With a Wordclay ISBN and Channel Distribution ($99 value), your book will be available to thousands of retailers worldwide, including Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. The addition of these two key ingredients provides the following critical opportunities:

• Reach millions of potential readers
• Increase your book’s Internet visibility
• Break into new book selling markets
• Enhance the professionalism of your book
• Earn more royalties as your title sells

Wordclay’s online do-it-yourself publishing is always on the house – but that doesn’t mean you have to go it alone. We have an eager staff of in-house designers, editors and book marketers available to help make your book a success. Just visit our services store for options.

We hope that you will take advantage of our anniversary offer to publish your work with us this month. Remember, simply contact us to preorder 10 copies of your title and claim your complimentary Wordclay ISBN and Distribution.

I was excited to get my copy of Altered Life, a detective thriller from Keith Dixon. He was nice enough to send me a copy all the way across the pond and I dove into it the same day it arrived. The description on the Lulu page hooked me: ‘Altered Life transplants the attitude and pace of the American private eye story into a contemporary English setting.’

This book features Sam Dyke, a hard edged private eye with a past. His niche tends more towards stakeouts and connecting the dots than the intricacies of corporate espionage. However, the murder of Rory Brand, consultant and computer tycoon, sends him lurching off on a case he didn’t want trying to find one killer out of a dozen likely suspects.

Each chapter seems to start with a paragraph or two which give you a glimpse at the English locations where Altered Life is set. Here is an example from Chapter 46: “The next morning I drove down to north Birmingham, to one of the suburbs that were built as wealthy Victorian merchants began to distance themselves from the dark heart of their steel foundries and sought the green pastures of what was then open country. The wide roads and spacious architecture of mansion and church had since been overrun by the mini-community of Chinese takeaway, Laundromat and video store but if you half-shut your eyes you could still see the outlines of the Palladian refuges that the bearded philanthropists had created for themselves and the families.”

There are strong female characters sprinkled throughout Altered Life as well. Laura Marshall is the up and coming executive at Brand’s firm that hires Sam to solve Brand’s murder. Tara Brand is Rory’s current wife who shares a connection to Sam Dyke as well. Of course, there is a police detective with a bad attitude about Private Eyes who end up in the middle of his case.

The action comes fast and furious as Sam starts stepping on toes and asking uncomfortable questions. The important aspects of detective stories are here, the ubiquitous car chase that ends up with Sam in the ditch and Laura in the hospital… the excusable breaking an entering to dig up valuable clues, and the switcheroo at the end which you don’t quite see coming even though you should. The writing is sound, the story flows well, and the frequent dialogue between characters is expertly handled. Perhaps surprising for a book like this is the time spent fleshing out the characters and examining what makes them tick.  Even Sam seems more like you and I trying to solve this case than a super-detective.

If you like private eye stories, you owe it to yourself to check out Keith Dixon’s Altered Life. I had a hard time putting it down and I bet you will too. With this book you’ll be in on the ground floor of what is sure to be a successful series of ‘Sam Dyke’ mysteries.

Cast your vote today in the sidebar on the right side of the blog.

This is also the final week to enter our raffle to win a free copy of the winning book!  Just click on the 100th Review Contest tab at the top of the blog to enter the contest.

We also have a new surprise announcement about the contest! Each of the six books that are currently in the running will be reviewed in August in numerical order based on the overall number of votes they receive!

So cast your vote today! Voting ends on Friday, July 3rd!

John Buckman

In February 2008, John  blogged about an experiment he was going to attempt with his author friend Ramsay Wood.  Ramsay is the author of a book called A Cat May Look at a King that is out of print.  He and John were going to self-publish the book and list copies on BookMooch to be given away to readers.  If moochers liked the book, they would  “tip” the author through PayPal. They would then list the book on BookMooch again to be passed on to another reader.  Or moochers can choose to keep the book and pay the full amount of the book’s cost.  Or, if you can’t afford it or don’t like the book, you simply list it on BookMooch again to be passed on to another reader.

Yesterday, John announced the launch of the Experiment in Generosity.  24 copies of the book were listed by John on BookMooch and have now all been mooched.  Ramsay’s book has also been added to 45 BookMooch wishlists, including my own.

