Category CreateSpace

Jan 12 2014

Which Should Come First—Kindle or Paperback?

First

Unless you have a book where Kindle formatting is impractical, you should make both Kindle and paperback editions of your book.

Benefits of the Kindle Edition

  • You can make the Kindle edition much more affordable. If your price is $2.99 or higher, you can still draw a high royalty (70% minus delivery costs).
  • Many customers only read e-books.
  • It’s much cheaper for you to send out review copies.
  • There is no extra charge for color.

One reason not to create an e-book is if you have a book where this is impractical, such as a workbook where the reader needs to write down answers.

You should also consider publishing your e-book with Nook, Smashwords, Kobo, etc. The only reason not to do so if you feel that the benefits of enrolling in KDP Select outweigh the benefits of having your e-book available with several e-book retailers.

Benefits of the Paperback Edition

  • Some customers prefer to read print books.
  • Amazon will show your Kindle edition as a percentage off compared to the paperback edition (once the two editions are linked together).
  • Kindle’s new MatchBook program encourages the sale of both editions.
  • It’s convenient to edit your writing with the printed proof.
  • You get to experience the incredible joy of holding your baby in your hands.
  • Local bookstores and other retailers might be willing to stock your book. If nothing else, your friends and family will believe you really are an author.

Which Should You Publish First?

Once you decide to make both Kindle and paperback editions, you must decide which edition to publish first.

Most authors simply publish each edition as soon as it’s ready. Some authors prefer to format e-books and have the Kindle edition ready first; others love the art of formatting pages and have the paperback edition ready first.

That’s not necessarily the best course. Suppose you had both editions prepared, but neither was published yet. What’s the best thing to do? Should you release them simultaneously? Or is there a reason to publish one edition first?

Some authors who plan this—rather than simply first publish whatever happens to be ready first—choose to arrange preorders for the paperback edition using Amazon Advantage. They use preorders as part of their strategy for building buzz for the book’s release, and to help foster a strong sales rank and prospects for early reviews when the book is released. They then release the Kindle edition when the paperback goes live.

Once you have both Kindle and paperback editions available, you can have them linked. This creates an interesting possibility that was recently mentioned in the CreateSpace community forum: If your Kindle edition is available for sale now and linked to a paperback edition that’s on preorder, any reviews left by Kindle customers should, theoretically, show on your paperback’s product page, since the reviews are linked together. (Paperback customers can’t review the paperback edition until it goes live.)

There are two good reasons not to release both editions simultaneously:

  1. You gain visibility by having a book in the Last 30 Days and Last 90 Days categories on Amazon. This is based on your publication date. (Tip: Don’t enter any publication date at CreateSpace. That way, your book’s publication date will be the day you click Approve Proof. This maximizes your book’s visibility with the new release search filters.) Release one book 90 days prior to the other and you get 180 days of new release visibility out of one book.
  2. You have the opportunity to create double-buzz. Build buzz for one edition. Then a month after its debut, you have two months to build buzz for the other edition if it’s going live 90 days after the first.

You could release the Kindle edition first. At the same time, setup preorders for the paperback edition. Arrange the paperback edition to go live 90 days after the release of the Kindle edition. Make the publication date of the paperback edition when it goes live, so you get a total of 180 days visibility in the Last 90 Days category.

If you’re one of those authors who can publish two books per year, you can use this method to always have a book listed under Last 90 Days.

Publishing Resources

I started this blog to provide free help with writing, publishing, and marketing. You can find many free articles by clicking one of the following links:

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Follow me at WordPress, find my author page on Facebook, or connect with me through Twitter.

Dec 15 2013

Where Are Your CreateSpace Sales?

Trust

Every week, I see multiple questions on the CreateSpace community forum regarding “missing sales” and “reporting problems.” I also see blog posts and articles across the internet about this issue.

I have monitored my sales ranks and royalty reports for several different titles for five years, and I see a very close correspondence. I see no evidence of reporting issues. However, I am aware of various reasons for reporting delays.

When authors (and indie publishers) suspect that a royalty hasn’t been reported, very often it’s due to one of the following explanations.

Where Are Your Royalties?

