Posts Tagged ‘CreateSpace’
Adding Your Book to Amazon’s Search Inside! Program
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on October 27th, 2009
If you’ve perused Amazon’s bookstore, you’ve no doubt seen the Search Inside! feature, where you can see samples of the book. For independent publishers and authors, here’s the trick to add this nifty marketing feature to the Amazon catalog pages for your printed books (note: you do not need this for Kindle books).
Before I go further, if you used Amazon’s CreateSpace, you’re already set: you need do nothing extra for the Search Inside! feature to be added. That’s part of the CreateSpace “package,” which is definitely nice.
If you’re using an independent printer, such as Lightning Source, Inc. (LSI), the first thing you need to do, assuming your book is already up in the Amazon catalog, is to get an Amazon Seller Central account. Once you get that, you’ll need to have a PDF copy of your book – just make sure to follow the guidelines! If you click on the Search Inside the Book tab, there’s some info and a link on the right hand side for PDF guidelines.
Once you get the file uploaded, Amazon takes care of the rest! The Search Inside! feature for your book won’t show up right away: give it two to three weeks to appear. If you need tech support or assistance, there’s contact information for technical support from a link at the bottom of the web pages.
Holdouts for Kindle and Print Book Discounts on Amazon: Mobipocket and Lightning Source
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on August 5th, 2009
We don’t know why Amazon has stopped discounting books published by independent authors and publishers, but it has. If you look in the Kindle Store or the greater Amazon bookstore, you’ll see that those nice red discount prices have disappeared from a great many titles. We can speculate on why, but it’s just that: speculation. The real reasons are only going to be discussed in Amazon board meetings.
The bottom line is that all of us – authors, publishers, and readers – are at the mercy of whatever Amazon decides to do pricing-wise. I’m not saying Amazon is “bad,” as I’m sure they’re trying to do whatever is best for their bottom line. But the bottom line for you and me is that customers are being asked to pay higher prices for books that have often been very inexpensive to start with, and authors and publishers are making less money (and it wasn’t a lot to start with, in most cases).
Right now, the only two avenues to getting discount prices for Kindle and print for self- or small-press publishers and authors that I see are publishing through Mobipocket for distribution to the Kindle Store, and Lightning Source, Inc. (LSI) for print. It looks like Amazon has discontinued its discounts across the board on titles published through its own direct services, including the Digital Text Platform for Kindle, CreateSpace, and BookSurge. Curiously, Mobipocket is owned by Amazon, but titles published through them to the Kindle Store are still being discounted – hopefully that will continue.
The downside is that for Mobipocket-based sales for Kindle, sales are registered through Amazon’s Vendor Central, which is pretty clunky and doesn’t give an ongoing tally of sales – monthly reports only. And LSI is more expensive ($212, I believe, including an ISBN) to set up; but it has wider distribution – including B&N – and the author/publisher has control of the retailer discount.
As a consumer, a lot of that may not mean anything to you, so let me show you the difference in a way your pocketbook will clearly understand. For the Kindle, there are two versions of my novel In Her Name (Omnibus Edition) now available in the Kindle store. The one published through Amazon’s DTP is currently priced at $8.99 – with no discount. The version distributed from Mobipocket is now priced at $7.19, which is 20% off. As a consumer, which are you going to want to buy? And if you had a choice between two different books that had similar appeal and the same list price, but one is discounted 20%, which are you going to get? All things being equal, the cheaper one, of course!
So, the beat goes on. Or beating, whichever you prefer. But these are some things I thought that you should be aware of, whether you’re a consumer or author/publisher.
First Proof of In Her Name: Empire
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in My Books on April 7th, 2009
The first proof copy of In Her Name: Empire is on it’s way from CreateSpace! I can hardly wait to see how it looks.
And once that’s approved and ready to go, I’ll finalize the Amazon Kindle and Mobippcket versions for publication. Yay!
Getting an Account with Lightning Source
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on January 30th, 2009
For those who may be thinking about Lightning Source (LSI), I wanted to give you a quick rundown on what it takes to at least get your foot in the door and get an account.
The first thing you need to keep in mind is that Lightning Source is not a path for those who don’t know how or aren’t willing to do all the in-depth pre-press work. This company is geared toward working with publishers who have technical people working the nuts and bolts of getting a book to press. They’re willing to work with authors, as well, as long as you really understand what you’re getting into.
So, what’s involved? First, assuming you’re up for the technical side of it, you log onto their site and go through the account creation process. A few things you’ll need up front: your company information; ISBN prefix from at least one of your ISBNs; charge card information so they can charge the necessary fees when you get that far; and bank account information (account number and routing number) for where your royalties will go. As far as I know, they don’t verify that you’re a company, but if you’ve gone this far in getting your book published, you’re silly if you don’t at least set up a sole proprietorship or LLC so you can write off your business expenses (there are lots of other good reasons to do this as a business, but that one goes directly to your wallet or pocketbook). Read the rest of this entry »
Print On Demand Options, Part 4: Lightning Source
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on January 28th, 2009
Beyond just getting your book on Amazon, it’s now time to look at the bigger picture.
Amazon is a giant, but they aren’t the only game in town, by far. The other on-line (and storefront) biggie is Barnes & Noble, plus the other thousands of other “smaller” chains and independent bookstores out there.
If you decided to go with a traditional POD like Outskirts Press, their upper-tier plans offer distribution to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Ingram, and Baker & Taylor. Those last two are key, because they’re the big-boy distributors to thousands of booksellers. I want access to those distribution channels, but I can’t get there through Lulu or CreateSpace (and as I noted previously, the price model with traditional PODs won’t work for a book as long as mine). BookSurge is also not an option, in my opinion, because they don’t have a relationship with Ingram. I wonder if that could be because Ingram owns Lightning Source, which is BookSurge’s main competition. Hmmm…
And that brings us to the focus of this post: Lightning Source. Now, for those who don’t know, Lightning Source is one of the world’s largest – if not the largest – print on demand company (with operations in the U.S. and U.K.) that is used by most POD publishers – but not Amazon’s CreateSpace – to actually print the books. But they don’t offer the “author friendly” services of the traditional PODs or Lulu: if you want to go to Lightning Source as an independent author/publisher, you can, but they put up lots of caveats and warnings that this is not a venture for the faint of heart! Read the rest of this entry »
Print On Demand Options, Part 3: CreateSpace
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on January 24th, 2009
At first glance, CreateSpace has a lot of similarities to Lulu: it’s pretty user friendly, the author uploads his/her own files, and so on. They don’t offer extra services like Lulu does, however: if you need those (file formatting, etc.) they direct you to Amazon’s BookSurge. Why? Because CreateSpace is an Amazon company, as well! In fact, they share the same printer facilities.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
