The Sun's Companion on Create Space
A box of books was waiting for me when I got back to England a few days ago - 25 copies of The Sun's Companion which we've just printed with Create Space. We thought about doing a paperback copy of the novel for quite a while before we made the decision. For previous paperbacks we've used big Trade printers such as Biddles (in Norfolk) and CPI Antony Rowe. They do a very professional job but they're expensive and you have to order copies up front which sit in boxes in your store room looking at you despondently while they're waiting for someone to order them. So we decided to go for print-on-demand and to try Create Space since there are - literally - no costs for publication.
I was rather worried about the quality of the finished product, but so many other authors are using Create Space I reassured myself that it would be ok. And it is. The books are lovely - beautifully printed and put together. We chose to typeset the novel ourselves rather than simply upload a Word doc, and this caused my partner Neil a few headaches. He did it in InDesign which allowed him to choose the exact look of it and put in fancy title pages. Then he exported it to PDF and we uploaded the file to Amazon. It took about 5 goes before we got it right. Once they've accepted the file you can either download proofs and print them out yourself (no charge for this) or order page proofs from Amazon for a small charge. We just printed out the file and found that quite satisfactory. This is what the title page looks like inside, with the Book Mill logo at the top.
In future we'd probably go for a slightly different format, a matt cover and cream paper, but for The Sun's Companion we needed this particular format in order to avoid a book with too many pages. The more pages you have the more expensive the book is for purchasers. The format you choose on Create Space dictates what kind of paper and cover is available. Overall we're really pleased with the result, which is now on sale in the Amazon store on both sides of the Atlantic at a very reasonable price for a novel of 460 pages - £9.99 in the UK or $13.85 in the USA. And it didn't cost us anything to have it printed. The copies I've ordered are mostly to give away or for review purposes. Local bookshops are asking if they can stock it, so I'll be ordering more copies from Amazon to sell here. Author copies are quite reasonably priced too, even with added carriage costs.
Printing with Create Space has been a very good experience and we'll certainly be doing it again.
The Sun's Companion Amazon.com
The Sun's Companion Amazon.co.uk
I was rather worried about the quality of the finished product, but so many other authors are using Create Space I reassured myself that it would be ok. And it is. The books are lovely - beautifully printed and put together. We chose to typeset the novel ourselves rather than simply upload a Word doc, and this caused my partner Neil a few headaches. He did it in InDesign which allowed him to choose the exact look of it and put in fancy title pages. Then he exported it to PDF and we uploaded the file to Amazon. It took about 5 goes before we got it right. Once they've accepted the file you can either download proofs and print them out yourself (no charge for this) or order page proofs from Amazon for a small charge. We just printed out the file and found that quite satisfactory. This is what the title page looks like inside, with the Book Mill logo at the top.
In future we'd probably go for a slightly different format, a matt cover and cream paper, but for The Sun's Companion we needed this particular format in order to avoid a book with too many pages. The more pages you have the more expensive the book is for purchasers. The format you choose on Create Space dictates what kind of paper and cover is available. Overall we're really pleased with the result, which is now on sale in the Amazon store on both sides of the Atlantic at a very reasonable price for a novel of 460 pages - £9.99 in the UK or $13.85 in the USA. And it didn't cost us anything to have it printed. The copies I've ordered are mostly to give away or for review purposes. Local bookshops are asking if they can stock it, so I'll be ordering more copies from Amazon to sell here. Author copies are quite reasonably priced too, even with added carriage costs.
Printing with Create Space has been a very good experience and we'll certainly be doing it again.
The Sun's Companion Amazon.com
The Sun's Companion Amazon.co.uk
I'm intrigued by this process, Kathleen. Will look forward to reports on how the whole thing plays out. The book looks lovely!
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