Support for Indie Authors discussion
Physical Book Publishing
>
Createspace problem after I updated interior
date
newest »
newest »
message 51:
by
Angela
(new)
Aug 26, 2017 11:20AM
Adding my two cents. Don't worry. I published with Createspace and the only problem I had was with the cover. It came out too dark. I contacted them, they fixed it and sent me a corrected copy free of cost. They were prompt and helpful. I intend to publish with them again.
reply
|
flag
Thanks for your two cents Angela. A good deal of my anxiety is being alleviated as I read a new post. I will be getting my cover back in a week. I appreciate hearing your experience.
I have found this topic to be very helpful. I am getting ready to release my book, Once, in paperback next week. I'm hoping everything goes okay. I'm using Amazon, but still....I'm so nervous.
For a total neophyte like myself this thread is really informative, but also daunting! I'm about ready to try to load my 1st book into Amazon/KS for e-book sales and CS and Ingram for POD. On a side note, yes, I'm aware from web research that there are various perspectives on using either CS or IS vs both CS and IS for POD; since I'm in a genre (fantasy) where bookstore print sales are still helpful, I've opted to include IS. Couple of questions to the group: 1) are the guidelines for loading books into any of the platforms above helpful in avoiding the issues discussed above? Doesn't sound like it! 2) a coupon was mentioned for IS to waive costs? Where do u get these? 3) There seem to be various opinions about the value of CS's help desk; how about IS's help line? Thanks!
I have two books, with three versions (paperback, hardback & digital) loaded to IS. I have found their help line to be outstanding, much better than CS. The main problem is the overall width of your cover has to be adjusted. IS uses a different formula for figuring spine width. The international distribution is better than what you get from CS. As for the coupon to waive the fees, enter INDIEFRINGE17 (all in uppercase) in the promo field. This is good until November 30th.
One other point for IS. If you are targeting bookstores, make sure you set your discount to 55%. This will provide the wholesale discount brick & mortar stores require. Also, set the return option to yes. Another requirement by bookstores.
For the coupon code, you could try INDIEFRINGE17 and see if that works :). I've never had an issue with IS books so I haven't used their help center. I wouldn't call the Createspace help center extremely helpful...the good news is that most of the printed books with CS seem to turn out fine.My most recent issue with CS was them randomly changing the title of one of my books *sigh*. It had already been published 6 months prior in KDP and CS with "Prequel" in the main title, but when I updated the interior, whoever reviewed the update had a problem with the original title and changed it! I emailed and called but they would not change it back to how it was originally. That was frustrating! My book does not say "Prequel" on the front cover and spine, and that's what they took issue with. They said that only the subtitle was allowed to have words that were not printed on the front cover. I was ready to pull the title from CS altogether because I needed my title to match on all sales platforms and (after a week of emails and phone calls) they refused to change it back. Finally I settled for having the word "Prequel" in the subtitle, but I'm still frustrated that they gave me so much grief over it after it had been published the other way for 6 months prior.
Some minor issues with CS that were fixed somewhat quickly: they suspended my book from being printed because the ISBN was not on the copyright page (so I added the ISBN and resubmitted). They also required extra verification from me a few times stating I had the right to print my own books.
It's good to be aware of the issues ahead of time imo as it might save some grief further down the road.
I am familiar with CS Create space, but what is IS?
Thanks Anita. I googled it and got nothing.
Thanks for the great advice, everyone! Best luck with your writing! Were the guidelines provided by IS and/or CS helpful for loading your manuscripts and covers into these platforms?
Yes I want to echo Peter's remarks. This has been an education and I value your advice. Having now had several weeks with CS I can say I am pleased with the cover design and the interior design. Next week I get it back, fingers crossed. Delores
Marie Silk wrote: "For the coupon code, you could try INDIEFRINGE17 and see if that works :). I've never had an issue with IS books so I haven't used their help center. I wouldn't call the Createspace help center ext..."Yikes! Good to hear these things so we know way ahead of time.
I did end up having an issue when I updated my CS interior file last month and didn't reload the exact same cover. It wasn't hideous, it just came out quite darker than any copy I had ordered before. In almost seemed a tad on the green side, which is odd as my cover is black and white.
Luckily it was just a proof copy and I easily fixed the issue by reloading the cover again.
I have a question pretty closely related to this thread (Mod, if there's a better thread, just let me know - I didn't see one!). Anyway, does anyone have any CS experience having them convert your cover and text files (PDF) to Amazon's KDP platform for e-books? At the end of the whole process of loading files into CS for hard-copy and adding in your meta-data, CS offers to send these files to KDP and 'convert them automatically' for Kindle eBook publication.
