Who would you recommend for POD / ebook publishers?

Who publishes the POD and ebooks that you read yourself?

What exactly are your goals and expectations?

JulieBeth said:

Hi,

I apologize if this has been asked, but I didn't see a post on this topic.

I have decided instead of self-publishing my non-fiction book I am working on on my own via PayPerPost through my website, I would like to publish it using POD.

So far, I have looked at the main ones - CreateSpace, Lulu, iUniverse, Author House, but they all seem expensive and are interested in upselling. I did really like Booklocker, but she seems more particular on which books to publish.

Are there any I may have missed? Or a is there one you had particularly good luck with?

Thanks!

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I would stay away from iUniverse and Author House. Check out Lulu. I don't know much about them, but I think that might be your best option.

Createspace for print. I don't know why you think it's expensive. If you can't do the formatting yourself, check the forums as there are people who can format for you cheaper than the C8S packages. You get a free C8S site that you can offer discounts on -- which you can link to from your web page and let someone else print and ship and handle getting payments etc. Their print cost for you to buy copies from them to have in hand is very good (best if you get the Expanded Distribution plan -- an extra $40). You can publish to Kindle for free (again, if you can't handle the formatting and for plain text it's not that difficult, you can find someone who will do it for you cheap.). You can use Smashwords to reach the non-Kindle markets.

IMHO

Jean

I agree with what jairey said.

Check out Create Space. $40 gets you into on line booksellers (including Amazon) around the world.

Smashwords is a good choice for e-books.

No one mentioned Lightning Source. They are a bit more expensive, around $180 I think, but they have a good reputation.

Good luck! If you format your book in accordance with what each company wants, it needn't cost you much.

Carmy

Agreed about Create Space. $39 should be all you need upfront for a paperback under the PRO plan (skipping this will mean less profit on all sales and is not recommended). You can select a gloss finish on the cover and their technical support has a great reputation.

Lightning Source will make you better profit if you think you will sell more than 32 books. However, it does require an upfront cost of 117 dollars, not the 180 quoted earlier. You can see a full breakdown of costs and benefits for Create Space versus Lightening Source here. Lightning Source is an Ingram company and has a very large distribution network around the world.

Smashwords will get you into all of the eBook publishing venues, if you'd like to be on Kindle, Nook, iPad, etc. If you are having trouble figuring out how to format your Word document (I assume) into an epub or mobi format (in case the Smashwords Meatgrinder converter isn't working for you--which sometimes happens), try one of the guides mentioned here. A lot of people have put together decent visual guides there. Smashwords offers you the ability to create coupons for free giveaways or reduced prices on your ebooks if you want to run a special (or giveaway copies of the digital version to family members, friends, etc.)

Like James said, the answer depends on what you are ultimately wanting out of your book.

Interesting article.

I see LS has dropped it's initial fee since I last looked at it.

Converting is easy if you take it step by step. I had no trouble converting to Kindle (for Amazon) and Smashwords.

I just signed with Lightning Source for a release I'm planning later this year. The process is a little bit involved with all the forms, etc, and you need to have purchased at least one ISBN beforehand, as far I could tell. (I already had a block of 100 from years back.)

I'm particularly interested in the UK and Australian markets, and that means LS.

CreateSpace

I'm using CreateSpace right now, and I'm impressed how smooth things have been so far. I bought their almost top of the line service for about $5,200 for a 120k word YA Fantasy novel, Arboregal-The Lorn Tree, which will be released this fall.
You don't have to spend that much if you can do a lot of the work yourself. The biggest expense was the editing.
The best thing to do is check their website and others and compare. Good luck!

ISBN

Aslo ISBN number, the self-pubs have ISBN's for sale which are cheaper than what you can buy from Bowker for only one number, but the ISBN from the self-pub will carry their name as the publisher.

I have published my book with Booklocker, and my husband has published two with them. We have been very pleased with this company.

I have formatted my clients books using CreateSpace standard and they are now sold in Amazon. So far, they have no problem with publishing in CS. If you need help with the formatting, my service is very affordable.

Thanks,

BookFormatterJen

My husband and I have been using Lulu for print at the moment. Createspace isn't really a viable option if you're in the UK because your royalties are paid in US dollars and the bank fees to exchange aren't really worth the hassle. Lulu pays via paypal in both UK pounds, dollars and Euros, and their fees are less than the bank. If Createspace had a paypal option or something similar, I'd consider it again.

I've been using smashwords for ebooks and have been very happy with them. I've just recently discovered that allromance/omnilit also accept self-pubbed ebooks to be sold on their site and have added some of mine a few weeks ago. You have to register as a publisher for their site and they take anywhere from 1-3 days to get back to you. They have real-time reports of sales and they also pay via paypal. One of my books I uploaded there sold 43 in one day, I never sold so many at once before, LOL!

You need to format the books yourself. If you don't have an ISBN, you can request a listing number from them to add your book to their site.

More info here:
http://www.omnilit.com/publishers.html

Books that are not romances are listed on omnilit and books that are romance are listed on both sites, omnilit and allromaceebooks.

Some links for more info on each:

www.lulu.com

www.smashwords.com

Take care,
Annette

I also would like to suggest/recommend CreateSpace because of Amazon, CreateSpace eStore and their Expanded Distribution Channel. Authors have a lot of options to earn royalties.

BookFormatterJen said:

I also would like to suggest/recommend CreateSpace because of Amazon, CreateSpace eStore and their Expanded Distribution Channel. Authors have a lot of options to earn royalties.

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Given your sig that's a little disingenuous.

Try looking up CPI / Anthony Rowe for POD printing. They've offered a much better price than createspace or lightning source for one of my recent projects.

Even if you go direct through KDP for Kindle and Amazon, you might want to look at Smashwords for access to other retailers. For ebooks, Smashwords is pretty easy to format for on your own. I've put some free non-fiction on it that's drawn interest. However the main advantages of Smashwords are that it pays through Paypal (not something I've used) and has a lot of distribution links, e.g. B&N, Kobo, Apple, Sony etc.

BookFormatterJen said:

I also would like to suggest/recommend CreateSpace because of Amazon, CreateSpace eStore and their Expanded Distribution Channel. Authors have a lot of options to earn royalties.

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As I pointed out in another thread, where you were also recommending CreateSpace because of its Expanded Distribution Channel, the EDC doesn't actually constitute what most publishing professionals understand as "distribution". As I understand it, the EDC is a wholesale system and not a distribution one. It puts the books into a catalogue but that's about all. That makes the books available for special order: but it doesn't actually place books before their potential readers. They have to know the book exists, and then go order it, rather than happening upon it on a bookshop shelf.

The missing link here is the active sales force selling your books into bookshops, which really makes a difference when you're talking about the sales of print books.

Ouch! Let me correct my earlier post . . .

Smashwords does not do non-fiction. That is unless they've changed things lately.

Sorry . . .

As far as I know, Amazon does it's own conversion to Kindle. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Carmy said:

Ouch! Let me correct my earlier post . . .

Smashwords does not do non-fiction. That is unless they've changed things lately.

Sorry . . .

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Sorry, but Smashwords definitely publish Non-fiction, and have for a while. It's under the Fiction section in the menu on the left (here).

"Createspace for print. I don't know why you think it's expensive."

The cheapest price I saw on their site was almost $800. If one wanted to e-publish there was another $69. I don't understand how one gets it for less. Perhaps I have not dug deep enough into their offers.