Aaron Shepard, one of the leading figures in the world of self-publishing and a strong advocate for using Lightning Source Inc. (LSI), announced on his self-publishing blog he will be changing POD services for several of his books with color interior books. Mr. Shepard will continue to use LSI for his all black and white interior books.
The decision to make the change came about due to CreateSpace's ability to handle interior color printing on a more consistent basis and with greater ease than using the LSI system. The information concerning the technical differences between color printing is explained in a bog post by Mr. Shepard.
I read this and I was really surprised. Aaron makes a couple of great arguments in favor of CreateSpace's color publishing, the most important for me of which is, of course, the lower price. I'm using LSI and CreateSpace for the first time this year, and the set up costs are definitely higher with LSI. No doubt about that. But the distribution is better. I set up four books with LSI and they were available and SELLING on Barnes and Noble three days later. If I had waited on CreateSpace's distribution channel, it would have been three weeks later. But it cost be a few hundred bucks to set up the books at LSI, and CreateSpace cost me almost nothing (except for the proof and the Pro-plan). I'll know in a few months which provider is giving me a better profit margin.
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