2023 Update on the Best POD Printers

More printing options for your self-published book

The print-on-demand (POD) technologies began about twenty years ago and have steadily improved. Print on demand means your book lives on the computer servers of a printer until there is an order, a demand. The demand triggers the printer to actually print your book. Most POD companies tie their printing to a drop-shipping component, which means they will also ship the books to your customer. Essentially, you never touch a book.

POD Gave Authors a Successful Business Plan

The POD services have created an amazing business plan for indie authors. We write and format books, but once it’s uploaded, we do nothing with the physical side of the book. Instead, we just focus on promotions and marketing.

Pricing has always been tricky because offset printing is cheap when you print thousands of copies. Printing one book at a time means the per book price is higher. Much higher.

Add to that, the POD companies often act as a distributor. Distributors make books available at wholesale prices to a certain segment of customers. Ingram Wholesale makes books available to the general book trade and bookstores, education, and libraries. Amazon makes books available through its online international marketplaces. When they provide such distribution, they also charge distribution fees.

Pricing a book and creating a budget that works is tricky. You must consider the printing fees and the distribution fees, and somehow make a profit.

What we’d love is a POD printer that drop ships but doesn’t charge distribution fees. That is possible, but it means you must have a way to actually sell the book. Today, authors accomplish this by selling directly from their own website/bookshop. The backend of the shop is tied to a POD printer who drop ships for them. Again, the author just has to focus on marketing, while the physical part of publishing is done by the POD company. The beauty of this business plan is that the profit per book is much higher because you aren’t giving the printer an additional distribution fee. Instead, YOU are the distributor through your shop and can keep that distribution percentage. Of course, you also have associated costs for the shop, including the hosting software and marketing or advertising.

Let’s look at the POD companies and update the information about the main POD companies. There’s an exciting newcomer, along with the main POD printers of the last twenty years.

2023 Update on POD Printers

First, a reminder. You are the publisher; the companies below are merely printers. You can print your book wherever you like, and change that status whenever you like. You are in control, not the printer. When the printer is tied to a distribution network (like KDP is tied to Amazon), your decisions will have consequences. But you are still free to make printer decisions because you are the publisher.

Second, always remember that just because a book is available doesn’t mean it will sell. You will need to market your book regardless of your printing and distribution models.

KDP - Kindle Direct Printing

The elephant in the room is KDP, Amazon’s print-on-demand service. They provide black and white and premium color printing. This printer is the easiest when starting out your publishing program since the Amazon marketplace is strong. However, most experienced people publish with Ingram; some use Ingram instead of KDP, but some (myself included) use both services in conjunction.

The “Global Distribution” option is not recommended with KDP because the extra distribution fees eat into your profits. For this option, KDP partners with Ingram and lists your book there. Most publishers are better off skipping the KDP connection and directly listing with Ingram themselves. That saves the extra distribution fee from KDP. Ingram has the superior distribution for the wider market anyway.

KDP printing does make your books available in Amazon’s stores worldwide, you you will have an international market. English language books do sell worldwide, but for countries like Germany, France, and Italy, translations would sell better.

Starting in 2022, Amazon has also had problems with ISBNs, the International Standard Book Numbers. About twenty years ago, the book industry went from 10-digit ISBN to 13-digit ISBN. But Amazon never changed. When the supply of 978-prefix ISBNs ran low last year, Bowker started selling 979-prefix numbers. Amazon can’t handle those because they don’t have 13 digits in their system. When they ONLY look at the remaining 10-digits, there were duplicate numbers (a 978 and a 979 listing). So, they switched over to only using their proprietary ASIN numbers.

No problem, if you only stay within Amazon’s system. But if you use Ingram’s POD system, there were problems ordering. For anything outside Amazon’s system, they cannot communicate because they deal with ISBNs in a non-standard way. If you are using 979 numbers, watch for this. They may have solved this internally, but it’s hard to know. NOTE: This will only affect you if you publish with both KDP and Ingram.

