My best selling book happens to be the first book I published. I used Dog Ear Publishing, an author services company to produce the book Game Strategy and Tactics for Basketball. I learned a great deal about the entire process of publishing a book and while I have no complaints at all about Dog Ear and the job the company did in getting my book published, I decided to strike out on my own and use CreateSpace.
I recently used CreateSpace's new Kindle conversion service for another of my titles, The Game of Basketball, and was happy with the result and the service I received during the process of getting the book published in the Kindle format.
After some thought about the possible impact a Kindle conversion might have on my paper book sales of Game Strategy and Tactics for Basketball I decided to take the plunge and offer a Kindle version as well.
To my dismay I discovered CreateSpace will not provide their conversion service for titles not published through CreateSpace. The polite, but to the point, e-mail I received informing me of this is posted below.
Hello Kevin,
Thanks for the e-mail.
The Kindle File Conversion service that we offer is only available to titles published through our system. The only way we can perform the Kindle File help for your second book is if you upload your paperback PDF files in our system and make the book available for sale through us. Once the book is available, we could move forward with the Kindle Service after payment is made.
I apologize I could not be of more help. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Why CreateSpace has taken this stance, I don't know. Perhaps they don't want to be flooded with authors who use Lightning Source for their POD service using the affordable $69 Kindle conversion service. Or, a bit more Machiavellian thought, is CreateSpace using this approach to have titles shifted from LSI to CreateSpace? What do I know. Still, it is disappointing. Now I have to find someone to do the conversion work.
I knew that there was a catch-- because 69 is so cheap. CreateSpace may even be losing money offering the service so cheap-- I have never converted titles for less than a few hundred bucks.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good strategy, though-- you have to admit that CreateSpace know that since LSI doesn't offer any of these services, they may become the first choice for authors who don't want to do any of this stuff themselves.