How To Plan Future Book Releases Across KDP and IngramSpark

Illustrated timeline graphic titled “Book Release Timeline” showing a children’s book moving through three release stages across several months: hardcover release in month 1, softcover release in months 2–3, and ebook digital release in months 4–5. A horizontal timeline arrow runs beneath three copies of the same book cover. Text at the bottom reads: “Different Platforms. Different Timelines.”


Like a lot of my blog posts, I didn’t plan to write about release timelines. I just wanted my books to line up in a way that made sense now that I have translations in the mix too. 

(See Why Human Translators Matter in an AI World about how we're tackling translations for our picture books.)

When I first started out and still today, it's hardcovers first, then softcovers later. It used to be weeks later but now it's months later when I have an open slot, then the next title. Spacing the books out this way creates a steadier flow across the calendar and gives me more time to focus on actually making the books instead of constantly uploading files like I was through much of 2025.

Once I started planning releases further ahead, the differences between the platforms became much more noticeable. (See, What is Print-On-Demand and Why We Use It)

Spacing out the releases

This year, I've started separating my formats more intentionally. Hardcover first, then the matching softcover months later it doesn't matter if those are English, French, Spanish or German books (or future languages). That alone fills in the calendar in a much more natural way and avoids everything landing at once and looks great on paper. It also means I need to plan further ahead compared to what I was doing last year. 

Now I don't think just the next upload, but multiple months out across the different series we're building.

Where the difference showed up

Amazon KDP Future Print Book Dates

With Amazon KDP, I ran into a limit fairly quickly that I hadn't seen on IngramSpark. I couldn’t push my release dates as far into the future as I wanted as they max out the publish date to 90 days on their print-on-demand books. That changes the workflow as I've found that uploading to KDP needs to be done first for the same ISBN (in this case softcover picture books). So even if I have the files to upload, I can’t set everything up in advance and leave it. I have to keep going back in and adding the next release as I move forward based on the restrictions of their calendars.

With IngramSpark, I have more flexibility to schedule further ahead and that's perfect for the hardcovers (KDP can't print my hardcover picture books). 

So even though I’m uploading the same books, I’m not managing them the same way and have to set reminders that I can upload the softcover into KDP then IngramSpark based on their timelines.

The publish and release date itself isn’t the same

Another thing I didn’t expect is that the release date doesn’t behave the same way on both platforms. On KDP, the publish date is effectively when the book becomes available to buy. On IngramSpark, there’s a distinction between when the book is published in their system and when it becomes available for purchase and you can manage those separately. 

What I’m doing now

I’m still using the same rollout plan, but I’m treating each platform differently behind the scenes. IngramSpark holds the longer timeline. That’s where I can place books further out for books that do not have the same ISBN on KDP. KDP's timelines is causing me to pause the softcovers being uploaded as far out as I'd like to go. I add upcoming releases in stages so everything stays within their window.

It wasn’t something I expected to spend time thinking about when I first started publishing. But once I stopped treating each book as a one-off project and started building a real release calendar across multiple series and languages, the differences between the platforms became much harder to ignore.

Where to check current allowed scheduled release dates

Since these platforms update things over time, it’s worth checking their own pages:

I’ll be sure to update this if anything changes.

This only came up because I stopped treating each book as a one-off as more titles and series have developed plus, of course, translations, and started building a full release calendar. Once I did that, the differences between platforms weren’t subtle anymore.


You can explore all of our current titles on our Books Page.

If you'd like to help share our works, visit our Libraries Page for circulation details and ISBNs.

Our books are available through major retailers including Chapters, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, and Waterstones.


Location: Canada

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