(1) CreateSpace reports the royalty when the book is printed, not when it sells. (A couple of years ago it was the other way around, but not anymore.) Depending on sales volume and maintenance issues, sometimes the book prints the same day as it is sold while often it prints 2-3 days after it sells.

Therefore, most royalties show up within 2-3 days of the sale. However, there are significant exceptions, as noted below.

(2) Returns and exchanges are fairly common, even though returning a print book by mail seems inconvenient (it’s actually pretty easy and painless once a customer learns how), although cancellations are simple.

CreateSpace never shows a return or exchange on your royalty report. Rather, Amazon waits until the next order comes through and simply uses the returned (or canceled) book to fill that order. Since the book had been printed previously, you’ve already been paid the royalty.

So here’s what might happen. A customer buys a book and returns it. Now the author’s friend buys a book, but no royalty shows up. The author freaks out. But that’s because the author didn’t know about the return.

(3) This point probably accounts for most of the missing royalty concerns. Amazon sources occasional orders through third parties (instead of using CreateSpace). Perhaps this happens when CreateSpace is unable to keep up with demand, but there may also be other reasons.

When Amazon sources the order to a third party, the royalty doesn’t show up for 1-2 months (maybe even 3). CreateSpace reports the royalty when Expanded Distribution royalties are reported (which can take a couple of months). The royalty correctly shows as an Amazon royalty, but is reported when Expanded Distribution royalties are reported.

Note that this happens whether or not your book is enrolled in the Expanded Distribution channel.

Although I said it happens occasionally, it is significant. Every month, when Expanded Distribution royalties are reported, I see several other sales reported at around the same time (in both the US and the UK, so it happens with UK sales, too).

A couple of years ago, CreateSpace used to send us an email and report these royalties as an adjustment; this is how we know about this issue.

(4) If your book is enrolled in the Expanded Distribution channel, a customer may order the book through a third-party seller instead of Amazon. In this case, the royalty reports as an Expanded Distribution royalty in a couple of months.

(5) After you’ve sold some copies, it’s possible for customers who have your book to resell them on Amazon used. You don’t receive any royalty for such re-sales. For most books, customers tend to prefer to purchase new copies directly from Amazon, so this is unlikely. This is more likely with books that have very high list prices, or books that have sold numerous copies.

(6) Some people say that they bought your book, but either didn’t buy your book or they canceled the order (or the credit card didn’t go through). It happens.

(7) Amazon may choose to stock up on your title. When Amazon does this, CreateSpace prints several copies in advance. You’re paid when these copies are printed. When they subsequently sell, you don’t receive a royalty because you already have.

Two ways that this might apply to you are as follows.

About a week into December, CreateSpace prints several copies of the hottest sellers and ships them to Amazon. From the data I have available, it looks like if you sold about 4 or more copies per day (on average) at Amazon US in November, on around December 10 you may have noticed an order for 50 (or much more, depending) copies of your book. From around December 8 until the time at which Amazon runs out, you won’t see any royalties from what is ordinarily your hottest-selling book. (Last year, CreateSpace sent an email about this.)

Amazon may stock books in Canada in a similar manner, printing a few up front to stock in their warehouse. Therefore, you may see your sales rank change at Amazon Canada (any time of the year), but don’t see a royalty report (if your book was in stock in the warehouse in Canada, you were paid when the book was printed).

Transparency

This method of royalty reporting isn’t transparent. If the royalties instead always reported when a sale was made, it would be much easier to see the correspondence between sales and royalties.

Publishers who sell large numbers of books are more likely to see a close correspondence between sales and royalties. Authors who sell a small number of books each month are more likely to notice a couple of royalties that haven’t yet reported due to one of the above explanations.

(If you happen to have several orders on a day when Amazon is, for whatever reason, fulfilling them through a third party, then it can seem like many royalties are missing. Or if you suddenly had a large number of returns, it could seem this way.)

Trust

I use CreateSpace because I have come to trust Amazon through several years of experience dealing with Amazon because CreateSpace is an Amazon company. I suspect that many other authors use CreateSpace for a similar reason. (It’s not the only reason; e.g. it’s convenient and the prices are good, too.)

Amazon has a reputation to uphold. If there were any royalty reporting inaccuracies, publishers who sell thousands of books per month would see large discrepancies between sales ranks and royalty reporting, and there would be many more complaints out there.

