So, what does CreateSpace do for you? In short, if you go through them you can – theoretically – get your book onto Amazon at a lower price point than you probably could otherwise. Let’s take a look:

CreateSpace has two plans, basic (no up front fee) and Pro, which is currently $39. If you’re at all serious about marketing your book, for heaven’s sake pay the fee and go Pro! For one thing, if you’re being smart about your publishing efforts you’re doing it as a business entity so you can write the costs off on your taxes. For another, you don’t have to sell tons of copies to recoup that cost. But the difference it makes in the royalty you earn is huge.

Using the same price model for my book – 678 pages at a retail price of $21.95 – that we used for the Lulu marketplace example, under the standard CreateSpace plan (free) I’d make $2.50 on a CreateSpace “E-store” sale, but couldn’t put it on Amazon (I’d lose $1.89!). [Note: If you've got MS Excel, they've got a nifty little price calculator.]

But with the pro plan, my royalties shoot up to $7.90 for the E-store and $3.51 on Amazon. Do the math, my friends, and spend the $39 up front if you’re going to use CreateSpace!

The other positive angle of CreateSpace is that if you want to buy books yourself to sell on your web site, give away for reviews, etc., the cost under the pro plan is a lot less: for my book, the price I’d pay under the pro plan would be $9.66, and under the “free” standard plan would be $15.06 (compared to $18.09 at Lulu).

As for the ISBN, you can use your own or they’ll assign one – for free. That’s a nice touch, but PLEASE READ the fine print in their FAQ:

A: Yes. Please note, however, that if CreateSpace assigns an ISBN to your book, this ISBN belongs to CreateSpace and may not be used to publish your book with another publisher.

You may or may not care about this, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Finally, all books published through CreateSpace are eligible for Amazon’s “Search Inside The Book” program, which is nice (but not exclusive to CreateSpace, so don’t let that sway you).

Now, the major downside is that CreateSpace follows the same distribution model as BookSurge: your book will find its way to a number of on-line stores (the various Amazon stores, Target, and some others), but won’t appear in Barnes & Noble. The main distribution channel is Baker & Taylor (which typically – but not exclusively – distributes to libraries and educational institutions), but not Ingram, which is where most bookstores get their books from.

So, the bottom line for CreateSpace to me is that it’s a viable alternative to get your book onto Amazon without bleeding to death from overhead costs to your publisher, or paying the higher fees necessary to get into Lightning Source (which we’ll get to later). But you’ll need to decide if you want them to control your ISBN, or just spring for the extra $125 and buy one direct from Bowker.

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