SimonBrooke
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2005
- Posts
- 1,139
Anyone used Amazon's 'CreateSpace'? It's a print-on-demand publishing system. You are the publisher, you can organise your own ISBN or Amazon will provide one; you supply the full content as one PDF and the cover art as another, so you have full control over the content and appearance; you set the cover price.
If you go for the 'standard' plan you don't seem to have to pay anything. The book goes onto Amazon.com and I think other Amazons (.co.uk, .fr, .de...) but is not available through other channels. I think, if I understand correctly, that it appears on Amazon just like any other book. You get a payment for every copy sold. If you upgrade to 'pro', there's a one-off fee of US$39 plus an annual fee of US$5.00 per title; on the pro plan not only do you get a bigger cut per book, but also Amazon will act as a distributor and make your book available to other retailers. They won't do any marketing, however - that's up to you.
Amazon's cut is quite large - on the roughly 400 page book I'm thinking of going ahead with, it's around US$17.00 (depending slightly on the cover price) for the 'standard' plan, or around US$13.50 for the 'pro' plan.
OK, yes, this is sort-of like vanity publishing. But it also sort-of isn't. It's disintermediating publishing by cutting the publisher and the agent out of the loop (but it means you have to work to add the value they would otherwise add).
Anyone tried it? Did it work? Were you satisfied?
If you go for the 'standard' plan you don't seem to have to pay anything. The book goes onto Amazon.com and I think other Amazons (.co.uk, .fr, .de...) but is not available through other channels. I think, if I understand correctly, that it appears on Amazon just like any other book. You get a payment for every copy sold. If you upgrade to 'pro', there's a one-off fee of US$39 plus an annual fee of US$5.00 per title; on the pro plan not only do you get a bigger cut per book, but also Amazon will act as a distributor and make your book available to other retailers. They won't do any marketing, however - that's up to you.
Amazon's cut is quite large - on the roughly 400 page book I'm thinking of going ahead with, it's around US$17.00 (depending slightly on the cover price) for the 'standard' plan, or around US$13.50 for the 'pro' plan.
OK, yes, this is sort-of like vanity publishing. But it also sort-of isn't. It's disintermediating publishing by cutting the publisher and the agent out of the loop (but it means you have to work to add the value they would otherwise add).
Anyone tried it? Did it work? Were you satisfied?
