Q&A: Is Amazon's BookSurge or CreateSpace a good deal for authors
QUESTION: Last year, Amazon purchased a print-on-demand (POD) company, BookSurge. And this year, Amazon launched a user-friendly service called CreateSpace, where authors can self-publish a book.Are either of these services a good deal for authors? If authors use them, can they expect more favorable treatment (and perhaps better sales) from Amazon?
ANSWER: No. Both offer terrible terms for authors, and they offer no special marketing advantages compared to traditional publishing or self-publishing.
Booksurge and CreateSpace are convenient for people who want to get a book printed and listed on Amazon fairly easily. You can buy a different packages that include various services. These are the details self-publishers need to arrange themselves, such as hiring a cover designer and buying ISBNs from ISBN.org.
The big problem with BookSurge, CreateSpace, Lulu and most other similar "author services" company is they skim an obscenely large portion of revenue. For example, I make about $10 on the sale of each of my books, but if I'd published it through BookSurge, I'd earn closer to $2 per book. Where did the other $8 go?
So for authors who are not planning to sell many books and are willing to pay for the convenience, I suppose BookSurge and CreateSpace are good deals. But if you've spent a year or two working on a book, shouldn't you invest a few more hours doing some simple math, and figure out how to publish as profitably as possible?
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Labels: Amazon.com, self publishing
posted by Steve Weber at 9/04/2007
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Steve, interesting post. I'd be curious to hear how you get better margins on your own. Are you using Lightning Source, Book Surge, or someone else?
I'd also appreciate if you posted a response to the first commenter here, who also seemed to make some good points.
As an author of a soon to be self-published novel, I'd love to know the best print option.
Thanks,
Mark
As a self-publisher, I've used offset and Lightning Source.
If you're going to use POD and you want to make a profit doing it, I don't see any alternative but using LSI. Frankly, I wish they had some competition.
The advantages of LSI:
1. Lower printing costs than other on-demand alternatives
2. Distribution through Ingram
3. 24-hour availability on Amazon at a wholesale discount as low as 20 percent
What are the disadvantages? A couple hundred dollars in setup fees?
Sure, you can go with one of the alternatives to avoid those setup fees -- then pay double or triple for printing/distribution.
I think you are being unfair to CreateSpace. CreateSpace takes zero fees up-front. They do not sell any add-on services whatsoever. Authors and self-publishers are left on their own to arrange covers, interior layouts, etc. They even give away ISBNs for free -- although one can use one's own and publish under one's own imprint. So other than buying one proof copy of one's book, one doesn't pay CreateSpace anything to get the book onto Amazon. What's more, compared with other on-demand options, CreateSpace gives the self-published author more money per Amazon sale than any other choice out there, other than dealing with Lightning Source direct and offering a very short discount. For example, with a 152-pge book listing for $16, the self-publisher will net a little over $5. That is not as good as using Lightning Source with a 25-35% discount. But it is vastly better than what you get if you publish through Lulu or any other of the other publishing services companies that are effectively front-ends for Lightning Source. (It's also more than you get going through BookSurge. That said, BookSurge itself pays out a lot more on Amazon sales than any of the publishing service companies that utilize Lightning Source -- it pays out 25% of cover price, so I don't know where you get your figure of $2.) And unlike with Lightning Source, there is a guarantee of being listed as in-stock on Amazon and receiving all the benefits of Amazon's promotional services, shipping deals, etc. Right now, going through Lightning Source will very likely lead to the same -- but there has to be some question as to how long that will last when Amazon makes so little on short discount POD titles. The underlying anxiety of the Lightning Source route is that one has no contractual rights with the sales vehicle on which one ultimately relies. For that matter, there is also some doubt as to whether Lightning Source will forever keep its doors open to people with only one or two books who want to deal with it direct but who are -- according to some perceptions -- really more "authors with their own ISBNs" rather than "publishers." With CreateSpace, the self-published author doesn't have to worry about "posing" in the right way in order to get through the door. I'm not saying that CreateSpace is right for everyone. But to simply dismiss it as offering "terrible terms" seems very unfair and misleading
In reply to the poster who referred to the "first" post on this thread, I deleted it because of a typo and reposted it. So his post now actually references the fourth post. (For some reason all the para breaks vanished the second time.)
In reply to another poster, it's not just a matter of avoiding set-up fees. There may yet be some benefit in dealing with an Amazon subsidiary direct -- right now, it's far from clear that there is, but I doubt that the heady days of 25% short discounts getting one on a level playing field with everyone else are going to last.
But my point is that even if one ends up concluding that LSI right now offers the better deal, it is really not fair simply to write off the CreateSpace terms as "terrible." They are really quite good, especially if one places any value on dealing with Amazon direct. I think a more balanced analysis should be made.
Although the CreateSpace program is preferable to BookSurge, your net profit is still only 50% of what you achieve through Lightning Source.
In addition, guaranteed Ingram distribution is a significant benefit. Of course it is possible as one commentor noted, said Lightning Source at some point will no longer work with small one or two book publishers. However, this seems unlikely, because they are a Print-On-Demand entity and were created to deal with small publishers.
Actually, I am surprised that Amazon .Com hasn't come up with a more competitive program to compete with Lightning Source.
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