CreateSpace

Forgive me if I'm posting news that folks already know, but I don't see anything about this elsewhere at this forum. Here's the relevant news article from August 10 at Publishers Weekly, and here is the new service, CreateSpace.

Differences that I notice between CreateSpace and Lulu:

The pricing structure is hard to compare, but someone at the Lulu forums who ran the numbers concluded: "CreateSpace's pricing is almost always better than Lulu's for books sold on Amazon (sometimes by a lot), slightly better for color or very short B&W books sold on storefronts [i.e. through Lulu's or CreateSpace's Websites], and worse on longer B&W books sold on storefronts."

Lulu books have the option of being sold through various online bookstores (and also brick-and-mortar bookstores, though that's unlikely, because of the pricing structure); for that option, you have to pay a fee. CreateSpace books can only be sold through the U.S. Amazon bookstore; you pay no fee for this.

Lulu does a lot of optional hand-holding through such processes as creating a PDF file and creating a cover. I can't tell whether CreateSpace does, but it certainly doesn't have the quite valuable support forums that Lulu does.

For more comparisons, see the second link above. Also, a Lulu member has already put together a comparison calculator between the two services.

Running some numbers for comparison's sake, here's the breakdown in prices, using as an example a 300-page book that's priced at $15.99.

Lulu Storefront (sold only at Lulu site): $4.53 (cover and binding) + 2 cents per page + 20% of profit to Lulu.
Author's profit: $4.91

Lulu Distribution (sold anywhere - realistically, only at online bookstores): $1.50 (cover, binding, and set-up) + 2 cents per page + 20% of profit + 50% of total to distributors.
Author's profit: 30 cents.
Added expenses: $100-150 for ISBN. Optional $80 fee for corrections.

CreateSpace (sold only at CreateSpace site): $3.15 (cover and binding) + 2 cents per page + 20% of list price (not profit) to CreateSpace.
Author's profit: $3.64.
Added expenses: Optional $270 fee for ISBN (a block of ten - you can use the ISBNs for nine other books too) if you want to sell the book through other self-publishing services too.

CreateSpace (sold at CreateSpace site and U.S. Amazon site): $3.15 (cover and binding) + 2 cents per page + 30% of list price to Create.
Author's profit: $2.04.
Added expenses: Optional $270 fee for ISBN (a block of ten - you can use the ISBNs for nine other books too) if you want to sell the book through other self-publishing services too.

Lightning Source (sold anywhere - realistically, only at online bookstores): 90 cents (cover and binding) + 1.3 cents per page + 25% of total to distributors (you set your own percentage, but that figure is on the low end, for maximum profit).
Author's profit: $7.19.
Added expenses: $270 for ISBN (a block of ten - you can use the ISBNs for nine other books too). $95 set-up fee (for 300-page book). Annual fee: $12. Optional $80 fee for corrections.

Summing up the profits:

Lulu storefront: $4.91.
CreateSpace storefront: $3.64.
Lulu + online bookstores: $0.30
CreateSpace + U.S. Amazon: $2.04.
Lightning Source (online bookstores): $7.19.

(Anyone have anything to add to my figuring? Math isn't my strong point.)

Lightning Source remains miles ahead of its competitors in terms of profit. However, working directly with Lightning Source continues to be a hassle, because they're set up to work with businesses, not individuals.

There's probably hidden ickiness in all this - there always is - but off-hand, it looks to me as though CreateSpace is a strong rival to Lulu. The good news is that neither company requires exclusive rights, so (provided that you buy your own ISBN, which costs a fair amount of money) you could upload your book to both companies if you wished.

Gigi Sahi, thanks for sharing your experience with us.

Veinglory, repeating what I said elsewhere: CreateSpace doesn't have an e-book option for the simple reason that Amazon only sells Mobipocket e-books, so Mobipocket takes care of the job of arranging for Mobipocket-formatted e-books to be sold at Amazon. Self-publishers can go through that process, incidentally.

Christine N. wrote:

"I discovered (through a little digging) that the 'ISBN' advertised on CS is NOT a Bowker's ISBN - it's only an Amazon tracking number, and useless anywhere else."

Oh, my, you're right. Good to know.

"Has anyone ever asked themselves why these company's charge so much for the author to buy their book that they have just sold?"

I haven't checked CreateSpace's policy, but Lulu lets you buy your own book for the price of the printing. The price of printing appears to be padded to provide profit to Lulu, but one expects that from a middleman organization like Lulu.

"It can't be for the great distribution they provide because we all know how few books per author are actually sold."

There's a difference between distribution and marketing. Lulu is quite frank about the fact that it does no marketing of the books. Folks who want someone else to do the marketing shouldn't go to a service that labels itself "self-publishing".

As far as distribution is concerned, I've heard a few complaints about the price of international shipping of Lulu books, but Lulu seems to be trying to address that. Also, I've had a couple of entanglements with Lulu's checkout process at their storefront that I've brought to the attention of the staff; again, they've addressed those problems. Other than that, I've heard no horror stories about Lulu's basic distribution process. Its global distribution is handled by Lightning Source, a printer that handles the distribution for many small presses.

So what it comes down to is marketing. If a self-published book doesn't sell well, it's almost never the distributor's fault - the fault most likely lies with the person doing the marketing, namely the author.

Of course, there's a long tradition of self-published books that are intended to have limited distribution. My father, who is a book designer, once designed me an edition of the Gospel of Luke, describing it in the colophon as being of "an extremely limited edition of two copies, of which this is copy no. 1."