What IngramSpark's February Fee Hike Costs You Per Title

IngramSpark raised its distribution fee from 1.5% to 1.875% of list price on February 1, 2026. The change shipped quietly in a portal update. Most indie authors noticed it during a royalty reconciliation a week later.

That 0.375-point spread sounds small. On a single $19.95 paperback, it's about seven cents. On a 5,000-copy run, it's roughly $375. On 10,000 copies you're at $750, and that's before you compare against KDP's flat trim-size print pricing, which did not change.

The math is genuinely closer now than it was a year ago. Three patterns are emerging in how authors are responding:

1. If your book sells primarily through Amazon, KDP-exclusive starts looking better. Lower print costs, no distribution fee, and Kindle Unlimited page-read income on the side.
2. If your book sells through indie bookstores or libraries, IngramSpark wholesale is still the only real path. The fee hike is a tax you pay for being on Edelweiss and in the Ingram catalog.
3. If you're publishing a business book or a hardcover, the fee math is dwarfed by short-run hardcover production cost, which Ingram still does well, so you stay.

Draft2Digital raised its print costs in lockstep on the same day. So the workaround of running Ingram for distribution and D2D for print is a wash.

If you have a title coming out in 2026, build the spread into your unit economics before you set list price. A book priced at $16.99 with the old math may need to be $17.99 to preserve net royalty. That's a fine adjustment for fiction. It's an awkward conversation for a corporate gift book where the price is on the back cover.

Authors with backlists should pull a six-month royalty report and compare net per copy before and after Feb 1. If you sold under 200 copies of a title, the change is rounding. If you sold 2,000 or more, it's worth knowing exactly what the new number is before you order another print run.