Monday, April 25, 2011

CreateSpace Kindle Conversion Round Three Update!

With the release of my latest title, Goal Setting for Sport: A Concise Guide for Coaches and Athletes, I have once again secured the services of CreateSpace, the POD printer for Goal Setting for Sport, to prepare the Kindle files so I can offer a Kindle version of the book. Since I plan to convert some of my back titles to Kindle books, I decided to go ahead and spring for Better Basketball Practices to be converted as well.

Some things have changed since my last Kindle conversion using CreateSpace as the service provider. The price of the basic conversion service is still $69. However, I found out including diagrams can drive up the cost quite a bit. Goal Setting for Sport is all text but alas, Better Basketball Practices is filled with diagrams, to the tune of a total price tag of $175. Still, this is not a bad price for the amount of work involved and below the average price of many companies performing quality conversion work.

The turnaround time has increased by two weeks. When I had The Game of Basketball converted to a Kindle edition it took 5-7 business days. Now the turn around time is 3-4 business weeks. This indicates to me the level of business in converting books to Kindle format has increased significantly. CreateSpace still only converts titles already available in its POD catalog.

The increased turnaround time might seem unduly in this day and age of instant gratification but is not unreasonable nor is it much different from other services. What has changed, and I think for the better, is the level of communication between CreateSpace and the author. When I first started using CreateSpace, I essentially dealt with their computers and was never able to talk to a human. Since CreateSpace requires the author to upload POD print ready interior and cover files, this set-up is fine if you can navigate the computer set-up CreateSpace uses.

When you purchase services you get much better service. CreateSpace calls you! Imagine that, a company calling you to ask you how they can serve you! If they cannot reach you by phone on the first attempt, CreateSpace then contacts you through your Member Dashboard's Message Center. If that still does not work, they e-mail you. I learned this because our phone temporarily went out of service due to our dogs chewing the phone line into. When talking with CreateSpace personnel on the phone, they were polite, paid attention, seemed to know what they were talking about, made suggestions on how to use the CreateSpace system to obtain exactly what I wanted and actually followed up on what we talked about on the phone and e-mailed to let me know they had followed up. Wow! What a concept - customer service!

None of this happened with my first conversion. I was contacted only through my Member Dashboard Message Center. I like talking to a living person much better.

I currently have two books undergoing the conversion process. One will be finished two weeks before the other. I hope the quality of the conversion is as good as the first two I had performed by CreateSpace.

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