Here are John’s goals for this project, as stated in his blog post from yesterday:

• Can authors make a little bit of money by giving away a bunch of books through BookMooch’s system? A lot of authors look somewhat dubiously on mooching, since they’re starving already, and so I’d like to see if there isn’t a way to help them.
• Is there decent money to be made for an author by intentionally encouraging their books to be passed from hand to hand? Currently, they only make money on the “first sale” and thus the publishing industry looks upon recycling/reuse as a loss of revenues, which pits them against ecological concerns.
• Is the “moochers social network” a way for an author to market a book? Instead of selling your soul to a publishing company, can the recommendations and networking that happen naturally on BookMooch cause a book to interest people, get them reading it and maybe even drum up some revenue for the author?
• I am particularly interested in self-publishing, as I run the music site Magnatune where musicians self-publish (thus retaining their rights) and make a little bit of money. Is there a similar model possible with books?

I love the idea of a self-published author being able to reap rewards beyond the first initial sale of a copy of their book, and I’m not just talking about the money they earn from readers who donate.  This is an excellent opportunity for authors to be able to grow their audience and fan base just from the actions of their readers alone.  In my eyes, it’s genius. Also, it adds value to the physical book itself.  Self-published books often carry an extremely high price tag and the author earns a very small royalty from each sale. Not only does this program make these books more affordable (and even free) to more readers, but the author has the chance to earn a higher royalty even if just one single reader tipped them half the list price of the book itself.  If three readers did this, the cost of the book is covered and the author has made money.  But hopefully it doesn’t stop there.  It’s like a chain letter for books that pays off for authors and readers!

John states, “The goal with all this is to have a short “How Authors can use BookMooch” how-to guide, so that this idea can be repeated over and over again, with increasing success.”  I for one will be looking forward to a chance to sign up!

If you aren’t a member already, check out BookMooch today.  If you have books to give away and would like to earn free books in return, sign up and join the humble and happy BookMooching community! And kudos to John and Ramsay for starting this amazing marketing opportunity for authors! I look forward to reading about and joining in its success!

I liked the way the title rolled off my tongue.  It reminded me of Frankenstein. Its pale gold color, white letters, and raised laced scrim on the cover caught my attention.  For being a hardcover book, it’s 7 x 5 size also appealed to me.  The book felt good in my large hands.  After reading the inside flap, I went to a nearby computer terminal to see why the book was being returned.  It turned out it had been released in paperback in December 1999 and since no one had purchased the last hardcover copy, the home office flagged it to be returned for credit.  I read the first page of the book and decided to buy it despite the higher cost of hardcover copies.

Although I have depleted most of the books on my shelves overtime, selling them on Amazon, donating them to community centers, shipping them to readers on BookMooch, this one copy of Allan Stein has been with me ever since I bought it back in 2001.  Sadly, I have never read Allan Stein…until a few nights ago when I came across it on a shelf.  I debated if I should finally part with the book.  Instead, I sat down and decided to read it.  I’m glad I did because I’m enjoying Stadler’s writing very much.  But this article is not a review of Matthew Stadler.

Like many books I read, thanks to the internet I like to research the book, or what it’s about, or learn about the author themselves.  Googling Matthew Stadler led me to a Wikipedia page where I found the following text and quote:

In a 2008 lecture in Vitoria, Spain, Stadler described publication as “the creation of a public … There is no preexisting public,” he went on. “The public is created through deliberate, willful acts: the circulation of texts, discussions and gatherings in physical space, and the maintenance of a related digital commons. These construct a common space of conversation, a public space, which beckons a public into being. This is publication in its fullest sense.”

This paragraph sparked me to write this article, asking myself, and wanting to ask you the writer, why do we publish? First, here are some of Stadler’s thoughts from the same seminar in Spain, which you can listen to here if you wish.

“In English, publication includes the word ‘public’…publication is the creation of a public. Publication is a political strategy.  It is not an attempt to make beautiful objects.  It is not an attempt to make an accurate record that can be stored and archived…  There is no pre-existing public.  The public that we hear about, which we think about often to our own discouragement, is itself a fiction created by political actors to lend moral authority to their choices. I am interested in publication because I want to create a public. I live in a culture, in a country, that uses the fiction of a main stream public in many ways that I find discouraging, negative, and disempowering but I don’t believe the notion of and the experience of a public needs to be that way… It is imperative that we publish not only as a means to counter the influence of a hegemonic public, but also to reclaim the space in which we imagine ourselves and our collectivity. We feel lonely and powerless when we accept the myth of ‘the main stream public.’ When we accept that fiction we relinquish our ability to form our own collectivities and draw hope from them.”

