CreateSpace

Because of Lulu's introduction of DRM, I'm looking around for viable alternatives. Amazon's "CreateSpace" seems to be worth consideration. It can't replace everything Lulu did. Here's a quick comparison of their advertised features. I haven't worked with CreateSpace myself and so can't describe personal experience on how well it really lives up to its stated way of doing things; if I do use it in the future I'll update this page with my experiences.

Electronic publication for books

Lulu offers PDF files or "ePUB," with or without DRM. CreateSpace links to "Amazon's Digital Text Platform," which offers Kindle, only - inherently a DRM format. From my point of view, that excludes CreateSpace from consideration for electronic publication, and nearly excludes Lulu (the Lulu pricing on electronic publication pushes it over the line). So as far as electronic publication goes, I'm no further ahead. However, I might still consider CreateSpace for physical publication.

Amazon's Digital Text Platform is only available to US-based authors anyway, so I couldn't use it even if I wanted to.

Electronic publication for other things

Both systems include features for publishing CDs and DVDs. I'm not going to go into those in detail, they're beyond the scope, except to mention that they exist.

DRM

Since I'm only considering print publication anyway, the question of DRM only has limited relevance; but one of my gripes with Lulu was that they promoted DRM, which affects me even when I can choose not to use it on my own work. How does CreateSpace stack up on that point? Well, it's mixed. They promote Kindle, and Kindle is inherently DRM, and that could be the end of it. On the other hand, they don't make a big deal of advertising the DRM even with Kindle - it's almost like they don't want to admit to it. That makes some sense, because (unlike Lulu) CreateSpace is affiliated with the people who sell the readers, and Kindle readers are much bigger business than CreateSpace. DRM is a big negative for the people who buy readers; it's only a positive for (stupid) content providers; so Amazon (and thus CreateSpace) is more likely to be ashamed and less likely to be proud of having DRM, as compared to Lulu.

For people to whom DRM is out of bounds, is it better to deal with the company that does it but is ashamed of it, over the company that does it and advertises it as a good thing? Probably. The company that's ashamed of DRM is more likely to stop doing it in the future if given the chance. But of course, we'd prefer to deal with the company that doesn't do it at all.

The CreateSpace member agreement (section 6.3) says they, or their "affiliate" who stores the files, reserve the right to apply DRM, or not, to video. I'm not sure whether the current practice is to apply it or not. They also disclaim any responsibility for the DRM actually working, and they say they will not apply it to MP3 audio. The best part: they forbid you from applying DRM to MP3 audio either. I imagine that's a reaction to iTunes: Apple gave up DRM, Amazon thinks they must do the same to compete, and the PR of saying "our MP3 store is DRM-free" is worth more to them than their relationship with you. Unfortunate that they apparently think that only extends as far as MP3 music, and (in particular) not to books. It appears we have to fight this battle separately for every medium. Internet people understand that DRM is out of bounds across the board, but that generalization may not be obvious to the general public.

Returns

This is a subtle point, but CreateSpace takes returns and Lulu doesn't. That means that after someone buys a book, they can return it to CreateSpace, and then you have to pay back the royalty on the book. In practice it's more likely they'll just re-sell the returned book and not pay the royalty a second time on the second sale, but that amounts to the same thing. With Lulu, all sales are final. That has the consequence that with Lulu it's reasonable for them to pay royalties faster, because holding payments against potential returns isn't an issue.

CreateSpace will deduct the returns from your future royalties, but will also demand an actual payment if future royalties (in some unspecified time frame) don't cover it. I didn't see a time limit on the length of time during which they'll accept returns; I suspect there is a time limit after which they'll tell the customer "Too bad, you're stuck with it" and I suspect that's related to the 90-day credit-card chargeback time limit; but they apparently make no promise to you, the author.

I don't know what the situation is with "returns" of electronically delivered items. Note that this ties into DRM - with a DRMed product it may be meaningful to "revoke" the returned item and refund the purchase price to the customer, if you assume the DRM actually works. Of course it doesn't actually work, and DRM is completely unacceptable for other reasons too... so "returns" of electronically delivered items may not really be a meaningful concept. The CreateSpace member agreement seems not to exclude the possibility that they'd attempt to charge you for "returns" of electronically delivered items. I don't think that would be a reasonable thing to do (charging for physical returns may be reasonable, especially if it's compensated by better prices elsewhere in the deal); but electronic returns are hypothetical and not particularly interesting, given that I wouldn't be using CreateSpace for electronic delivery anyway.

Pricing

Please note that all prices here are in US dollars.

CreateSpace's pricing is generally similar to Lulu's. I'll summarize the notable points of each, and then give a few examples.

With Lulu, you set the retail price. For books sold through Lulu, they subtract a base cost, and a per-page charge, and then subtract 20% of what's left, and you get what remains. For books sold through "distribution" (which means Amazon, for all practical purposes), they subtract half the retail price before doing the above computation, but then use different, usually more favourable, base and per-page numbers. (The exact details of how the computation is defined are stated in different terms from that, but that's the practical effect.) You can set different retail prices for Lulu sales through Amazon and Lulu sales through Lulu, but only in the direction of setting the Lulu-through-Lulu price greater than the Lulu-through-Amazon price. Practical result: sell through Amazon and you get screwed. The 50% discount is coming entirely out of your royalty.

In all cases, Amazon reserves the right to offer buyers a discount, which they pay for out of their share. You're not allowed to offer a discount from the retail price when you sell the book through Lulu, nor (when they're available through "distribution") if you acquire copies through whatever means and re-sell them yourself. The idea is that Amazon wants to be able to beat anybody else's retail price.

