Support for Indie Authors discussion

I published my first couple of books through Amazon and Createspace, but I've been getting rather tempted by Bookbaby? Anyone work with them before, tell me if they're any better than Createspace? And if they are, should I pull my stuff off Createspace and redo it through Bookbaby?

Hi Ahmed. I looked into them last year and I used to get e-mails from them about publishing with them. I would always look it over and while everything seemed and sounded fine I always found myself never going through with publishing with them. It's been a while since I saw their services but they are free to publish with yes? I'm just trying to remember because there was a reason as to why I was hesitant to go with them. Perhaps it was because they aren't widely known.

I will say right now your best bet is Createspace. I myself have 4 books with Createspace and have never had an issue. You yourself have published with them and if you've had no issue I say stick with them. I would say stick with Createspace and perhaps consider putting a new work on Bookbaby to try it out and see how it goes or even publish one of your works already on CS on Bookbaby if you can, perhaps they offer distribution in other places.

I just noticed a book i contemplated to buy that was published by Bookbaby but sold on Amazon. It says it is "Usually shipped within 1 to 3 months".

I had to read it a couple of times to make sure I wasn't mistaking: 1 to 3 MONTHS? I mean I like paperbacks but I also like to remember I ordered something when it finally arrives in the mail. :/

I used Bookbaby for my first novel. I think it was great. I can't say anything about CreateSpace, but I think Bookbaby was worth the money.

I'll admit the downside for me was the 1 to 3 months to ship. But that may be due to the fact that I used the Print on Demand feature so that I didn't have to buy my book in bulk.

One way to work around the long shipping wait is to have the book available to pre-order. Most people who pre-ordered ahead of the release date received the book in less than a month.

Tyler, it was your book I was looking at. The premises looked interesting. I mean I am crazy about aliens now add vampires and zombies... no comment! :P

I solved the problem by finding a second hand one. The sad thing is you won't get royalties, but it should still help your ranking on Amazon since it will show Verified Purchase whenever I will review it. (And I will have it on my shelf.) :P

One to three months is pretty crazy though... I use createspace and I've never had any reason to try elsewhere, it's brilliant and straightforward. And admit it, one to three days sounds so much better :D

I have both and Createspace is much better.

Wait so it's 1 to 3 months for authors who publish with theme to receive their copies? Or does it also take 1 to 3 months for a customer to receive a book through them?

Which customer would be happy to wait 1-3 months for their order?

Justin wrote: "Wait so it's 1 to 3 months for authors who publish with theme to receive their copies? Or does it also take 1 to 3 months for a customer to receive a book through them?"

I'm thinking it must only be the customers who buy the book through Amazon. Maybe it's Amazon's fault. We don't really know. Maybe Amazon only protect themselves saying that when in fact it might be shipped sooner too. I can't tell.

I'm sorry to have open a bag of worms. I just happened to want a book published by Bookbaby and that's what it said on Amazon. One would have to try it to confirm but I'm not a patient one...

I have had some dealings with them when they were starting up, and personally, I don't trust them.

The books I ordered came in just a couple weeks after I ordered them for the first time. Those who pre-ordered did not have to wait that long either. It seems like the 1-3 months only happens with customers who purchase after the release date. But the paperback hasn't even been out for a month, so I have to ask around and see if anyone really has waited that long after ordering.

I only did Print on Demand because I heard all the horror stories of authors printing 1000 copies and only selling 100. The upside is not having to worry about the boxes piling up in storage. Downside is the shipping.

If it helps... I'd still publish with Bookbaby in the future (although I might take a shot at traditional publishing first). Only the next time, I'll forgo the Print on Demand feature and print and ship the books myself. I don't like making my readers wait.

G.G. thank you for taking the time to find a copy, I understand completely about the secondhand thing. I can't wait to hear what you think.

My pleasure Tyler. I know I could have bought the eBook instead, and normally I would have, but even though you hadn't win my mini contest, I wanted the book on my shelf. It sounds so good! LOVE aliens! :) I'll let you know once I read it and reviewed it. (I'll send you the link.)

Of course, it's not here yet, and I may have a few to read before. It always depends on my mood. I don't read a book unless I'm entirely ready for it. ;)

(Sorry for being off topic.)

I have not used bookbaby. Good to hear everyones feedback. I do have a website through hostbaby.com; their web building site. Its affordable and easy to use.

I have a recent update on my situation:

Amazon now has more of my book "in stock" and my Prime account now says it can be shipped in two days. I think everything is good now (sorry G.G.)

My guess is that my pre-order period was not long enough for Amazon to gauge how well my books would sell and therefore how much to order and keep in stock. I don't know if that really is the case, but I will try to keep updating those who are considering using Bookbaby.

Don't need to apologize Tyler. I'll still get the book. It's you who won't get the royalties. :(

I publish my print books through Lulu.com. Very good quality. I haven't had any problems with them, except you have to order a print copy and then approve it before they will distribute it through their channels.

I live in Australia, and Lulu now do print via a print company in Melbourne (Victoria, Aust) for Aussies so the post cost isn't as bad as when I had to order from the US. However, I've been thinking of trying Create Space and having print books available through both Create Space AND Lulu. It's difficult to decide - Lulu does distribute through Amazon as well, but I have found some print versions of my books not yet available through Amazon. So Creat Space would fix that little hiccup.

