CreateSpace – Ken-McConnell.com

I’ve decided to go with the matte finish on all of my Star Saga novels and to stick with glossy finish for my lone Mystery title. The decision to stay with glossy on the Mystery was largely based on readability of the currently uploaded cover file. The matte version of the book was hard to read the blurbs on the back. I felt the zero and ones in the background were too prominent, too in your face. The glossy version was more subdued and easier to read the blurbs.

You can see this affect if you look at the photos below from the back of the book. I could fix the cover art but that would require some effort on behalf of my cover artist and layout guy. I’d rather have him work on the next book than tweak a perfectly fine older book.

The code in the background seems to overtake the text in the matte version.

The same enhanced imagery seems to work out much better for the Military themed Space Opera novels.

I did a destructive test on one of the matte finish books. I poured water on it and was able to wipe it off without damage. I split the corner and there was no separation of the finish. On the glossy covers you can peel off the glossy materiel on a corner. Sometimes just normal wear and tear will cause that glossy layer to come off.

I also broke the spine to get the familiar crack line and I folded it long ways to fit it in my pocket. Both of those tests resulted in the same behavior as any paperback book.

So there you go. Anyone else have experience with matte or glossy finishes?

I’ve been looking into moving my paperbacks over to Lightning Source. The reason has to do with getting them into local Indie bookstores. As amazingly easy as CreateSpace is to use, they are still an Amazon company and Indie book sellers hate dealing with Amazon. Most store owners I know won’t carry your book if they have to order it from Amazon. So what’s an Indie writer to do then?

You have to use both CreateSpace and Lightning Source. First, establish a CS account and get your paperback looking awesome through them. The software for setting up your interior and exterior PDFs is far superior on CS. Caveat, use your own ISBN numbers for your books. This will get your paperbacks on Amazon and available to a national audience. Don’t purchase the Expanded Distribution option. This makes your books available in the Ingram catalogs for stores and libraries.

Next, take your book PDFs to LS and set up an account there. Again, use your own ISBN numbers so that the publisher of record is you or your LLC. In my case, I use GB Press. You may need to complete a Doing Business As or LLC in your state to protect yourself and establish your imprint as a legitimate business.

LS is owned by Ingram, so you get their “expanded distribution” built in. But the real reason you go this route is to get your books into the Ingram catalog as not being published by CreateSpace. Now when your local Indie bookstore owner goes to order your book, she sees your imprint as the owner and not Amazon. Provided your book is professional looking and edited, they are usually happy to support local authors.

If you only did the LS version, when your book appeared on Amazon, it is likely to always say out of print. As Amazon won’t order any to have on hand. But if you have also gone through CS, this out of print never happens. Again, CS is owned by Amazon so they tend to work better with each other.

Both CS and LS use POD or Print on Demand, so your book will never go out of print and only be printed when someone orders it. I’ve already messed up in all this by using CS’s ISBNs for books. So I’ll be using my own ISBNs for LS and risk the confusion that will surely happen on Amazon later. This is because in something like six years of Self Publishing, I’ve never sold more than a dozen paperbacks on Amazon.

Getting your books into local Indie stores should be your prime directive as an author. First of all, you should be supporting local businesses in general and second of all, when it comes to marketing, act local and think global. Get into your local bookstores and do signings. Do signings with other local authors. Network with them. Go out of town to do signings in other parts of your state. If you happen to border other states with bigger cities, go regional. This is where I’ve fallen down in the past.

I started out doing signings at local stores and then stopped. But now that I have four books out, it’s time to start getting out there and meeting the public. Shake hands, talk to customers and show off my books. Just like I have links to my local Indie store for my ebooks on Kobo, I will eventually have all my paperbacks in their stores. This is just good business as a publisher and a writer.

Useful Links:

http://write2publish.blogspot.com/2011/02/why-create-space-is-better-than.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/terri-giuliano-long/self-publishing-platforms_b_2810092.html

http://www.newselfpublishing.com/LightningSource.html

Ingram Color Chart and Trim Sizes

http://www.ingramcontent.com/MRKNG/2012/52856-29853/29853.html

Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPzadTgxqqc