Self-pub Nikki 8

A lot of things happening suddenly

13oct11,

Got news from CreateSpace that things are on the way. I will receive a "proof" = a test-hardcopy within the next week or two.

Now comes the daunting task of taxes! Since I am a non-US citizen I have to fill out some whatever forms to get TIN numbers and tax waving and and and… horrible… I feel like I'm being subjected to a modern form of torture! (laugh).

17oct11,

I received the proof copy already and it looks great. It feels very good to have these 400 pages in hand now. I approved the thing via the CreateSpace homepage and suddenly things were going quickly.

In a burst of activity I set the price, activated the CreateSpace e-store sales channel and the Amazon sales channel and "created" the CreateSpace e-store homepage.

Unfortunately it doesn't look exactly brilliant. There is only very limited stuff the author can do with that page. I tried to install a banner, but a banner photo needs to be of a certain pixel size and I need to get some proper photo formatting software onto my new computer first.

Other than that you can only choose a background color and a font color and that's about it. Unfortunately the book description and the author bio overlap each other a bit and the page's layout thus looks a bit weird. Well, at least a photo of the book cover is on the page.

As for pricing: A print copy of Dome Child costs 9.66 $. The royalty schemes for the CreateSpace e-store and for Amazon and for what they call the "extended distribution channel" are all different. The author gets the most royalty when a customer buys the book via the CreateSpace e-store (no idea why that is so) and the least royalties when going through the extended distribution channels, where, in principle, bookstores etc. can order your book. I have no clue yet whether these extended distribution channels will be worth it, but you never know, right?

Now the thing is that if you choose the extended distribution channel you have to set a relatively high price, since those channels require their margin. That means you need to meet their minimum price, otherwise they don't even allow you to distribute through these channels. If I want to go via the extended distribution channels I need to set the POD Dome Child version price at 14,99 $ or so, which is rather high for an independently published book, I think.

So what I did now is to price Dome Child at 12,- $ so that all my friends and relatives can buy the book for a cheaper price and end of November or so I will increasing the price for a while to get access to the extended distribution channels after the Kindle version is out.

The system said that it would take another 3 to 5 business days until the Amazon page will be up. Once that one is up, I will announce to everyone who wants or doesn't want to know that the book is available. It is in fact already now via the CreateSpace e-store, but since it looks a bit odd I am not so eager to advertise it. But anyway people can buy Dome Child via the CreateSpace e-store already now.

Another thing is the Amazon distribution: I asked the CreateSpace guys whether I can also sell Dome Child via for example Amazon Gemany, Amazon Japan and Amazon UK. I promptly got the answer that this is not possible, since Amazon US has no such contracts with the other Amazon entities. If I want to distribute via them too, I have to contact them all separately. Don't know yet if I will go this route, or better to say whether it will be worth going this route. I will investigate and give it some more thought, but for the moment it looks like the POD version will only be available via Amazon US.

The kindle version is a different story though, there the system asks you automatically how you want to receive royalties from the US, UK, Germany and France (only possibility for someone not living in the US is by check). So the future Kindle version will be available via those four entities. Unfortunately not Japan though, where you still will have to go via Kindle US.

So, the POD version journey has just begun, the Kindle journey will follow and I'm thrilled about where the journey will go!

And by the way, I didn't know that the day when you approve your proof-copy is the publication date. You can choose another one manually, but I thought, what the heck, so the Dome Child saw the light of day on the 17th of Octobeer 2011. Happy birthday!

19oct11,

The journey continues with the Kindle conversion of my book. I got an email from CreateSpace and instructions on what to do next. I already set up my Kindle account and had to decide the following now:

a) Whether to upload the Kindle file myself or whether to let them do that. I chose for them to do this, since I have no experience with this and don't want things to go wrong. For this purpose you need to tell them your Kindle account email.

b) You need a new ISBN for the Kindle version, meaning it has to have its own, you cannot use the paperback ISBN. There are two options, you buy your own ISBN or you can let CreateSpace assign an ISBN for you. I chose the latter version, since so far I have not bought any ISBNs. I might consider doing that in the future.

Now CreateSpace will start with the conversion of the file to Kindle format and it means waiting time for me again. They said it would take some two or three weeks for the kindle file to be ready. They are outsourcing stuff like that I presume.