CreateSpace for POD self publishing

http://ebooksuccess4free.webs.com/ - CreateSpace is a great and free way to self publish POD (print on demand) style. They're owned by Amazon, the world's largest bookseller. When you self publish with CreateSpace you get a webpage there and with Amazon to sell your books. They provide everything for free, but you must be a do-it-yourself type. For more information visit my website or check out my book, How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks All for Free by Jason Matthews.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• print on demand

[markblyn]

I know I know, too much information. You only asked about the price, but I thought I'd add my 10 cents worth!

[TarheelJ]

@markblyn , great information. Thanks for the contributions. If you ever want a free and powerful graphics editor for making book covers, I've done all of mine with Inkscape. A bit of a challenge to learn, but once you get familiar with Inkscape you can design anything.

[markblyn]

RE: @MAYKITHRT about book prices. My 'Createspace' book 'The Occasionally Disgusting Adventures of Brian and Sprig' is 8" x 5.25". It cost me approx $8.00 per book when I bought 5 or more. My book is fairly lengthy...600 pages, which is longer than most, so I was quite happy with the pricing. Very reasonable. Now I have it up on Kindle $0.99, which is selling a lot better for me than the physical book $15.99 (The lowest price I could sell it at & still make a buck).

[TarheelJ]

@markblyn , That's good to hear. Just curious, did you pay the extra for the Pro Plan with CreateSpace? If not, that would lower the cost of your books, but 600 pages is a lot.

[AuthorsBroadCast]

CreateSpace is a good way to go for many first time authors and those who want a true POD solution.

[markblyn]

Sorry, yes you are correct. It was a year ago so I forgot. I paid I think about $39.00 (something like that) for the Pro-plan which really brings down the price of the printed book. I think it also (supposedly) gives you a higher percentage of the profit when you sell your printed book, not that I'm seeking to become the next Stephen King.

[markblyn]

I have ordered about 15 copies in total, which easily recouped my costs if I hadn't done the 'Pro-plan' thing. You never know, if I should suddenly get interest in my book then I might want to order quite a few copies, so it seemed like a good option.

[markblyn]

Yes, 600 pages (150,000) words is a lot. I got carried away, but I was really pleased with the finished article. The colors really pop and the text is clear and exactly as i'd formatted it. No surprises. My cover has gold's/yellow's/brown's, so it's quite lively. I had heard rumors from other Createspace users that darker covers don't show so well so that was partly why I stayed away from doing a dark cover.



[markblyn]

If you do decide to publish your own book you might as well do the editing, formatting, blurb, cover, back cover and spine yourself. Why pay people to do all that, and anyway it's far more satisfying having really self-published without any help at all. It really becomes 'your baby!' that way.

[markblyn]

'Createspace' provides the template's for some of the book sizes, and together with photoshop (You can get a free 30 or 60 day trial version online) you can do your own. But only do that after you have the exact page count from your formatted text. You have to enter the page count to get the correct spine-size, when doing your cover.

!