Quality in software
Behind the Scenes of self-publishing
TL;DR:
Relying on quality in self-publishing software, but a little afraid out best people are caught in the hype cycle.
I finally have a solid page count for The Tech Drama: 566.1 The page count allows me to generate a final cover and get copies of my book to proofread. The manuscript has been through 2 professional editings and 2 proofreads since December after 3 solid years of work. Now it’s time for what I hope are the final changes.
I’ve done a number of simple, financial models based around the two big print on demand services, IngramSpark2 and AmazonKDP3. I decided to setup in both services to compare how they actually work last fall. Now, it’s time to get my book setup on both platforms as I plan for a July 1 release.
Ingram/IngramSpark
I was super bullish on IngramSpark since Ingram only charges printing and shipping costs. They appeared to be the better deal. If I had to sell a book for $32.99 on Amazon, I could sell a book for $19.99+$5 shipping on Ingram. I was excited to save readers money.
Unfortunately, when I went to refresh myself on the work needed to setup the book I ended up with an error.
No problem, right? I filed a support ticket to figure out what the “! On Hold” was. After a day I was patient. After 3 days I was concerned. I pinged the company after 2 weeks. After 3 weeks, still no answer. I have lost confidence.
Reddit suggested that IngramSpark used to value customer service, but service has gone downhill in the past year.
In the experiences I explore in The Tech Drama, quality and operational support are background themes. They suffered in the case of early-Polymodal because the organization put primary emphasis on “bookings.” The product teams, in turn listened more to the sales teams than the operations teams. If a customer being sold had a chance to ask for a feature that would make or break the sale, that feature was prioritized over making sure existing features worked. Over time this eroded the ability to build and deliver products and services. On the other hand, the private equity firm that owned Polymodal’s stock killed it when they sold their shares—and they sold all responsibility for the demo features the customers were expecting to be mature.
I don’t know if this is going on with IngramSpark. I do know there’s a giant operational hole consistent with setting something up and moving on. I read there used to be a support phone #, but that’s not on the website any more. I’ve heard many industry stories about laying off a department and then adding the work that was being done to another department. This depletes the resources that run the business. The c-suite calls it productivity because they appear to be making more money with less people, but meanwhile the quality of the service suffers. Less work is being done.
I could work around the problem and setup my book under another record in IngramSpark, but I have no confidence that they will take care of anything that goes wrong. Thinking it’s a dealbreaker. I might be better off printing 500 copies and selling on Shopify. TBD. For now, it’s been 20 days without a response.
Amazon KDP
The 400lb gorilla: Amazon KDP setup was simple and seemed to work last fall as well. There was on hiccup when I went to upload my most recent cover: a spinning wheel of death (SWOD).
I found relevant support online, which suggested switching machines and browsers. It didn’t instill confidence, but it was better than the dead end at IngramSpark. 3 browsers later, I was able to get the upload to work.
Redoing work, particularly when setting up accounts and assets that are supposed to handle real business and real money is serious. One really serious thing with Amazon and the current Generative AI zeitgeist: In May I came across a story from March 2026 which claimed Amazon was losing orders, a lot of orders, because they were putting bad code into production. They were running too fast. See Business Insider, 2026-03-10. The story itself is difficult to check as the story was not widely covered, but it’s consistent with the narrative that we are in a giant hype cycle and bubble in big-tech. It’s consistent with what I have seen in generative AI: sometimes magic, sometimes garbage. It’s consistent with “enshittification.”
I really hope the SWOD wasn’t caused by their AI coding tool, but I can’t know.
Right now it looks like it’s setup in KDP.
The Tech Drama
The Tech Drama is an autofiction about about the human cost of the wrong values set in what should be doing meaningful work in tech. It’s about the tech hype cycle, building and selling great demos, and then realizing we got it wrong. Well, I realized we got it wrong. These days, I like to think I value quality.
Please don’t be daunted by the count. It’s a great value for the money and is definitely not AI slop.
Ingram is actually a giant, hidden company that does warehousing and distribution. They are the primary distributor for local bookstores. This allows local bookstores to order and sell The Tech Drama. IngramSpark primarily charges for book printing and shipping.
Same Amazon. They are really big in POD. They just sometimes take a bigger cut than Ingram: printing, shipping and a % off the top.