My CreateSpace Experience Part 5

In this final post regarding CreateSpace we’ll look at completing, proofing, pricing and distributing your book. After clearing the interior reviewer and successfully uploading a cover, it’s time to order and review proof copies of your book. Once you are satisfied that your manuscript looks good and is error free, it’s an easy click to order proof copies.

You are provided with two proof options- a free downloadable PDF of your manuscript as it will appear in your book and the opportunity to order one or more physical copies. I recommend ordering some physical copies and giving a few of them to trusted proofreaders. Even after porting the manuscript to the 5×8 CreateSpace template and carefully checking the text with the interior reviewer I still found errors in The System – A Detroit Story – which was published as an eBook and on the market for months. It was profoundly embarrassing.

In few days a box will be on your porch with your proof copies. It’s exciting to unpack the box and hold a physical copy in your hands, feeling its weight and flipping through the pages. Even though I’m first and foremost an eBook author, I’ll admit it seems “more real” holding a physical book.

I believe the only way to catch all errors in a manuscript is to read every page out loud. Errors pop up like prairie dogs. Why? I have a theory. When you read without articulating you are not seeing the words, but the images created by the words along with other sensory stimuli induced by words. It’s semantic and has meaning. When you read aloud you are merely parroting the printed words and are not sensory or image focused. It’s purely lexical. This method works for me. That being said, proofing is a painful, boring and time eating process for you and your proofreaders. Thank, reward, and do something nice for your proofreaders. It’s as boring for them as it is for you and they will catch errors that you will not.

After you approve your proof the next step is to set pricing and distribution. CreateSpace calculates the estimated cost of your book when you provide the  book size, ink and paper type along with a page length. This is the price that you the author will pay (along with shipping) for production copies.

Pricing depends on where you distribute your books. I chose the U.S., the U.K. (pricing in pounds) and E.U. countries (pricing in Euros) since my eBooks sell relatively well abroad. This will bring up a form where you set your price. You can experiment with different prices and dollar to pound and Euro conversion takes place automatically, along with royalty calculations. I try selling my books as low as reasonably possible since my eBooks are priced at $2.99. It looks fishy to a reader to see a book priced at three dollars for the eBook and fifteen dollars for the paperback. Be careful making this decision. If you sell a lot of eBooks in the U.K. and Europe then give it a shot. All three of my books are available in paperback in all of the markets. If they don’t sell well overseas, I’ll pull them out and drop the U.S. price. That’s one of the beauties of self publishing- pricing is flexible and you make the decisions and can react fast to your markets.

If you already have your eBook on Amazon, your paperback will automatically be linked to your Kindle book page. CreateSpace offers an expanded distribution service which I have not used. If anyone reading this has experience with that, please post a reply or link to a post here.

Overall, my experience with CreateSpace was absolutely positive, and I wouldn’t think of going anywhere else to produce paperbacks. The only roadblocks were the template error and my ignorance and inexperience. Now, I can port an eBook and get it into the paperback market in a matter of days. So will you once you get the hang of it.

My CreateSpace Experience Part 4

So I carefully ported the text for The System into the 5×8 inch CreateSpace template, converted it to a PDF then uploaded it. CreateSpace checks the file for formatting errors, called “issues”. Mine came back with several dozen. It turned out that the margin value for the gutter was incorrect. A gutter is the white space where the pages are bound to the book. The value supplied by the 5×8 CreateSpace template was .14 inches, and the the CreateSpace scanning tool stated that the gutter needed to be at least .75 inches. I changed the gutter value in the template margin settings to .75 inches, recreated the PDF and uploaded it. It sailed through the format scanner and I’ll tell you, it felt good to see the scanner message “no issues found”.

My next two books, Reckoning in Escobara and Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR blew through the process with no errors. The moral of this story is don’t trust the template.

Cover Art

After your manuscript is properly loaded and error free, the next step is to upload your cover art. All book content is important, but having a professional cover and great teaser  text or log lines on the back is what attracts readers. CreateSpace offers free cover templates, and if you’re desperate or flat broke you could use these, but I don’t recommend it. Use a professional cover artist. I do, and I would never think of producing a cover myself because I don’t have the talent. What would you rather do? Start working on a new book or waste time producing an inferior cover? For me, the choice is easy.

Lindsay Breen creates all of my covers for eBooks and paperbacks. Sometimes I’ll supply a photograph and Lindsay takes it from there. Lindsay is reasonable, timely, easy to work with and does a great job. Here are the covers Lindsay has produced for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SITE Z is an eBook work in progress, so there’s no spine or back cover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you would like Lindsay’s contact info, reply to this post and I’ll email it to you.