June 2023 Changes

As of June 20, 2023, there’s a 15% price increase from KDP. My 32 page color picture book with premium printing will go from $3.65 to $4.20 printing charge. (When you log in, you can run a one-time bulk price increase from your dashboard.) This means I’ll have to increase list prices to maintain a profit.

Price increases are an ongoing problem with printing feed increasing across all the print-on-demand companies. It means we must adjust our prices, but we are already at the limits of what the market will accept and pay. So far, my books are still selling, but ebooks look more interesting all the time for parents and teachers. See my blog series about kids reading ebooks.

BEST FOR

KDP printing is generally good for any publisher who wants their books available on Amazon.com.

Ingram Spark and Lightning Source

Ingram Wholesale is the largest US book wholesaler. That unique position makes them an almost required market for indie publishers. If you POD with Ingram Spark, your books are automatically available in the Ingram Wholesale catalog. (Remember: Availability is only the first step to sales; it doesn’t guarantee sales.) That means any library, bookstore, educational distributor, or other retailer can order your book.

The alternate program with Ingram is Lightning Source (LS), their original POD division. This is now reserved for publishers with a large backlist. I started early enough that my books are with LS, so you may hear me talk about Lightning Source instead of Ingram. They are fairly comparable.

Ingram Spark has better international distribution than KDP because they are tied to the Ingram Wholesale. KDP just distributes to Amazon stores, although they distribute to all international Amazon markets. KDP does have Expanded Distribution, but that just means they send the books to Ingram and charge you a hefty percentage of profits.

In spite of their dominance in print, most indie publishers recommend you do not use Ingram for ebooks.

May 2023 Changes

Ingram Spark updated their fees in May, 2023. They now allow you to list your book free and upload revisions free. But to replace those lost fees, they have started charging a market access fee of 1% of each sale. That’s good news for books that don’t sell much, but for popular books, those fees will add up. And, cynically, I expect that 1% to creep upward.

BEST FOR

Most publishers should eventually add their books to Ingram because of the connection to Ingram Wholesale. It’s OK to start with KDP and then add Ingram later, as your publishing program grows.

Right now, my income is split 50-50 with KDP/Ingram, earning about the same amount from each company. I consider both of these POD printers important to my income.

Lulu

Lulu Printing is another popular print-on-demand company. They do allow general distribution, but their distribution fees are high and result in overpriced books. Instead, indie publishers are using Lulu Direct as the backend for a direct-to-the-public online store. Publishers can choose to use Shopify, which is a stand alone website/store software, or Woocommerce, which is a plugin to the popular WordPress blogging software.

For either option, Lulu Direct offers an app that integrates into the platform. When a customer orders, your store manages the financial transaction then sends the order to Lulu, who prints and ships. In the beginning (just two years ago!), I studied the Terms of Service over and over because I was shocked that there was no distribution fee. That 40% fee taken by KDP and Ingram simply wasn’t there. That’s because I am the distributor when a customer orders through my Mims House Books store.

That leaves me with 40% EXTRA profit in my pocket. Of course, you have to pay for Shopify or Woocommerce, credit card transaction fees, and advertising, but there are reasonable options.

The biggest advantage to Lulu Direct is the cut out the middle man. You distribute the books through your website, and pocket the profits.

2023 Changes

No one is escaping price increases. Lulu has seen its own increases, but they opted to put some of that into a Handling Fee. Regardless, look for price increases from them, just like everyone else.

BEST FOR

Lulu is great for anyone who wants to run their own online bookstore. It’s slick and easy to set up and the printing is great because for color picture books, they offer an 80# coated paper, something not available from KDP or Ingram.

Bookvault

Lookout Lulu! You’ve got competition from newcomer, Bookvault. They are a UK print-on-demand company that will start printing in the US in June, 2023. They offer coated papers, custom print sizes and a lot of excitement. Among those already using Shopify, the excitement has been really high because they also offer lower prices than Lulu, KDP, or Ingram. Some high profile authors have brought them a lot of attention. With superior print quality and paper, good pricing, and good integration, the only question will be their reliability. Expectations are high because they have been reliable in the UK.

BEST FOR

Shopify store owners to sell direct to the public. It will be especially enticing for color printing and custom book sizes.

