Re: www.createspace.com

On Feb 14, 7:24 pm, Tina_H...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Tina Hall) wrote:
CharlesRCaplan <CharlesRCap...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
zebo...@xxxxxxxxx (Zeborah) wrote:
Jimmy Clay <jimc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This is for anyone who has written a book and would like to see it
in print,
1) WHAT RULE DID I BREAK?

Some people might complain that you spammed -- you may not have,
technically, but your announcement does come under our
no-advertising policy. Ads can be anything that promotes something,
even if you aren't making money off it. For more details about this
(and much more), check out the group's FAQ (Frequently Asked
Questions) at:http://www.lshelby.com/rasfcFAQ.html
I dunno. This is probably borderline spamming and he is certainly
promoting something, but it does seem legit (as opposed to that other
one a while back) and it is on topic. I'm willing to cut the guy some
slack.

I found it an interesting idea, but kept wondering how much Amazon wants
for it - do they just sell it and give you the entire price, or do they
add a percentage to your price, or do they make up their own price, or
whatever else. There was no mention of that.

The link on the book page to the pricing is broken, but the site map
does provide a working link to it:

http://www.createspace.com/Products/BooksPrices.jsp

The rundown is this:
The book has a base price. This is the price it costs the company to
make the book (and a small profit no doubt) and as the owner of the
book you can buy the books at this price. You have to pay for shipping
however, but Amazon shipping is reasonable.
The book then has a 'cover price' or 'list price'. This is the price
the customer will be expected to pay for the book. Of this cover price
you must pay 20% off the top if the book sells through the createspace
store or 40% off the top if the book sells from the Amazon site.
The money you make from the deal is whatever is left after the
percentage is taken off the top minus the base price of the book.
Amazon may choose to discount your book, if they do so it reduces
their portion of the money and not yours. So obviously they can never
discount the book further than 40% off. (In which case they make only
the shipping and handling cost.)

So in the example I sited in my previous post:

Base Cost for a 100 page Color Cover Monochrome Interior: $3.66
Cover Price/List Price/MSRP: $12.95

***

If book is sold via CreateSpace's e-commerce site, their cut is: $2.59
....so 2.59 + 3.66 = 6.25, your cut is $6.70

If book is sold through Amazon.com, their cut is: $5.18
....so 5.18 + 3.66 = 8.84, your cut is $4.11

If you sell on consignment via putting feet to pavement at 50% rate,
the store's cut is: $6.48
....so 6.48 + 3.66 = 10.14, your cut is $2.81

If you sell the books directly to your customers, you pay 0% off the
top: $0.00
....so 0.00 + 3.66 = , your cut is $9.29


You can also pay $50 to get a cheaper base price for your books, so if
you are going to buy enough to make up this additional outlay then
it's a good deal.

***

Okay, so as I mentioned in my first post this is not really the way
that a novel writer would want to publish. For all the reasons that
have been mentioned in this thread: Publishers want first publish
rights, it's damn expensive for a novel (a 350 page novel sized book
would have a base cost of $8.50, no way to sell that at a price anyone
would want to pay for an unknown author), and if you go this route I'd
assume it was because the normal publish routes turned your manuscript
down. If that's the case, it probably isn't so good. No one is going
to buy it since it won't be on store shelves and no one knows who you
are. And if they did buy it, it would probably be amateur work and
they would tell everyone how much of a waste of money it was.

So it's not the way to publish a novel. It is vanity publishing and
nothing else.

On the other hand...

As I commented in my post earlier, it may be a sane method to publish
RPG material. Most RPG material, except the stuff from the major
publishers (TSR/Wizards of the Coast, White Wolf, and Palladium, are
the only professional ones I can think of off the top of my head,
there are more though) is basically amateur. Most of the D20
supplements (which is the only type of stuff you can really get
published and get paid for following the normal route) look like they
were made in someone's basement anyway. So while you will be at a
disadvantage to the professional outfits, about 2/3 of the shelf space
in your average game store devoted to D20 stuff is all from the
smaller publishers. (Read amateur looking.) So if you do a good job,
you can stand out amongst the secondary stuff.

Your major disadvantage would be that you do not have a distributing
mechanism aside from your own two feet and charisma to get your
product on the shelves. If you want to publish anything not D20
related. It's. Not. Going. To. Happen. None of the publishers can risk
paying for something that they can not guarantee sales for. D20 is the
only thing selling well enough to take a risk on. In general with RPG
publishing you are selling all publishing rights to the publisher for
a flat rate. You get no royalties. Writing for a magazine like
_Dragon_ might get you 5 cents a word, but supplements of the type I'm
referring to often get you 2 cents a word or less in some cases, and
if there is a mountain of slush for every published novel it's even
worse with RPG products.

Now, RPG publishing is not exactly what this group is about, but it is
related. You do many of the same things building a world for an RPG
that you do for writing a novel. So the same sort of skills and ideas
are needed. If you want to publish some RPG material, this looks like
a way that you could do it and be competitive, at least in your local
region. Since Amazon does carry the books, you could sell some through
there as well if you put some money into advertizing through gaming
magazines. This is not the way to publish a novel though.
.

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