IngramSpark Reviews 1.596

IngramSpark's customer support is horrendous! I decided to remove my titles and close my account. I submitted a request per their online instructions, but even after three weeks and two requests for a status update, I've heard nothing! If I could keep other indie authors from making this same mistake, I would. I'm hoping this review might be a start.

I've been self published on IS for three years but getting my books removed had been a nightmare

I've submitted many tickets none of which have been actioned

This will be a long review. After watching a 3-hour YouTube video about uploading my book to Ingram Spark, the program stopped in the middle, and I could not continue the upload. The only phone number is for people with disabilities, but through a chatline, I was connected with 3 publishers that would format my book for Ingram Spark (a necessity not mentioned on the YouTube video). I went with Authors Book Publishers who will format my book and upload it to Ingram Sparks. Warning: Ingram Sparks will do this job too, but they are very expensive. On their website, Ingram Spark warns about scammers and I think much of the problem is that it is very difficult to upload a book by yourself, and Ingram Sparks is almost impossible to reach directly. The other advice given is that if you go with a 55% IS reduction in price you, the author may only net about a dollar per book. And if you allow the bookseller to return or destroy unsold books, you the author pay for those books. So user beware with this company. They may get your books into many new places but it can be a difficult, expensive road.

Their customer service is terrible. Their responses seem to be copy & paste, because they're extremely vague. There are other companies that you can get distributed through and I have. Their uploading process with their template is so tedious too. You have to attach the ISBN yourself. What a waste of my precious time.

Update: They have responded to this review quicker than they have a request that I sent them pertaining to my title. Make that make sense. Notice how they just give copy/paste responses here. It is the same when dealing with your book(s).

I have been caught in a book publishing scam. After I questioned my “Account Manager” why all the books I was charged thousands of dollars to produce; for “trial runs”with publishers “ did not show in my account as “orders” I have been tasked to print nearly 2000 books at $5@ to provide these vendors, and not one shows up in the que. When I questioned this….I was locked out of my account and a “malicious blocker” placed on my account email. I have six books in that account and these scammers have control of them. Ingramspark is doing nothing.

If I could give ZERO stars, I would. IngramSpark's customer service is DREADFUL! For God's sake, if they're going to run a business, then do it properly! HIRE MORE PEOPLE. When this many customers think they're doing a terrible job you know it's true. I knew they had a bad reputation for customer service, but I didn't realize HOW bad. I called them a month ago with questions about setting up my account. I was told I would get a call in a week ( NO JOKE!) A week! Gee, that's helpful - by then I had already ripped my hair out by the roots and resorted to using AI, which still didn't address the issue. And guess what? They never called me back. I've also emailed them - no reply. They should be ashamed of the way they treat their customers!

They published a book for me for years ago. I've had an account open with them for years. I went to access my account to order some more copies and I can't get access to my account. I reached out to them. They sent me a help ticket over a month ago and so far nobody's contacted me and nobody can help me. I've heard about this lack of service from them before, but this is over the top. I keep reaching out to them. I don't know what else to do.

Princess was awesome, walked me through the process, and now can get my issues resolved. Thank you so much!

As a new writer trying to self-publish, I was a bit lost on trying to figure out computerized help suggestions. It's like trying to find where you are--using a GPS suggesting everywhere. However, I submitted the text to Ingram-Sparks and received outstanding support, particularly from Jonas D., David, B. and Joanna C. These three, and in particular Jonas, went above-and-beyond being first rate! Had it not been for their support, I do not think I would have been able to finish, esp. because I am a Luddite, etc. I am so grateful for the exceptional support from the team at Ingram-Sparks.

Everything the people below say is true, and it’s probably even a bit worse. The fact that this company can still exist is a riddle yet to be solved. Worst customer service ever, a completely unprofessional backend. Books are not shipped on time, customers have to wait more than a month. The print was misaligned, and now I’m curious to see whether there will be issues with the numbers and payouts as well. Class action lawsuit, anyone?

