News CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing to merge

[Emurelda]

CreateSpace and KDP to Become One Service


CreateSpace and KDP to Become One Service | Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing

Thought it worth posting this as it might be relevant to self publishers here.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Just ordered my first author copies from KDP, after shifting my titles over from Createspace. I've heard good and bad stories about the quality of the 'new' service. Crossing my fingers, as I have two events coming up next month.

 

[S.T Stevens]

What can we expect from this in terms of the negatives, does anyone know?

 

[Robinne Weiss]

The biggest one is that KDP doesn't support as many languages as Createspace did, so if you were publishing in multiple languages, you may find you can't publish the language you want. Other issues I've heard of anecdotally is in printing quality, though, frankly, I've seen poor quality printing on occasion from every POD provider--the issue is in how the company addresses concerns, and I haven't heard anything on that front. I understand the algorithm KDP uses to calculate spine width is not as accurate as that used by Createspace (they calculate pages in multiples of 10, rather than using your exact page count), so there's a little more possibility for shifting of the cover when printing, leading to titles not quite being centred or whatever, if you don't take this into account. And, of course, if you want to change the cover of your previously Createspace book, you have to use a different template, because the KDP cover will be a different size.

 

[S.T Stevens]

Thanks for that. I appreciate it. I've only every used Createspace once, but I did find it easy. It's a shame that they've merged, but maybe Amazon will turn to them for advice on how to run it and fix the major differences.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Thanks for that. I appreciate it. I've only every used Createspace once, but I did find it easy. It's a shame that they've merged, but maybe Amazon will turn to them for advice on how to run it and fix the major differences.

Createspace was an Amazon company, so it's doubtful they'll 'learn' from Createspace now that they've absorbed it into KDP. I'm certain it was a money-saving move for the company. They say they do have plans to support more languages in the future, which is good. The cover issue is something I'm sure we'll work out. If you know how they're calculating the cover size, you can plan for any shift in your artwork. I'm actually pleased to have all my Amazon sales data in one place now (well, most of it anyway)--nice to be able to see it all together. And it means I'll reach the royalty payment threshold more frequently, because paperbacks and e-books are counted together.