Tag Archives: CreateSpace

Oct 17 2018

Looking for CreateSpace? What’s the Best Alternative Now?

 

THE BEST PLACE TO PUBLISH A PRINT-ON-DEMAND BOOK

For 10 years, I have heartily recommended CreateSpace for self-publishing a paperback book.

But now if you visit CreateSpace, you will be directed elsewhere.

So what is the best place for print-on-demand now?

The two major options are Amazon KDP and Ingram Spark. There are a couple of other options, such as Lulu and BookBaby.

AMAZON KDP

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is Amazon’s original self-publishing service.

kdp.amazon.com

Although it used to be exclusively for Kindle eBooks, it has recently expanded to offer paperbacks.

It has also evolved so that it either matches or surpasses CreateSpace in the most significant ways.

CreateSpace didn’t disappear. Rather, CreateSpace simply merged with KDP.

KDP’s paperbacks print on the same facilities used by CreateSpace.

You get the same quality with KDP as you could expect from CreateSpace.

Since KDP is Amazon’s company, KDP is the natural feed for Amazon sales, and most indie authors sell the vast majority of their books on Amazon.

KDP lets you self-publish for FREE. (But I do recommend investing in one printed proof before publishing.) KDP’s main competitor, Ingram Spark, charges a setup fee.

KDP is also the most convenient option. When you finish self-publishing your paperback, you can self-publish a Kindle eBook edition with the same publishing service.

The distribution is slightly better with KDP than it was with CreateSpace (now that KDP added Canada distribution and Expanded Distribution, and is expanding to other countries like Australia, Japan, and Mexico—actually, I already sold a book in Japan).

KDP offers a free ISBN option.

You can now advertise paperbacks on Amazon by publishing with KDP.

As with CreateSpace, the free Expanded Distribution channel will get your book into the Ingram catalog, and if you use the free ISBN option you may get into Baker & Taylor.

The royalties are the same (except for sales in Europe for books under 100 pages).

Authors based in Europe can now have proofs printed from the UK or continental Europe instead of in the states.

If an author was looking forward to using CreateSpace, in principle KDP should seem just as compelling.

For most authors, I recommend checking out KDP’s print option first.

INGRAM SPARK

Ingram Spark and KDP are the two main print-on-demand companies.

www.ingramspark.com

Ingram has been a major distributor in the publishing business for decades and the Ingram catalog is famous in the publishing industry.

Ingram does charge a setup fee, and you may spend more ordering proofs or author copies (depending).

Some successful illustrated children’s authors who self-publish sell hardcovers well. For a print-on-demand hardcover, I recommend Ingram Spark.

(If you just want hardcover author copies and don’t need to sell them print-on-demand, another option is Nook Express. Note that Barnes & Noble’s Nook Express doesn’t currently offer print-on-demand with distribution; it’s currently for ordering author copies. However, Nook Express has been growing and expanding recently, so perhaps this will change in the future.)

A few indie authors who thoroughly research how to format their books with stores in mind, how to prepare an effective PR kit, and how to approach bookstores in person effectively may find it beneficial to self-publish with Ingram Spark. Most indie authors struggle with bookstore sales unless they sell author copies in person to local stores, in which case you could have these printed at KDP. But if you’re among the few who can get bookstores (and other types of stores that sell books, which can be valuable) to order directly from Ingram’s catalog, you might be able to set a discount to help with this (they could order from Ingram through KDP’s Expanded Distribution, too, but there you can’t control the discount).

Authors who aren’t based in the US and who expect significant sales in certain countries through Ingram’s distribution channels might benefit from Ingram Spark.

These are a few examples where Ingram Spark’s print-on-demand option makes sense compared to KDP.

Though I will say, in general, Ingram seems attractive with its potential distribution. But getting into the catalog is the easy part. Getting stores to order through those distribution channels is the hard part. Even KDP will get you into the Ingram catalog through the Expanded Distribution option. And if you’re worried about KDP’s imprint name showing as Independently Published, simply buying your own ISBN from Bowker (in the US at least) will solve that problem (and let you create your own imprint name).