PS: German bookstores won’t even list with Ingram anymore, so don’t even try to launch your book if you’re selling in Europe. Their prelaunch is a joke since nobody got the book on time and now we had to shift everything over to BoD.

Do not make the same mistake I did. I'm an indie author, and this is the worst self-publishing platform I've ever used. The site is full of glitches (for instance yesterday, it showed a "fill in book type" error on forms throughout the site, making the site virtually impossible to use - and when I first tried to sign up, silly me, I got a similar error about the phone number. By the time CS got back to me weeks later, asking for more details, the error was gone, and I was already using the platform to publish my eBooks. More about "customer service" below.

While ebook publishing isn't hard, unless you have a glitch like I did, I recently discovered print books are an absolute nightmare.

Other sites have working templates for book covers. Ingram will send you a "template" based on your info, but it's just a .png picture of the bleed lines & layout, with measurements and the ISBN bar code embedded in back cover. You cannot actually use this to make your book, or you will cover up the barcode. Thus I made a nice .pdf wraparound cover exactly according to their specs, with a newly made barcode, & submitted my print book for publication.

It was in processing for almost 3 days before I received an error message about sizing. ALL other publishing platforms tell you immediately if there's an error, but here you have to upload, wait 3 days, get error message, attempt to fix, re-upload, wait 3 more days ... ad infinitum. It's absolutely ridiculous.

I finally gave up and notified "customer service" to remove the print book. Unfortunately, I made a print & eBook at the same time. The eBook went through, but I can't make any changes (price, details, etc) because it's tied to the print book in their system. The print book has to be published - or in my case, removed - before I can make changes to the ebook.

I know I will have to wait over a month for an answer from their alleged customer service. My book in is pre-order and due out March 31, so I don't see a resolution here.

Customer service is abominable. There is no customer support phone number or chat feature. You have to use their online form. If you submit a ticket, you receive a message saying someone will get back to you within 5 days. In my experience it's several weeks, and then it's a vague answer or one without a solution.

To my utter shock and disgust I see Ingram is charging customers $25-50 for faster customer service! They blame this on a high influx of help requests (if so, I wonder why?) but don't consider it necessary to hire more staff to take on the load. It's clearly a scam to make customers pay for customer service.

I've just been to hell and back trying to get an eBook ISBN clash resolved ... it's a very simple thing, just a matter of deleting or de-activating he offending book. Again, it was over a month before CS got back to me, and then I had to update them on the problem (they remove any updates sent during the month of waiting, unread).

Meanwhile, another customer service rep finally got back to me on a problem I had several weeks ago, and I asked her about the eBook ISBN clash. She eventually told me I had to appeal, and I did so. I still have no solution from the first rep, but the appeal finally went through, coincidentally the day after I posted my review on the Better Business Bureau website. I had to wait over 6 weeks for a solution that should have been simple - meanwhile my book was unpublishable, and I have customers asking for it!

The website is incredibly glitchy, and the most difficult of all platforms to use for print. There is virtually no customer service, and when they do bother to respond, most reps are uninformed and not at all knowledgeable.

The company is totally unethical. I regret signing up with these scammers. I did so because other self-publishing outlets such as Draft2Digital (easy to make print books there btw) use Ingram for distribution, so it seemed to make sense to skip the middleman.

I actually opened an account here especially to post this review, and warn others not to make the same mistake I did. If you value your author reputation, potential sales, and your sanity, do not sign up with IngramSpark.

Look. I've been using IngramSpark for about four years and it pains me to write this. I write this in hopes they take a serious look at their non existent, horrible customer service. IngramSpark is an arm of Ingram, a VERY big distribution company. It really shows that they don't invest much in their self publishing platform, which really shows in tools/interface they provide.

Submitting a book or ePUB is a gamble these days. Your book will likely get stuck in a processing stage forcing you to open a ticket. It takes IG weeks to answer tickets. My last ticket took a month and it went past my planned release date. That was upsetting.