For me, Stadler’s “public” can be translated as being a writer’s audience. And your audience can be made up of a handful of friends and family, or encompass thousands of people across the country.  Your success should not be measured by how many physical copies of a book you sell, but by how many people make up your audience, your public.  If readers outside your circle of friends and family members are attracted to what you’ve written, your audience grows.  You capture the attention of more and more readers, and the public you have created can thrive with one thing in common:  they have read your words.

It is quite possible that some of those readers will tell others about your book, other people that you do not know and have yet to reach out to.  A new public of readers soon grows outside your personal public, as more and more people pick up your book and read it and tell others.  It’s a chain reaction that depends completely upon two things: the power of your words to speak to the reader, and second, for those words to be powerful enough to make the reader speak to someone else about them.

Publishing itself is a very large public, and as Stadler stated, it’s political.  Think about it.  Go to Amazon.com’s home page and what do you see?  Who do you see?  Walk into any chain bookstore and take a look around.  What books, whose books, do you see up front and center?  Chances are it’s a Dan Brown, a JK Rowling, or a Stephenie Meyer.  It’s not the authors we’ve reviewed on this site.  It’s not the books we have published ourselves.  What gives those books a right to be there?  Politics. So, why do we publish?  Like Stadler said, it is our responsibility to publish to counter influence that public we know as the “traditional publishing industry.”

As self-published authors, we have already disassociated ourselves from the “main stream publishing public.”  And as long as somehow, we arrange and form a public of our own along the way, we are destined to succeed.  As self-published authors, we are already “saving the earth”  by not wasting trees to make paper for huge print runs of books that may or may not sell.  We are not eating up valuable sale space on chain bookstore shelves where our books must be checked monthly for proper shelving or possibly pulled off the shelf, packed,  and returned to a publisher for credit as I mentioned before.  Our books are not eating up warehouse space, destined to become a clearance book and resold to B&N buying groups for people perusing the bargain aisle and buying us for half price while sipping an expensive latte. We are not wasting ink, paper, or payroll.

And yet, self-published books are frowned upon because of their price, their nonreturnable status, and often their poor editing.   POD is practically a Star of David a writer may or may not wear proudly. It can be the most discouraging, most expensive, most time consuming project to ever eat up a writer’s time, in the end preventing them from devoting time to their real craft which led them down this path to begin with.  And yet, more and more writers are turning to self publishing each year, snubbing their noses back at that “elite” traditional main stream public.

Print on Demand publishing is, in fact, like many art forms and is not bound to traditional rules and formats deemed necessary by well paid editors, publicists, and traditional publishing models who are out to appease their public in a certain way whether through wizards, vampires, or religious thrillers, or whatever else everyone thinks they need to read because everyone else around them is reading it too.  A traditional author may sit down and tell the story they wanted to tell, but it may not end up being the story their readers finally purchase in the end.  The essence of their story is whittled away like pieces of wood at a carver’s knife or like film strips on a director’s cutting room floor.

Though a certain level of formatting and consistency is expected in POD, isn’t it interesting that blogs and how-to guides everywhere teach us how to make our book look like everyone else’s?  We try to fool the main stream market into thinking our book is one of theirs.  And yet, self-publishing is the perfect way for a writer to publish when he doesn’t want to follow the norm, he wants to be experimental, and he wants to stand out from the rest.  And yet, the traditional public ridicules him for doing that.

Even Stadler was disappointed with the narrow interests of the big time New York publishers that published his books and the main stream magazines and journals (like the New York Times) which he wrote for.  He decided to go his own way and he started his own journals to focus on the writing he wanted to bring to a public. He co-founded Clear Cut Press as a part of that movement.  Suddenly.org, another of Stadler’s projects, developed out of his Using Global Media workshop.  This workshop focused on what he calls “the ecology of publication” (that is, the combination of printed texts with public gatherings and an associated digital commons).

