Saturday, January 16, 2010

CreateSpace versus Lightning Source and other options - Updated May 18, 2011!

(Visit my most recent post on this topic. To read more...)

Thus far in my career as an author my books have been published through Dog Ear Publishing, an Author's Services company (one book) and the rest through Amazon's CreateSpace (eighteen total books).

The very first book I wrote, Game Strategy and Tactics for Basketball, was published through Dog Ear Publishing.  For the most part, I have been very pleased with Dog Ear. They did a great job with the book in its design, editing and cover.  I only get paid quarterly and have to wait until the end of the next quarter to both get paid and find out the total number of books sold.  As I addressed in an earlier post, it is hard to tell if a marketing strategy has worked when you have to wait three to six months to find out the results.

CreateSpace allows you to see the results immediately of sales on Amazon which is great.  You are paid for the previous months sales at the end of the next month.  In other words, you get paid for your July sales at the end of August, but at least you know the total number of books and the exact amount you will earn.

The disadvantage of using CreateSpace is that up until recently, you had to do all of the production work yourself.  Print ready files had to be submitted in order to publish with CreateSpace.  Amazon appears to be moving aggressively into the POD self-publishing market as it has expanded the services offered by CreateSpace by now offering a complete range of author services.

So what are the advantage and disadvantages of using an author services company like Dog Ear or going with CreateSpace. In short, you have to pay for the services that Dog Ear provides, and no, don't call them a vanity press. You are also stuck with a 40% discount if you sell your book on Amazon. I do want to state clearly that the author price to purchase copies of your own book from Dog Ear for resale is one of the best prices that you will find with an author services company. The advantages are Dog Ear does a great job of designing and producing your book.

CreateSpace requires, unless you want to pay for the work to be done by professionals, that you submit ready to print files. CreateSpace has great pricing for author copies if you purchase the pro plan.  You also get a direct conduit for sales on Amazon, but you are stuck once again with the 40% discount.

With a company like Dog Ear, your book is printed by Lightning Source, the largest POD printer in North America, and can be sold anywhere, including bookstores.  Up until recently, your CreateSpace book could only be sold on Amazon, but CreateSpace now has an expanded distribution network option, but you have to grant a large discount in order to take advantage of that option.

I do want to make it clear that I am happy with the results I have gotten by using both companies.  So why am I considering not using either for my next book? I can make more money by truly self-publishing my own book through Lightning Source than I can any other way.  By using Lightning Source, I control the discount that is offered to Amazon and other retailers.  I can set it as low as 20%.

In order to do this, I will have to have ready to print files for Lightning Source and I will have to obtain my own ISBN which is easy to do.  I have already learned how to do both through my experience in using CreateSpace.  I have done a lot of homework and thought about this a great deal.

So, for my next book I am going to take the plunge and truly self-publish the book using Lightning Source as my POD printer.  I will still target the bulk of my sales at Amazon with the rest coming through coaching product retailers that sell to basketball coaches.

If you want to learn more about the POD business model of self-publishing I strongly urge you to obtain Morris Rosenthal's POD Publishing and Aaron Shepard's Aiming at Amazon and his forth coming book, POD for Profit which specifically details how to use Lightning Source.  If you are interested in learning more about using CreateSpace my own book Self-Publishing with Amazon's CreateSpace is a good source of information. You can go to all of these books product pages on Amazon by using the widget on the right hand side of this blog.

I will be posting the details of my experience using Lightning Source in comparison to Dog Ear and CreateSpace as I move through the publishing process with my next book about coaching and playing basketball.

UPDATE! For authors considering using either CreateSpace or Lightning Source and struggling to decide which company best meets their publishing needs, I have a new concise book comparing the two companies.  As much pertinent information as I could gather has been collected and organized to help authors planning to use print-on-demand for printing and distribution to select of the two companies.

The title of the book is Selecting a Print-on-Demand Company: Comparing CreateSpace and Lightning Source for POD Self-Publishing. It is available now as a print book on Amazon for $6.95.


3 comments:

  1. A newbie here: can people order single issues that will be shipped to them from Lightning source? I am assuming they don't have a webpage like other pod's do (Createspace and Lulu) where you can send people to buy your books. If I set up my own webpage for people to order the book will Lightningsource ship say a single book to them? And if so how would I link up the my webpage to Lightningsource to do this?

    There is a cover generator with the ISBN number where they ask for the price.. how do I determine the price. I didn't see a price calculator (for my fee, Lightning sources fee and retail mark up) on the website so how do I know what to put on it? I'll need more information on all of these details so that I can figure out the price to put on my back cover.... how do I do this or get this information?
    Can it be put on and priced for you?

    And, I can't figure out the PDF submissions. I have a color cover and all color insides, I need one for the front and back called .cvr and then what is the middle called?

    P.S. if my book is 7x10 and it's a graphic novel that I want to print all the way to the edge, what information do I put in for trim etc.? It is exactly how I want it right now at 7x10...

    P.P.S. if I want to sell through Ingram, amazon all retailers, library exposure and individual sales do I pick this one? http://www.lightningsource.com/print_to_publisher.aspx

    Thank you! Gina

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  2. Gina,

    My apologies for the delay in answering your question.

    LSI is not a retailer as such. They only produce and distribute, through Ingram, your book.

    They do not have their own store.

    Color is tough to produce, from what I understand, with POD. You might want to pose this question at the POD Yahoo Group and you will get lots of leads on how to handle this issue with LSI - Aaron Shepard himself often weighs in on that message board.

    Again, my apologies for the delay in responding.

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  3. Gina,

    I managed to skip the most important part of your question - can you have orders from your website go to LSI and ship to your customer.

    I don't know but I will say this - you are much better off directing all (or as many sales as you can) to Amazon. For a really detailed explanation of why this is the best business model read Aaron Shepard's Aiming At Amazon.

    The short story is the Amazon will handle all the office administration, shipping, collections, etc. LSI - if that is who you use will pay you each quarter. CreateSpace pays monthly with a one month delay. In other words, you are paid for September at the end of October.

    The primary advantage of directing sales to Amazon for a self-published author is that Amazon's computer will help you sell your book. The more it sells, the higher Amazon will rank your book in the search listings. The higher your book is in the search listings, the more it sells. The more it sells...you get the idea.

    I strongly suggest Aiming at Amazon. Also, Aaron's POD for Profit talks extensively about dealing with LSI - in fact that is the what the book is about.

    ReplyDelete