You shouldn’t just trust, you should also verify. You can monitor your sales rank through Author Central, for example, and compare this to your royalty reports. After you sell hundreds of books, you’ll probably see that there is very good correspondence, but there may be occasional delays according to the reasons noted above.

If you’re concerned about a possible missing royalty, the best thing is to contact CreateSpace and inquire about it. If you can get the printing number from the last page from the customer, that will make it much easier to track the royalty.

If you don’t trust Amazon or CreateSpace, or you believe you’re missing royalties, you should consider looking for another print-on-demand service.

Personally, I would be more suspicious of other services. (However, Ingram’s two services, Lightning Source for small publishers and Ingram Spark for indie authors, I would be willing to trust.) Even if you publish traditionally, you must still have concerns about the accuracy of royalty reporting (in fact, I see articles about this online, too).

A CreateSpace Author

I’m Chris McMullen. I’ve published several paperbacks using CreateSpace since 2008 and I’m pleased with my decision to use CreateSpace. But you should decide for yourself.

Follow me at WordPress, like my author page on Facebook, or connect with me through Twitter.

I started this blog to provide free help with writing, publishing, and marketing. You can find many free articles by clicking one of the following links:

Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Dec 4 2013

CreateSpace Discount Codes—Suddenly Better

40 off

Amazon.com recently raised the qualifying total of eligible purchases from $25 to $35 in the US for Free Super Saver Shipping.

(Yes, this is significant for CreateSpace discount codes. You’ll see.)

When you reach the bottom of this post, you will find an incredible reward. No peeking!

In the past, many customers who were buying a $10 book would simply add a couple of more books to make the total $25 in order to qualify for free shipping. Now you need another $10 on top of that. Suddenly, for some customers it might be better to just buy one book with shipping than to spend $35 or more.

(Some customers do have Amazon Prime. They get free shipping on eligible purchases regardless of the total. Perhaps the price change will get a few more customers to give Amazon Prime a shot. However, many customers don’t have Amazon Prime. Those who don’t may be reluctant to purchase $35 worth of books all at once.)

So how does this relate to CreateSpace discount codes?

Until now, many customers would rather buy a book at Amazon.com with free shipping than get a discount at CreateSpace because shipping isn’t free at CreateSpace. The new Free Super Saver Shipping requirements change this to some extent.

Customers who would now pay for shipping at Amazon will also pay shipping at CreateSpace. With shipping charges being roughly equal, now a discount code at CreateSpace may entice customers to shop there.

(Another hurdle is that customers must sign up for an account at CreateSpace. That’s true of most shopping sites. They don’t have to publish a book. They just need to enter minimal information to place an order. If the discount is compelling, it will be worth the effort.)

Do you want customers to shop at your CreateSpace eStore? That’s a good question you must ask yourself:

  • The royalty rate is higher: 80% minus the author cost vs. 60% minus the author cost.
  • However, if you offer a discount code, this cuts into your royalty.
  • When customers buy your book at Amazon, it helps your sales rank. CreateSpace eStore sales don’t affect your sales rank.
  • If a customer buys your book through CreateSpace and leaves a review, the review will show as an unverified purchase.
  • Your book is probably on sale at Amazon. You may need to give 5 to 10% off just to compete. It may take 15% or more to entice customers over to your eStore.
  • Discount codes help you reach customers who wouldn’t pay full price. If you can target customers who wouldn’t buy your book at Amazon because of the price, offering them a discount of 20% or more may get you sales that you would ordinarily miss out on. (But if your discount is large, you may earn a smaller royalty than usual.)
  • Offering a discount at your eStore is a good way to create a short-term sale on your paperback. If you run an effective promotion for a short-term sale, you may succeed in gaining exposure. This might lead to more full-price sales at Amazon months down the road. There are some big IF’s here. Things might not work out this way.
  • For books that tend to sell more often as e-books than in print, a discount code may help to stimulate more paperback sales. (Now ask yourself if that’s something you want to do.)

European customers can probably get much better shipping rates by purchasing directly through Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, Amazon.es, or Amazon.it. They probably won’t be interested in your CreateSpace eStore if they have to pay international shipping charges.

Once you decide you would like to sell some books at your CreateSpace eStore, the next challenge is driving traffic there. Customers are very unlikely to discover it all on their own.

