Settle in, this is a wild one.
Kerry came to me through my hairdresser – and who says networking doesn’t pay off! She had been working on a book and trying to get it published for over ten years, but kept getting turned down. At this time, I was considering closing my submissions to children’s books after the fiasco of That’s Not True, but one more couldn’t hurt, right?
Kerry and I met and chatted and generally had a great time! The editing seemed quick and easy, and Kerry already had designs in mind for the illustrations. Working with an author who knows what they want is often amazing; I can get straight to the point and make their dream happen.
There were some slight issues with the illustrator whom we found on Fiverr. They did great work, as you can see if you have a copy for yourself, and after a few adjustments, I thought we smashed it.
My first mistake was giving the illustrator the wrong trim size. My bad, I can make it work.
I don’t quite know how I got confused – I think we had always planned for it to be A4, but I told the illustrator it would be standard trade size. Thankfully, the images were done in a high enough resolution that it didn’t matter. I asked for the cover to be resized (Ingram always kicks up a fuss with covers), and we were plain sailing. I ordered physical proofs, liked what I saw, and submitted two ‘big’ orders for Kerry and everyone who pre-ordered.
Two weeks until publication day. I get an email;
It has come to our attention that during the printing of your order it has experienced saturation issues due to the high ink content,
As we flag any titles where we see the pages with a wave or curl. All it takes is for one printer to move a little faster, preventing a few seconds of drying time, and the pages wave and curl. The same book could print beautifully hundreds of times, but it can only take one time to catch it and flag it for oversaturation.
Unfortunately we can’t continue with the current file and run the risk of having to reprint or send books we consider outside of our tolerance. Our operations team flags titles that they catch with the wavy pages because high-density ink titles, such as this one, can slow down the entire production line. If it happens once, it’ll happen again.
S#!+
I should have expected this; the illustrations are very colourful, and some of them quite dark too. The paper options were limited too, because it was a larger trim size, so the paper was thinner than an ordinary children’s book would have been.
I asked what my options were;
- Reduce the illustrations to allow for more white space
- Reduce the trim size, which would require a new ISBN
- Don’t print
None of those are great options, especially two weeks before publication. What do I do? Do I stick to the plan, publish the book and make the changes in secret? Do I tell Kerry and the readers who pre-ordered the book? Kerry and I had already invested so much into this project, I don’t want it to go to waste. But I don’t want to use another ISBN and miss out on publishing another book.
I sent Kerry an email explaining what was happening, and we arranged a call to discuss our options. I knew that I’d be the one to make the decision in the end, but it felt wrong not to include Kerry in making a choice about her book.
Then a package arrived.
Remember how I said I made two orders? I assumed Ingram’s email was about the first order. I was wrong. In that large box that just arrived at my door were 40 copies of The Treasure Trail, sent from Ingram, not a curled page in sight.
Confused doesn’t quite cover the feeling.
I sent an email back to the person who raised the oversaturation issue, informing them that an order had arrived and that there was nothing wrong with the copies. How could I change the book now that I’d received copies in the original format that were perfectly fine? I’d lose out financially if I couldn’t sell these books, and wouldn’t everyone be confused if they ordered it and it arrived smaller than expected?
Then I checked the books.
If you’ve read any of my other blogs, you’ll know that I very much learned my lesson when it comes to checking copies. Since those naïve days of postgraduate education, I swore I would check every single book that left my office for inconsistencies. I would not disappoint readers with a sub-par product. So, of course, I checked them. And by the time I picked up the fifth copy, I realised that all of them had been trimmed wrong, leaving a white border along the top. One copy was missing pages. They were all unsellable.
I cried. I was angry, both for myself and for Kerry. I didn’t know what to do. There was no one I could ask who would understand the industry enough to help. I felt so alone. I left early and would face the stack tomorrow.
I like to think of myself as a problem solver. It’s a flaw; I can’t just let things be until I have the best outcome. So as I lay in bed that night, I came up with every single route I could take to make this book happen.
- I can’t sell the books I have at full price. There was nothing wrong with the text or the illustrations, but as a product, it wasn’t worth what I was charging. I could sell it at a discount – I wasn’t going to break even with this project anyway because of how much the illustrations cost, but something is better than nothing.
- I still had two separate issues: the trim and the oversaturation. They were unrelated, but the oversaturation options would fix the trim problem.
- I was obviously going to tell Kerry about the books, but what do I do about my readers? We had a good number of pre-orders that would be waiting for copies that would take weeks to fix, regardless of what route I took. Should I email them to let them know that their orders will be late? Do I cancel the launch altogether? If I did, how far would I push it back? I had another book launch in two months, and I didn’t want one to overshadow the other.
- Ingram was frustrating me more and more, “We can’t continue with the current file and run the risk of having to reprint or send books we consider outside of our tolerance”, they said. They kept one order back for curling pages that could be easily fixed with a sandwich and a heavy pot, but wobbly white borders and missing pages were acceptable to them?
- Is this it? Is this the end of my publishing career? Should I just pack it in and be done with the whole affair? Maybe I’m not cut out for this.
