Print On Demand is Complicated

My wonderful wife Sue Dockstader just published her 4th book and made the big leap to get this on "print on demand" for both Amazon and Ingram. The first three books were printed traditionally, and she ordered 500 at time and shipped them out herself. Now, for bookstores, she can point them to Ingram and direct customers to Amazon. As a person who is not familiar with book publishing, I was shocked at how much work it is and why you have to do both Amazon and Ingram. Book stores won't buy from Amazon and end use customers don't typically buy from Ingram. This all got started when we lived in Hong Kong. Sue's mother, Josephine, would hand write stories to our young children about a field mouse living in the Great Britain countryside. Sue kept all of those stories, and 20 years later hired an illustrator and for her mother's 80th birthday presented her with the stories as a book. That motivated Jo to write 2 more books worth of stories that got published a few years ago. For Jo's 90th birthday Sue created a children's activity book with games, puzzles and coloring and presented a spiral bound proof of it to her this September when we visited. For this version it was print on demand only and our first few orders showed up in a few days. We also noticed the actual location where they are printed is in the book and we saw some were printed nearby Portland OR and some in Tennessee. More information on the books and the background story can be found at Henry’s web page www.adventuresofhenryfieldmouse.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Henry-Field-Mouse-Activity/dp/B0DLKTSJD8