OTHER OPTIONS

BookBaby is an interesting option for both print-on-demand paperbacks and for eBooks.

www.bookbaby.com

BookBaby has a big advantage for authors who are already planning to invest a significant amount of money on a variety of publishing services, such as formatting or editing.

Among eBook aggregators and distributors, BookBaby also stands out in terms of its Kindle offering (with a KDP Select option).

I generally encourage new self-published authors to try to learn formatting on their own and to keep their overall publishing costs to a minimum. You have no way of knowing whether you will sell enough copies to recover your costs, and many new books don’t sell particularly well, so it makes sense not to risk too much when starting out.

Also, if you wind up publishing several books, and most successful indie authors do, think of how much you could save in the long run by learning how to do some of the work, like formatting, on your own.

However, if you do need to hire professional services, BookBaby offers a variety of paid services in addition to what appear to be competitive distribution options.

BookBaby also posts a satisfaction guarantee on their website.

I featured an inspirational story on author Cheryl Holt on my blog last year. Cheryl is one example of a top author using BookBaby. (But of course, there are no guarantees that you will have success, regardless of how you choose to publish. My example just shows that it can be done.)

Another print-on-demand option which has been around for years is Lulu. You might find Lulu to be more expensive for a typical paperback, but you might also discover some publishing options at Lulu that are hard to find elsewhere. For example, suppose you wish to order author copies with spiral binding.

www.lulu.com

If you were among the few authors who could have benefited by directing customers to the CreateSpace eStore, Lulu or BookBaby’s BookShop may be of interest to you (but you may have to use BookBaby for all of your distribution channels, and you may need a minimum investment to publish with BookBaby).

Write Happy, Be Happy

Chris McMullen

Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides

Feb 1 2014

CreateSpace Royalty Math

list price

CreateSpace Royalties

When you self-publish a book with CreateSpace, you set your own list price and your Amazon royalty is based on the list price that you set. In this way, you have the freedom to determine your own royalty rate.

Unfortunately, the formula that CreateSpace provides to calculate royalties for Amazon sales is a little roundabout:

CS share 2

(For a more direct formula, see the section below entitled “Amazon Royalty.”)

CreateSpace’s share is the sales channel percentage (40% of the list price for Amazon sales) minus the author cost. The author cost includes two parts: the fixed charge of the book plus a per-page charge. The fixed charge also depends on the page count (add one page if needed to make an even page count):

  • For black-and-white interiors with up to 108 pages, the fixed charge is $2.15.
  • For black-and-white interiors with more than 108 pages, the fixed charge is $0.85 plus 1.2 cents per page.
  • For color interiors with up to 40 pages, the fixed charge is $3.65.
  • For color interiors with more than 40 pages, the fixed charge is $0.85 plus 7 cents per page.

Example: Consider a book with a black-and-white interior with 200 pages. The author cost for US sales is $0.85 + 200 x $0.012 = $0.85 + $2.40 = $3.25. CreateSpace’s share for US Amazon sales is $3.25 + 40% of the list price. If you set the list price at $8.95, CreateSpace’s share is $3.25 + $8.95 x 0.4 = $3.25 + $3.58 = $6.83. In this case, your royalty would be $8.95 – $6.83 = $2.12.

Fortunately, there are a couple of simpler alternatives to this calculation. However, you need to know your page count. To do the calculations by hand, you’ll still have to determine the author cost first.

Royalty Calculator

However, CreateSpace does provide a convenient royalty calculator: https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/#content6:royaltyCalculator. It’s worth playing around with it.

While the royalty calculator is fun and handy, there are actually a couple of formulas that may still be useful.

Amazon Royalty

Here is a more direct formula for determining your Amazon royalty for CreateSpace paperbacks:

royalty

Example: You set the list price at $7.95 and the author cost is $2.50. Then your Amazon royalty is $7.95 x 0.6 — $2.50 = $4.77 — $2.50 = $2.27.