I spoke with Kerry, who has been (and continues to be) immensely supportive and passionate about her book. She has called me out on errors I’ve made, and I respect her for that – it’s not easy pointing out things people have done wrong. She was also understanding about the printing situation. We made the decision to push back the launch until we had copies we were happy with, which meant I had to make a public post and send more emails…
I made a script for Instagram and recorded several takes. I hated every second of it – I’ve never liked being in front of a camera – but it’s a part of the job I need to do more. I wrote an email to everyone who pre-ordered, letting them know about the situation and giving them some options.
Dealing with Ingram was the most difficult and the most time-consuming. Whilst the printer for the UK is based in Milton Keynes, the customer service comes from America, so the time difference alone dragged the problem out far longer than necessary. Additionally, I had to submit two separate requests, one for the oversaturation and one for the trimming error. Two customer service assistants were ‘helping’ me, and because we were all talking about the same book, I ended up repeating myself a lot.
The assistant assigned to the trimming issue took the document I uploaded to the printing team to see if they could find a problem. They came back and said that there were discrepancies with my upload, which led to the white border.
They blamed me.
I checked the e-proof, I ordered a physical proof, and there were no issues with either. After getting that email, I went back and checked the active working document, and all the illustrations were over the bleed margins, save a fraction of a millimetre on ONE SINGLE PAGE. But no, it’s my fault.
I pushed back, provided evidence. Eventually, they let me resubmit my files for the same ISBN with an increased bleed for free (Ingram charges $25 per upload after the first 60 days), would refund the printed order, and credit the unprinted order to my account.
It took a month of emails to get there.
The fix was easy – add an extra few millimetres of bleed, make sure the illustrations extended beyond that bleed. Maybe an hour of work, and then it would be sorted!
The images didn’t fit.
Okay, new idea, let’s add a nice themed border on the outside of the pages to cover the extra space! I reached out to the illustrator again, hoping they could help us out, but they couldn’t get to it until the end of May. No dice, I’ll do it myself.
Kerry must have been so sick of my emails, we went back and forth with a few ideas until we landed on the design you see in the book today. More adjustments, of course, but finally we did it.
Or so I thought!
During the final proof, I double-checked all the text to make sure there were no errors. At this stage of production, I’m solely focused on line edits, so I don’t always see the bigger picture. I changed the text, didn’t tell Kerry, and sent it off for printing. I was done.
Then the second order came through…
What second order? I hear you ask. Turns out, Ingram hadn’t cancelled the second order I put through before the oversaturation email arrived. They had credited the account and then taken the credit away when the order was sent for printing following the new upload. I didn’t think anything of it.
Kerry called me out for the changes because they messed with the flow of the rhymes. She was completely right to do this, and I’m glad she did. The mistakes I’d already made during this project were probably enough for her to revoke rights and take her book elsewhere. But she stuck with me, and I will forever be grateful that she did.
Because I’d already sent copies out to readers, I ended up having to use a new ISBN anyway. I made the corrections, checked everything myself, had Kerry check through it, had a third person check through it, and uploaded it with a new ISBN. The old edition has been taken off Ingram’s records, but we are still waiting for stock from Amazon and other places to clear before no one can buy it.
And so.
This project is more evidence of the fact that I am still learning. I’m only 3 years into my career, but I try my best with every project I work on and take the mistakes I make in my stride. I won’t be publishing children’s books anymore, but I’ve certainly got a lot more experience from this book.
IngramSparks and the series of unfortunate orders
Whilst I was getting The Treasure Trail sorted, I needed a few more copies of my other books in preparation for a book fair. It was a very small order, only 10 copies, no problem. When the order arrived, part of the title was cut off.
Seriously? This, again?!
I raised another ticket, and a new assistant got back to me quickly. They arranged for a new order to replace the books I couldn’t sell, done and dusted. The order arrives, but it looks too thick to be four books of 30 pages each…
They sent me someone else’s book. I’m now the proud owner of a copy of Pluralistic Therapy: Responses to Frequently Asked Questions by Frankie Brown and Kate Smith, published by Routledge. For anyone interested, according to the first line of said book –
Pluralism, at a philosophical level, is the belief that there are multiple truths and a variety of plausible, yet conflicting, responses to any one questions.
Do you think they’re trying to tell me something?
Looking for a new printer
Needless to say, I don’t use IngramSpark anymore. They’ve messed up so many orders, it’s just not worth the hassle. I did some research on other print-on-demand services I can use, and BookVault came up – Lira actually suggested them for PTD, but I was hesitant because they ask for an up-front payment to upload the ISBN to their database. When I was making PTD, Ingram made more sense; they had a wider reach, they were more reputable, they had just removed their upload fees – no brainer. Now I was working on The Treasure Trail, BookVault was like an answer to my prayers. Their distribution isn’t as wide as Ingram’s, but they cover Amazon and most UK booksellers, plus they have more options for hardcover customisation. I’ll still leave the books already in Ingram’s database where they are, but future projects will be printed through BookVault…until something else happens…