I love the print quality of the books, the reach of the global network. But at this point its not worth the headaches this company forces on its user base. I'm in the process of moving my digital books to one service, and print books to another POD.

....And now queue the automated IngramSpark "we're sorry you feel this way message".......

UPDATE: LOL - Ingram responded to this post the SAME day. Wow, wish this rep were the one helping their customers.

I'm trying to create an account from Belgium to self publish my book. It wants bank account information but won't accept Belgian bank details - all configured for US banking. I've tried the support link but it's just a bot that doesn't help at all. No use ... just general sentences. Tried to ask for support through the help centre but it won't let me submit a ticket without an account number - the registration site won't let me continue without inputting my bank information. So I'm stuck in a ridiculous loop. If it's this hard to create an account, I dread to think how hard it must be to upload a product.
Looks like they're not interested in new customers.

IngramSpark is a clown show run by clowns so they now refuse to take phone calls like any other legitimate business. When you try to upload a file their uploading software is so flawed it can't recognize that the requirements have been met so it blocks you from proceeding. Then when you submit a ticket it literally takes them weeks to respond. What a joke. They may think they're indispensible but they're really a clown show. Then when you try to use a Bowker ISBN their system doesn't recognize that either. So you have to submit anoter ticket then they tell you that you'll have to wait another month for them to resolve the most basic of all issues. Buyers beware. Avoid them like the plague. You'll sleep better at night. Trust me. This has been going on like this for years and it only gets worse with them every year, not better. Like I said, so much so, that they now even refuse to take phone calls. Their incompetence knows no bounds.

I'm trying to create an account from New Zealand to self publish my book. It wants bank account information but won't accept NZ bank details - all configured for US banking. I've tried the support link but it's just a bot that doesn't help at all. Tried to ask for support through the help centre but it won't let me submit a ticket without an account number - the registration site won't let me continue without inputting my bank information. So I'm stuck in a ridiculous loop. If it's this hard to create an account, I dread to think how hard it must be to upload a product. Any suggestions?

Avoid this company at all costs. IngramSpark is the worst run company I've ever come across. Their platform is junk - their staff totally incompetent and their customer service is basically non-existent. They should not even be in business - it's too bad there is no other option. I ordered personalized books for my biggest supporters and they sent them all to the wrong person. Totally embarrassing and such an incompetent mistake. I don't even know how that can happen. When I asked for a refund and contact their customer service team they did nothing - just ignored my messages.

The website is extremely difficult to use, and the customer service is terrible, if they even bother to reply.

Five stars for their print product, three stars for the slow response time, and one star for the most frustrating publishing process for indie authors. It just takes ages to work out what they really need. Making a cover PDF is okay with the template, but I wish they would have more informative and simpler instructions for the interior layout. It's actually quite easy from a Word document printed to PDF, but I got that from AI, not from Ingram. My message to all you frustrated Indi authors: don't give up. Ask detailed questions in AI mode and you'll eventually get there.

Setting up my book was easy, but ordering is a different story. The time it takes to process the order was longer than expected. I looked at their website and they say you don't count weekends so make sure you account for that. My biggest issue is the quality of the book. I got paperbacks and the glue was sloppy. So much so that you can see it when opening the cover. I don't even want to sell at the regular price because I feel it would be unprofessional. The pages are also thinner than getting Amazon to print them. I'll go with Amazon from now on.

I have been trying to activate my account with Ingram Spark for more than 2 months now. I have contacted their support probably 6 times over those months to get help and each time the team member replies once or twice, doesn't resolve the issue then dissapears. They said apparently there was an email asking for ID which I never got, then I sent them ID multiple ways and no one ever replied.
I am so surprised a company that is supposedly so big has such terrible support.
I can't even speak to the quality of the work because I haven't even been able to publish my book and this has cost me hundreds of sales and many hours of stress.