The Misleading Truth About IngramSpark’s Wholesale Discount

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I’ve been an indie (aka self-published) author for seven years. It’s been a difficult yet rewarding journey, and I’m always learning more about the industry as I meet other authors, vend at comic-cons and other events, talk to booksellers, visit libraries, and release new novels in my supernatural sci-fi fantasy series.

I have been sharing my story as a writer, artist, photographer, and indie author here on my blog since 2016. If you’re already familiar with the blog, you know I don’t pull any punches. I’m transparent about the hard lessons and mistakes I made on my publishing journey while hoping that by sharing my experiences, other authors can avoid some of those pitfalls.

Recently, I learned about a serious misconception I had about my Ingram listing. For years, I’d been inadvertenly telling booksellers incorrect information, and I had no idea until I spoke with a local bookstore owner who showed me what my book title looks like on the other side of Ingram. So, I’m pulling back the curtain on self-publishing through IngramSpark to expose this misrepresentation to indie authors.

In this article, I’ll show you what my back-end dashboard for a title looks like compared to the front-end listing for a retailer.

This article may contain affiliate links. To learn more about how these links are used on this website, read the affiliate disclosure.

Indie Author’s Perspective: The Metadata Dashboard

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Ingram and Baker & Taylor are the two biggest book suppliers for libraries and bookstores. If you’re an indie author going with the wide distribution model, you really need to have your book listed on one of these platforms. Baker & Taylor primarily serves libraries, while Ingram is a staple for bookstores. Self-publishing through IngramSpark is one way to ensure you’re in Ingram’s system as well as other major retail platforms like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Apple, etc.

I have experience with three self-publishing companies: IngramSpark, B&N Press, and KDP (Amazon). Each of these platforms has pros and cons; none of them are 100% perfect. My primary distributor for bookstores is IngramSpark, while KDP manages the Kindle ebook version of my novels.

As an IngramSpark indie author, I have a lot of control over my books’ metadata, including the suggested retail price. I can also set a wholesale discount, which allows libraries and booksellers to purchase the books at a set percentage of the retail price.

Below is a screenshot of my book’s metadata in my IngramSpark dashboard. At the bottom, you can see that I’ve set a 40% wholesale discount for retailers. You can also see that my book is returnable, which is important for booksellers (and I talked about in a previous article).

For the past seven years, I’ve been telling librarians and bookstore owners that my titles were available through Ingram at a 40% discount. That’s what it seems like, right?

I had no idea that I was giving them incorrect information.

The retail price I chose and set was a calculated balance of my print cost combined with the wholesale discount to ensure that I’m not in the red when a customer orders my book through a retailer such as Amazon.

As you can see in my dashboard, for a $30 hardcover, I make less than $4.50 per book when offering a 40% discount. That’s about a 15% profit margin. Yikes, right? There’s a reason it’s hard to be an author. We have to sell a LOT of books to make any real revenue! (And this is exactly why the bulk of my sales comes from in-person events and my own website instead.)

Retailer’s Perspective: The Book Title Listing

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IngramSpark strongly pressures their authors to offer a 55% wholesale discount.

When I was setting up my first title back in early 2019 after transferring from B&N Press, IngramSpark warned authors that retailers might not be willing to purchase their books if the discount was under 50%, even though we were technically allowed to go as low as 35%.

Now, this is what they advise:

“We recommend offering a 55% wholesale discount in all markets, but a minimum of 40% is acceptable. As you can appreciate, we are not the only piece of the distribution chain in your title. Each company that is involved in the distribution chain may receive a portion of your wholesale discount. Bookstores and retailers want to receive their standard trade discount, so offering a 55% wholesale discount can allow them to receive the discount they expect.  Also, Amazon and other online sellers receive information for so many books that offering a higher discount may help your book stand out more than other books to the booksellers. If you offer a wholesale discount lower than 53% in the US, your book will be considered a ‘short discounted’ title, and many bookstores will not order it.”

