Publishing
The paperback question gets framed as “Amazon or wide” far too neatly.
In practice it’s usually about whether the extra reach from IngramSpark is worth the slower proofs, the fiddlier setup, and the way your margins quietly vanish if you stare at them too long. Sometimes it is. Sometimes KDP is the sensible, boring answer and that’s fine too.
What gets missed is that print distribution is not a moral choice. It’s a trade-off with paperwork attached. And paperbacks, annoyingly, have a habit of making every trade-off feel slightly more dramatic than it ought to be.
In practice it’s usually about whether the extra reach from IngramSpark is worth the slower proofs, the fiddlier setup, and the way your margins quietly vanish if you stare at them too long. Sometimes it is. Sometimes KDP is the sensible, boring answer and that’s fine too.
What gets missed is that print distribution is not a moral choice. It’s a trade-off with paperwork attached. And paperbacks, annoyingly, have a habit of making every trade-off feel slightly more dramatic than it ought to be.
The part that gets skipped is the reader side. Most people buying a paperback do not care which distributor you used, they care whether the thing arrives intact and looks like a proper book. If the spine is crooked or the cover stock feels cheap, the grand strategy rather evaporates. Distribution matters. So does not making the book feel like it was assembled in a hurry.
The bit that gets left out is shelf life. A paperback can be perfectly sensible on paper and still be a nuisance if it takes three weeks to arrive, lands with the wrong trim size, or looks oddly anaemic next to the competition. Distribution is only useful if the book survives contact with a shop browser.