I used them to make hardcovers of three of my (baby series) books. I had to buy 900 dollars worth of copies. (that's part of the deal) The books look beautiful. I just got the proofs (which I had to pay for as well.) Createspace doesn't charge or expect anything- as soon as you publish, the paperback will be on Amazon within the same day.
The hard cover from Bookbaby is also priced so high, I doubt I will recoup my investment. I am wondering if Amazon will discount it like they do my regular books.
I am making a dollar on each copy sold, so when you think about the cost of ordering the first batch of books at 900 dollars, I feel it will take a loooong time before that one pays off. But I was asked to do it by a pretty big site- so I made the investment.
If Createspace did hardcovers, I would have done it with them.

Lulu do hardcovers, I think. I have been very happy with their paperbacks. They wouldn't ask you to order more than one, though I think they give you a discount if you do order more. But as Angela says, it takes them quite a long time to get them into the retail chain.

I have been happy with Bookbaby for ebooks (I had formatting problems doing one through Lulu).

I had a bad experience with Lulu. I could never get help- no one took responsibility for misinformation. They claimed they could do something with no extra charge and then ended up charging me over 2000 dollars. I cancelled the job I was doing. They refused to refund my credit card. I threatened them and they finally refunded everything.

I am a BookBaby author. But right now for e-book only. I am very satisfied with their services on my e-book. They have amazing customer service and I found their formatting and distribution services in that arena to be very fair. My only issue is the long delay in Amazon sale reports. It just makes things a little trickier in seeing marketing results.

For print...I really wanted to see how well the readers responded to my novel before pulling on the trigger for which print publisher and distributor to use. I am still thinking it through, but BookBaby is a contender.

I had already spent over $10K on writing/researching/editing my novel, I had to make sure I was making wise investments as I hardly have any more money to spend.

For print books I know Bookbaby recently acquired a second operation site, so they *should* be able to keep up with demand. I definitely would print bulk orders though, whenever possible, and make sure Amazon and others can ship immediately, as I wouldn't want to turn away sales. Sadly, no one in this culture is willing to wait for anything anymore. We're so spoiled.

I would do as someone else suggested and rather than pull products down from CS as an experimemt, just test a new book on BookBaby.

No. But they spam my e-mail all the time. I've read their rules for publishing, distribution and don't like some of the thing they're offering. But I was considering them before Createspace came along.

I have never used Bookbaby. I looked into it and thought I may try it. I use Smaswords for e-books and print books on Creatspace. I have been very happy with Smashwords until recently. They have made putting up new books difficult. There are so many places to use that it's difficulty to change. I'm interested in what you all have to say.

We eBook through Smashwords AND Amazon Kindle. Prints we went through Blurb (discount stepchild of Ingram Spark) and distribute through Ingram Spark to all print retailers including Amazon. The royalties from Amazon are greatly reduced, but Ingram gets it out both in US and Internationally (Amazon only US). We are considering a second printing through Createspace to better the royalties on Amazon sales. Multiple printers creates more work to discount. Happy with Blurb's printing and turnaround. Never looked into Bookbaby.

I used Bookbaby for everything on my novel, editing, cover, ebook format, print, distribution. My first time writing and I needed a lot of help with the process. They were fantastic for me and I would recommend them. Any time I had an issue customer service took care of me.
The one thing I would note is the editing was fairly pricey in my opinion, 2600$ for 72k words AND the actual editing seemed a bit lacking to me. I think it could have been done better.
Being my first time I lacked the experience to know better at the time.
Overall I had a good experience with them.

Converting from eBook to print requires several edits. Like EBooks don't require page numbers or page headers, but prints do. Then there's margin adjustments for binding. Prints as well have backcovers and spines. Images cost in print and require dpi adjustment. Prints require ISBN's and many eBooks are published without... so its not just simply uploading an eBook format to create a print format. Interesting/needed, which will make it an interesting option to explore.

Patrick wrote: "Converting from eBook to print requires several edits. Like EBooks don't require page numbers or page headers, but prints do. Then there's margin adjustments for binding. Prints as well have backco..."

With Lulu you get the template for the paperback. I copy my ebook contents and paste on the template, then go through and make sure the numbers match my contents page because of the page numbering. I've never found Lulu to be hard. In fact, they've adjusted it if it won't fit the required size. I also upload in word.doc, not PDF. For the cover I upload a 2500 jpeg or png image.

I have to admit, I hardly sell any paperbacks, I mainly do it so I can get a copy for my own personal writing library, and so the option is there for anyone who wants to buy it. Otherwise, most of my sales are ebooks through Amazon and Smashwords and Smashwords distributors.

But I think Create Space is listed on more print book sites?:

Hmmm...I think I've veered off the original topic of Bookbaby! It's just such an interesting topic, and seeing who has used what for print and ebook. Always something to learn.

Angela wrote: "Hmmm...I think I've veered off the original topic of Bookbaby! It's just such an interesting topic, and seeing who has used what for print and ebook. Always something to learn."
Oops... you're correct Angela. Sorry Ahmed... I'm going to have to do more research on BookBaby to make comparisons.

That's what happens when we talk ebooks and print and self publishing in general! Easy to veer off-topic. I'm watching the thread with interest, though, as I am curious about Bookbaby.