Note that the above applies to sales of Lulu books through Amazon by "GlobalReach distribution," to access which you must also pay an up-front fee of $75 and jump through some other hoops. The most significant of those in practice have to do with the formatting of the book. I think that under GlobalReach the books may be subject to customer returns, but if so, that apparently happens behind the scenes and is covered by the larger margin (out of Amazon's share) rather than being explicitly passed on to you. There is also something else called "MarketReach" where the sales are really sales through Lulu, via Lulu's storefront on Amazon's Web site. Those sales are paid just the same as any other Lulu sales, but the listings are not real Amazon listings (they don't appear as first-class entries in Amazon search results) and I don't think they signify. Even though I never paid the $25, my book appears to be available on Amazon through something like this; I think I was part of a pilot program, or possibly the free "ExtendedReach" service. As far as I can tell, I've never sold a copy through this channel. I don't think it's reasonable to expect MarketReach or ExtendedReach to provide any revenue.

With CreateSpace, you set the retail price. For books sold through your storefront on CreateSpace, they subtract 20% first, then subtract a base cost and a per-page charge (though unlike with Lulu, the per-page is zero for some book sizes). You get what's left. Selling books from CreateSpace on Amazon is much easier to set up than with Lulu - understandable, since Amazon and CreateSpace are really just two tentacles of the same slimy monster. For books sold through Amazon, they subtract 40% first, then the base cost and per-page charge. Subtracting the percentage first is, of course, equivalent to doing it later (as Lulu does) with correspondingly larger values for the base cost and per-page charge. As an added wrinkle, with CreateSpace you can also opt for the "Pro Plan," under which you pay a one-time fee up front, plus a yearly "maintenance" fee, but then your book is subject to more favourable base cost and per-page fees. The percentage take at the start remains the same.

I ran the numbers for several typical cases (including my own book) and the overall result seems to be that CreateSpace pays authors more at the same retail prices in most cases. The "Pro Plan" becomes profitable if you can sell a few tens of books. Note that "a few tens of books" is basically the median sales level for self-published works, a fact Amazon no doubt took into account when designing their pricing structure. So: if you are sure your book will sell better than the average self-published book, then it pays to get the "Pro Plan." A very likely scenario is that you think your book will sell better than the median, but you're wrong, and so you end up buying the plan and Amazon makes that much more money from you.

You can see my calculations as an editable Gnumeric spreadsheet (requires the appropriate application) or a PDF file of the results. On typical "book" books, CreateSpace seems to pay better, though it's in the same ballpark as Lulu. The "Vampire novel" example is interesting - there, Lulu wins, and I think the reason is that although the per-page charge is the same for both systems, Lulu applies its 20% after subtracting printing costs but CreateSpace applies it before. The large number of pages means the printing costs are unusually high for that book, and so the effective 20% difference in the per-page cost ends up dominating. I don't think that book is typical. The colour-printing ones are interesting, too. CreateSpace charges a flat rate for books under a certain page count (110 for black and white, 42 for colour), and that flat rate is pretty expensive. However, its lower per-page for colour will eventually eat Lulu's lunch, especially in the "Pro Plan" case. I included examples of a few-pages and more-pages colour book to illustrate the difference.

Physical book quality

The claimed quality standards are roughly the same between the two systems. Both offer full-colour coated covers as the only cover option. CreateSpace offers a choice of white or cream text paper in black-and-white; Lulu offers only cream. Both offer the option of colour printing for the interior, which if selected implies plain white paper, full colour available on all pages, and a much higher per-page charge. Both offer "perfect binding" (the typical binding of commercial paperbacks), in paper covers, as the basic standard binding. Lulu also offers "saddle stitch" (which means staples along the spine, typical of comic books), plastic coil, or a couple of hardback options. I suspect CreateSpace is actually doing saddle stitch for low-page-count books too. The Lulu prices vary depending on the type of binding.

I'm told that most POD printing in North America is done by one company anyway, so it's quite likely that Lulu's and CreateSpace's books actually pass through the same production lines. At the very least it seems reasonable to assume they're using very similar equipment and standards and the quality of the books should be comparable.

Lulu doesn't support industry colour standards. They tell you to convert everything to RGB with the colour space unspecified and hope for the best, and if it doesn't come out in the right colours, too bad. I did that with the cover for Chessudoku and the colours came out the way I wanted them to. But I've certainly heard professional graphic-design people say they would not consider using Lulu because Lulu's approach to colour management really can't be called professional at all. I'd certainly think twice about it if I were doing a photo book or something of the kind, in which the colours were really important. CreateSpace claims to support industry standard profiles and the CMYK colour model. I don't know how well it really works. I wouldn't actually put my hopes too high on that point, because I suspect they don't really have graphics people with the proper skills on staff, and they're just loading the profiles into the machines and hoping, much as Lulu seems to do - but at least it may mean there's one more variable you can adjust yourself.

ISBNs

Lulu doesn't provide an ISBN for free, though they will sell you one. CreateSpace claims to provide an ISBN for free. I've heard rumours that CreateSpace's ISBNs are in some sense not "real" - that they just have a large pool of them, assign a number temporarily to you without reporting the assignment upstream (so it doesn't go into the big books-in-print databases that allow the international distribution infrastructure to work and are the main point of having an ISBN) and if your edition goes out of print, they'll reassign the same ISBN to someone else. That is a big no-no; real ISBNs are supposed to be permanently assigned with a fresh one per edition. Since there's nontrivial fixed cost associated with assigning a real ISBN, it would make sense that if CreateSpace claims to provide them for free, there may be a catch. Tread carefully.

Self-publishers located in Canada may be able to get ISBNs for free from the agency that controls Canadian assignments. The process is somewhat complicated. I haven't investigated carefully, but it appears that both Lulu and CreateSpace will allow you to use an ISBN that you get from somewhere else, but there may be penalties associated with doing so in terms of more bureaucracy or ineligibility for some distribution packages.