BOOKVAULT: Why I’m Never Using it Again

Recently, I published my middle grade fantasy novel, Ophelia Brown and the Unseen. Although I love the way the book turned out and I’m incredibly proud of it, I will not be using the same company to print my books in the future. This is a (rather lengthy) post detailing why, for the sake of other authors, and also for anyone interested in what exactly “went wrong” with my publishing process.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and say that I had ONLY negative experiences with BookVault, but I am gonna be honest and say that the majority of my experiences with BookVault were negative. Before we dive into that, though, let’s talk positives.

1. The quality
   • Very good quality books! I held it in my hands and immediately thought “THIS FEELS EXACTLY LIKE A REAL BOOK!!”
2. So many options
   • I do really think that BookVault would be a WONDERFUL option for people planning on doing special editions. I wanted to try using them for just regular editions, though, and I really feel like they fell flat. But we’ll get into that in a minute.
3. Good customer service
   • I had a LOT of problems, so I had a LOT of emails going back and forth with them. They were always professional, quick to respond (within 24 hours), and handled my issues relatively effectively (minus the copyright page problem).

That is about all I have to say on the positives side. Let’s get into the problems that I had with BookVault, why I won’t be using them anymore, and why I’d caution others from using them.

1: Hidden Fees

On their website, they claim to have no hidden fees. Except that they require you to send copies of your books to the British Library and the Agency for Legal Deposit Libraries, the cost of which totaled an extra $44.58. That might not seem like a lot to some people, but to me it certainly is, especially because it’s not an optional charge. It’s a charge that’s thrown on you unexpectedly once you’ve already paid to have your title with them and officially published your book.

2: Unavailable on Amazon

My book came out on August 1 and it was unavailable on Amazon until I manually put it in through my KDP account a couple weeks later* (I gave up waiting for them to do it). According to BookVault, it could have taken as long as 6 weeks for it to be available. I thought that I had just overlooked this fact and that it was listed on their website, but looking back at the page, it actually doesn’t have that information there, which is kind of shady. It’s in the information once you’ve set up your account, but not beforehand.

*I’d also like to note that the only sales I’ve made are through Amazon, my own personal website, and in-person sales. The Great British Bookshop has made 0 sales, and sales via BookVault in general are at a whopping 0. So there’s no advantage to having it through them or their website.

3: Unreliable Shipping Speeds

One of the early proof copies I ordered took 20 days just to list as printing and then another few days to actually print and ship to me. Other than that, I didn’t have any issues necessarily, except that I was promised my reprinted 50 copies of Ophelia Brown and the Unseen would arrive before my launch day and that didn’t happen.

4: The Copyright Page Fiasco

Okay. This is one of the two big ones.

In case you’re unaware, BookVault does the printing of copyright pages themselves. This might only be for the copies they assign the ISBN to – I’m not totally sure, as I’m not going to be using them again, so I won’t have the chance to find out. Throughout all my proof-copy ordering, my book arrived without a copyright page. Since I’d never used them before, I thought, at first, that it was just a thing with proof copies. But by the second to last one, I sent them an email asking about it. They informed me they had some kind of issue with it, but assured me it would be handled.

I ordered another proof copy. It didn’t have a copyright page. I triple checked to make sure this wouldn’t happen when I bought my copies to sell, and they assured me it wouldn’t.

Fast forward again. My books arrived! 50 copies, ready to sell. Except they weren’t. They still didn’t have a copyright page.

Obviously, I was a little ticked off. I emailed them again and asked for them to either refund me or send me 50 more copies with the copyright page included. They handled it professionally and let me choose if I wanted a refund or 50 more copies. I chose 50 more copies, and asked for them to please be sent by August 1st. I was assured they would.

Thankfully, those 50 copies did arrive with the copyright page (and proper barcode). It’s ugly, quite frankly, but it’s there. They did not, however, arrive on time.

At that point, I just had to kind of take the wins I could get. I was mad, but it was fine.

This is one of the top things that made me decide not to use them again. I can’t trust that the product will even arrive in the right condition, let alone on time. So why use them again when I’ve never had a negative experience with Amazon?

5: Issues Connecting to Website

BookVault, as previously mentioned, does not automatically make the book available on Amazon (which I didn’t know until 2-3 weeks before my publication date). I was a bit upset about that, but it wasn’t a huge deal. What was a huge deal was their issue making the book available for purchase on time.

Ophelia Brown was available on their website on time, but that’s the only place it was. I had connected it to my websites (author and publisher) a month in advance. It said it was “out of stock” from the beginning, but I just thought that was because it couldn’t do pre-orders through websites. Technically it should’ve been able to, but I didn’t trust their word at this point, so I didn’t think anything of it.

Then comes the launch day. August 1st. I wake up excited and ready to start the day!

…Except nobody can actually buy my book. Unless they want to buy it for $2 extra PLUS shipping costs through The Great British Bookshop.

It still claims to be out of stock on both my websites. I worked from 6:00 a.m. until 11:00 a.m. trying to fix this, to no avail. I watched multiple videos, tried everything I could think of, and it did nothing.

When BookVault finally got back to me (the next day) they informed me that “they would always advise ensuring your website is setup and tests put through prior to launch just incase there are any setup issues” (which I had done. I just didn’t know what “right” was supposed to look like, because I’d never done this before. Since I followed their instructions step-by-step, I just assumed it would work correctly, which I guess was my error). They then basically told me to turn it off and back on again. They disconnected the product from the store on their end (which I was unable to do, because I couldn’t edit anything in the BookVault website) and then I deleted the product and recreated it (using a different method than I had originally). 

That worked. A day too late.

Conclusions…

Basically, all of that is to say, I don’t suggest going with BookVault, and I won’t be using them again unless I choose to do special edition versions. There’s really no more availability than Amazon has, when it all breaks down, and they can’t even promise that they’ll get the book on the main major retailer that most people buy their books from (Amazon).

I do admit that some of the issues I had were completely because of my own human error. But some things were entirely out of my hands, very frustrating, and not worth the hassle to me.

I wanted to go with them in the first place because I didn’t like all the negative things I’d heard about Ingramspark and their customer service, and I wanted to try going wide instead of just selling through Amazon. I also hadn’t heard a negative word about BookVault…which is why I wanted to share my experience.

I’m not trying to drag them. I don’t hate them or anything, and I hope as time goes on they’ll continue to improve their system so I can give them a second shot. But I had only heard good things about BookVault, from multiple sources that I trusted, and my experience just didn’t line up with what they claimed BookVault was. So I wanted to add my voice into the mix to help more people make good, educated decisions for themselves on who they publish their books through.

Have you used BookVault? Was your experience positive or negative? Am I just absolutely crazy, or…? Let me know in the comments!