Calling Out These Self Publishing Companies

About this video

Dale L. Roberts airs gripes about self-publishing companies and services beyond KDP. He calls Bowker in the US and Nielsen in the UK an ISBN monopoly: a single ISBN costs $125 and covers only one format, while he says he bought 1,000 ISBNs for $1,500, about $1.50 each, and notes ISBNs are free in Canada and cannot simply be transferred to change imprint. He urges authors never to buy barcodes because KDP, IngramSpark and others generate them free, and points to free generators via Kindlepreneur and other sites. On Amazon Advertising, he criticizes inflated suggested cost-per-click bids — which he says can only be justified by series read-through — and glitchy auto-targeting that charged him for irrelevant keywords such as ‘amazon.com redeem’ that could not be added to negative targeting. He warns against unsolicited pop-up marketing services with zero reach, contrasting them with legitimate firms like BookBub and Book Doggy that do not cold-prospect. He criticizes contract auto-renewals at ACX and Babelcube versus the simple opt-out in KDP Select, the Alliance of Independent Authors watchdog description of Babelcube translators as unvetted, and ACX’s 50/50 royalty split in perpetuity where authors do not own the audio files after seven years; he prefers Findaway Voices terms and advises paying narrators by finished hour instead. He also faults BookBub for giving no clear reason for Featured Deal rejections, Barnes & Noble Press and Blurb for awkward cover/barcode formatting despite excellent print quality, and IngramSpark for all-or-nothing distribution despite reach to over 40,000 retailers.

Key takeaways

• Bowker (US) and Nielsen (UK) hold an ISBN monopoly in the creator’s view: $125 for a single-format ISBN versus about $1.50 each when buying 1,000 for $1,500
• Never pay for a barcode — KDP, IngramSpark and free generators provide the same barcode authors need for covers
• Do not follow Amazon Advertising’s suggested CPC blindly and use negative keywords; he describes a glitch that prevented suppressing irrelevant auto-targeted terms he was charged for
• Avoid ACX’s 50/50 royalty split in his opinion because authors do not own the audio files; he presents Findaway Voices and paying per finished hour as better options
• He criticizes IngramSpark’s all-or-nothing distribution, BookBub’s unexplained Featured Deal rejections, and unsolicited marketing services that cold-email authors

Episode details: published August 2, 2022 · 15:31 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

← Previous: Amazon KDP Will HATE This… · Next: Amazon KDP Terminates Your Account for THIS… →

All Dale L. Roberts videos · Dale L. Roberts profile · Dale L. Roberts on YouTube