How to Order Author Copies for Signings and Shows: Bulk Books on a Budget

Authors who sell at signings, festivals, local events, or even just straight from their website often face the same question: what’s the smartest way to get 50-200 author copies on hand?

Some consider buying retail copies from Amazon (especially if they belong to Amazon Prime for the free shipping), others order author copies from KDP, and some turn to IngramSpark or a short‑run printer. The right choice depends on speed, cash flow, shipping, and your book’s print cost.

Let’s compare the main options available to us so you can see the real per‑copy cost, lead times, and break‑even points. We’ll also highlight the edge cases where buying retail can make sense and when bulk author copies are the better deal.

If you’re stocking up for a launch, a convention, or a steady schedule of in‑person sales, here’s how to choose the most cost‑effective path for your situation.

Amazon Prime

We may as well start with the obvious suggestion that we often hear people take: buying your author copies direct from Amazon. It can make sense in specific circumstances, but is usually not the best idea.

If you only need 1 or 2 copies of a book, especially if you need them fast and can float the price for a couple of months, and you have an Amazon Prime account that will offer you free shipping, then it might make sense to just buy a copy at retail from Amazon.

It will cost more than buying an author copy at the print price direct from KDP Print, since you'll have to give 40% of the retail price direct to Amazon, but with Prime you don't have to pay for shipping and KDP overcharges for shipping on single unit author copies and that might actually save you a few dollars, depending on the price point of your book.

For example, if your book is priced at $15 retail, and it costs $4 to print (just to have simple numbers for the math), then you would pay $15 today for a copy and will have that copy in hand in 1 to 3 days. Your royalty payments are paid out 60 days after the end of the month in which the books were sold, so in 60-90 days you would receive a royalty payment of $5. That comes from the retail price of $15 that Amazon collected, minus their 40% discount of $6, and minus the $4 printing costs, for a total of $10 going to Amazon and $5 going to you.

If you then went on to sell the book in person for the $15 retail price, you'd have earned $20 for the sale of that book at a cost of $15, so $5 total profit.

You receive the book quickly, but have to float the retail price until the royalty payment comes in 2 months after the end of the month in which you bought it.

If you were to buy 100 books, then you would have to spend $1500 up front, and would eventually get $500 back in your royalties, and you would have to sell at least 67 of the books in order to begin seeing any profit on your book sales.

If your book is more expensive at retail, then the discount you are giving Amazon will be even higher. For example, an author using this strategy and selling his books online for $19.99 would mean he was giving Amazon about $8 on top of the printing costs of his book, to save the $5.59 it would have cost him to ship the book from KDP Print.

You could lower your retail price as low as Amazon would allow it to account for a $0 royalty after Amazon’s 40% discount and the printing costs; for our example that would be a retail price of $6.67 ($4 printing costs plus $2.67 discount for Amazon), you would get free shipping, and there'd be no royalties earned on any sales while the price of the book is depressed, even from actual buyers.

So, at the risk of not being able to make profitable sales on Amazon while prices update, you'd pay $667 for 100 copies of your book, which means you'd start to see a profit after selling 49 copies of your book in person if you sell them for $15 each.

As a side note, if your book is enrolled in Expanded Distribution, then you won’t be able to set the price for our example book any lower than $10 because you would have to account for Amazon’s 60% discount on catalog sales. So then you’d

In some circumstances, that math may make sense for you. For example, if you are making direct sales from your website and are running low on inventory, but don’t want to risk delayed customer shipments or turning off advertising that is performing really well, then it might make sense to take advantage of Amazon Prime and get some stock of your book delivered in 2-4 days.

KDP Print Author Copies

The alternative that will make the most sense to the majority of us is to purchase author copies directly from KDP Print, rather than buying the books at retail from Amazon.

There are a few disadvantages; you have to pay for shipping, and your books won't arrive as quickly.

For a single author copy, you would have to pay the $4 printing fee plus $5-$10 for shipping. Let's assume that shipping is $6 for your book from KDP’s closest printing facility to where you live; this would basically be break-even with buying direct from Amazon, except that you only have to pay $10 up front, so all of the profit you'd earn would be immediately upon making the sale in person.

We aren't really concerned with single copies, however; we're interested in carrying some inventory and making more sales in person for this thought exercise, so we want to purchase 100 copies of our book. A realistic shipping price is probably going to be right around $60 for 100 copies, but let's round up to $100 for shipping for easier math, which means it would cost an extra $1 per copy of your book for shipping, instead of the $6 discount you give Amazon off of the retail price.

That means you would be spending $400 for 100 copies of your book, plus $100 to ship it to you, for a total cost of $500 up front. You would start to see a profit after selling 33 copies of your book in person.

And of course, the second disadvantage of ordering your books through KDP Print is how long it may take for your books to arrive. KDP Print prioritizes printing customer orders first, which will usually print within 1-3 days of the order being placed.

Author copies, however, are placed at the back of the queue as capacity allows, which means it’s not unusual to take a week or more before your books get printed, and maybe even 3+ weeks during busy seasons such as leading into the winter holiday season.

If you are ordering books through KDP Print, then most of your quantity discount is going to be dependent on more efficient shipping costs, and those can vary based on where you are shipping to and how many boxes are required to ship your books.

However, in nearly all circumstances, your books will be cheaper to obtain than they would by buying them at retail, even with the shipping costs factored in.

