I was first introduced to CreateSpace in 2007. Once my book, Stealing Wishes, was eliminated from the semifinals for the first Amazon ABNA contest, I was given my consolation prize which was a CreateSpace membership and the ability to publish and order a free copy of my book. I chose not to do this at that time and published the book with Lulu instead. But ever since we here at LLBR decided to add CreateSpace books to our review portfolio, I thought it would be a good experience to create something with CreateSpace and learn more about this company.
The first major disadvantage I discovered is that CreateSpace books are only available through the CreateSpace website and through Amazon.com, but the more I thought about this, the more I thought about it not being so bad. After all, self-published books are often frowned upon in chain bookstores because of their big price, small discount, and non-returnable stipulation. For an author who doesn’t mind eliminating the capability for bookstores to be able to order your books through wholesale, it’s not such a bad thing. I’ve noticed this limitation also keeps pricing low, but we’ll talk more about pricing later. For now, just know that it allows your books to be affordable enough to invest in enough of your own stock to sell to indie bookshops, at conventions, book fairs, signings, etc. on your own.
CreateSpace allows creative individuals to make their own DVDs, CDs, videos, audio downloads, and of course, paperback books. For the sake of the blog and being an author, I’ll be discussing the book option. After creating a free account, an author follows four simple steps to publication. The first step is Title Setup.
Title Setup is where you enter all the basic information about your book: title, subtitle, volume number, description, and imprint name. Here, you can also enter your own ISBN number if you already have one or you can choose to have CreateSpace assign one to you. There is no additional fee for their ISBN. You also choose what category you want your book listed under; you are only allowed to choose one so pick carefully. Next, you choose a reading level which starts with preschool and goes up to college graduate student. I would have liked to have seen at least a few more levels beyond the graduate student range such as adult male, adult female, parent, single parent, senior citizen, etc. Otherwise, college graduate student becomes quite broad.
There’s also a section where you choose where your book might have been previously published. Although this is probably there just to help CreateSpace capture where their customers are coming from, it’s interesting to note that there are only four choices to pick from: Not Previously Published, LSI, Lulu, and Other. Publication date, country, language, keywords, authors and contributors, and an author biography are the final steps in Title Setup.
Step 2 is File Review where you will upload your book’s cover and your manuscript, both of which have to be in PDF format. You’ll also choose what size your book will be. There are 13 sizes to choose from ranging from basic 6 x 9 to magazine size 8 x 10. Learn more about Trim Sizes on the Get Started page. I’d also like to point out the information on the Trim Sizes & Artwork tab which thoroughly explains how to create your own cover file. From minimum cover width and height, safe zones, cover bleeds, spine width and variance, and ISBN barcodes there is a lot of information on this one page which can be applied to any DIY Publishing model where you would be responsible for your own book’s cover (including Lulu).
So, authors needing a good reference on this should definitely bookmark this page even if you aren’t using CreateSpace. It contains very valuable information! For those authors who might want some easy and free assistance with creating a book cover, CreateSpace offers that too. Just click on Create a Cover when you are on the Upload File page. Now, be warned there is a lot of free artwork available here, so someone else’s book having a similar cover to yours is bound to happen.
In Part 2 of this article, I’ll be discussing Step 3 of the publication process, pricing, CreateSpace’s Pro Plan, shipping, and more.