I downloaded a CreateSpace cover template just to see what it looked like, and I couldn’t make much sense of it. There are three components to a cover, the front, the spine, and the back. The spine width is calculated by the number of pages of your manuscript, the type of ink and paper you use, multiplied by a conversion factor.

Also, you will need a bar code containing the ISBN for the back cover. This usually is attached as a PDF or jpeg when you order an ISBN for your book. Check into this before you order an ISBN. I’m not sure if CreateSpace supplies bar codes with their ISBNs or not. Please post a comment if anyone knows for sure either way.

If you already have eBook versions of your books, keep the covers and teaser text the same, since if you sell on Amazon the eBook and paperback will be linked on the same page. It’s confusing to readers, seeing different covers for the same book.

Once your cover is uploaded it’s time to go through the proofing process. More on this in the next post.

My CreateSpace Experience Part 3

If you’ve read the first two installments, then you know we’re ready to move on to preparing your manuscript for upload to CreateSpace. The next step is to format your book using a Word template, converting it to a PDF file, uploading, correcting formatting errors and proofing your manuscript.

The first thing you need to do is choose the size of your book. CreateSpace offers several sizes and defaults to 6×9 inches. You should make this decision carefully. I chose a 5×8 book size. Why? For several reasons. I planned on pricing my books as low as reasonably possible and the smaller the book size, the lower the production cost. The same with your choice of paper and ink. I use white paper with black ink, plain and simple.

Another reason 5×8 is a good choice is that the physical book is highly portable. A few 5×8 books take up a lot less space in a backpack or carry on piece of luggage than a 6×9 or larger versions. Also, due to the smaller page size, the book will be thicker than a 6×9 version. With eBooks, readers seem to prefer shorter books and accumulate a lot of them on their eBook readers, but it’s just the opposite with paperbacks. Who would pay eight to fourteen dollars for a 150 page paperback? Not me or anybody else I know. When people spend money for a physical book, they like it to have some heft, and a 5×8 300 page book feels like they’ve gotten their money’s worth. And they have, if the price is low. My books are thrillers designed to be read in a few hours and are usually a little under 300 pages long. This formula and book size works pretty well for me, and it might for you, too.

Once you’ve decided on the size of your book, CreateSpace provides a Word template for your book size, which you download for free.  CreateSpace recommends using the template and so do I, with a couple of caveats. I use Scrivener to write all my novels since it’s a great tool for large documents and contains eBook compilers- .mobi for Kindles and epub for Nook and other readers. This got in the way of using the template as-is.

I downloaded the 5×8 template and started porting my Scrivener based manuscript for The System – A Detroit Story. Here’s where my ignorance came into play, big time. I spent hours copying and pasting the text from Scrivener to the template, messing up the template’s preset margins in the process. So much so, I had to start over from scratch after all the text was transferred. The edges were ragged and I had the margins adjusted equally for left and right pages and couldn’t get them reset properly.

Here’s what I did to make life and the conversion easier. From Scrivener I saved the manuscript as an RTF file and changed the page size and margins to those in the template. Then I did a copy and paste from the RFT document to the template. That process went smoothly and the margins were untouched.

Once your manuscript is ported to the template, a PDF version needs to be created. CreateSpace only accepts PDF files as manuscripts. This is no problem if you use Word- just save your manuscript as a PDF. I saved The System as a PDF and checked it in Preview (I use an iMac). It looked pretty good so I uploaded it to CreateSpace. CreateSpace then checks the PDF for “issues”, which are formatting errors. Mine came back with several issues, even though I used the template and didn’t muck with the margins.

More on what went wrong in the next post…

My CreateSpace Experience Part 2 All About ISBNs

After realizing I needed physical books to sell I signed up for a CreateSpace account, which costs nothing. There are a lot of steps producing a physical book, many more than an eBook. CreateSpace breaks it down to four major categories, Setup, Review, Distribute and finally Sales and Marketing. There is also a Create category which provides editorial services, illustration services and the like.

You will spend the majority of your time in the Setup category. Sections in here are Title Information, ISBN, Interior, Cover and Complete Setup. You enter the title of your book, the author (you), a description and so on. This is easy if you already have an eBook released. Just copy the teaser/log lines from your eBook. Make sure you keep the text the same across all platforms. It’s confusing when you see the same book with differing descriptive text. Be consistent.