You must market your eStore and provide a link to it. An effective promotion can drive traffic there. One way to do this is to offer a compelling discount and be effective at spreading the word about it.

How do you make discount codes at CreateSpace?

  • Click on a book from your dashboard to open its project homepage.
  • Select ‘Channels’ on the ‘Distribute’ column.
  • Choose ‘Discount Codes’ under CreateSpace eStore.
  • Look for the ‘click here’ link in the paragraph above the table.
  • This will create a new code. Click ‘View Codes’ to see them all.
  • Copy and paste the code into the table (previous window).
  • Choose dollars off or percentage off.

Enter a ridiculous amount, like 99% off, and CS will tell you the maximum discount you can offer. This way, you don’t have to guess or figure it out yourself.

If you want to make a royalty on the sale, don’t choose your maximum discount. The smaller your discount, the greater your royalty.

Here is the formula for computing your eStore royalty:

(List price — discount) x 0.8 — author cost = royalty.

Example: List price = $7.99, author cost = $2.53, discount = 20%.

($7.99 — 20%) x 0.8 — $2.53

= ($7.99 —$1.60) x 0.8 — $2.53

= $6.39 x 0.8 — $2.53

= $5.11 — $2.53

= $2.58.

Make sure you are happy with your royalty. If you want to double-check your math, feel free to use the comments section below.

The link to your CreateSpace eStore will be https://www.createspace.com/titleid, where you must replace “titleid” with the numerical value for your title id (find it on your Member Dashboard). You can alternatively find the url for your eStore by clicking eStore Setup from the Channels page for your book (this will also let you customize your store).

Unfortunately, each book has its own store and you can’t consolidate them. However, you can add a Continue Shopping URL and Continue Shopping Text to let customers go back to your site, where they can conveniently find each of your books. (This reminds me, I haven’t done this yet…)

You can use the same discount code for multiple books. This makes it easy to put several books on sale for 20% off, for example. However, you must add the discount code to each book separately (use copy/paste).

Shipping is cheaper when purchasing multiple books. Encourage customers to buy multiple books at CreateSpace to reduce the per-book shipping charges. If you get together with other authors to create discount codes, promoting all of your discount codes may help to inspire multi-book sales and encourage customers to shop in your eStores.

A customer can use multiple discount codes on the same order, even if purchasing books by different authors. I tested this out. After logging out of my account, I went to two different CreateSpace eStores by different authors, added 3 books of one and 2 books of the other to my cart, and then entered my discount codes (save this until after adding all the books) one at a time. It correctly reduced the price when each code was entered.

(The discount code is only good on the book or books associated with it. John’s discount code won’t work on Sue’s book or vice-versa. But you can buy John’s and Sue’s books together, enter both discount codes, and CreateSpace will automatically discount each book correctly.)

If you decide to deactivate your discount code, return to the table of discount codes, check the box to delete the discount, and save your changes.

(As you probably know, CreateSpace discount codes are only good at CreateSpace. They don’t work at Amazon.)

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I promised an incredible reward.

This discount is good for 40% off all of my books at CreateSpace from now thru Tuesday, December 10. That’s crazy! Especially, since almost all of my books already have very competitive prices, $6.99 to $9.99, to begin with.

N6BSBJ36

It’s good on my self-publishing books, math workbooks, fourth dimension books, science books, puzzle books, golf books, and chess books.

Why? I’m participating in Read Tuesday—a Black Friday type of event just for book lovers. Hopefully, this amazing deal, 40% off my paperbacks, will help attract a little attention. (I sell half a dozen paperbacks for every e-book. If I ever start publishing fiction, maybe that will change some.)

If you want to use this discount code, you’ll need to find my eStore. Click here to find links to my books at CreateSpace. Enter the code N6BSBJ36 to save 40% when you’re ready to check out. Offer is good now thru Read Tuesday, December 10, 2013.

No limit. Buy as many of my books as you want at these amazing prices. These would make nice gifts. You can also save on per-book shipping charges with larger orders.

It’s not just my books. Many authors will be participating in Read Tuesday on December 10. Check it out.

Don’t call me Crazy Chris. Call it Crazy Read Tuesday.

