The Great Debate: Print On Demand Services

A good friend and fellow author Belinda Frisch had the idea to compare POD (Print On Demand) services from an author's perspective.  Belinda, author Thomas Amo and I contributed our experiences with Create Space, Lulu, and the Espresso Book Machine, which is what I used.

We reviewed the following:

1. Formatting

2. Cover

3. Time/Cost

4. Pros/Cons

5. Overall Rating

We'll start with Belinda's review of Create Space (CS). It's quite possibly the most widely used POD service.

Create Space (CS):

1&2 Formatting/Cover Design

Formatting is easy if you use MS Word.

I favor standard format (1″ margins, 0.5 indent for first line, and converted double to single space for print) and that worked just fine.

Create Space offers a "guided" tour when you start a new project which includes everything  from paper and ink colors, cover, book interior, and ISBN assignment (which CS will do for free if you list them as the "distributor" of your novel. Choices include white/cream paper, full color/blank and white ink, and upload your own PDF cover (front, back, and spine) OR you can use one of CS's cover creators (which is what I did using a photo from our local spooky, old cemetery.) Tom had cover issues as he tried uploading a custom cover and said he never could get it to work right. Using the cover creator to do mine, I had no issues with style, color, or cover layout. It has been 100% consistent.

3. Time and Cost

In all, I probably formatted and uploaded in about thirty minutes including cover creation. I'm not a tech genius by any stretch, but I'm not tech illiterate either. Skill might play into this a bit, but it's mostly cut and paste if you use the formatting link (see book interior highlighted above.)

Cost is a little author-dependent. You can upgrade to a Pro Plan membership for $39.00 which increases your royalties and decreases your "author price" when you order copies. Print cost depends on the size of your novel and page count. Dead Spell, at 40K words, costs me $3.22/per copy on the Pro Plan. On the sales end, selling the print copies at $9.99 through Amazon, I get about $2.17 per copy. I honestly do not sell many prints, but they've been great for giveaways (advertising), contests, reviewers, and library sales which I'm just starting to get into.

4. Pros/Cons

Pros–easy formatting, author copy cost is low, and the finished product is nice looking.

Cons–limited CS cover creator options make the covers a bit more cookie-cutter and I hear custom covers are a nightmare. Library royalties are very low. About $0.79 per $9.99 sale. Proofs have to be ordered before you set a book to "live" under the old structure. This makes the first one take a week or so after you create the file to start printing them on demand. I know there is a new option for this where you can go live immediately. I am just not sure I'd trust it, especially if you do a custom cover.

5. Overall

I am pretty pleased with CS for the limited amount of prints that I sell/order. I like the tangibility of the print copy, but am not totally jazzed to have two different book covers. I'd give it 4/5 stars, cover issues being the reason it's not 5/5. Shipping is fast and the finished product has been consistent across 40 or 50 copies I've ordered to date.

Belinda's debut novel Dead Spell is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. You can learn more about Belinda at  http://belindaf.blogspot.com.

And now, author Thomas Amo's review of Create Space and Lulu:

Create Space (CS):

1&2 Formatting/Cover Design

I spent hours if not days on the CS website weighing the options of them vs Lulu. I read on their support boards from many other users, that if you stay within CS formatting templates, your publishing experience should come off without a hitch. I would say that is a 99% true statement. I downloaded their template for the book size I wanted based on my page numbers and it worked fairly easy. I had to make a few adjustments but it was pretty painless.

As Belinda stated, Create Space offers a "guided" tour when you start a new project which includes everything from paper and ink colors, cover, book interior, and ISBN assignment (which CS will do for free if you list them as the "distributor" of your novel. Choices include white/cream paper, full color/blank and white ink, and upload your own PDF cover (front, back, and spine) OR you can use one of CS's cover creators.  Belinda said she had great luck with this. I on the other hand had a custom cover. I had read from many others this became a nightmare for them, as the print version was never consistent. Because I had a custom cover the spine of my book was blank. The spine became a constant battle because if you had any changes and it required deleting pages or adding pages, it would alter the spine and you'd be adrift again. A guessing game if you will, since you had to order proofs to find out if it worked or not. (Nice way for CS to rack up some of your cash by forcing to purchase several proofs.) I understand you can ignore that now and go live. But if you have to pull it down and fix it…it's $25 to do a new version.  The first proof was pretty good. The cover was centered, and I got the cream paper and it was huge compared to my Lulu version which was lean. (I used white paper with Lulu). So I was happy with the cover, I just needed to fix some typos in the MS. I only changed the interior file, a word here and there, no big fixes. The new proof came and the cover had shifted.  What happened? I didn't do anything to that file. It should have remained the same. I was told all covers shift…so why didn't this happen on the first proof?  It never got straightened out. I've sold 17 copies thus far. Not very impressed. Shortly after my proofs and some press copies came, I began to notice the covers curling. The clear coating that covers the book image began to separate from the book. I had never seen this before ever with a book. This one an issue I read many folks complaining about. It was true, happened to all my books.

3. Time and Cost

CS is fine if you want a drop and drag template publisher. If you go outside the parameters be prepared to deal with product issues. It took me an evening to get it together, but weeks to try to resolve issues with CS, which were never resolved.

Cost. A Pro Plan membership for $39.00 is best purchased if you're going to spend any length of time with them. This increases your royalties and lowers your "author cost" It's a cheap way to go but the product did for me reflect what I paid for.

4. Pros/Cons

Pros– cost is low, and the finished product is nice looking if you use a template.

