QUESTION: I’ve decided to try print-on-demand for a nonfiction title. I believe I understand the advantages of POD versus Amazon Advantage. I’ve read about Lightning Source, and am wondering if Amazon’s CreateSpace is a better alternative.
When I do the math, it seems the royalties with CreateSpace Pro are similar to LSI. The big difference appears to be when you want to try other venues such as B&N.
CreateSpace also seems more user-friendly. As I understand it, Lightning doesn’t really want to deal with authors, and have pretty tight restrictions on the files they’ll accept.
ANSWER: Yes, the CreateSpace Pro plan is very comparable to LSI, at least in terms of printing costs. But, as you allude to, a big consideration is availability. Generally, CreateSpace makes your book available only through Amazon, so you’d be missing out on sales at Barnes & Noble.com — not to mention special orders from brick-and-mortar bookstores.
The other big issue is the wholesale discount. If you want to use a “short discount” of 20 percent via LSI, Amazon and BN.com will sell your books at 10 percent off.
(To illustrate: Let’s say you set your retail price through LSI at $15, and your discount at 20 percent. That means Amazon (and everyone else) will pay $12 wholesale for your book. Your profit for each book will be the $12, minus printing costs. Buyers will pay $13.50 at Amazon and BN.com.)
By contrast, the shortest discount you can set at CreateSpace is 40 percent. So you’re giving Amazon an extra 20 percent of your potential revenue compared to the scenario above. You’re not getting much in return for giving CreateSpace that extra 20 percent cut. An easier interface, perhaps.
It’s true that CreateSpace is better suited toward non-techies because it’s relatively easy to use. Customer support seems to be a foreign concept at LSI.
One new wrinkle: CreateSpace now offers an “expanded distribution” upgrade option for its pro plan, and they actually use LSI to achieve it. However, with this option CreateSpace mandates a 60 percent discount.
Really, Amazon, you want another 20 percent?
That 60 percent discount may be fine if you’re being stocked at brick-and-mortar stores nationwide. But if your sales are mostly online, you’re giving away most of the profit.
By the way, it doesn’t hurt to have an account at various POD providers and staying abreast of their offers and tools. One time last year when I was having trouble with the measurements and layout of a cover (I design my own) I opened a CreateSpace account for the sole purpose of fiddling around with their cover template. And it was a help. Likewise, I have used my account at Lulu to generate PDFs from Word documents at times.
I don’t see this situation changing in the near future — LSI has the widest distribution and best terms. However, Aaron Shepard, in his book “POD for Profit,” points out that “double sourcing” your book — making it available simultaneously through LSI and elsewhere — might become an option. For example, TextStream, a POD unit of Baker & Taylor, may someday offer access to Borders bookstores and Borders.com, which don’t seem to carry LSI books anymore.
Yet another consideration: LSI also gets you into Canada and overseas markets — the UK, Germany, Japan. More discussion here on a CreateSpace discussion thread.
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6 Comments
I thought I was onto the right idea for discounts at CreateSpace, including the expanded one, but I still didn’t get it quite right with the short discount differences. I’ve been getting a bit confused by the discounts when I read the examples I’ve seen by Morris Rosenthal and Aaron Shepard. I’d make sense of those and then look online at Amazon’s list prices and see everything has a price slashed out and a discounted price beside it and wonder where the other number came from. So the $15 in your example would be the slashed price and the $13.50 would be the actual consumer price. In fact, Amazon is making only $1.50 from the sale. (Poor Amazon!) They appear to reduce “my” retail price by 10% for the sale. Thanks for this. I couldn’t wrap my head around how we got to those last customer-facing prices.
I’ve got a pretty good handle on Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign – and a graphic designer client of mine is happy to help so I think I’ll take a shot at Lightening Source. I had a little distrust in going with CreateSpace only because if it’s offered by Amazon they must be making a good profit somewhere! But your thoughts on signing-up with them as a secondary solution are great.
It’s interesting that you mention Aaron’s POD for Profit book. I’d only just ordered it a half-hour before I saw the CreateSpace option yesterday! I’m glad I did order it now. I was having second thoughts that Lightening Source might have become the “has been” solution.
For review copies I prefer not to have the bar code on the last interior page.
Both LSI and Createspace require it. I ran off ARC copies with 360 Digital and then with Lulu. Both were printed fine. The spine width had to be adjusted slightly for Lulu. Lulu is of course outrageously expensive but I can order copies as needed. 360 Digital has a 25 copy minimum. Createspace is cheaper than either.
For my finished books I will probably use Createspace. I can meet LSI’s extreme requirements but just don’t think I should reward their lack of user friendliness.
John Culleton
Wexford Press
I must disagree about LSI and customer service. I have found them unfailingly polite and helpful in getting us set up.
Moreover, they are now set up in the UK so you get instant access to sales in Europe.
On the other hand, I think the avenue to explore with Amazon is their Fulfillment by Amazon service. They will warehouse your books and charge only for the space you are taking up. When you are set up as a reseller for your own book–say to sell off your own website or in bulk–they will handle the entire sales transaction. You collect at the end of each month. Also, they make it very easy to manage shipments manually from your inventory to any destination. I have been very happy with this approach.
I used Create Space and for a first time author NOT trying to make a huge profit, just not trying to lose their shirt, it is a great deal.
I published my book March 09 and have sold couple hundred books. I am on Amazon.com, look like any other book by a publisher, made up a publisher company name, have to supply your own ISBN though or Create Space would be listed a the publisher.
NO COST, wow!
Now the downside. The first two proofs look pretty good but when I ordered some of my own stock to sell, which is like $3.03 at book, the quality was defiantly lower. I even contacted them twice but they only replied quality varies and always trying to improve. I have a couple people ask me to autograph their books they bought off Amazon and they were too lower quality. The cover looks great! But the inside black and white look kind of POD.
I don’t know what you are talking about discounting? Going through Create Space, even their expanded distribution, no additional cost, they don’t discount you book. There is no competition.
I’ve published nine books with Lightningsource, and I’ve never had any type of problem. I also teach other authors how to publish with Lightningsource in my book “Authors: You Are The Publisher That You’ve Been Searching For!”
I want to echo what P.P. Kaywood says about Lightning Source. I’ve been publishing my own books and books for other authors through LSI for almost six years and I would rate their customer service among the best anywhere.
The difference is: LSI is strictly a printer, not a design house, and they’ve never pretended to be anything else. In order to take advantage of all that LSI has to offer, you need to present them with files that fit their specs, just as you do with any other printer.
I’ve been in the book publishing biz as a writer, designer, and marketer for nearly 25 years so LSI’s business model is normal to me. Before digital printing made one-book-at-a-time possible, you had to know how to fit your printer’s specs in order for your end product to look the way you wanted it to look.
The paradigm for POD delivery systems such as CreateSpace or Lulu is totally different than LSI’s so comparing them to one another is an apple/artichoke kind of thing. Personally, I find template-driven systems such as Lulu and CreateSpace and Blurb confining. I also think their printing charges are higher than LSI’s, their print quality (particularly for images) is not as good as LSI’s, and their distribution is far more limited.
In terms of expense, with LSI you’re going to pay someone else with the design and tech expertise to create the files you need if you don’t know how to use desktop publishing software yourself. With CreateSpace, you’re going to be paying more for books and giving away a bigger cut of the retail price to underwrite their distribution. Me, I’d rather pay for the file-making up front and be done with it.
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