Ingram Spark

A third option for obtaining your own inventory of books is to use Ingram Spark instead of KDP Print. If you are using your own ISBN, rather than a free one provided by KDP, then you could distribute your book through Ingram Spark and have more control over your wholesale discount that you offer and get better reach outside of Amazon.

Ingram Spark's pricing is pretty close to KDP Print's pricing, so your book will most likely cost about the same (maybe a little more, maybe a little less.) You would be able to get a discount between 2% and 15% on 100 or more copies being printed at once, and depending on where you live, the shipping may be more or less than you are used to. Basically, if you upload your book, you can then see which company is more cost effective for getting author copies and then go with them.

Assuming that the price is reasonably similar, there are two advantages of using Ingram Spark. The first is that while you do have to pay for your print proof copies (same as for KDP Print), you can resell those proofs later if you want. Ingram Spark doesn't put a large “NOT FOR RESALE” badge over the cover like KDP Print does.

But since we're talking about bulk inventory, Ingram Spark will also be faster to print and ship your books than KDP Print. KDP Print only prints author copies when they have spare capacity in their printing facility. Sometimes, that might be the same day you place your order, and you'll get your books reasonably quickly. Other times, especially in late Autumn as the holidays approach, they may not have capacity for days or even weeks at a time, and your author copy shipment may be delayed by quite a bit.

Ingram Spark will print and ship your books in the order that they receive it.

If you are purchasing enough bulk orders of your books from Ingram Spark and have enough titles in your catalog, you may also qualify to work through Lightning Source, which may offer better terms and account features and provide an option to scale more easily in the future. Ingram Spark was created as a more small- and independent-publisher friendly alternative to their Lightning Source program.

Alternative Printers

There are other options that you could look into for printing your books. Realistically, it will be difficult to find better pricing than KDP Print or Ingram Spark for most printers with one notable exception for low quantities, of which 100 books would be considered a small quantity.

There are some print on demand options like Lulu or Blurb, and those usually come at a premium cost (though they both have excellent print quality.) Lulu also has local printers around the world for easier shipping opportunities depending on where you live.

You could also use a dedicated print shop, like 48 Hour Books or somebody local to you.

Realistically, it will probably cost more to print the books at low quantities like 100 books for a local printer, so while it's an option it's probably not realistic. It doesn't hurt to get a quote, though, and then you don't have to deal with shipping costs at all if you are able to get your books in person.

Then there's BookVault. If you are in the UK, they are a great option for local printing and have a lot of bespoke options and are a great choice for special editions of your books. Even in other countries like the US, they may actually come to a lower printing cost than either KDP Print or Ingram Spark and the quality is also really good.

When ordering books from their UK printing facilities, they also offer quantity discounts on 100 or more copies of between 3% and 10%.

There is a setup fee for your books that would need to be factored in (about £20 or $25 for a single title, though there are discounts available), so it may not be worthwhile for a one time purchase. It is worth getting a quote and seeing how much the printing cost plus shipping would be and if you could save some money.

Other Considerations and Costs

There are some other cost considerations to consider no matter who you are using to print your author copies.

Depending on where you live, you may need to provide a reseller certificate if you don’t want to have to pay sales tax or VAT up front. There may also be payment processing fees if you are accepting credit card or app payments.

If you are shipping between different countries, there could be currency or foreign exchange fees that could eat into your bottom line, and cross-border shipments could incur customs or VAT costs and delays.

If you are bulk ordering inventory, you’ll need to get them shipped directly to a venue or else will need to find storage space and be able to transport your books to where they need to go, which can also add to additional costs.

You will also want to watch out for any damaged or defective books. No matter how a book is printed, there can always be damage from improper handling or accidents, and for print on demand you can sometimes wind up with printing defects such as missing or additional pages or the incorrect book matched to your cover. Sometimes, you can get those copies replaced, but not always.

Finally, you will probably want to choose a primary printer for your in-person author copies, because minor printing variations between the different printing companies would stand out much more if you had copies next to each other.

Choosing the Right Option

For most authors stocking 50–200 copies, KDP Print author copies will usually deliver the best margin with the least cash up front. If IngramSpark quotes a lower landed unit cost or faster turnaround to your location, use them instead.

Buying retail copies from Amazon only makes sense for very small, urgent needs (think 1–5 copies) when you can float the retail cost until royalties pay out. Be cautious about temporarily dropping your Amazon list price, especially if you use Expanded Distribution.

If you regularly need 300–500+ copies and can store them, get quotes from short‑run digital or offset printers; you may beat POD unit costs at scale.

A quick decision workflow:

1. Get quotes: Price out 50, 100, and 200 copies from KDP and IngramSpark to your ship-to address. Note print, shipping, taxes, and any setup fees.
2. Compute landed unit cost: (print cost × qty + shipping + taxes + setup fees) ÷ qty.
3. Estimate per-copy event revenue: your selling price minus card/app fees and any sales tax you must remit.
4. Compare margins and lead times: pick the vendor with the best margin that can meet your deadline; order 10% extra to cover damages/defects.
5. Plan buffers: order 2–3 weeks ahead in normal periods and 4–6 weeks ahead in Q4. Stick with one printer for consistent appearance.

Handy formulas:

• Landed unit cost = (all costs to your door) ÷ quantity
• Per-copy profit at events = sale price − payment fees − sales tax remitted − landed unit cost
• Break-even copies = upfront spend ÷ per-copy profit

Use our free calculator to plug in your numbers and see your true margin and break‑even by quantity. If you want a second set of eyes, or help tailoring the math to multiple formats or price points, reach out and we’ll walk through it with you.