I'm soon to publish my first novel to Kindle, but I would also like to get some paperbacks made and make them available as well. Does anyone have any advice on a POD publisher I can go with?
Hi, As Steerpike says CreateSpace is the Amazon POD arm, and you can convert your ebook to a paperback or hardback through it. When you sign up to kindle as an Amazon author you'll get a link directly to it as part of your author pages. But you can also use it without publishing an ebook. They provide some packages in terms of editting and publishing and promotion and the costs aren't prohibitive, and the finished product can then be listed on on your book page in both forms, printed and electronic. The other company that's often mentioned is Smashwords, but I've never looked into their services in any great detail. Cheers.
Smashwords is for ebooks. Two other print options would be Lulu and Lightning Source with respect to POD books. Lightning Source has more hoops I believe. Lulu is user friendly, but if you're going to try to sell via Amazon, Create Space would be a printer to look at first.
I"ve just done one through createspace. I recommend it. The prices are cheap enough and the quality seems very good - the paper is better quality than some of the books on the shelves at the bookstore where I work. Nice and white and crisp. Just make sure your pdf files are PERFECT as they print exactly what they see.
I've looked at Create Space and honestly I just don't think that they are worth the investment but hey to each his own I guess.
Unless you pay for their designers or marketing, it doesn't cost anything except the purchase price of the books. Which for me is around $8 per book plus postage ($30 for 12 copies - and that's to New Zealand). Of course, you make a low commission (I make around 50c per book sold) but if your aim is to have your book available for people to read, then it works well.
Thanks for the info. I've decided to go with CS for the printed book. I've made a perfectly formated. .prc which I will upload to Kindle, but I want both versions to be available at the same time, so I'm waiting. Right now, I'm formatting the book in Adobe PageMaker. Then I'll make a .PDF and create the cover (which is really already created). I've published a book before using a traditional printer, so I'm familiar with the process of formatting a book. I actually rather like the process; it's kind of like a craft to make it all look good. I don't really care too much about profits with this book. I think concentrating on profits is a mistake for an author with no audience. Instead, I'm concentrating on making a really good product and marketing it the best I can. Fortunately today, unlike the first book I published, one doesn't have to lay out and risk a lot of cash. So that's good. E of G
As you have Adobe PageMaker, this probably won't be an issue for you but I had read trouble getting the cover sized right. Eventually I discovered that in their "stock" styles there was one that allowed you to upload a full sized jpg on the front and one on the back so that you didn't have to figure out what to do about the spine. It made things a lot easier, since I had to use "print to -> pdf" to create pdf files from art and it wouldn't permit me to do custom sizes.
I think I have the cover right according to their specs. I'm about to send my stuff to CS for review. One thing I'm doing right now is making a very careful check of my interior pages, making sure nothing is missing and everything is formatted just right. It's tedious.
