As I said in my earlier post, I tried to get some standard publisher to take on my sister-in-law’s book, but nobody was interested. I let the matter lie until just recently when I became aware that self-publishing had matured greatly since the time I had tried to get a standard publisher interested. This where I became aware of CreateSpace.
Since Amazon.com is the best outlet, for sheer worldwide coverage, and CreateSpace is the house self-publisher, I decided to give them a shot.
But first, I decided to make a trial.
I have an autobiography, which isn’t finished (because I am not done, either). But the section devoted to my life up to the end of the 6th grade is pretty much done, I decided to use CreateSpace to publish it — just so I could see what kind of work they do. Here’s a link to the first part of my autobiography:
http://www.createspace.com/4317285
After uploading the book, I ordered a “proof” copy and found it to be a quality paperback! That was great, but would CreateSpace trade honestly with me? I put this to an experiment.
The experiment involved ordering several copies of the book through both Amazon and CreateSpace itself, and seeing what happened. I had my brother and sister assist with this, and the results were: CreateSpace reported on all sales. So my one suspicion, that they would perhaps under-report sales, cheating me out of royalties, seemed to be allayed.
So we got a publisher! This means that the books will be appearing before the end of the year.
I thought it would be instructive to post an image of my CreateSpace dashboard with the report of sales:
s
I can identify these as:
- First five orders are a bulk order of five that I put in myself through Amazon.
- Next one is an order I put in through JnJStore, which appears to be an Amazon surrogate, since it is attributed to Amazon, and its price was 10 cents less than the Amazon discounted price. This seems to be a sly way to give the buyer alternative price points — and note that my royalty is the same in this case.
- Next one, the 26th, is the order my sister put in
- The last one is the order my brother put in. Note that it is “eStore”, meaning direct through CreateSpace’s own market. And note further that the royalty is one whole dollar more than through Amazon directly.
This confirms nicely (to me, anyway) that CreateSpace quickly attributes orders to authors, and attributes them correctly. I’m satisfied.
Cyberherbalist's Blog 
Be wary of JnJstore on Amazon. I have contacted Amazon’s legal department about them. There are scam sellers on Amazon who sell pirated materials, nonexistent items, and frankly I wonder if some of them aren’t simply using websites as a way to launder money. They often have a US address, but when you did a little deeper you discover they are actually based outside the US.
JnJstore is not part of Amazon. They are a third party seller. They have nothing to do with Amazon or CreateSpace. You will find “stores” like them offering your books even if they don’t actually have copies to sell. You have to keep an eye on the listings for your books to catch them.
You may be correct about them. But I ordered, paid for, and ultimately received a copy of my test book from them. Weird.
I’m a writer looking to get published, and originally I had chosen Lulu, but several people advised me against it. I’m wondering how Createspace handles copyrights? Is it up to the author to obtain the legal copyright or does Createspace do that?
I want my work protected before I throw it out to the internet.
Check out this question in the CreateSpace forum: Registering Copyright
The short answer is, you get your own copyright. This isn’t hard – the US Copyright Office lets you do it online. It is not free, however, but it isn’t hugely expensive, either. By the way, if you don’t apply for copyright before you publish then you can’t use the online copyright application, and it costs more money to register copyright. So do it before you publish. Go to their website: http://www.copyright.gov/
You do not need to pay for a copyright. “Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.” (Source: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#mywork). No matter which POD publisher you use your work will be copyrighted. There are no additional steps. Look at the copyright page of any book to understand what text you should set with the copyright symbol and date. You do not need a Library of Congress Control Number. If you are worried about your work being stolen you need to seek legal advice. But buying a copyright is unnecessary.