One thing you can see from this formula is the effect of changing your list price. Once you have a tentative list price in mind, consider raising or lowering your list price by one dollar. For every dollar you add to the list price, you would earn 60 more cents per book; for every dollar you subtract from your list price, you would lose 60 cents from your royalty.

This can be an important figure. For example, suppose you were thinking about pricing your book at $4.95 and had determined that your royalty would be 40 cents. By raising your list price to $5.95, your royalty would be $1.00 instead. You would have to sell 2.5 times more books at $4.95 compared to $5.95 for the lower price to pay off. For every person willing to pay $5.95, do you really see 2.5 or more people walking away who would instead buy the book if the price were $4.95? This is unlikely, unless you happen to be in a unique market where most of the similar titles are selling for less than $5.95.

Let’s look at a second example. Suppose you’re planning to set the list price at $9.95, for which you’ve determined that the royalty would be $3. If you raise the price to $10.95, your royalty would be $3.60. In this case, if you can sell 20% or more books at $9.95 compared to $10.95, it would be more profitable to go with $9.95. It’s just a dollar less, but looks like a one-digit number instead of a two-digit number of dollars. Here, I’d be inclined to try $9.95. You could also consider $8.95, for which the royalty would be $2.40. Most customers who would be willing to pay $8.95 would probably also be willing to spend $9.95, so the lower price might not draw the extra 25% of sales needed to make it pay off—unless, for example, there are many similar books selling for $8.95.

Royalty Rate

Something else you can do is pick the royalty rate that you’d like to make, like 25%, and see what the list price would be. I’m not saying you should set your list price this way, just that it’s worth exploring.

The following formula tells you what list price to set in order to make a given royalty rate. For this to work, express the royalty rate as a decimal. For example, write 25% as 0.25 (just divide the percentage by 100). Remember, this is for Amazon royalties for CreateSpace paperbacks.

list price

Example: The author cost is $3.00 and you wish to earn a 25% royalty rate. Set your list price according to $3.00 / (0.6 — 0.25) = $3.00 / (0.35) = $8.57. This gives you a royalty of $2.14, which is 25% of the list price, $8.57.

Research

You shouldn’t just base the list price on the royalty amount or royalty rate that you’d like to make. You should look at these numbers, but they alone shouldn’t dictate your list price.

It would be wise to research similar books on Amazon. Don’t just compare prices of books similar to yours in terms of topic, but also compare the page count, the depth and range of content, the quality of writing, and other factors that customers are likely to explore when shopping. If your book is noticeably below or above the typical range for comparable books, it may greatly deter sales.

Underpricing doesn’t always create more sales, and even if it does, it takes many more sales to generate more royalty (e.g. you might make more money selling 200 books at $8.99 than you would selling 250 books at $6.99). Many customers believe that you get what you pay for, which is why lowering the price doesn’t always improve sales frequency. Quality of content, good packaging, and effective marketing are often more important than price, provided that the book isn’t significantly underpriced or overpriced compared to similar books.

Another consideration is the Expanded Distribution channel. If you have a large page count or color interior, for example, adding the Expanded Distribution channel (which is now free) raises the minimum possible list price. Opting out of the Expanded Distribution allows you to set a lower list price. For most books, you should be able to set a fair price and draw a healthy royalty with the Expanded Distribution; the exception usually applies to books with large page counts or color interiors, where comparable books have competitive prices.

Think of your CreateSpace paperback as a trade paperback, not as a mass market paperback, when comparing prices of traditionally published books.

Finally, note that Amazon often sets a sale price below the list price, offering customers a discount. This is good for you because CreateSpace still pays the royalty based on the list price, not based on the sale price; if anything, the discount will probably help sales, not hurt them.

Publishing Resources

I started this blog to provide free help with writing, publishing, and marketing. You can find many free articles on publishing and marketing 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.

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)