However, I'm worried that somewhere in this process, key formatting for my text will be corrupted. I had a designer do the interior text and it looks great, but trying to load this directly into KDP as an unzipped ePub file has been problematic - much of the formatting simply didn't get reproduced in KDP. Maybe the automatic conversion route will work better via CS? Anyone with any experience would be enormously appreciated! Thanks!
Sigh…self publishing leaves a lot to be desired. I published my children's book Learning to Fly by Mebo through Createspace for the paperback and Ingram for the hardback. All the pages in my book have bleeds since there are illustrations on every page. Createspace kicked out all sorts of error messages due to the bleeds during the proofing process, when in fact there were none. It was quite alarming since this was my first time giving a go at it. The Ingram process went smooth. Unfortunately though when I ordered 50 copies, to my dismay 15 of the books had pages glued together! They did replace the defective books, but I shutter to think of a customer getting such a deformity.
I have had just the opposite results from Createspace. My co-author and I ordered 165 copies of our third book in a series and they arrived with horrible "pink" covers instead of the yellow background on the previous two in the series. All of the proofs we had ordered to this book had the correct cover color and alignment. Createspace looked at my photo of the books side by side and they are shipping us at no cost to us 165 books in time for our launch on 18 Oct. We only have to ship back 16 copies. Their rep told me right off that the printing had been outsourced and our account is marked for no outsourcing of printing in the future. A similar problem happened with the first in the series and we had a similar resolution. I can't say enough good things about their customer service. I have printed seven books with CreateSpace and six with IngramSpark - CS customer service is much easier to work with.
Thanks! Looks like it's almost random whether an author gets good/bad customer service from either IS or CS.I've just loaded my cover and content onto IS - fingers crossed about whether any issues come up. The IS process seems more straight-forward than CS. For CS, my cover designer included my bar code and ISBN (which I ordered for myself from Bowker), but apparently CS insists on putting your bar code on the cover themselves. Has anyone had an issue with this?
Peter wrote: "but apparently CS insists on putting your bar code on the cover themselves. Has anyone had an issue with this?"Given that they are the distributor, I'm guessing this likely a quality control issue. You can have your own bar code, but rather than assume you put the correct one on, they do it on their end to avoid future problems.
I have always used my own bar code. Nine books and they have never insisted on their own bar code. Ask why?
Peter wrote: "Thanks! Looks like it's almost random whether an author gets good/bad customer service from either IS or CS.I've just loaded my cover and content onto IS - fingers crossed about whether any issue..."
Createspace will generate your barcode for you with just the ISBN barcode and no price. If you want the price on the barcode you will have to generate one yourself. There are free barcode generators online. Though upon closer inspection, they ended up generating the barcode and replacing the one I placed on there. Therein lies the odd quirks of Createspace.
Ingram prints your ISBN barcode with the price for you. Ingram's process all around was much easier than Createspace. I had no issues whatsoever when submitting my print files to Ingram, with the exception of some epub validator errors. But that is to be expected when dealing with script.
Thanks. Yes, I have my own ISBNs and barcodes from Bowker. My cover designer placed them and the price on my back cover (lower right corner per industry standard)That is fine for IS; not so fine for CS who apparently tried to over-write my barcode/ISBN. I'll probably have my designer surgically remove my barcode so CS can add my barcode/ISBN back to the cover - seems rather cumbersome. I'll see if CS's customer service can help. As a humble author, this isn't my preferred way to spend time.
Absolutely order a physical copy, even if you need to do it twice. My margins looked good until I held it in my hand. And, I noticed that my cover guy dropped a few words on the back. Has anyone noticed that publishers are not starting new chapters on the right hand side of printed books?
Pauline
Connie wrote: "I have had just the opposite results from Createspace. My co-author and I ordered 165 copies of our third book in a series and they arrived with horrible "pink" covers instead of the yellow backgro..."I had issues with one cover that did not print the color the way I wanted it from CS and while they were very easy to work with I never did figure out exactly what went wrong. Covers are okay but do not "pop" like I'd hoped.
Pauline wrote: "Absolutely order a physical copy, even if you need to do it twice. My margins looked good until I held it in my hand. And, I noticed that my cover guy dropped a few words on the back. Has anyone ..."
I have manually set my print books to have chapters always begin on the right hand page. Not everyone does that and some older books I have begin chapters mid-page, which I thought was bothersome.
