Last reviewed by Robert Prime — September 2026
Quick Answer: Use KDP to sell on Amazon. Use IngramSpark to be orderable by UK bookshops, libraries and every non-Amazon retailer. They are complementary, not rival, and using both is the normal setup for an author who wants trade reach — it needs your own ISBN rather than a free KDP one. The single choice that locks you in is KDP Select, which demands ebook exclusivity for 90 days at a time.
That is the decision. Below is what each platform is genuinely good at, the maths that decides your paperback price, and the mistakes that cost people money.
Table of Contents
- They do different jobs
- The ISBN decision comes first
- Where each one wins
- The ebook royalty maths
- Why bookshops need IngramSpark, and returns
- Using both without duplicate listings
- The one genuine lock-in: KDP Select
- What we could not verify
- Frequently asked questions
They do different jobs
The framing “KDP vs IngramSpark” is the reason so many UK authors get this wrong. It implies a choice between two shops. It is closer to a choice between a shop and a wholesaler.
Amazon KDP is a retailer’s own publishing arm. You upload, Amazon prints on demand and sells on Amazon. Reach outside Amazon is limited and indirect.
IngramSpark is the self-publishing front end of Ingram, one of the largest book wholesalers in the world. You upload, and your book appears in the catalogue that bookshops, libraries and other retailers order from — including Amazon, which also buys from Ingram.
So the question is not which is better. It is whether you need to exist outside Amazon, and what that costs you.
For a lot of authors, the honest answer is that they do not. If your readers find books on Amazon and buy them on Amazon, KDP alone is a coherent strategy and a simpler life. The moment you want a local bookshop to stock you, a library to order you, or a UK distributor to take you seriously, you need Ingram.
The ISBN decision comes first
This is the step that quietly decides everything after it.
KDP will give you a free ISBN. It is genuinely free and it works — but it records Amazon as the publisher of record and it cannot be used anywhere else. You cannot take a KDP-issued ISBN to IngramSpark.
If you want both platforms, you need your own ISBN, bought from Nielsen in the UK. That also makes you the publisher of record, which is what a bookshop’s buying system expects to see.
Get this wrong and the fix is not elegant: a second ISBN, a second listing, and two editions of the same book competing in the catalogue. Decide before you upload anything. Our guide to ISBN requirements for UK authors covers what you actually need and what you do not.
Where each one wins
| Amazon KDP | IngramSpark | |
|---|---|---|
| Selling on Amazon | Native, best royalty | Possible, thinner margin |
| UK bookshops and libraries | Effectively no | Yes — this is the point |
| Hardback | Available | Available, wider options |
| Free to start | Yes | Yes — account and upload cost nothing |
| Own ISBN required | No | Yes |
| Returns for retailers | No | Optional, and often required |
| Paper and finish choices | Limited set | Wider set |
| Author copies | Cheap, fast | Ordered as wholesale |
The row that decides it for most people is the second one. Everything else is a preference; bookshop and library reach is a capability you either have or do not.
The ebook royalty maths
Verified against KDP’s own pricing page on 18 September 2026:
- 70% royalty applies to list prices from £1.77 to £12.99 ($2.99 to $12.99 on Amazon.com), in designated territories, and is paid on the list price excluding VAT less a delivery cost that varies with file size — KDP gives an average of about $0.06 per unit.
- 35% royalty applies from £0.77 to £150.00 ($0.99 to $200.00), everywhere, with no delivery deduction.
Two practical consequences.
The £12.99 ceiling is a real cliff. Price at £12.99 and you take 70%. Price at £13.99 and you drop to 35% — earning materially less from a higher price. If your book sits near that line, model both.
Delivery cost punishes big files. It is charged per megabyte in some territories, so an image-heavy book can lose a noticeable slice of a 70% royalty. Compressing images is not only a file-size housekeeping job; it is margin.
IngramSpark’s ebook side pays, in their words, 85% of the net revenue received by IngramSpark — note that this is a share of what Ingram receives from the retailer, not of the list price, so it is not directly comparable to KDP’s 70% of list. For most authors the Amazon ebook goes on KDP regardless.
Print royalties on both platforms depend on trim size, page count, colour and territory, and no honest article can give you a single number. Both publish calculators, and you should run your actual page count through them before setting a price.
Why bookshops need IngramSpark, and returns
A UK bookshop buys from a wholesaler on trade terms. Two things matter to them, and Amazon’s own platform offers neither.