Stadler self-published an annotated reader for Suddenly.org, and guess who he used to do it?  Lulu.com!  It’s called Where We Live Now. Here’s a quote from that Wikipedia page that states the beauty of self-publishing quite nicely for you:

Suddenly distributes the book by programming public conversations in many cities around the world, so that rather than having a large reservoir of printed copies that must be stored until they are pushed out through market pipelines, suddenly cultivates conversations that then draw the books out one-by-one from the printer, like sponges drawing water.

So, why do we publish? For me, it stopped being about the money a long time ago.  Actually, it never was about the money.  I never set myself up for disappointment by thinking that my self-published book with Xlibris back in 2003 would put me on the New York Times Bestseller list.  I said from the very beginning if I could walk into a bookstore and see my name on a book on the shelf, I accomplished what I’d set out to do.  And I’ve done it twice now.

For me, it’s a review on Amazon from a complete stranger.  It’s an email from a reader in another state I’ve never met before.  It’s being befriended on MySpace or Facebook by someone telling me they enjoyed my work.  It’s a book review by another author who offers me a serious critique.  It’s someone asking me when my next book is coming out, or what am I writing now. It’s that feeling of elation when someone tells me, “I’m reading your book.”  You’re reading me?  You could be reading Harry Potter or Twilight or The Da Vinci Code or anything else that any of us has heard of or read before, but you are reading me!?  It’s quite simply talking about my book with someone who has read it and learning how it made them feel.  It’s having the chance to learn what emotions my words evoked.

It’s lying awake at night in bed and envisioning the scenes I’m going to write in the morning.  It’s breathing so much life into a character on the page they make me laugh out loud, or even cry.  So much that I can talk about them like they are a real person.  It’s stressing over the perfect title for the book or for just one chapter.  It’s visiting a place or seeing a painting or reading about some event and being inspired so much by it I make a mental note to put it in a story.  It’s sitting down and creating a chapter or an entire story about whatever inspired me.  It’s so much more than this, but by now, you get it.  At least, I hope you do.  And for you, a writer, you know what it is that makes you want to write, what it is that makes you want to publish.  You’ve already started making a mental list of them while reading this.

Of course, in this technological age self-publishing has broken off into two formats: paper and digital.  For the sake of this article, I won’t discuss digital publishing right now. I still like the feel of that hardbound book of paper and ink and cardboard in my hand, no matter if it was the last one on the shelf or a copy printed on demand just for me or for my own public.  I think Matthew Stadler does too.  He says the internet lacks literary closure.  Like browsers in a bookstore, our internet browsers show us thousands of words everyday and we can never read all of them.

But a book, a published book, is much different.   It requires focus.  It requires attention.  It has a beginning and… it has an end.  Even now, that blue “Publish” button taunts me from the margin of this site’s administrative dashboard, eager for me to press it and publish these words for you, my public, to see.  Dare I press it?  Dare I publish these words, these political views of my own, for you the visitor, the reader, the public, to read?  I think I will.

After all, why do we publish?

Frogs Boy Scout by Joshua Smith

Frog’s Boy Scout
and other books

Written and illustrated by Joshua Smith

Copyright 2008-2009

Paperback editions $9.95 and up
Artwork/Ebooks .99-$1.99

Here at the LL Book Review, we have reviewed a wide variety of books in a little over a year. Fiction, non-fiction, children’s and young adult, memoirs, and mysteries, to philosophical tomes that give us a new way of thinking. One thing all of the books reviewed have in common is they are all written by authors who believe in their work enough to pursue the hard road of self-publishing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying the path of traditional publishing is an easy one, because it is not, but it is different than the path of self-publishing. I’m not going to provide the battling viewpoints of the self-published vs. traditionally published debate at this time either. However, I am going to talk about one of the areas where self-publishing, using a POD service such as Lulu.com has traditional publishing houses beat. They publish anything. If you would like to publish a book, you can. There is an immediacy to the process that traditional publishing will never match, and there is a great deal of satisfaction that the authors feel from being able to hold a bound copy of their work in their hands.