The next step is entering an ISBN. So what is an ISBN anyway, and why do you need one? ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number. It’s a unique number, like a Social Security number, that identifies a book. ISBNs used to be 10 digits long, but since January 1st, 2007, they are now 13 digits long. Many independent authors who write eBooks don’t bother with them. I never did. Amazon and Barnes & Noble assign their own internal numbers to your book. ISBNs are optional. CreateSpace absolutely requires you to have an ISBN for your book.

Not all ISBNs are the same, even if it’s for the same book. A hardcover ISBN is different than an eBook ISBN or paperback. Once an ISBN is issued, it can’t be used again. For a detailed description of ISBNs go to Wikipedia.

CreateSpace offers four choices for ISBNs, which makes it confusing. You can get a free, CreateSpace assigned ISBN, but the ISBN is not assigned to you- it stays with CreateSpace. If you want to publish your book elsewhere in the future this ISBN will not follow your book, as I understand it. The next choice is a Custom ISBN for $10 where an imprint is assigned the ISBN. An imprint is essentially a publisher, which could be you. I use JohnSilverBooks. The next is a Custom Universal ISBN where you can provide your imprint and be able to publish elsewhere. This costs $99. The next choice is providing your own ISBN. This is the selection I use. I get my ISBNs from a clearinghouse near Chicago. I may try a CreateSpace ISBN in the future, but I will put out the $99 to have the ISBN assigned to me and reserve the opportunity to publish elsewhere if and when I choose. Here’s a link to a good blog post entitled The Truth About CreateSpace’s Free ISBNs: http://www.publetariat.com/book/export/html/218

In Part 3 I’ll talk about the hard part (at least for me)- using the CreateSpace MS Word templates to format you book text and using their proofing tool to see what your book will look like and check for proper formatting. This is called the “interior” and the the proofing tool is called the Interior Reviewer.

My CreateSpace Experience Part 1 – Paper vs. Electrons – The Case for Paperbacks

I started writing books about three years ago and decided to release them as eBooks on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and possibly other outlets. Being a long time Kindle owner I thought paper books were quickly becoming a thing of the past, like Polaroid film or VCRs. Millions of Kindles were being sold by Amazon and at the same time brick and mortar bookstores struggled or were going bankrupt. This reinforced my belief that paper was going away.

My books came out and bounced up and down the charts and I have no complaints taking the self-publishing route. Why waste time chasing agents and publishers and, if and when a deal was landed, waiting a couple of years to receive $1.25 royalty on a twenty eight dollar hardcover if and only if the advance was earned out. No thank you. I wanted my books in readers hands as soon as they were ready.

John Grisham said something like “it’s easy to write books but hard to sell them.” That’s the truth. In order to sell books, authors need to meet with people, go to book fairs, festivals, coffee shops, conferences and conventions. Guess what? You can’t sell eBooks at any of these venues. It’s like vaporware. People like holding books in their hands and like inscriptions from the author.

I realized I needed physical books when my wife and I were on an early morning walk. We passed by the LED message board in front of our City Hall. A message flashed by saying that an author/artist festival was being held at a community center in a couple of weeks. The organizers were currently looking for authors and artists. I looked it up on the Web and although very small, I thought it would be fun to have a table, meet people and try and peddle my eBooks.

What did I have to offer? I have professionally printed 3×5 inch postcards with the book covers on the front, teaser text on the back and the book website URL. A lot of people like to collect books cards like this, especially ones signed by authors. I contacted the organizers via email and told them about the eBooks and how all of them were in the Kindle Top 100 in their respective categories at one time or another, qualifying them, however briefly, as best sellers. The organizers asked me if I had any physical books to sell. I said no. They said they only wanted authors who had “real books”  for sale. Did I get upset? No. I learned something the hard way.

LESSON LEARNED: AUTHORS, HAVE A STOCKPILE OF PHYSICAL BOOKS AVAILABLE TO SELL.

It made sense to me after I gave it some thought. Seeing an author at a table without books, merely signing and handing out postcards is like seeing a musician handing out flyers and not having CDs for sale (another soon-to-be obsolete medium). It just doesn’t work and gives the perception the author is non-authentic (aka wannabe). How can this guy be a real author without any books?

Even from this trivial rejection I took something valuable away. Authors, traditionally published or self-published, need physical books on hand to sell, preferably trade paperbacks. After some research and having a great experience with Amazon, I decided to have books produced via CreateSpace, an Amazon company.

In Part 2 I’ll talk about my first encounter with CreateSpace, using (buggy) Word templates provided by CreateSpace, ISBNs and book cover graphics.

 

 

My CreateSpace Experience

I just put out The System – A Detroit Story – on Amazon.com via CreateSpace. Writers- I’ve kept a journal of what I went through to get it out for sale. I’ll have Part I up by the weekend.