Observations On Using CreateSpace's New Kindle Conversion Service

After the success, well, my terms of success, of my first Kindle book, I have decided to have several more of my books converted to Kindle using CreateSpace's very economical $69 conversion service. In the process I have learned several things that might be of interest to others interested in this service.

First of all, I could not find a link anywhere on the CreateSpace website to purchase the service. In fact, there is only one location on the entire site where you can find anything about the Kindle conversion service. It is located in the Services section on the Design, Editing and Marketing page. This link will only take you to a page describing the service and other marketing information to entice you to use the service.

I simply could not recall how I managed to get my first book converted. I e-mailed my customer rep and low and behold, the answer was revealed. Why CreateSpace does not provide this information on its site page about the Kindle conversion service, I do not know, but here is the answer on how to purchase the service.  You have to e-mail your customer service rep and the rep will manually add the conversion service to your shopping cart for the title you want converted. You may then purchase the service.

I also learned that any title published using another POD service (LSI) or a traditional off-set press is not eligible for the CreateSpace conversion service. So, my one other title that is published using LSI as the POD printer is being converted by eBook Architects.

My first experience with the CreateSpace Kindle Conversion was not without its problems, as noted in an earlier post, but CreateSpace did a wonderful job of rectifying the situation and the finished eBook was well done and had the desired bells and whistles.

Given the cost of paying for Kindle conversions by other companies, why does CreateSpace charge such a low price? $69 is basically giving their service away when comparing what other reputable companies charge for the same level of conversion. Christy Pinheiro who hosts the blog Publishing Maven, commented elsewhere on this blog the pricing of the service might be part of a marketing strategy on the part of Amazon/CreateSpace to draw authors away from LSI since Lightning does not offer a Kindle conversion service, making CreateSpace a more desirable, or perhaps more honestly, a necessary choice since CreateSpace will only provide the service for books published through CreateSpace's POD service.