Love books? Check out Read Tuesday, a Black Friday event just for books (all authors can sign up for free): website, Facebook page, Twitter

Chris McMullen, author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers, Volume 1 (formatting/publishing) and Volume 2 (packaging/marketing), Facebook page, Twitter

Nov 20 2013

Updating a Book at CreateSpace or Kindle Direct Publishing

Update

Today I will share my experience of updating books at Amazon. I recently updated Volume 1 of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers at CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). The paperback now includes a comprehensive 18-page index, and both the paperback and eBook include minor updates (such as mention of recent changes at CreateSpace, Amazon, and Kindle and correcting a few minor typos).

If you need to revise your interior or cover file at CreateSpace, first study your sales rank history (you want to know the time of the sales, not the time that the royalties report) to help choose the time where you’re least likely to sell books. Your book will be unavailable for sale while the new file is being reviewed, so you don’t want it to interfere with sales (unless your revision is more urgent, then you just have to do it immediately).

It takes approximately 12 hours for your files to be reviewed. The biggest concern is how Murphy’s law will get you:

  • One way is for CreateSpace to make changes to your cover, even when you didn’t change the cover file and it had been perfect. The best thing to do is resubmit your files for review and hope the next reviewer doesn’t make changes to your cover. This is another 12 hours. But if you call, they put in a request to research the problem, and this can take a couple of days (and may not even resolve the problem). There is, unfortunately, a worst-case scenario where your book is offline for several days. You just have to cross your fingers and hope it doesn’t happen to you. Let me add that this rarely happens, so most likely it won’t be an issue. I didn’t mean to scare you. Just prepare for the worst, then if something does happen, you won’t be surprised by it.
  • Another way is for you to make a minor revision, which winds up causing major changes to the layout of your book. You see, revising a phrase on page 3 could cause a crazy page break on page 8. Take the time to scroll page by page through your book in the Digital Proofer to ensure that there aren’t any crazy layout problems and you might be able to avoid this problem.
  • Then there is conservation of typos, whereby you introduce a new typo in the process of correcting others.
  • Finally, there is the Doh! moment when you click Approve Proof and suddenly remember something else that you should have done.

Very often, your book is again available for sale in 12 to 24 hours after uploading the revised file.

A crazy thing is that you can actually order the paperback directly from Amazon after the revision and receive the older version. This evidently happens when they already have your older version stocked in their warehouse (e.g. if there was a returned copy to resell or if they had ordered some in advance to stock up).

What I like about KDP is that your previous edition remains available for sale while your new eBook is in the process of publishing. This way you don’t miss out on any sales in the meantime.

I put a note on the copyright page indicating when the eBook was last updated. This way, when I viewed the Look Inside at Amazon, I knew I was looking at the updated version.

I like the way the Look Inside turned out. The Look Inside when viewing on a PC is the greatest formatting challenge. I went into the HTML in my effort to perfect this. The indents look large on the PC, but that’s because I set them to a percentage instead of a value in inches. That way, the indents will look fairly reasonable from a cell phone to an iPad.

Another thing to consider is updating the description. I updated the paperback description from CreateSpace, using the basic HTML that’s allowed to create linebreaks, boldface, italics, and bullets. I used Author Central to do this for the eBook. The paperback description begins with a note about the new index that has been added.

The paperback was ranked around 14,000 on Amazon, but has now dropped down to 45,000. It’s amazing what a 16-hour window of no availability can do to sales rank. On the other hand, the eBook edition jumped up to 40,000 from the 100,000’s. I guess when the paperback wasn’t available, people decided to go with the eBook (ordinarily, I sell many paperbacks for each eBook that sells).

For those who may have purchased the original paperback without the index, there is a free index available in PDF format online: https://chrismcmullen.wordpress.com/index-for-a-detailed-guide/

Now I need to work on an index for Volume 2.

