Publishing Through CreateSpace

Amazon.com's self-publishing arm, called CreateSpace, turns out to be a suprisingly easy and affordable way to publish a book.  At least, that's been my experience so far.  CreateSpace gives you two options: do your own text and cover layout or hire their experts to do it for you.  If you are able to carefully format your text in Microsoft Word, you can do it yourself.  That's the option I chose, which is the free option.  Amazon then makes its money from sales of your book on-line.

The same is true for your book's cover.  You can choose one of their standard cover templates and add your title information; you can pay their experts to design a cover for you; or you can develop your own in a photo editing program such as Photoshop using the layout template CreateSpace provides.  Since I am somewhat Photoshop-adept, I chose the latter option.

The hardest part of the process, frankly, is getting your text formatted.  I chose a 6X9" book format, which is the one recommended by CreateSpace for best distribution and sales.   To accommodate it, I changed the page size of my document in Word.  This necessitated reviewing all of the page breaks and eliminating the resulting widows and orphans.  This was eased, I later discovered, by turning on the widows and orphans feature in Word, something that would have saved me considerable time--not to mention several read-throughs--had I done it earlier.  Numbering the pages also turned out to be something of a challenge; numbers kept popping up on blank pages and in other places where they were unwanted.  I had to insert special breaks in the text, sometimes seemingly at random, until all the page numbers ended up where intended.

Once I had my text formatted the way CreateSpace needs to get it, I converted it to a pdf file--the preferred method for uploading to CreateSpace, though apparently they will also take Word files.  I filled out the background information needed--title, author, choice of ISBN option and where I want my royalties deposited--then uploaded my text for review.  In a matter of minutes, the text is returned in a form you can scan on-line for errors.  The review, in fact, will tell you whether or not your text passed CreateSpace's tests.  Mine did, with one minor error.

While your text is being reviewed and approved, it's on to the cover.  This is uploaded as a pdf file also.  It must meet CreateSpace's specifications for layout and spine thickness (which depends on the number of words and the choice of paper color).  This too is reviewed by CreateSpace.

That's where The Hero of Gucci Gulch stands now--waiting for final review.  Once I get approval--a matter of a day or less, in my brief experience--then I'll order a single print copy for final inspection of the book as produced.  If all is then OK, I'll release it for publication. 

This process has proven to be very quick.  I've spent three days getting the text laid out in final form and through the review process at CreateSpace twice.  Now I'm down to waiting to order and receive the first hard copy.  I'll let you know how that goes.