At the time I set my 40% discount, that wasn’t considered the lowest option. Now, it is. Even 50% is low enough to land your title in “short discounted” status.

But this is still EXTREMELY misleading. At no point in the seven years I’ve been with IngramSpark did I have any suspicion that retailers weren’t actually getting the 40% discount I thought I was offering them (or at least close to it). Imagine my shock when a local bookstore owner corrected me and said that Ingram actually takes HALF of that discount. He pulled up my title on the retailer side of Ingram and showed me my listing:

Under the “Publisher” section, you can see the US SRP (suggested retail price in US dollars) and the wholesale discount… which is only 20% instead of the 40% that I set on the back end.

I was speechless.

I learned a long time ago that the publishing industry (both traditional and indie) is rigged against authors just like the music industry is rigged against artists. It’s not the creators earning the majority of the profits; it’s the producers, distributors, and retailers. The actual artists creating the heart and soul of the product are left with crumbs in comparison to the middlemen.

This is one reason why I rarely do bookstore signings anymore. After factoring out the costs for me to print and ship the books, which I supplied for the signing, I was earning about $3 per paperback sale while the bookstore made about $8 per book with the standard commission deduction, which was… wait for it… 40% of the retail price. They pocketed more than double what I was making, just for setting up a table for me and processing the sales. I make a lot more money selling the books myself, either in person at events or online through my website, not to mention I get much more foot traffic when I set up at festivals, markets, conventions, and other types of events that draw crowds. (I come from a mid-sized town in the Midwest, so it might be a different story for authors doing bookstore signings in large cities.)

When it comes to offering a wholesale discount for retailers, I am literally incapable of offering the recommended 55% discount because my compensation would be negative, as you can see in the screenshot below:

$30 for a hardcover under 400 pages is a reasonable price; it’s not as if I grossly underpriced my book. (Also, keep in mind that this book was published in 2018, before the pandemic-fueled inflation.)

I also didn’t overprice it to the point where customers weren’t willing to spend the money. I wanted to be able to compete with traditionally published books. If I set the discount to 53% — the minimum threshold to avoid being labeled a “short discounted” title — I would make a measly $0.58 per sale. That’s simply not realistic. I have to earn something to pay my bills!

Remember when I broke down the math earlier and said that after factoring in the print cost and 40% wholesale discount, my profit margin was about 15%? So, even though a retailer is getting only 20% rather than 40%, they’re still earning more per book sale than I am.

What bothers me about my recent discovery isn’t even the fact that retailers are getting only half of the discount I set — it’s the lack of transparency. After being a self-published author for years, first with B&N Press and then with IngramSpark, I never had any indication that my wholesale discount was being slashed in half. I was completely blindsided when the local bookstore owner told me that my title was only 20%. Even after directly searching IngramSpark’s help articles, I still haven’t found any disclosure informing authors that half of the wholesale discount goes back to Ingram rather than the retailer. The only hint is that quote above where Ingram mentions they are “not the only piece of the distribution chain.” On top of that, they also deduct a 1.5% distribution fee from the author’s cut as well.

I don’t know if other indie authors know that booksellers are getting only 50% of the discount the author sets with Ingram. Maybe this is common knowledge, and I’ve just been oblivious.

So, to the self-published authors… now you know.

To the booksellers out there, please know that indie authors aren’t being greedy and setting smaller discounts just so we can keep a bigger chunk of the profits for ourselves. We’re not. We’re trying to make a living with the products we worked so hard to create, and we’re barely scraping by.

My Solution When Pitching My Books

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Once I learned the truth about Ingram’s wholesale discount, I changed the way I approach bookstores and libraries.

First, let me start by saying that every bookstore and library is different. They all have their own preferences for vetting and ordering titles. Some won’t carry self-published books at all. Others prefer to go through the official channels and order from Ingram. Some will purchase directly from the author. I’ve even had a library purchase from me at the full retail cost, in cash, without a wholesale discount. It all depends on the individual policy.

