by Anura Guruge
on October 15, 2021
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Amazon’s KDP paperback printing DEFINITELY works & KDP, to its credit, has made it quite slick. Moreover, there is still, quite good, telephone support.
But, over the last two weeks, with the publication of my latest paperback I encountered some frustrating anomalies.
The most aggravating is the discovery that KDP is not really a ‘Print on Demand‘ (PoD) service as they should be — & allude as being. ‘So what’ you may ask.
Well, it makes a huge & costly difference IF & when you publish an update to your book.
With a genuine PoD service there is no stock of old books lying around waiting for the next order. You do a revision, & the next book to get ordered get printed afresh with the UPDATED PDF you uploaded.
Not so with Amazon KDP. It appears they NEVER print just one copy. Transpires that they invariably print at least 2 copies. OK, yet again, you may say ‘so what‘?
We now come to the next ‘issue’ — though in the long run, down the road this will prove to be an asset, i.e., a benefit. KDP now has multiple paperback printing centers, at a minimum in: Middletown, DE; North Haven, CT; Las Vegas, NV; Monee, IL, etc. So, if a few copies of your book have been ordered, it doesn’t take long to discover that there might be 8 (or more) copies pre-printed awaiting new orders. Even if you do an update, & the update is ACTIVE, Amazon insists on shipping all of the OLD stock it has before it starts printing new copies.
In my case, after an update, I had to buy 8 copies, over a 10 day period, before I managed to flush out all the old (out-of-date) copies. Very frustrating.
Having multiple print centers is (of course) good, IF Amazon uses decent artificial intelligence to channel orders to the nearest — & maybe least busy — print center. That is NOT happening as yet.
So, you could order two books on the same day. One is getting printed at one center, the other at another. There could be a week’s difference in delivery dates! I kid you bloody not. One will be scheduled to be delivered in 3 days (after order), the other 10 days later. I can show you examples. Plus, the printing quality is, ALAS, NOT the same. Some centers have better, i.e., higher resolution (or maybe just newer) printers than others.
So, it is frustrating, but better than NOT having paperbacks via Amazon.
I am just letting you know so that you will at least know what to start looking for if you start running into problems.