Volume 1 eBook: http://amzn.com/B00AA5CJ7C

Volume 1 paperback: http://amzn.com/1480250201

Volume 2 eBook: http://amzn.com/B00CSDUP66

Volume 2 paperback: http://amzn.com/1484037243

Chris McMullen, author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers, Vol. 1 (formatting/publishing) and Vol. 2 (packaging/marketing), Facebook page, Twitter

Check out Read Tuesday (a Black Friday event just for books): website, Facebook page, Twitter

Nov 12 2013

Matte Finish Now Available at CreateSpace

Matte

CreateSpace now offers a matte finish cover in addition to the usual glossy cover. To learn more, visit the CreateSpace homepage and look under the login where it says “What’s New?” You’ll see a “Matte Cover Finish” note. Click the “Learn More” link. It will provide some more details, along with an example of when matte may be a good fit.

Glossy seems to be a better fit for my books, but I think I will try matte out at some point. It’s nice to have an option.

CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing have been making changes lately, with free Expanded Distribution and the new Countdown Tool. I’m liking these new changes. 🙂

Chris McMullen, author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers, Vol. 1 (formatting/publishing) and Vol. 2 (packaging/marketing), Facebook page (it’s new), Twitter

Check out Read Tuesday (a Black Friday event just for books): website, Facebook page, Twitter

Nov 5 2013

CreateSpace Expanded Distribution is FREE now

Free

When I opened my Member Dashboard at CreateSpace today, I saw a note in yellow at the top of the page telling me that the Expanded Distribution channel is now free.

I called CreateSpace to speak with a representative, who confirmed that it is now free.

So if you had been thinking about trying it out, but didn’t want to invest $25, now you can test it out for free. The advantages and disadvantages remain the same. What’s changed is that you don’t have to invest in this distribution channel.

If you recently added the expanded distribution, you might be a little bummed. I inquired about this.

Any expanded distribution purchases made since September 24, 2013 (if I was informed correctly) will be automatically refunded.

Chris McMullen, author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers, Vol. 1 (formatting/publishing) and Vol. 2 (packaging/marketing)

Oct 3 2013

CreateSpace & Kindle Keyword and Category Tips

The first “secret” is to visit the following KDP help page. This page tells you how to use different combinations of keywords to get your book listed in “special” categories. Once there, cick on a category from the list.

https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A200PDGPEIQX41

At CreateSpace, you can select one BISAC category and enter up to 5 keywords separated by commas in one of the publishing steps (same page as where you enter the description). At Kindle, you can select up to two categories and enter up to 7 keywords.

First, you should try searching for similar books on Amazon by keyword. As you start typing a keyword, common search results will pull up. This will help you see if customers ever search for the keywords that you’re trying. See which books similar to yours show up in the search results. Are the top searches all bestsellers, or have lesser known authors achieved visibility on these searches?

The most important thing about the keywords that you choose for your book is that they are a good fit for your book. That is, people searching for those books are very likely to be in your target audience. If not, the keyword is wasted. The second thing to consider is this: You want to balance popular keyword searches (i.e. ones that customers are likely to use frequently) with your chances of being visible in that search. Guess how many super-popular books show up if you simply search by “romance,” for example. You might be better off trying to find specific romance searches that are highly relevant for your book and which customers actually search for periodically.

Here is a handy keyword tip for CreateSpace: Don’t put spaces after your comma. The 25-character limit includes that space. So if you include a space after the comma, CreateSpace will reject an otherwise 25-character long keyword. (Obviously, you have to have spaces between separate words, just don’t put one after the comma that separates two keywords). Note that Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) doesn’t impose this limit on characters.

Words in your title, subtitle, author name, and imprint are already searchable, as is the word “book.” So, for example, if your subtitle has the word “mystery” in it, you’re wasting a keyword if you choose “mystery book” as a keyword because it would already be searchable that way. Plurals may make a slight difference in the order of search results, but you shouldn’t waste a keyword to change something like “soldier” to “soldiers,” for example (if you have one or the other, your book will show up in both searches, though not necessarily in the same place).

As you find books similar to yours—especially books where the author wasn’t well-known, but which are selling well—see which categories they are listed in. You want to choose the most relevant category for your book.

Although you can only choose one BISAC category at CreateSpace, you can actually get your book listed in two relevant categories at Amazon. After your book is published, simply contact member support and politely as CreateSpace if they could please add your book to one more category. First go to Amazon to find the browse path—something like Books > Romance > Contemporary.

You have to make a separate request for Amazon US and Amazon UK. Note that the category choices are different on both sites, so you have to find the category that you want on each site before making the request.