Now that I know Ingram’s discount is only 20%, not 40% as I thought, I can give retailers a more informed choice. They can still order from Ingram if that’s their preference. Alternatively, I give them the option to purchase from me at a 30% discount.

According to the bookstore owner who alerted me to the lower-than-expected discount, the standard wholesale discount for traditionally published books is usually around 30%. This gave me a much better perspective since I’d always assumed, based on the way IngramSpark worded their recommendation, that retailers expected to purchase books at no less than half the retail price, which seemed high in my opinion. However, I sell other products in my booth besides my books, so I’ve also been on the wholesaler side as well. Many products, like the candles from my collaboration with Old Soul Artisan, have a 50% or more wholesale discount when purchased in bulk for the purpose of reselling them. All this time, I thought I was offering 10% lower than a standard 50% wholesale discount, not 10% lower than a standard 30% discount.

This also explains why IngramSpark pushes authors so hard to give up 55%, thereby providing a 27.5% discount to retailers. That’s still a tiny bit lower than trad books, but not enough to prevent bookstores from ordering.

I acknowledge that offering 20% off instead of 30% likely has a negative impact on my potential online book sales. However, since my marketing model focuses much more heavily on in-person sales, I’m not overly stressed about it right now, especially because it’s a problem I really can’t fix unless I increase the retail price of my books… which I don’t want to do since I try to make my novels as accessible as possible. As long as the big online retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble are carrying my titles, I’m okay, especially since smaller indie bookstores can still get their standard 30% discount if they purchase directly from me. That way, they receive autographed copies, which are better anyway! Most of my online sales through Ingram are coming from people who are directly searching for and requesting my books from retailers. Bookstores typically don’t stock indie books on the shelf unless there’s a request or the author reaches out.

In the meantime, IngramSpark keeps slowly raising the print cost on our titles every year, which in turn cuts into our profit margins, which are already pitifully low after the print cost and wholesale discount are removed. What are indie authors to do?

Getting our novels on shelves is a MASSIVE challenge already, and now I know that the odds are stacked against us even more than I’d realized. Retailers with brick-and-mortar locations need to make money so they can keep the lights on. If the profit margins aren’t high enough to be worth the investment, they aren’t going to buy the “short discounted” books from distributors. And yet, offering the maximum 55% discount still won’t give booksellers a full 30% off, not to mention the authors earn practically nothing for their books unless they raise the suggested retail price and make the consumers pay more. If Ingram didn’t take such a large chunk of the discount, then we could properly compete with trad titles.

There’s really no getting around the problem. If you want your book to have a shot at being on a bookstore shelf, the title needs to be available with a major distributor such as Ingram. But for many of us, especially authors like me who write fairly big books that have a higher page count (and therefore print cost), a 50%+ discount isn’t feasible. Not when this is our full-time job and we need to make enough money to survive, let alone invest in our next book.

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If this article was valuable, you might like some of my other posts:

Author’s 20 Tips for a Successful Book Signing
Self-Publishing a Book: 8 Facts & Hacks You REALLY Need to Know
Perspective: The Freedom of an Indie Author
Pros & Cons: Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing
4 Affiliate Programs for Authors to Earn More Money with Their Books
Are Vanity Presses a Reliable Option for Authors?
Self-Publishing 101: How to Purchase & Register an ISBN
Author’s Review: Polgarus Studio Ebook Formatting Service
Author’s Advice: 15 Tips to Write a Compelling Fiction Book Blurb That Sells
NetGalley Review | Author’s Experience Joining a NetGalley Co-Op
Tips for New Authors: How to Overcome 5 Common Fears
3 Ways Indie Authors Can Make Extra Money with Their Website
How to Make Money: 7 Extra Revenue Streams for Indie Authors
IngramSpark Self-Publishing: Process, Royalties, Review, & Advice
3 Reasons Why I Self-Published