Tim’s Comments (group member since Oct 22, 2012)

Tim’s comments from the CreateSpace, Lulu and Lightning Source authors group.

Rebekah wrote: "I wish CS did hardcovers. I'm starting my first stand-alone novel, and would prefer it to be in hardcover instead of paperback (seems more distinguished to me), but I guess I'll see where LSI takes..."

I think you're right: hardbacks look more distinguished. Never tried LSI, but I did make hardbacks with Lulu a few years ago and was very pleased with the results.

JeanNicole wrote: Interesting that you worked out LSI was cheaper because our conclusion was the opposite. Perhaps it d..."

Now that is interesting. I suspect it depends on which channels you want to sell through. NewCon is UK-based and happy with its premium hardbacks and paperbacks, for which they use a traditional printer (the printer is blessed with the name 'Biddles' - what a great name!). NewCon want a bigger presence in the US and were assuming US print sales would probably be through amazon.com If you go through Createspace AND you only consider selling through Amazon (40% markup) then that's probably why the numbers came out cheaper for CS.

You're right there, Jolea. I think my problem with Calibre was to do with it trying to build a KF8 and Mobi7 combined version. As Kovid (Mr. Calibre) says, Amazon don't say how their file format works in detail, so he's not surprised if the Calibre team doesn't always guess how the files are supposed to be built.
When I had the problem and Googled a solution, I did see occasional problems like this going back before the KF8/ Kindle Fire. But it seems rare.

The only time I used Calibre to build a Kindle book and upload to Amazon KDP, it didn't work. I think that's bad luck, but Googling around, this has been an occasional problem with Calibre going back a couple of years. The book appeared to upload fine, and the downloaded preview file was fine, but Amazon wouldn't publish it. Turns out something was wrong with the header where Amazon write in catalog and DRM information (though I think this was a DRM-free book.)

If this ever happens to you, the fix is to set Calibre to output debug information, find the contents of the 'processed' folder, and run Kindlegen over it. Worked a treat.

I've just been discussing Createspace vs LSI with another publisher (NewCon Press). Interesting that you worked out LSI was cheaper because our conclusion was the opposite. Perhaps it depends on which channel you're selling through.

In the end, NewCon opted for LSI because they felt the covers were slightly higher quality and they preferred the paper stock.

Hi everyone, and thanks for the invite. I've been making eBooks for about 18 months now, which makes me feel like a veteran :-) I've typeset books for Createspace and Lulu too. Although I've worked on a lot of books, I'm still learning and being surprised. With the rate of release of eBook devices and firmware, the 'rules' change so often that I expect to be surprised for a long time to come.