Weighing the choice rather than the terms? KDP vs IngramSpark: What Is the Difference?
| Amazon KDPVerified 26 October 2026 | IngramSparkVerified 26 October 2026 |
|---|---|
| What it is | |
| Type | |
| Publishing Platform · Print-on-Demand | Print-on-Demand · Distributor / Aggregator |
| Formats | |
| Kindle ebook, Paperback, Hardcover, Audiobook (Virtual Voice) | Paperback, Hardcover, EPUB |
| Distribution | |
| Amazon stores, Expanded Distribution (print) | Wholesale trade distribution, Retail, Library |
| Territories | |
| Ebooks: worldwide rights or individual territories. With worldwide rights a title sells in 13 Amazon Kindle stores, and customers in a selected territory with no store of its own buy from Amazon.com. Paperback: 14 Amazon marketplaces. Hardcover: the same, except Amazon.co.jp and Amazon.com.au. Amazon.com.br, Amazon.in and Amazon.com.mx do not sell KDP print books. Print in the EU and UK is all-or-none: to sell in any one of those countries the book must be eligible in all of them. Selecting the US, Canada or Mexico, KDP says, makes a print book “eligible for sale in all countries”. | Print from IngramSpark’s own facilities in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Sharjah (UAE), plus Global Connect partner printers in countries including Brazil, China, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Poland, South Korea and Spain. A title is offered in each market where you add pricing for it. |
| Terms | |
| Exclusivity | |
| Not requiredPublishing on KDP does not require exclusivity. Enrolling a title in KDP Select does: for the 90-day term Amazon holds the exclusive right to sell the digital edition, and you may not sell or license it in digital form in any territory where you hold rights. Enrolment renews automatically in further 90-day periods unless you opt out before renewal. Print is unaffected. Audio is affected in two cases. A Virtual Voice audiobook is enrolled automatically when its ebook is in KDP Select, and an enrolled audiobook must be exclusive to Audible for the enrolment period. An ACX audiobook joins only if you enrol it, and it must already be exclusive to Audible. | Not requiredThe licence in section 6.2 is non-exclusive, and print titles carry no restriction — the same book can sit on KDP at the same time. Ebooks are where this stops being simple. Section 5.2 closes with a flat covenant: “Publisher shall not directly or indirectly distribute Digital Titles to any Reseller outside of this Agreement.” A Reseller is defined broadly, as “any wholesale, retail, or other account that distributes digital content”, which on the plain words reaches the retailers an author would otherwise reach through Draft2Digital or directly. Read strictly, putting an ebook into IngramSpark’s digital programme forecloses distributing that ebook anywhere else; read narrowly, it only bars routing around Ingram to the Resellers Ingram supplies. The agreement does not resolve which, and the distinction decides whether the ebook side is usable alongside another aggregator, so it is recorded as the open question it is rather than settled in either direction. |
| ISBN | |
| Free ISBN: YesYour own ISBN: YesA free ISBN is offered for paperback and hardcover only; Kindle ebooks do not need one. The free ISBN cannot be used with another publisher or printer, and the imprint is registered in Bowker as "Independently published". Supplying your own ISBN lets you register a custom imprint name and reuse the identifier on other platforms. | Free ISBN: YesYour own ISBN: YesThe free ISBN is owned by IngramSpark, cannot be transferred to another account, and cannot be used on other platforms. Any title using one must be placed in the wholesale distribution programme with pricing set for at least one market, and the publisher shown is IngramSpark's own "Indy Pub" imprint rather than your business name. Moving to an ISBN you own means republishing as a new title — the original cannot be converted. |
| Royalties | |
|
|
| Fees | |
|
|
| Payment schedule | |
| Monthly, approximately 60 days after the end of the month in which the sale was made (Terms s.5.4.2). Expanded Distribution takes longer, but KDP’s pages disagree on how much: its royalties estimator says 90 days, while the Expanded Distribution page says about 60 days after the end of the month in which distributors report the sale. Electronic funds transfer has no minimum. Cheque and wire payments wait until a marketplace’s balance reaches its threshold — $100 on Amazon.com, £100 on Amazon.co.uk, €100 in the EU stores — counted separately for each marketplace in its own currency, after tax withholding, and then paid 60 days after the end of the month the threshold is reached. On termination Amazon may hold all royalties for three months to cover refunds. | Ninety days after the end of the month in which the sale was made, for both print (section 9.1) and ebooks (section 9.2), and for ebooks the clock starts from when the Reseller reported and paid Lightning Source rather than from the sale. Payment is by electronic deposit in a preferred currency chosen at account setup, with amounts in other currencies converted at the end of each sales period. Section 8.3 makes the whole of it contingent on the Seller having paid Lightning Source first. |
| Returns | |
| Royalties are paid net of refunds (Terms s.5.4.1), and sales reports calculate them on net units sold: units sold minus units refunded. If a customer is refunded after a royalty has been paid, Amazon may offset it against future royalties or require you to repay it (s.5.4.8). For print, a royalty is reported only when a copy ships to fill an order, so a copy returned in new condition and resold by Amazon earns no new royalty. KDP’s pages do not say whether bookshops can return copies ordered through Expanded Distribution. | Direct and Global Connect print orders are non-returnable. For wholesale, the publisher chooses non-returnable, returnable and destroy, or returnable and deliver — but Lightning Source “has the right to require Print Titles be non-returnable”, and any title it judges to breach the agreement or the User Guide is returnable whatever the publisher set. The trap is in switching: section 5.4.6 holds the publisher responsible for returns for 180 days after changing a title from returnable to non-returnable, and notes that switching the other way can pull back previously sold copies of the same ISBN the publisher never sold. Where compensation has already been paid on a book that is later returned, Ingram may withhold future compensation to offset it or invoice for the unit. Ebooks distributed through the digital programme are returnable, and Ingram reserves the right to withhold a returns reserve against compensation. |
| Rights & privacy | |
| Overall posture | |
| Mixed | Mixed |
| AI training on your work | |
| Terms are silent or ambiguous | Terms are silent or ambiguous |
| Content licence | |
| Sublicensable to third parties | Sublicensable to third parties |
| Deletion | |
| Not available | Available |
| Export | |
| Partial | Partial |
The full records, with sources, facts and change history: Amazon KDP and IngramSpark.