Amazon has two POD (Print-On-Demand) publishers: BookSurge and CreateSpace. Amazon owns CreateSpace and, I believe, “almost” owns BookSurge.
For additional cost, BookSurge offers complimentary services while CreateSpace does not. I used some of the services BookSurge provides and was always happy with those. BookSurge does a good job and is practically always on time. You get a team working for you: your publishing consultant (mine was Zach Coddington and I was happy with him), your Product Fulfillment coordinator (mine was Douglas Thompson, also a good fellow) and other people who gently guide you through the process of publishing your book.
CreateSpace, on the other hand, is completely Internet driven – there are no people you can talk to, and your emails are answered with Do-Not-Reply’s return address.
Yet both CreateSpace and BookSurge produce identical final products. I couldn’t see a difference between my books whether published by CreateSpace or BookSurge. So, if you are able to format the text and design the cover for your book yourself, I see no reason why you should use BookSurge, especially because in one aspect CreateSpace is much better. A major factor in deciding which publisher to use, from my pont of view, is the minimum price they charge for the book. CreateSpace lets you have much lower price than BookSurge does.
For Publicani, Booksurge couldn’t go lower than $16.99 despite my numerous attempts trying to make them change their mind. I am not even sure they could change the price even if they wanted to – I suspect they are stuck with Amazon’s determining prices algorithm.
Publicani exposure is important to me, so when I learned that CreateSPace can offer the same book for $7.95 I decided to switch. Before I did, I told BookSurge about CreateSpace and asked them again to lower the price. They couldn’t.
So the good news for Publicani readers is that the book is available on Amazon for $7.95 and is even eligible for free shipping under some Amazon’s conditions.
And as an additional benefit, preparing the book to a new publisher, I made some small formatting changes and corrected a few typos. I think the price is so low, that instead of correcting the free online version, I discontinued it altogether. I might bring online version back at some future time though.
17 responses so far ↓
1 Prince Kaywood // Sep 23, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Have you ever used Lightning Source? If you have, how does it compare to Create space?
2 Zak Maymin // Sep 23, 2008 at 1:29 pm
No, I don’t know them. They are not affiliated with Amazon, do they?
3 Surajit Bhattacharjee // Dec 9, 2008 at 5:59 pm
When you say CreateSpace lets you have a much lower price than BookSurge, do you also mean they keep less for each published copy than BookSurge? In other words, for a lower list price you can make the same royalty with CreatSpace?
Thanks!
Surajit
4 Zak Maymin // Dec 10, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Yes.
5 Randy // Apr 13, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Agree with the Createspace pricing model. I have yet to find anything which can match it. Also, they ship the fastest of all the POD publishers.
6 Stephen Peters // May 22, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Thanks for the great post. It was really informative.
7 Prince Kaywood // May 26, 2009 at 9:36 am
I have never used Createspace. How much do they charge. I haven’t had too many problems with Lightning Source
8 Carol // Sep 19, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Yes, thank you for putting this up. I have talked to and read so many self publishing sites my head was starting to spin. My question…I had heard that Amazon will not put the “Buy now” button for any books that are not submitted by booksurge. Do you know if this is true? Were you able to get your createspace book on Barnes and Noble also?
9 TheImmaterial // Oct 22, 2009 at 3:15 pm
I’ve been scouting around for POD publishers for a while and there’s three main ones that keep cropping up all with their own pros and cons.
Lulu
Seems to be the most common.
Pros: unbelievably easy to use, for a small fee you get online distribution in amazon, borders, etc.
Cons: damn expensive print price (especially for the longer novel)
Createspace:
Pro: cheaper than lulu by a long stretch
Con: seem to be primarily US based and limited distro (only sell on amazon altho that is where most buyer will go by default anyway).
Lightning Source
Pro: probably the cheapest out there. Amazing distro to all the good channels and you set your own trade discount (anywhere from 25%+ so you are more flexible on price).
Cons: they are a printers not a publisher. This means you have to do all the formatting, type setting, ISBN buying and registering yourself which is a major hassle. However it does offer the best chance to make money (you’ll need to search for prices as their website isn’t very user friendly usually $0.90+$0.013 per page)
I think i’ll go for lightning source if i can be bothered will all the DIY elements, if i cant probably createspace.
10 Courtney // Nov 3, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Amazon is going to merge BookSurge and CreateSpace. After the merger, authors should be able to set the list price they want, and get the low wholesale price that CreateSpace offers, while still getting the superb service that BookSurge offers for an extra fee. I’ve used BookSurge myself, and don’t see how you could possibly get better service anywhere else. They really go the extra mile for you. But I’m really looking forward to the new pricing structure that will be available once the merger is complete.
11 Wing Girl Kim // Nov 13, 2009 at 12:27 pm
I don’t care if CreateSpace charges less for prints. I was happy with BookSurge. Their service and feedback makes the extra charge worth it. I’m not happy about the merge.
12 Wing Girl Kim (again) // Nov 13, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Though, I do like that people can order books through your website with CreateSpace.
13 Tim // Dec 8, 2009 at 7:48 am
Incidentally, I’ve read somewhere that the “ISBN” that CreateSpace provides you with is not registered with Books in Print, etc, so it can’t be used as an ISBN outside Amazon. In other words, it’s not a real ISBN.
14 John Macvan // Jan 11, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Two brief questions:
Does BookSurge provide and ISBN — and if it does, is it only an ‘Amazon ISBN?’
If the “ISBN” that CreateSpace provides you with is not registered with Books in Print, does it mean that there could be two books floating around with the same ISBN?
John Macvan
15 A. Victoria Mixon, Editor » Blog Archive » Silent Sorority: the second indie-publishing interview // Feb 24, 2010 at 3:07 pm
[...] didn’t have that extra layer of protection in terms of service available. (I recently found a link that compares the BookSurge to CreateSpace [...]
16 Anna // Apr 29, 2010 at 6:18 pm
I am confused about all this.
Lightning Source states that they are printers, not publishers. They don’t market books. They will ship to distributors, but they will not establish an agreement with a distributor. So… it sounds like they’ll print it and ship it, but you have to do all the marketing to establish distribution opportunities.
Did I read that wrong?
17 jan Furst // Mar 6, 2011 at 9:56 pm
I would like to increase the marketing of the book
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