More CreateSpace Speculation
Now that we’ve seen the press release.
Couple things people are confused about. Booksurge didn’t “disappear” or morph into a Self-Publishing-only option. It’s still around as “CreateSpace Enterprise,” with different terms and improved server… been that way since October. And there’s also Booksurge EU 
and Booksurge UK 
The deal with LSI only affects titles published through CreateSpace Pro–in essence, Amazon and LSI are saying, if you have a CreateSpace Pro title, you don’t need to go the extra mile and get an LSI book too. One of the three “extended distribution channels”–libraries–only happens if you’ve got a CreateSpace Pro book where you didn’t also supply an ISBN and imprint–i.e., CreateSpace is the publisher.
That’s not a bad choice if you’re a self-published author. Again, my only rule is not to spend more than $10 or so to print your title, but, if it is selling, some, then absolutely drop an additional $40 if you think you can recoup that cost from an extra % on every copy sold (can’t just be mom buying 6 copies a week).
Here’s where it gets weird. CreateSpace Pro gives 40% of the cover price to anybody. However, the books are only discounted on Amazon if, you know, there’s also an LSI version. (Unless, maybe, you want to offer additional discounts to CSpace.)
40% of the cover price for a print-on-demand title is huge. That’s about what you’d get, per book, if you printed a 10k offset run and went with a distributor like Perseus, after allowances for returns, shipping, overages, etc. Heck, it’s probably better, in this climate.
To offer an example, several of my smaller imprints (Black Mask, Silk Pagoda, Munsey’s, to be precise) lie in the portion of the publishing biz (trade paperbacks; academic markets) that is just getting killed right now. (Four of Silk’s competitors have vanished in the last year; Hard Case Crime, the gold standard for noir, superior in quality to even the legendary Barry-Gifford-helmed Black Lizard, is taking three months off and coming back as a bimonthly.) 40% of the cover price on a discounted trade paperback through Amazon–even those that only sell 3-5 copies a month, are a big reason why, for me personally, even with the economy, even with Kindle, print is actually up this year. Rumor has it, having fulfilled certain obligations, I might have even mixed in a few of those Olympia titles that sell 3-500 copies a year, print, with the CreateSpace pro.
I love 40% of the cover price for a trade paperback that’s available, discounted, through Amazon. Really dig it. I like it even more with LSI than I do the experiments I made with, you know, all the Maurice Leblancs, charging as little as $9.99 for ‘em. Those books are… OK. 40% of cover price is… salvation. The only cost attached, apart from $5 a year (starting next year, maybe), was the proofs that they made you buy, but of course if you go to book festivals and genre events, you’ll find the magical power of the word “Proof” across the last page of your mandatory title can, through the miracle of literary alchemy, turn that surplus title, and six of its brethren, into beer. You’re laughing if you did this, and laughing more if you take advantage of CreateSpace Pro pricing for books you’ll sell in quantity at shows.
Unless, you know, you’re Amazon, which maybe isn’t making too much on CreateSpace Pro books where LSI has a version and there’s algorithmic discounting. So, partnering up, for that particular line of titles, makes sense from Amazon’s perspective, particularly given all those small publishers who went nuts during the free setup period with Createspace through ’08, and, you know, put in 2, 3, 400 ISBNs/free CSpace ISBNs for later.
‘Cuz we all did that, right? Everyone? Remember how slow it was, and the way you’d keep getting the flower books in your shopping cart for the free setup charge on Dec. 30th? That happened to you all, right? Right? We should get together and reminisce. My hand hurt after a while…
/Was it just me? So lonely over here, having print sales rise amid the economy and the ebook revolution.
Anyway, that’s part of the speculation: Amazon isn’t really making money on CreateSpace Pro, and of course they only gave away CreateSpace Pro setups free because of the whole Booklocker outcry.
Other part: Amazon got serious about Booksurge and POD in the summer of ’08, just after I’d paid $4.35 a gallon for gas in Chicagoland near O’Hare. Shipping costs were rising, with no end in sight. It had to be scary for the world’s largest online retailer, and printing the books in house made a ton of sense.
These days, though, with gas prices stabilizing at $2.75, and Kindle ebook sales accounting for anywhere between 25%-33% of Amazon’s total book sales–POD doesn’t look like such a big deal.
Not that, as an original ebook person, I’m giving up on print, mind. But I won’t be spending quite as much of my time on it, let alone as much of my $, apart from all of Goodloe’s cool covers, of course, and things that the author wants, and other things that… err, boost Kindle sales. So, more printed books than ever, really, hope that’s clear.
/I’ll experiment with CreateSpace-as-Publisher now on a couple titles, have 75 of those setups left, ish.
Tags: Books, Booksurge, CreateSpace, Ebooks, Espresso, LSI, On Demand Books, On Demand Publishing, POD