I am sure this the case with author Joshua Smith. Joshua is an eight year old, who definitely works on his craft as a writer. He also illustrates all of his books. With the loving support of his parents, Joshua has written, illustrated, and published 24 children’s books via Lulu.com. That, in and of itself, is an amazing feat. It makes me feel like I may have started late in life because I only started writing my first, never to see the light of day, book at the age of nine. Some of the books are Joshua’s versions of existing tales such as Jack in the Beanstalk or Charlotte’s Web, and others are his own original work. In addition to the 24 books, Joshua has several art pieces which he has published as download files. He has a bold color sense and the happiness of the pieces leaps off the page.

Joshua, with the help of his father, requested a review of his books about Charlie Smart, the frog. Frogs just happen to be one of Joshua’s passions, so it is natural that one of his favorite characters to write about is a frog. I had the pleasure of sampling three of Joshua’s frog books, Frog Goes to the Circus, Frog Has a Super Hero, and Frog’s Boy Scout. In reading these books, it is clear that Joshua takes his muse from his own life experiences and then uses those experiences with the character of Charlie Smart. In Frog Has a Super Hero, the artwork is primarily pencil sketches, whereas, Frog Goes to the Circus and Frog’s Boy Scout are very colorful. Joshua’s work is improving as he gets older, and whether he stays with illustrated books or starts working on longer pieces, I think his dedication to writing is clear. My favorite piece of those I read was Frog’s Boy Scout, because I felt that Joshua’s artwork was becoming a little more detailed and complex and the story line had challenges that Charlie Smart had to overcome.

I would like to see Joshua progress from hand writing his stories in pencil to having them typed, and to work with his parents and teachers, both of whom it is clear support him in his endeavors, to do some editing. As he hones his skills as both a writer and an illustrator, I’m sure he will continue to write stories to entertain and delight his siblings, as well as those around him.

Hi all, when comparing apples to oranges to limes, one must make color and texture adjustments for the differences in fruit. I have more experience with Createspace than with either Lulu or Lightning Source but have reviewed price specifications for print-on-demand contracts from Lightning Source, so I can tell you a bit about those costs. For the purpose of this discussion I will reference only print-on-demand services because I assume most people considering Lulu or Createspace are not planning on having thousands of books printed for warehousing purposes.

1. POD PER-BOOK COST. Createspace does small print runs via print-on-demand. They do not do offset printing for mass-market volume discounts. Lulu may offer discounts on volume, but I don’t know for sure. Lightning Source offers both POD and offset printing. For POD, the cost per book is virtually the same as the cost for producing the same book on CreateSpace under the PRO plan. Lightning Source does offer graduated discounts on bulk POD print runs, starting at 5% for 50 books. Last time I checked on Lulu three months ago, the per-book production price was consistently higher for the same product under any plan than the cost would be from either Createspace or Lightning Source.

2. TITLE SETUP. Createspace charges nothing for you to set up your title and provides an ISBN for free, but that ISBN marks them as the publisher, not you. With their PRO plan you can cut your per-book cost by about 1/3 by paying $39 upfront and annually thereafter to keep the book in print. Without the pro plan the book remains in print for free. You can provide your own ISBN under either plan with no extra charge and no discount. Lulu has a similar program and a distribution program that costs $99 or more the last time I checked. Lightning Source charges $37.50 for cover file setup and $37.50 for text (book interior) file setup, for a total setup fee of $75 for a book digitally uploaded for production. You provide your own ISBN. Also LS charges $12 annually to keep your book available. By far Createspace is the cheapest route to produce a book when considering startup cost.

3. PROOF & REVISION COST. Createspace charges the per-book production cost plus S&H to send a proof. Additional proofs after changes are the same cost. There are no revision or file replacement charges. Generally speaking a proof for a 300-page book would be around $12 or $13 including S&H. I don’t know what it would be on Lulu. On Lightning Source a proof copy is $30 including Express mailing cost. LS charges a whopping $40 per file upload, meaning if you make changes to your cover and upload a revised file, they’ll charge you $40. If you also make changes to the text and upload, that’s an additional $40.

4. SHIPPING CHARGES. Createspace since January has appeared to offer more options for shipping. The first proof I ordered was via UPS and cost over $6.00. By the time I had my second title ready for proof, USPS media rate was available at $3.85. I don’t know if those choices are now consistently available, but they were the last time I ordered a proof. I don’t know what Lulu charges for shipping. Via Lightning Source, they say they charge the ‘going rate’ for mailings of the book itself to you as the publisher or to distributors, plus you will be charged $1.50 handling fee per book. For a box of 50 books, that would include $75 handling fee above the shipping rate.