You can’t add your book to a second category in children’s or teen unless your BISAC category is in juvenile. If you want one category in children’s or teen and one category different from this, first choose your BISAC category within juvenile and then request to add the other category on Amazon.

When your book first goes live, it may be way down the list (several pages, perhaps) in search results. Through successful marketing, if your book gets searched more and sells after being searched, this will help to improve the book’s position in the ordering of search results. You can’t expect a new book to pass bestsellers in the results, can you? It takes time for Amazon’s program to establish relevance.

Chris McMullen, author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers, Vol. 1 (formatting/publishing) and Vol. 2 (packaging/marketing)

Aug 30 2013

Formatting the Book’s Blurb

You can include boldface, italics, and bullets (with dots or numbers) in your book’s description on Amazon.

If you publish a paperback book with CreateSpace, you can include this formatting in your description when you publish. There is an advantage of using CreateSpace for this if you enable the expanded distribution channel: Online booksellers may preserve this formatting. For example, Julie Harper has a CreateSpace published handwriting book at Barnes & Noble with such formatting (click the link below if you want to check it out, then scroll down to the Overview). The caveat is that you must use basic HTML. But don’t worry: Even if you don’t know anything about HTML, the only HTML that is allowed is so simple that you can do it easily. Hold your objection further: There is even an easy way out of the HTML all together, if you really must. You can find this solution at the end of this blog post.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cursive-handwriting-workbook-for-girls-julie-harper/1116092847?ean=9781490515717

If you have an eBook or didn’t publish your physical book with CreateSpace, you can still format your blurb using AuthorCentral. When you login to AuthorCentral, click the Books tab. Then click on your book to edit the description. You can format the boldface, italics, and bullets yourself, or you can choose to write the description with HTML, if you prefer. Use <b> for bold, as in <b>bold</b>, <i> for italics, as in <i>italics</i>, and <br /> to force a new line (the Enter key won’t have any effect on the output text in HTML mode; the <br/> command basically has the same effect as the Enter usually has). If you want to create a blank line, use the <br /> command twice. Strangely, the <br /> command has a funny space between the ‘br’ and slash in AuthorCentral’s HTML.

To create bullets, use <ul> for dots (unordered list) and <ol> for numbers (ordered list). Place <ul> at the beginning and </ul> at the end. For each bullet, place the text for that bullet between <li> and </li>.

EXAMPLE

<b>Here</b> is an <i>example</i>. <ul><li>This is the first point.</li><li>This is the second point.</li></ul>

The HTML above produces the following effect at AuthorCentral.

Here is an example.

  • This is the first point.
  • This is the second point.

Unfortunately, (almost all) fancier HTML won’t work in AuthorCentral.

I recommend formatting your blurb in three stages:

  1. First, type the blurb in Microsoft Word as just basic text (no formatting). Use Word’s built-in spellcheck and grammar-check tools to ensure that you didn’t make any obvious booboos. It’s probably easiest to edit your text in Word. Typos in the blurb tend to kill sales.
  2. Copy and paste the blurb from Word to Notepad. This will strip it of unwanted formatting. If you omit this step, you might get a nest of extra stuff that you didn’t even know was there in Step 3 (you might be able to see it by clicking on the HTML option afterward).
  3. Copy and paste the blurb from Notepad to the description at AuthorCentral. Toggle back and forth between the Compose and Edit HTML modes a couple of times to ensure that everything looks okay (if not, you should notice something ‘funny’ when you go back to Compose).

How to format the blurb at CreateSpace without knowing HTML:

Follow the three steps outlined above. Then copy and paste the text from the Edit HTML window at AuthorCentral into your description at CreateSpace. You’ll need to remove the space from every <br /> to make it look like <br/>, otherwise you’ll get an error message. After saving your description at CreateSpace, open your book’s project page and click the Channels link in Distribute, then click the tiny link for eStore Setup. Now click the link for Title URL to view your CreateSpace eStore. This will show you how the formatting looks. Preview this carefully and correct any mistakes.

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers, Vol. 1 (formatting/publishing) and Vol. 2 (packaging/marketing)

Aug 25 2013

Authors: Where Is Your Happiest Place Online?

I’ll discuss a few places, then I’ll cast my vote in the last paragraph. I’d also like to hear your vote, if you’d be so kind as to leave a comment.

