Zoe Winters did a response to Robin’s post about liking CreateSpace. Zoe likes LighteningSource. Here are her reasons why. I suggest that everyone read both articles when looking at POD.
That said, I use CreateSpace. I use a fantastically better profit margin that Robin talked about, as Zoe talked about, and I love how cheap I can get author copies (or direct sale copies to bookstores) through the CreateSpace $39.00 Pro Plan.
However, that said, I will be using LighteningSource on hardbacks.
By the way, those of you arguing paper and quality and such, CreateSpace often has their books printed and bound by LighteningSource. Order the cream paper on both, folks. No extra cost at CreateSpace.
Thanks, Robin and Zoe for a great discussion.
Read both, folks, then explore for yourself.
I keep seeing that CS is not listed with Ingram. I’m pretty sure I remember when talking to a rep on the phone at CS, they said that the book would be listed with Ingram.
I was also looking at the royalty plan for the expanded distribution channel with CS. Does this seem a bit low to you, or is this a fair royalty?
Seems very fair, since they print and do all the work with the books. This isn’t like an electronic book, this has real labor in it. You don’t even want to be around the packing involved. I honestly do see how they do it for the price they do, plus in the speed they do it in.
As for Ingram, both CreateSpace and LighteningSource gets books into a special listing in Ingrams where books can be ordered, just the same as Baker & Taylor. The books I have through the pro plan can be ordered from both, no issue. Low discount of only 32% in both, which smaller dealers don’t like, but it can be ordered. It took almost two months for a title to reach both catalogs, again not a bad time.
Zoe and Robin both talked about discounts. And margins. It made perfect sense to me because I have been a publisher and understand all the terms, but I’ll try to do a blog post on how writers should set pricing in POD publishing, but clearly most don’t know how to figure a margin over cost.
Specific POD question: Does it make as much sense to do POD for a collection of short stories as it does to do POD on a book? I know that I buy a lot more anthologies and collected short stories than I do books, the more short stories in one the better…but…I don’t know how normal that is.
My adventures in POD are scheduled to begin six months from now (minimum), so I’m not too concerned with the nitty-gritty yet on account of it’ll change.
Kris and I are doing them. 5 story collections that range about the same size as an Asimov’s Magazine for $7.99 and longer collections for $12.99 and up depending on the margin and size of the book. Why not?
Other than cost, is there any downside/rule to using both? I mean, just to get a feel for the systems and see which is better personally?
Robin already mentioned on her blog that she was unaware that you could discount down to 20% on LSI. That changes her numbers – dramatically.
Based on her numbers, if all Michael’s books had been via Createspace, they would have lost about $2230 between November and December on their Amazon sales alone, compared to what they would have earned via LSI.
($13.99 cover price means $2.80 extra per book via LSI minus 45 cents per book extra cost for printing times 949 books sold in those months)
The math is really easy. LSI means you earn 20% of the cover price more on every Amazon sale, and 40% of the cover price more on every B&N.com sale. That overcomes the extra 45 cents per book cost to print easily, and quickly makes the extra $50 setup fees back as well.
I can’t see any finance based reason to use Createspace, until they start offering competitive discount rates to retailers.
Kevin, you are sort of ignoring one major fact. Not all books are priced equally. And/or have set prices.
And NO bookstore on the planet is going to order a book or books for a 20% discount. They don’t even much care for the 32-35% discounts offered normally by Ingrams and Baker and Taylor for this kind of book.
And I hope you realize that the normal discount for most traditionally sold books is between 45-55% percent.
So, yeah, you can short discount your books, but besides a few people finding it on their own, who’s going to buy the book? No one. You give stores and supplies and distributors no reason to even bother.
Clearly I need to do a New Worlds post on discounting. Sigh.
Out of curiosity, how is the cover stock from the two sites for books? Are they comparable to standard trad pubbing books? I ask because I’ve seen a handful of self-pubbed books and all of them had high-gloss covers.
Jim, most books out of traditional publishers also have high gloss covers. Very seldom, usually special or literary books, do any commercial books not have high gloss covers. So confused as to the question.
Walk into your local Walmart and stroll the book aisle. Find me a non-high-gloss cover. There will be a few, but not many.
Jim, you might have been looking at bad covers, also. On a well-designed cover, the high gloss isn’t noticeable at all, but when you have a ton of white on a cover, a bad cover design, and bad lettering, the high gloss, for some reason really shines and is what people notice. It’s cover design, not the gloss. I just went back through my brag shelf here in my office and out of the hundreds and hundreds of books on that shelf, the only ones not high gloss are ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies) of novels.
Dean, I know that bookstores require higher discounts for books they order and stock on shelves. I honestly don’t know what level of discount they will accept for POD orders by customers (would be curious to hear if any 20% discounters got sales in brick bookstores). But if you want to have your books stocked on shelves, you need to offer a 45-55% discount. Shelf space is not something most indies are going after, though.
If you look at Robin’s Nov/Dec “channel” sales though, in Nov/Dec she made about $240 there.
And she lost $2230 by not setting down the discount on the Amazon sales.
Sounds to me like in her case, at least, going LSI and 20% discount would be the more sensible way to go even if she lost EVERY non-Amazon sale. She’s losing $12,000 a year, otherwise.
I wasn’t ignoring prices, either. Publisher sets the cover price on their own print books. And on any book priced higher than $2.25 cover price, LSI earns the author more money at 20% discount than CS does on 40% discount Amazon sales.
I think I have a pretty good understanding of bookstores, from the indie perspective. But unless you’re selling more books at bookstores which don’t allow a 20% discount on POD orders than you are at Amazon/B&N.com, the math just doesn’t seem to work for using CS.
Kevin, I am just confused. Let me come back to this later this evening and see if I can make sense of what you are saying. I guess my old age is showing. (grin)
Actually, quick correction. Where I said ” And on any book priced higher than $2.25 cover price, LSI earns the author more money at 20% discount than CS does on 40% discount Amazon sales”, my math was off, because I was using the 45 cent price difference Robin mentioned, which was for a 300 page book. The price difference dips as the page count drops, so unless you are selling the book for less than the cost of printing, CS will never be a better deal on Amazon sales. My bad, knew I’d mess up the math somewhere.
Dean, you’re right in that I was probably looking at bad covers. Most of the books within reach are high-gloss, except for the Rick Riordan Percy Jackson books, a couple books from the History Press, and a few mass market paperbacks that have a sort of matte finish. But, the books with a matte finish feel like a different cover stock–less slick. Anyway.
Re-looked at the books I was concerned about and you’re right–a lot of white space on the cover and poor design.
This has entered a zone of reducible complexity. That is, the only way I’ll be able to make headtales of what is being discussed is to do it myself, reading all the FAQs and using Customer Support to the max, see what happens, then compare.
Perhaps I’m not “indie” enough, but what’s wrong with shelf space? Perhaps if there were a series, one could do POD for the first book through whichever one is most advantageous for that 45-55% to get it on shelves, and then put the rest of the series out through whichever is most advantageous for Amazon. (If this sounds ridiculous, see my first paragraph and disregard.)
Shelf space is great, David. The big problems with acquiring it for indies is much greater up front expenses (gotta print all those books), difficulty marketing them (gotta convince the bookstores to buy), and much higher risk levels (usually need to offer returns, which means they destroy any unsold books and you give them full credit for the destroyed books).
Usually not within the scope of what an indie is able to do.