5. DISTRIBUTION. The one HUGE drawback to Createspace is that distribution is only on Amazon. Lulu and Lightning Source offer distribution on Amazon plus other channels. The biggy for LS is the Ingram catalog. Note Lulu charges a fee for distribution but then has some exclusions so that maybe foreign rights are not included. LS distribution for UK is included only if you choose that POD contract in addition to the US POD contract (you have several options you can mix and match).

So, let’s look at comparative costs to get ONE book done without any revisions. For comparative book cost between Lightning Source and Createspace, I will use Createspace PRO plan and no pro plan. Because I am not dealing with Lulu right now I will leave it out of the comparison. Their prices are available online, so you can check them out yourself. Just be sure you use the same page count for your book when making comparisons.

LS
$75 file uploads
$30 proof
$12 Ingram catalog annually
$40 cost of your ISBN if purchased in block of 10
TOTAL $157 for a small paperback
Cost per 360-page book ($0.90 + $0.013/pg) $5.58 direct to distributor (slightly higher if direct to you the publisher)

CS
$13 proof
TOTAL $12 for a 360 page book
Cost per 360-page book ($1.50 + $0.02/pg) $8.70

CS-Pro
$39 Pro fee
$9.57 proof
TOTAL $48.57
Cost per 360-page book ($0.85 + $0.012/pg) $5.72

Comparing the three pricing structures you can see that distribution via Ingram’s catalog you will pay about $110-135 showing you as the publisher. Add your ISBN to CS and that lowers the difference to $70-95. NOTE that just because you have the opportunity to reach additional distribution sources through Lightning Source, there is no guarantee that anyone will buy your book if they don’t know about it. So MARKETING is your number-one priority at this juncture. Note also that generally POD books are non-returnable, and if you opt with LS to have them returned to you, they will charge you a fee per book as someone else already pointed out.

Clear as mud?

-Penumbra Publishing

I shared this with fellow reviewer LK and she pointed out the issue some might also have as far as your ISBN is concerned: “CS has that one huge downside being linked ONLY to Amazon, which is why I went with Lulu for Misfit McCabe.  Plus, they also have the other downside of owning the ISBN instead of you.”

So when you are choosing a direction for your book, ask yourself these questions?

1. Do you want to own your ISBN?
2. Do you care about getting your book into bookstores?
3. Do you want your book available through other channels than Amazon?
4. How much money are you willing to invest in the project up front?

Remember, Wordclay is offering a Summer Publishing Package that saves you 15 percent on services, but it’s only available until June 30. Publish under the Wordclay imprint for $465.00 ($547.00 value) or under your own personal imprint for $495.00 ($583.00 value).

With summer officially beginning and readers looking to curl up in their hammocks with riveting books, now’s the time to release your debut novel, memoir or collection.

Summer Publishing Package includes:

• Stock Art Cover: Guided by your ideas, your designer will use stock images to generate a powerful cover.
• Custom Typesetting Interior: Your book’s interior will be professionally formatted to today’s standards.
• Wordclay ISBN and Channel Distribution: Essential to be competitive in the marketplace, this service makes your book available to 25,000 retailers.

Or you can choose to publish under your own personal publishing imprint with the Summer Publishing Package with a Single ISBN for only $30 more.

P.S. Got a case of writer’s block? Visit Wordclay’s Writing Help Center for common cures to pesky artistic headaches.

Notice the additional information for books in the square to the right. Even though in Step One of the creation process you were asked to enter a publisher or imprint name, if you are taking advantage of the free ISBN through CreateSpace, then CS will be listed as the publisher.

After finalizing, it appears to take 5 to 15 days for the book to become available at Amazon.  In speaking to a few authors, I’ve learned that can actually happen much quicker.  The page will load over time after about 5 business days with the Search Inside feature being the last function to load, taking the full 15 days to happen.

One of the unique tools CreateSpace offers is called Preview Gallery.  This is where you can upload a preview of your work for other CreateSpace members to read, rate, and review by answering a few questions about it.  The only thing that turned me off about looking at other previews in the Preview Gallery is that each preview contains a warning that says “For personal use only. Please use caution when downloading; files have not been scanned for malicious software.”