A wholesale discount. The shop needs margin. On IngramSpark you set the discount you offer the trade. Set it too low and shops will not stock you, because there is nothing in it for them.
Returnability. Bookshops order on the understanding that unsold stock can go back. A title marked non-returnable is, to many buyers, simply not orderable. IngramSpark lets you choose; the choice has a real cost, because you carry the risk on returned copies.
This is the genuine trade-off, and it is commercial rather than technical. Making a book attractive to bookshops means giving away margin and accepting return risk. Plenty of authors decide the shelf is not worth it. That is a reasonable decision — but make it deliberately, rather than discovering months later that nobody can order your book.
Using both without duplicate listings
The standard setup:
- Buy your own ISBN. One per format — paperback, hardback and ebook are separate.
- Publish the paperback and ebook on KDP for Amazon.
- Publish the same paperback (same ISBN) on IngramSpark, and switch off Amazon distribution in the IngramSpark channel settings.
That last step is the one people miss. Leave both feeding Amazon and you get two supply routes for one book, which can produce a second listing, odd availability messages, or Amazon preferring the Ingram copy at a worse margin to you.
Hardbacks are the common exception: many authors do the paperback and ebook on KDP and let IngramSpark handle hardback everywhere, because it keeps the formats cleanly separated.
The one genuine lock-in: KDP Select
Everything above assumes you are free to distribute. KDP Select changes that.
Select enrols your ebook in Kindle Unlimited and requires exclusivity: the ebook may not be sold or distributed in digital form anywhere else, in 90-day terms that renew unless you opt out.
It does not restrict your paperback. You can be in Select and still sell print through IngramSpark.
Whether the Kindle Unlimited page reads are worth the exclusivity is genre-dependent and beyond the scope of this page — we cover it in KDP Select vs wide. The point here is that it is the only decision on this page that removes options, and it renews quietly.
What we could not verify
In keeping with how we write these: IngramSpark has at various times charged a market access fee on distributed titles. We found three different figures in circulation while researching this page — including a fee-free statement in IngramSpark’s own products-and-pricing PDF, which is dated March 2020 and contradicts their current live pages on setup fees.
We could not reach a current primary source we were confident in, so we have not put a number here. Before you budget, open the price sheet inside your own IngramSpark account, which reflects your market and is the only version that binds you.
Setup and upload being free is verified: ingramspark.com/pricing, read 18 September 2026 — “It costs you nothing to sign up for an IngramSpark account and to upload your print or ebook.”
Frequently asked questions
Is IngramSpark worth it if I only sell on Amazon?
Probably not. If every sale comes from Amazon and you have no ambition to be in shops or libraries, you are adding a second upload, a second set of files and an ISBN cost for reach you are not using. Revisit it when you want the shelf.
Can I move a book from KDP to IngramSpark later?
Yes, if you used your own ISBN. If you used the free KDP ISBN you cannot take it with you, and you will be starting a new listing.
Does Amazon penalise books distributed through Ingram?
No. Amazon buys from Ingram like any other retailer. What causes problems is supplying the same book to Amazon through both routes at once — that is a configuration mistake, not a penalty.
Which gives better print quality?
They use different printers and both are print-on-demand, so neither is uniformly better. IngramSpark offers a wider range of paper and finish options. If quality matters to you, order a proof from each and compare the actual object — we cover the difference between proof copies and author copies.
Do I need different interior files for each?
Often yes. Trim sizes overlap but margin, bleed and spine requirements differ, and a PDF built to one platform’s spec can be rejected by the other. This is the most common reason a second upload stalls.
Can I set different prices on each?
You set a list price on each platform, and they should match. Retailers and readers comparing a cheaper Amazon edition with a dearer bookshop one is not a good look, and some retailers price-match anyway.
Final thoughts
The useful reframing is that KDP is how you sell to Amazon’s customers, and IngramSpark is how you become orderable by everybody else. Most UK authors who are serious about print end up doing both, with their own ISBN, Amazon distribution switched off on the Ingram side, and a wholesale discount they have actually thought about.
The part that trips people is not the choice. It is that both platforms reject files for different reasons, and a PDF that sailed through one comes back from the other over bleed or gutter. If you would rather not run that gauntlet twice, our formatting service produces files for both from £69, with a 24-hour turnaround.
— Robert publishing.co.uk
