$0.99!! Offering my novel, Perdition’s Brink, on the Amazon Kindle for only $.099!
See the Kindle Store at http://www.amazon.com/Perditions-Brink/dp/B00200K0HQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1237825290&sr=1-1
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
POD Case Study: Perdition’s Brink, Part 2
I’m R.A. Harrington, and I recently published my new novel, Perdition’s Brink, using a publish on demand (POD) methodology. I’d like to share my experiences with POD though a series of posts. In this post, Part 2, I’ll answer the question, “What do I think of CreateSpace?”
Bottom line up front: I give CreateSpace and A+ as the perfect POD implementation for my publishing strategy.
I initially had some concern about my choice of POD implementation through CreateSpace. Some bloggers have expressed difficulties such as formatting the book cover and the book insert. Fortunately, my experiences with CreateSpace have been extremely positive.
Setting up a CreateSpace account was easy. Starting a new book title was simple, although I would recommend you first build a spreadsheet with all the CreateSpace fields, complete the spreadsheet offline, review and spellcheck the text carefully, then cut and paste on-line. I found that being methodical and organized has directly reflected on the final quality. I will recommend you pay for the Pro plan; it doesn’t cost much, and it allows you to sell your book at a much lower price.
CreateSpace allows you to submit a custom cover in Adobe Acrobat or create your cover through a native on-line tool. Frankly, I liked their tool and was easily able to create an attractive cover. I did spend a little time creating the right pictures for the front and back using my mediocre digital camera and the Microsoft Paint editor. I contemplated other imaging strategies, but what I had around the house worked perfect in the end and met my strategy of lowest cost.
CreateSpace allows you to select several book sizes. I was a little concerned that the normally smaller novel sizes weren’t available. However, I picked 5.25" x 8", which turned out a great product in the end. I wrote my book in Microsoft Word, so I had to spend some time with the formatting to make sure all the margins, fonts, font sizes, headers, footers, chapter numbers, etc. to make things just perfect. The formatting took some research, namely blogs for lessons learned and standards such as CreateSpace written guidelines and the Chicago Manual of Style (I’ve never regretted buying this in hardcover). Really, the formatting is not as hard as some people fear, but it does take some work and attention to detail. Once I got the Microsoft Word file just right, I simply saved the file as Adobe Acrobat using the latest Word plug-in.
The CreateSpace process of submitting the book for proofing was much, much quicker than CreateSpace advertises—I was very, very happy with the service. I went through 5 proofs to get everything exactly the way I wanted in both the quality of my writing and the formatting of the book. I was able to turn a review, change update, repost for proof, and receive a new physical proof in about a week round (faster once I got to the latter books which required less review time). Once I was ready to publish, CreateSpace set up my on-line sales site on Amazon and on the CreateSpace native site. There’s much more to talk about marketing, but I’ll save that for later.
CreateSpace may not be the best implementation for everyone’s POD strategy, but it was A+ perfect for me, and I continue to be happy with the service they provide.
I’ll list some exact formatting guidelines for a successful Adobe Acrobat conversation for CreateSpace submission in my next post. Keep writing!
R.A. Harrington
Author, Perdition’s Brink
http://www.amazon.com/Perditions-Brink-R-Harrington/dp/1441421874/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236805893&sr=1-1
Bottom line up front: I give CreateSpace and A+ as the perfect POD implementation for my publishing strategy.
I initially had some concern about my choice of POD implementation through CreateSpace. Some bloggers have expressed difficulties such as formatting the book cover and the book insert. Fortunately, my experiences with CreateSpace have been extremely positive.
Setting up a CreateSpace account was easy. Starting a new book title was simple, although I would recommend you first build a spreadsheet with all the CreateSpace fields, complete the spreadsheet offline, review and spellcheck the text carefully, then cut and paste on-line. I found that being methodical and organized has directly reflected on the final quality. I will recommend you pay for the Pro plan; it doesn’t cost much, and it allows you to sell your book at a much lower price.
CreateSpace allows you to submit a custom cover in Adobe Acrobat or create your cover through a native on-line tool. Frankly, I liked their tool and was easily able to create an attractive cover. I did spend a little time creating the right pictures for the front and back using my mediocre digital camera and the Microsoft Paint editor. I contemplated other imaging strategies, but what I had around the house worked perfect in the end and met my strategy of lowest cost.
CreateSpace allows you to select several book sizes. I was a little concerned that the normally smaller novel sizes weren’t available. However, I picked 5.25" x 8", which turned out a great product in the end. I wrote my book in Microsoft Word, so I had to spend some time with the formatting to make sure all the margins, fonts, font sizes, headers, footers, chapter numbers, etc. to make things just perfect. The formatting took some research, namely blogs for lessons learned and standards such as CreateSpace written guidelines and the Chicago Manual of Style (I’ve never regretted buying this in hardcover). Really, the formatting is not as hard as some people fear, but it does take some work and attention to detail. Once I got the Microsoft Word file just right, I simply saved the file as Adobe Acrobat using the latest Word plug-in.
The CreateSpace process of submitting the book for proofing was much, much quicker than CreateSpace advertises—I was very, very happy with the service. I went through 5 proofs to get everything exactly the way I wanted in both the quality of my writing and the formatting of the book. I was able to turn a review, change update, repost for proof, and receive a new physical proof in about a week round (faster once I got to the latter books which required less review time). Once I was ready to publish, CreateSpace set up my on-line sales site on Amazon and on the CreateSpace native site. There’s much more to talk about marketing, but I’ll save that for later.
CreateSpace may not be the best implementation for everyone’s POD strategy, but it was A+ perfect for me, and I continue to be happy with the service they provide.
I’ll list some exact formatting guidelines for a successful Adobe Acrobat conversation for CreateSpace submission in my next post. Keep writing!
R.A. Harrington
Author, Perdition’s Brink
http://www.amazon.com/Perditions-Brink-R-Harrington/dp/1441421874/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236805893&sr=1-1
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