CreateSpace has a “Showcase” option where you can submit your own success story.  You can also read about other CreateSpace users whose products have been featured. I took a look at several of these, particularly those who have used CreateSpace to make DVDs, and found most of the write ups to be too hard of a sell.  Some even reminded me of those infomercials you see online for fad diets and exercise equipment.  They even read like a Billy Mays script for OxyClean or some other “act now and get a second one totally free” product.  Each shows a picture of the creator along with the product.

In searching through the Community Forums, I found several helpful topics.  I found the forums to be much more organized with Discussion Boards at the top for the different types of products you can create (Books have the most discussions), and the most recent posts can be found at the bottom.

The only thing I don’t like about CS so far has to be the lack of a bookstore.  Each of your projects comes with an “E-Store” link you can direct customers to, but there is no complete “bookstore” to shop at CreateSpace to view all of the products available.  There’s not even a search feature to help you locate other products while you are on the CS site. So it seems the only true selling outlet for your CS project is through Amazon, or at least it will lean toward being the more popular.

To close out my focus on Createspace, I promised we’d hear from a few other authors who have used CreateSpace for their own publishing ventures.  First, I checked in with Cheryl Anne Gardner, author of The Thin Wall.

Why did you choose CreateSpace?

I have my own imprint; I list my titles directly with Bowkers, and so I wanted a flexible low-cost printing and distribution solution. Amazon functions as my printer and my distributor, so the business model is efficient while still allowing for expansion.

What do you like best about CreateSpace?

•Free distribution with the number one online bookstore.
•Streamlined system designed for the advanced DIY Indie Publisher.
•Advanced Adobe distiller specs, allowing for cover files up to 40MB at 300dpi.
•Can use own ISBNs, but must list directly with Bowkers.
•The cost of proof copies is low, and the turn-around time from proof to listing is quite fast. The Createspace guidelines state 15 business days, but I found the product pages load in about 5, and while they may not be fully activated with the search inside feature, customers can purchase the product as soon as it goes online.
•Can offer promotional discount codes on purchases through the Createspace e-store.

What do you like least?

That distribution is limited to Amazon in the US. I would like to see Amazon UK and Canada added on as well.

What troubles (if any) did you experience during the publishing process?

I had one instance where the discounted author copies I ordered had a noticeable print defect. The odd page toner saturation was much darker than the even pages. I emailed the customer service center, and within 24 hours, I was asked to provide them with the barcode tracking number from each of the books so that they could identify the run. Subsequently, they sent me 6 new copies, which I received within 5 days. I didn’t have to return the damaged ones, either. This was the first incident I have had with defective books. I find Createspace’s print quality to be above par, with covers of higher quality than Lulu and even Lightning Source. Manufacturing errors occur and my situation was dealt with promptly and respectfully.

Would you recommend CreateSpace to someone who is considering self-publishing? If so, why?

I would only recommend them if the author has advanced knowledge in desktop publishing and has the software capability to distill their own PDF files. Your book is only as good as the writing and the files you upload. There are no help wizards.

I asked the same questions to RJ Keller, author of Waiting for Spring.

It all starts with sales reported to me from Lulu.com.  In order to keep the price of my book affordable, I opted for a lower royalty, just 67 cents per copy sold through a distribution channel outside of Lulu.  Here are the total copies sold through Lulu and the total money I made from each as of June 8, 2009.

Lulu:

23 copies sold through distribution channels – Amazon  (67 cents each x 23 = $15.41)

2 copies sold through UK distribution channels (67 cents each x 2 = $1.34)

3 Ebook downloads direct from Lulu ($4.00 each x 3 = $12.00)

1 print copy sold direct from Lulu ($3.86)

That’s a total of $32.61 earned direct from Lulu.com the first year.

Sad, isn’t it?  Not really.  Obviously, I sold more copies through Amazon than I did direct from Lulu. Perhaps I could have done more promotion.  Perhaps I could have directed more people to Lulu instead of Amazon to increase my earnings per copy.  However, the majority of readers are more likely to buy through a site they know and trust, such as B&N or Amazon, rather than buying direct from my Lulu bookstore.  Had I never once mentioned the book was available on Amazon, and had I only directed people to Lulu, maybe my earnings would be better…maybe not.

