Printing in more than one country
A print-on-demand book is not sitting in a warehouse. Nothing is printed until someone orders it, and when they do, the order is routed to a production facility that can serve their address. Order the same title from two countries and two different machines make two different copies, days apart, from the same file.
That is the whole mechanism, and almost everything authors find confusing about international printing follows from it.
What "global distribution" actually means
It is a listing and routing arrangement, not a shipment. Switching it on adds your book to catalogs that retailers in other territories can order from, and tells the printer it may produce your book for those regions.
What it does not mean is just as important. It is not a promise that copies exist anywhere. It is not a promise that every retailer in a territory will list the book, because retailers choose what to list. And it is not a guarantee that a buyer's copy is made in their own country — routing depends on where the printer has capacity for that binding and paper, not on where the reader lives.
The settings that decide all this live in your printer and distribution accounts, per title. Set them deliberately, and check them again after you add a second sales channel. Where to print: KDP, IngramSpark, Lulu and B&N Press covers how the channels overlap.
Why the same file looks different from two plants
Nothing changed in your PDF. The variables are physical.
- Press calibration. Every machine is calibrated to a tolerance, not to another machine. Two presses in spec can still lay down measurably different ink density, and a single press drifts between calibrations.
- Paper batch. Sheets are not one color. Batch, mill and region all move the white point slightly, and a cover printed on a warmer sheet reads warmer everywhere, in every color on it.
- Lamination. Gloss and matte films vary by batch and supplier, and finish changes perceived color — matte reads flatter and slightly lighter than the same ink under gloss.
- Trimming. Cutting is accurate to a tolerance too. A fraction of a millimeter of drift moves where a full-bleed image is cut, which is visible if something important sits near the edge.
Deep solid colors, large gradients and skin tones show all of this most. A cover built from flat mid-tones shows almost none of it.
What tolerance is normal
No printer commits to matching your screen, and none commits to matching another facility exactly. Treat as normal: a slight overall warm or cool shift, a visible difference between two paper whites, small variation in where the trim falls, and minor differences in finish.
Treat as a real problem: spine text landing on the front cover, an image cut far past where you placed it, text crowding the gutter, a missing or substituted font, or a spine visibly too wide or narrow for the block.
The test that separates them is repeatability. Plant variation differs copy to copy and plant to plant. A file or specification error reproduces on every copy from every facility, because the press is doing exactly what the file says. The proof came back wrong. Now what? works through that diagnosis.
In the Cover Maker. Standard bleed is 0.125 in on the outside edges and the safe area sits about 0.25 in inside the trim. The live guides show both while you work, so nothing that matters ends up close enough to the cut for a plant's trim tolerance to reach it. Start a book → · about the Cover Maker
Paper is a regional question
Paper stock availability differs by region. A paper color, weight or finish offered in one market may not exist at a facility serving another, and where an option is unavailable the printer substitutes what it has or declines to produce that configuration there.
This is not only a look-and-feel matter, because paper is an input to the spine. On KDP's own figures, white bulks at 0.002252 in per page and cream at 0.0025 in — so a 300-page book is about 0.074 in, nearly 2 mm, thicker in cream. Change the paper and the spine width changes with it.
So choose paper as a specification, record what you chose, and use the same choice everywhere you can. White or cream paper? covers the choice itself, and Paper weight, cover finish, and how the book feels covers finish.
Listed is not the same as quick to get
A book can be perfectly available in a secondary market and still take two weeks to arrive. The order may route to a facility in another country and ship internationally, or wait behind local capacity for that binding.
That is normal for print-on-demand and it is not something you can fix in the file. What you can do is not promise a launch-day delivery in a market you have not tested, and not read a slow secondary market as a sign that something is broken.
The practical advice
- Order a proof in your main market. That is the copy that represents what most of your readers will receive. Read Order the proof. Then read it in daylight before you order.
- Order a second market's copy only if that market matters commercially. Otherwise you are paying to inspect a difference you have already decided to accept.
- Do not chase small color differences between plants. Adjusting a file to correct for one facility's shift makes it wrong at every other facility, and you cannot converge on a target that moves.
- Keep one file. Per-country versions multiply proofs, versions and mistakes, and they are the reason an author eventually uploads the wrong cover to the wrong store. One design, one interior, re-cut per printer and binding.
- Fix only what repeats. If it is on every copy, it is yours. If it is on one copy, it is the day the machine had.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Metric trim sizes, and books printed outside the US · More: Where to print: KDP, IngramSpark, Lulu and B&N Press · Order the proof. Then read it in daylight · The proof came back wrong. Now what?