Cons–limited CS cover creator options make the covers a bit more cookie-cutter and I hear custom covers are a nightmare. Library royalties are very low. About $0.45 per $9.99 sale. Proofs have to be ordered before you set a book to "live" under the old structure. This makes the first one take a week or so after you create the file to start printing them on demand. I know there is a new option for this where you can go live immediately. I am just not sure I'd trust it, especially if you do a custom cover. (This was all Belinda's paragraph, I didn't dig this deep in regards to Library royalties etc.)

5. Overall

I am not happy with CS as I feel the quality of the product just didn't represent my book, as I had envisioned it. Perhaps this is on me too. Belinda had much better luck with them and is quite happy. Perhaps they have resolved those issues now. My final word for CS, is I won't be doing any further publishing with them.

LULU

1&2 Formatting/Cover Design

Like CS, Lulu also relies on template, cookie cutter type books. However they also are prepared for the custom needs publisher as well. Formatting is easy; they already have print size files ready for download and if you're writing in MS Word, it's copy and paste. Works well. I loaded my PDF into the book size template I wanted and had my book in moments. I just needed to make the proper adjustments. As for my custom cover, it fit and worked like a dream. I chose a blank cover template. This allowed me to make full use of front, spine and back.

I had my cover images ready and  dropped them in and the spine creator was easy and worked perfectly!

3. Time/Cost

Time was minimal in prepping everything and I had my book together in less than one hour.

There is no cost to publish with Lulu, unless your buying copies of your own book. Now you can pay for media/distribution channels and such, but you can easily put a book together and if you're happy with it, make it available pretty much instantly and are not charged for anything.  Price of your book is based on how many pages, print size and paper quality. I chose 5×5 8×5 on white paper.

Cream paper makes your production cost higher. The white pages are pretty easy to see through to the other side, admittedly that's a drawback, but not enough to make me or you, pay for the price of cream paper. I wanted to keep my book cost reasonable. $10.00, I realize I'm an unknown but if I like a book enough I will pay much more than that. You can spend a little or a lot, depends on how much you want Lulu to be involved.

4. Pros/Cons

Pros, Lulu is very user friendly and their product is nice quality, the book looks professional and printing is consistent every time. If there is a problem, it's going to be 99% your fault, not theirs.

The Cover Creator, Loved it!

Cons, Depending on what book size you choose, for example mine, Lulu does not ship from the USA. But that doesn't mean I can't, buy books and ship them overseas.

The white paper is only available in two print sizes. You are forced to buy cream paper for the most common used print edition ( 6×9 ).

5. Overall

I am 100% Satisfied with Lulu and I can say for certain, my next book will be a Lulu edition.

Tom's novel, the first in a series, An Apple for Zoe can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and from Lulu: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/authoramo

And finally, a different kind of POD. my own experience with the  Espresso Book Machine:

1&2 Formatting/Cover

The Espresso book machine is fairly easy. I, of course, cheated and had mine done professionally by a graphic artist because I wanted to pull in special fonts and chapter headings to intensify the spooky vibe of the story. The guidelines, however, are really straightforward and offer a variety of trim-sizes to choose from. I chose the 9×6 oversized paperback for Asylum Lake. At just over 72,000 words it made for a nice weight and feel.

The Espresso book machine really leaves the cover design up to the author. You can be as simplistic or as creative as your heart desires. The formatting instructions guidelines provide clear instructions. Again, my designer handled all of the heavy lifting. The four-color cover of Asylum Lake has received countless compliments and I believe it is one of the reasons my title has enjoyed so much success; it draws the reader in.

All in all the formatting seems very straightforward.

3. Time and Cost



Okay, this is where the Espresso Book Machine deviates from the competition. On the plus side, it takes me four minutes to have a copy of Asylum Lake printed. Yep, you heard me – four minutes! I can even watch it all. I've had several events at the independent book store that owns this Espresso machine and one of the most fascinating parts for the audience is to actually see the book printed, cut and bound right in front of their eyes. It's also local so I can pop in and get books whenever it's convenient.

As for costs, I have to pay $10 for each and every copy. At a cover price of $15 I'm still raking in a cool $5 profit on each sale, but I had to price Asylum Lake a bit higher than what I would have normally wanted to. There is also a $75 set-up charge for them to load the file. Add in the $115 I paid for my ISBN and you can see that I had to sell almost 40 copies before I even broke even.

4. Pros & Cons



You guessed it, the big con is the pricing. It's hard for me to compete against Create Space or Lulu authors who can list theirtitles at much lower prices. Still, I have yet to have anybody complain that they didn;t feel they were getting their money's worth.

The pros greatly outweigh that con. First off, it's local. I can pop in anytime I want and pick up copies or view proofs. Also, because an independent bookstore owns the machine I have the added value of having my books placed right on their shelves alongside the traditionally published books of King, Koontz and the other heavyweights. I've also been able to have in-store discussions and signings. Schuler Books owns five bookstores throughout Michigan so it's greatly increased myy exposure. I am featured prominently on their website and in their other marketing efforts.

5. Overall

I've looked long and hard at the other services and feel like I've built my brand through this relationship with the bookstore and their Espresso book machine and would hate to try to fix what isn't broken. That being said, I do wonder what my sales would look like if I could take that $15.00 price and whittle it down to $9.95.

Asylum Lake, can be purchased from Amazon, Smashwords, and you can get an autographed print through www.schulerbooks.com.