The Many Different Self-Publishing Platforms

Quick book 2 update: I will be publishing around New Years. I don't have an exact date, but this is about 2 or 3 months sooner than my previous target.

As I'm reaching the moment of publication for book 2 of The Corpus Chronicles, I thought I'd share another self-publishing tidbit with you all.

UNDERSTAND THAT CREATESPACE IS NOT A MAGIC BULLET.

It will make your life much easier, trust me.

Most of the self-published authors I talk to, like me, used Amazon Createspace to publish. I chose Createspace after a lot of research. As EOA was my first novel, I needed an extremely user-friendly to get a good footing. I also liked how I could center ebook and paperback distribution into one very well known website. However, there were some downsides I did not know about before I started.

1. First, if you are signing up for Createspace and continue on to Kindle Direct Publishing for ebooks, DO NOT click the button signing you up for KDP Select. The agreement prevents you from having your ebook available anywhere other than Amazon and the royalties they pay you in return are very negligible - for me it was only a couple of dollars a month. You miss out on sales and your book doesn't get as much circulation. I made a stupid rookie mistake. Don't fall for it too.
2. Second, Createspace has a lot of paid services, such as professional cover design and interior layout. This sounds great and all, but Createspace receives a massive amount of orders at a time, and the cover art they produce ends up looking cheap for the exorbitant amount you have to pay them. It is much better to find an illustrator on your own. I'd recommend Kit Foster (and here's a link to my previous post detailing the illustrating process with him). He's a bit pricier than others I've seen, but the amount of time and effort he puts into his work is immediately recognizable. There are other artists that offer ready made covers for around fifty dollars (which is much better than the 200+ dollars Createspace demands). The only down side to these covers is that you probably won't be lucky enough to find something ready made that will immediately capture the essence of your book, but hey, it's worth a look. You could also design your cover yourself, but this is not something I would recommend unless you're an experienced artist/graphic designer, because everyone judges a book based on the cover. Moving on to interior layout/design - again, Createspace offers this service at a very high price. There are other services that will format the interior pages of your book for much cheaper rates. However, after looking into these services, I decided to do it myself. I had to do a lot of research to determine the preferred font/spacing for different books (yes this is a thing and there are a lot of factors such as target age group, genre, length, book dimensions, and plain old personal preference). It wasn't too difficult to do and it came out looking as good as the professionally designed ones. I must warn you though, the Createspace template was a pain to deal with.
3. Third, Createspace is very popular. Consequentially, it is also very saturated with a ton of different titles. It will be hard to get your book seen. It is important to have either a paperback/ebook available on Amazon as it is a good place to centralize reviews, but using a couple other platforms is very helpful to get more exposure. 
4. Lastly, and probably my biggest problem with Createspace, is how hard it is to list an ebook as free on Amazon. Amazon wants to make money, so besides for five day promotions run through KDP Select, you can't list your ebook for free. When I ran my five day promotion, I got hundreds of more downloads than I had ever gotten before, and as a new, independent author, getting your name out there is the most important thing. After that, I wanted to list my book for free for longer to hopefully rake in some reviews, but Amazon would not allow it. However, Amazon does have price match and you can list your ebook as free on another platform and then ask Amazon to price match. Some author friends of mine have been successful with this. I've been trying for months and Amazon still hasn't followed up with any of my requests. It's very hit and miss. 

Those were the big problems I found with Createspace, but there were also many positive aspects, so don't write it off right away. If you know what you are doing going into the process, you can have a much more positive experience, like I am with The Corpus Chronicles Book 2. Learn from the mistakes of others. It's much better than making them yourself.

As a last little note, you don't have to use just one self-publishing platform. Currently, I have EOA up on Amazon and Smashwords, but there are so many others. The more platforms you hit, the greater your circulation will be.

That's all for today. Enjoy, share, comment. 

-Esha