Welcome to my premiere edition of The Buzz on Books &
More! These will be interviews with book publishing insiders and writers on
issues, trends, methods, etc.
The first edition’s topic?...
The CreateSpace to
KDP Publishing Transition
Change is often disconcerting when you’ve used a particular product
or service for a long time. That’s what customers of the self-publishing
service CreateSpace are facing, as
Amazon transitions them over to Kindle
Direct Publishing.
For the inside scoop, I turned to one of my favorite people
in book publishing, Gerald Everett Jones, author of Bonfire of the Vanderbilts and
host of the GetPublished! radio
show (https://getpublishedradio.com/).
Highlights: Changes after the move include having paper books and ebooks on one dashboard, proof copies now having
“not for sale” on cover and special barcodes, royalties paid every 60 days
instead of every 30, and greater access to Amazon’s AMS ads.
Interview with author
Gerald Everett Jones
How did you learn
that you needed to migrate your books from CreateSpace to KDP?
My first notice was when I logged into my CreateSpace
dashboard and there was a message saying migration of POD paperbacks was going
to happen to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) kdp.amazon.com.
Amazon
also sent me emails from time to time advising that the move was coming up. A
particular warning was that if I’d chosen CreateSpace Direct distribution as
one of my Expanded Distribution options, I’d have to go into each book for
which I’d selected that option and deselect it. That’s because your selling
direct to customers is no longer supported in that way. If I did opt out of
that, Amazon advised that my paperbacks would be moved automatically to KDP and
remain LIVE.
Was the process
complicated? How long did it take you?
The migration is or is intended to be automatic now. I
didn’t do anything to move my book files from CreateSpace to KDP. All I did was
go into CreateSpace and disable the CreateSpace Direct option in Expanded
Distribution. Doing so made those books eligible to stay LIVE through the
migration process. But, once I saw them on the KDP dashboard, I went through
all the selections as if I were publishing them as new titles. That’s how I’d
recommend doing it.
Also, my LaPuerta Books and Media imprint has 15 different
titles on KDP, all in Kindle and some in POD paperback. The migration from the
CreateSpace dashboard to KDP was just a matter of days, but then I was fine-tuning
the metadata and other details for about a month, including the migration to
the Videodirect platform for the streaming videos.
How does the process
work?
The Amazon instructions tell you to start the process from
the CreateSpace dashboard and just click the migration notice you see at the
top. The process will no doubt take a few more steps if you don’t already have
a Kindle Direct Publishing account. Also, I believe Amazon expects that the
account ID you use for CreateSpace will be the same login credentials you use
for kdp.amazon.com. But I don’t know if that’s mandatory. As you probably know,
Amazon is like Google in that once you log in, they regard you as the same entity
across all their platforms.
Whether you explicitly opted to migrate from the CreateSpace
dashboard or you just wait because you already have a KDP account associated, Amazon’s
invisible robots do the work of porting your titles to the KDP dashboard. If
all your book’s specs and settings are correct for KDP, its status on the
dashboard should show LIVE printed in green. If there’s a glitch of any kind
that you need to resolve, the status will show as DRAFT printed in black. LIVE
books are on display in the Amazon catalog and available for order. DRAFT
versions are not (unless you had a prior LIVE version that the DRAFT is
updating).
Are there any tricky
parts?
My advice would be, whether your book shows as LIVE or
DRAFT, click through all the detail and metadata settings for it as if
you were publishing it for the first time. You don’t need to upload the ported cover
or the guts unless you’ve made a change – or unless Amazon has flagged some
error in those files. (You will have the opportunity for Live Preview of the
book pages before you’re done.) Make sure your Description and Keywords are
up-to-date, and here’s an opportunity to make changes. It shouldn’t take any
longer to publish if you do. As well – and I think this is crucial – carefully
review the Expanded Distribution and pricing options. Here’s a perfect
opportunity to reprice your list, especially right before the holiday shopping
season.
I experienced a glitch on one book that was totally
unexpected. Choke Hold had been LIVE
on Amazon via CreateSpace POD for some time. However, after porting to KDP, I
got a notice from Amazon support asking me to prove my copyright. I assume this
was because there are several books with that title (Choke Hold or Chokehold),
but of course none have remotely similar content. I replied to the email with a
PDF of the copyright registration certificate, and after about a week the book
went from DRAFT to LIVE on KDP.
Are there any
downsides to the move?
One difference is payment terms. CreateSpace pays monthly,
30 days after month-end closing. KDP also pays monthly, but 60 days after
closing.
What are the upsides
to the move?
It’s a convenience to see and control all your Amazon book
titles on the same KDP dashboard. And on the sales results charts, you’ll see
the ebook results right alongside the paperback results, color-coded. You can
get a good sense that way of how the sales and pricing of the two products are
working or not working. For the industry, you’d expect to see ebook sales about
25% of the total, but in self-publishing, ebooks typically are a much higher
percentage of the mix, if not all of it.
Has Amazon issued any
deadline that you know of by which this move has to take place?
The migration is well underway. If you want your CreateSpace
titles on KDP, don’t hesitate to check their status and get involved in the
process.
But if you start a new paperback, it’s simple. You’ll have
to create a new title through the KDP dashboard.
Gerald Everett Jones
has been a professional writer all his working life. He is the author of more
than thirty business and technical books (including How to Lie with Charts), and seven novels (including Bonfire of the Vanderbilts). He
currently hosts the GetPublished! Radio show (getpublishedradio.com) and has
been a regular book reviewer on KRLA-AM in Los Angeles.
For further details
and insights, check out the following links:
CreateSpace (where you can log in to your account)
Moving from
CreateSpace to KDP: A Simple Guide [Alliance of Independent Authors]
KDP & CreateSpace
Merger | What You Need To Know [Video]
CreateSpace and KDP
to Become One Service [KDP page with info and related links]
Robin Quinn
is a book
coach, editor and publishing consultant. She has provided editorial support to
the independent publishing community for over 25 years. Recent clients include
Ayn Cates Sullivan (multiple award-winning Legends
of the Grail: Stories of the Celtic
Goddesses and the forthcoming Heroines
of Avalon: Legends of the Grail 2), Tami Shaik (novel Ocean in a Drop and self-help title Detox Your Soul-A 30 Day Roadmap to Loving Yourself), Kristen Falde
Smith (self-help title Artichokes &
Grace: Getting to the Heart of Aging) and Ian Brooks (forthcoming self-help
audiobook in progress). To ask for a free book editing quote or inquire about book coaching,
email Robin at quinnwordforword@aol.com.
