CreateSpace.com is an Amazon company for authors or writers who would like to self publish their books.
If you have already written a book or maybe, you are thinking of writing one in the near future, I would recommend you to take a closer look at CreateSpace.
Basically, Createspace takes care for publishing, selling and even shipping your books to your customers just for a small share of your list price.
Whether you are looking for help in book cover designing, editing or even marketing, CreateSpace offers top notch professional services at a fee and even a free interior reviewer.
Why Self Publish a Book with CreateSpace
One of the major advantage of publishing your book with CreateSpace is exposure. CreateSpace is an Amazon company with a huge amount of traffic and your books get exposed to million of viewers or readers from all over the world.
What are the Available Distribution Options?
CreateSpace distribution offers the following membership options:
1. Standard Distribution
Standard distribution is free with the regular CreateSpace membership. This membership allow you to sell your books on Amazon.com and others European websites, including Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.es, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it, plus to other customers ordering from Amazon’s European websites.
CreateSpace eStore – You can sell your books directly from your eStore. You can customize your eStore to match your own website. CreateSpace will handle the cart, credit card processing and fulfillment of your customer’s orders.
eBook for Kindle – Make your book available to more readers through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Simply sign-up for a KDP account and they will provide you with everything that you need to publish your book on the Amazon Kindle Store.
2. Expanded Distribution
Expanded Distribution offers book owners an opportunity to make their books reachable to a larger number of audience through online retailers, bookstores, libraries, academic institutions and other distribution within the USA.
In addition, with Expanded Distribution membership, you can distribute and make your title available for orders through the following channels:
Bookstores and Online Retailers – make your book available to online and offline retailers such as Barnes & Noble and to distributors such as Ingram and NACSCORP.
Libraries and Academic Institutions – make your book available through Baker & Taylor to libraries and academic institutions.
CreateSpace Direct – make your book available to certified resellers through CreateSpace wholesale website.
How to Make Money with Createspace
You earn royalty points every time a book is printed to meet the demand of a new customer in any of the distribution options that I have mentioned above.
Your royalty earnings is calculated based on the list price you set for the location where your book is printed.
CreateSpace usually take their share from the list price (a percentage of the list price for each sales channel, fixed charge plus per page charge, based on the print location). The remaining balance is usually what is termed as the royalty earnings.
For Example: Let us assume a customer from Amazon.com purchases a book and it is printed. For a 184 page black and white book, you set your USD list price at $8.99. The CreateSpace share will be calculated as the following;
- Sales Channel % = $3.60
- Fixed Charge = $0.85
- Per Page Charge = $2.20
- Your Royalty = $2.34
The sales channel share for standard distribution for Amazon.com, Amazon Europe is 40% of the list price. For Standard distribution CreateSpace store is 20% and for Expanded distribution is 60%.
Fixed charges ranges in between $0.85 – $2.15 per book and Per page charges ranges in between 0 – $0.07 per page.
Conclusion
CreateSpace is a great website for authors or writers to get their books published for a small fee. It is most suitable for beginners who are yet to establish themselves as well as those with no previous experience on how to go about selling their books.
With the many options offered by CreateSpace, it very easy to find something that will work best for you.
One downside though, the CreateSpace professional fee seems a little bit high for those who may need extra help like designing their cover page. So, it would be wiser to outsource editing or book cover designing in other places such as Fiverr to reduce the overall costs.
CreateSpace didn’t work out for me. The book came out great but when it came time to pay out my royalties, a big fat ZERO. The payouts met the minimum threshold, too. They just gave a bunch of lame excuses that never panned out. At the end, simply stalling tactics. There are also many complaints about CreateSpace underreporting sales. CreateSpace is a Amazon company, but it’s a shady operation. I would stay away from them.