Let me start with Amazon, since it’s a huge website that authors are familiar with. I love shopping for books (and more) at Amazon and I love the support that Amazon has given to authors, including indies. It doesn’t win my vote with regards to happiness, however. For one, the current customer review and comment platform detracts a little from what would be a much more positive ambiance. It’s great that they promote freedom and independence, I just wish they could do that and still limit the occasional spitefulness. Another problem I see is that I sometimes find myself frustrated when trying to search for and discover new books by keyword or in a category. It’s sort of an inherent problem in trying to search through twenty million books. Maybe if we could see more than a dozen or so books on a page that would help speed up the process; sometimes, the way the results are ordered seems to make us scratch our heads, too. Still, I love Amazon and continue to use it.

There are many features that I enjoy at Goodreads, both as a reader and an author. Authors can connect with other authors, and friend reviews are allowed but clearly marked as such (I happened to see one on an author’s page recently, and thought it was an interesting option). You can see what friends have read, are reading, or intend to read. You can discover new books. However, there seems to be a little too much negativity (enough that some authors actually shudder at the mention of the website’s name), but not enough effort to try to make the ambiance more positive throughout. Again, perhaps the negativity is associated with the effort to provide independence and freedom. On the other hand, my vote goes to a website that seems to promote freedom and independence quite well, yet still appears to be a much more positive environment. If they can do it, why can’t others?

Another popular place among authors is CreateSpace. There may be a little room for improvement, but overall I like the way the website works as far as publishing books goes. I also love the wealth of free publishing and marketing information available to authors (if you haven’t checked it out before, you should). The community discussion forum is a nice place for authors to interact with one another, and a good place to look for publishing help. There are many helpful members there, some who are small publishers with many years of publishing experience. For the most part, the forum is very courteous (especially, compared to some community forums on other websites). Still, there are a couple of reasons that CreateSpace didn’t receive my vote. First, the file review process can be a little frustrating at times – even if you submit the interior or cover to specifications, there are sometimes unexpected changes (like telling you that your file is too complex, or resizing the cover on you). The defect rate may be a little higher than we may like (we can hope that they are working to improve this), yet there are defects with all publishers. Finally, eStore sales require the customer to setup a CreateSpace account and it’s not intuitive for customers to search for books on CreateSpace. Nonetheless, I still love CreateSpace and continue to use it, even though there are promising new rivals like Ingram Spark.

I’ll cast my vote now. WordPress is the happiest place online for me. Authors seem to enjoy ample freedom, independence, and creativity, while also in my experience it’s usually a very happy place online. The exception may be the occasional bitter rant, but that’s easy to ignore if you want. The comments section is often filled with positive interactions. The sense of community here at WordPress has been excellent, in my experience. WordPress draws me in like a magnet. I don’t hesitate, fearing negative experiences. I find myself spending way much more time writing posts and reading posts than I ever imagined, and I enjoy it. A positive ambiance attracts people, and the people make or break the place. Here’s a big THANK YOU to all the great people who make this place. 🙂 Please remember to cast your vote and share your opinions and experience.

Aug 17 2013

How to Change the Publication Date at CreateSpace…

(I intended to include this in my previous post. Better late than never?)

First, note that once you click Approve Proof, it is no longer possible to change the publication date.

As mentioned in my previous post, after you enter the title information, much time can pass before you approve your proof (from making revisions). So if you enter the publication date as ‘today’ when you enter the title information, by the time you approve your proof, this date can be a few weeks old. The problem with this is that you would then have very little time in the ‘Last 30 Days’ section.

At CreateSpace, when you enter the title information, if you click on the ‘What’s This?’ link, you’ll see that you don’t actually have to enter any date at all. Just leave this field blank and CreateSpace will automatically set the publication date to the day when you first click the Approve Proof button. This gives you approximately 30 days on the ‘Last 30 Days’ list (since it may take a day or more for your book to show up at Amazon).

If you didn’t know this and entered an actual date in the title information, when you go to the title section, you may find that everything appears to be ‘locked.’ If so, contact CreateSpace and explain the situation. Make it clear that you have not clicked Approve Proof (even in the past) for this title, and ask CreateSpace if they could please reset the date for you.