But don’t frown.  That’s just Lulu.  Let’s take a look at Kindle E-reader sales for the year.  For the sake of price changes, discounts, and the various number of copies sold per month, I’ll just show you how many copies sold each month and then give you the grand total of my earnings from Kindle alone.

Amazon Kindle:

June 2008: zero copies sold

July 2008: 2 copies sold

August 2008: 23 copies sold

September 2008: 25 copies sold

October 2008: 25 copies sold

November 2008: 29 copies sold

December 2008: 22 copies sold ( December/January show a decline in sales probably due to the holidays.)

January 2009: 17 copies sold

February 2009: 24 copies sold

March 2009: 73 copies sold (Release of Kindle 2)

April 2009: 33 copies sold

May 2009: 43 copies sold

June 2009: 7 copies sold as of June 8th

Grand total earned from all Kindle sales: $1044.80.  Not too shabby.

I invested in a total number of 30 author copies.  The majority of those copies were given away to friends and family or included in marketing kits.  I did sell five copies to coworkers and through the Amazon Marketplace at $10.00 each.

Total earned from direct author sales: $50.00

Last, we have sales through Smashwords.  A total of 23 copies have been downloaded since I published the book here back on February 18th, 2009.  However, I’d like to point out that I used Smashwords mainly as a marketing tool to help gain Amazon reviews.  Here, my book was offered for free in exchange for an Amazon review.  I only gained royalties from three sales totaling $5.81.  I have not yet been paid for these sales since Smashwords has a minimum requirement of $25.00 in earnings before they pay out.

This brings my total earnings across the board to a total of $1133.22.

That’s a far stretch from being able to afford my cost of living for one year.  Not really even enough for one month.  It is 3 car payments though; it’s even enough to pay my utility bill for 16 months.  As I reported in my last diary entry, almost all of this money was invested in marketing and review copies. But I have no debt as far as this project goes, which is more than some self-published authors can say.

Now, let’s take a quick look at reviews.

To date, I have 10 reviews on Amazon. Nine are from people I have never met face to face.  That’s important because reviews from friends and family are nice, but they are always going to be positive. The first review came from an Amazon Top 500 Reviewer who I sent a review copy to.  Three of the reviews were a result of my free Smashwords Ebook give away. And two of the reviews were cross posted from other review sites. My current Amazon rank is at 1.2 million, but has been as high as 101,000 although it fell fast. My current rank on the Kindle is 104,705.

My first review outside of Amazon came from Rainbow Reviews.  I was sorely disappointed in this review, not because it only gave me three stars, but because the quality of the review itself is horrible.  The reviewer just reposted my book blurb, then pointed out three paragraphs he liked and wrapped up the review with two sentences which pretty much anyone could have come up with just by reading a few pages.  Thankfully, this review was not cross posted to Amazon.

The second came from Floyd M. Orr at PODBRAM.    Floyd cross posted a version of the review to Amazon for me.  I have to admit its a nice critical and well rounded review, just as a review should be.

The last review I received outside of Amazon was from Cheryl Anne Gardner at PodPeep. Cheryl was the first to really point out a lot of my subliminal underlying tones of the book and to really embrace the humorous aspect of the story. Cheryl also cross posted the review to Amazon for me.

And this is where my year ends.  It’s certainly not where my story ends.  Like I said in my last post, this is a good place to end the diary even though my journey as an author is far from over.  I’m not going to recap my mistakes or what I’ve learned from this diary.  I’ll leave those things up to you to find out for yourself in all my previous posts. I have no philosophical words of wisdom to share with you. The diary speaks for itself. I’ll still be sharing news and thoughts about self-publishing in general from time to time on LLBR, but this is where the POD Diary comes to a close.

What’s next for me, you ask?  Well, I’ve often referred to myself as a literary medium.  There’s always another character or storyline in my head waiting to be born, usually several at a time actually.  I’ll still be promoting my book and seeking out reviews, and checking my Amazon rank every other day, and wait eagerly for more Kindle royalties, but it’s time to put my focus into something new.  Another story, another character is calling and I’ve ignored the messages long enough.

For the readers out there who took time to read my book, I thank you.  And for the writers out there who have followed my diary this past year for information or inspiration, I say to you what I say to every author I encounter who takes the self-publishing path:

Don’t give up!