for their creative efforts to be seen and acknowledged for over four decades. We’ve also been syndicated on the United Public Radio Network and can be heard in over 150 countries.

Paige Allen (56:54) Yes, thank you for having me.

John Goodwin (57:14): Visit WritersoftheFuture.com to listen to past episodes of this podcast, to sign up for the free online writer workshop, enter either contest, and see the past volumes and winners.

Again, thank you very much, Paige.

Paige Allen (57:24): Thanks, John.