Great distribution and printing, less than ideal UX Great distribution and printing quality. I’ve moved away from Amazon print on demand as Ingram spark’s physical product is better. the user experience could do with some love (e.g hard to decipher error messages), and it would be great to have some marketing options incorporated other than adding the book to a newsletter (e.g. google ads).

Error message of “mobile number must be unique” There was a problem setting up my account because it conflicted with information when I originally set it up in 2016. Despite several attempts to remedy the conflict, it still didn’t recognize my cell phone (unchanged since 2016.) However, once Zac stepped in to work on my file, he resolved the problem in one day. After 18 days of email exchanges, nothing was resolved until Zac took over. He gets a gold star!

Totally nonexistent customer service Totally nonexistent customer service. I placed an order for advance copies of my book, and paid extra for rush service, which should have printed in 3 days. Now more than 2 weeks later I can't even get an estimated time to ship. Multiple requests to customer service go unanswered. I'm having a book release party with no book to actually show.

Unreliable delivery. Unreliable delivery. I've received numerous notifications that my book package has arrived at the drop-off point, but at the drop-off point they tell me that they have not received my package. I've been there several times.

Lightning Source to Spark complete failure Total Spark database failure -- in an attempt to save money, we switched from Lightning Source to Spark, having had assurances that it would be seamless. It wasn't. Beginning on 5 March 2024 we tried to upload new covers for two of our books that we'd entered under the LS regime. Spark wouldn't take them, claiming "Imprint name already taken." Surprise! It's OUR IMPRINT THAT WE'VE BEEN USING SINCE 2011. But somehow, Spark's IT folks have been unable to flip the bits necessary to tell the Spark side that (all) our Saddle Road Press books belong to us. This has caused problems -- do I even need to say that email help has been, so far, useless? No answer, no fix -- and it's the 15th -- ten days of an unfixed problem. Two authors need review copies and we're unable to produce them. It's causing trouble. This is just nuts.