Accutrack: POD + Warehousing

There’s one other company worth mentioning, but it’s a hybrid of POD printing. Accutrack’s business model isn’t exactly POD/Dropshipping. Instead, they print short runs of about 50 books and warehouse them. When orders come in, the stock allows them to ship overnight, thus competing with Amazon’s overnight service. When an order comes in for 51 books, though, they can POD print and ship within three days.

In return, Accutrack’s pricing falls between regular POD and offset. They bought the latest POD printer last year and a sample color book was absolutely amazing. Beautiful, and near-offset quality. Twenty years after the first POD printers, the quality has increased so that it’s now competing with offset. The caveat is that you must use the right papers, which Accutrack has available, but no other POD company does.

They like to work with a customer to manage stock in a cost-effective way. But if you have books with low sales, they’ll just recommend you put those out-of-print. That’s not my business model! I’ll keep books in print indefinitely because that’s how indies think about copyright and IP. It’s valuable and something may happen to bring the book to the public’s attention.

You could, however, list some books with Accutrack, and others with Lulu or Bookvault. One reason to do that is that Accutrack will also add anything to the package that you want: flyer, coupons, letter, plush toy, or other merchandise. There are pick-and-pack fees, but they are reasonable. For example, they may be a great printer to fulfill a Kickstarter.

BEST FOR

This printer will appeal to those to want excellent printing, and can manage the overhead of small print runs. If you want to add merchandise or advertising, the pick and pack option is great. However, the books you place here should all be steady sellers. If you have slow selling titles, the warehousing fees can eat into profits.

Problems Working with the POD printers

Quality

Each print-on-demand printer has its own quality issues. The gold standard printing is still offset printing. But the POD technology has matured in the last twenty years and I’ve seen excellent print quality. Pay attention to the paper quality. 70# paper is the minimum recommended for color printing, but 80# and up is better. Coated papers are also preferred for full color because the coating accepts the color ink better. Standard printing is often acceptable for paperbacks which tend to have lower print quality. For hardcovers, premium printing is often preferable, but sometimes is so expensive that the profit margins disappear.

In the end, remember that you must make a profit on every sale! Choose the best quality you can within your profit margins. Plan to recheck print quality options yearly as these upgrade or change as printers purchase new equipment.

Listing at more than one printer.

As noted above, listing with multiple printers is often recommended because they serve different markets/marketplaces. Currently, I upload to three different printers (LS, KDP, and Lulu). The problem is that each printer has different print specs, which means I have to modify files for each printer - a royal pain!

Also, it’s recommended that you set up the book on all the printers you’ll be using before making the book live on any printer. Sometimes, KDP and Ingram will argue over who has control of the book’s ISBN. You’ll get an error message that says the ISBN is already in use. If that happens, email the support staff to correct the problem. Next time, set up everywhere first, then approve the book for publication.

Delivery times

You cannot compete with Amazon on delivery times. Their overnight service will always win. Ingram, and Lulu will generally deliver within 4-10 days, depending on the delivery costs you choose. Bookvault is untested in the US market, but is expecting the same 4-10 day delivery.

In addition, shipping fees can vary widely. For example, when I ship to Hawaii, I run that transaction through my Amazon account because the shipping is more reasonable and reliable.

On your website/shop, highlight that when a customer orders directly from the author/illustrator, they are supporting a creative life. This approach tries to build a relationship with the reader, one that supports a creative life. Explain that the delivery times are reasonable because these books are custom-printed just for them. However you approach the marketing, highlight the positives: supporting the author directly, custom-printed, or other ideas. Don’t let the negative - slower delivery - stop you from starting an online store.

Pricing updates

It’s a fact of our lives: printers will raise rates often and all we can do is react. Lately, these have been very often and quite costly. It’s forcing our pricing higher, which has the potential to cut sales. I’m always on the lookout for ways to optimize my profits while providing beautifully printed books that are delivered in a timely manner.

In the end, you are responsible for driving demand for your book, and hopefully the demand is strong enough to be resistant to slightly higher prices. People won’t even glance at the price, they’ll just buy!