Mood:
not sure
Lulu or CreateSpace? I am seriously thinking about publishing the second in my Whisperings series, The Demon Hunters, using CreateSpace. I used Publish By Lulu expanded distribution for Along Came a Demon because it says your book will appear on “Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, Amazon.uk, Amazon.ca (Canada) and many more online retailers,” but that didn’t happen.
I found it on Amazon.ca, but only by searching for my name (searching for the book title or ISBN does not find it.) It is unavailable, and no price is listed. Hardly going to encourage anyone to buy it, is it. It is listed on Amazon.uk, but at a price no Brit is likely to pay. It is also listed on Amazon Japan. And of course it is listed on Amazon.com, but at the ridiculously high price Lulu ends up with when it doubles the distribution costs and adds your royalty, as meager as that may be. It does not appear on Barnes and Noble, or any other online book seller.
I’ve already published using CreateSpace. Granted, CS books only appear on Amazon.com, but at half the price Lulu would put them up there for, and if you purchase from the CreateSpace store, the shipping is a lot cheaper than Lulu charges, as is Amazon’s shipping fees. Your book, including the Look Inside feature, gets onto Amazon.com a lot faster than when published through Lulu.
Let’s face it, I don’t think I’m going to make sales in the UK and Canada, because the UK price is stupidly high and, as I mentioned, Canada’s listing is pathetic. Lulu has not lived up to their part of the deal and got my book on Barnes and Noble and “other online bookstores.” So my sales will come from Amazon.com, and I can get my latest book on there faster using CreateSpace than Lulu, and at a lower cost to me and customers.
If anyone advises me to become an independent publisher and manage sales myself, well I’m not ready to go that route yet. Right now I market my books as selling on Amazon and Lulu. I can just as well market them as selling on Amazon and CreateSpace.
And whatever I do, I can still sell my books as Kindle. In fact I’ve had requests to do so. So look out for Along Came a Demon and the Demon Hunters, coming to Kindle in the near future.
