print on demand amazon custom · how do i create a book? on createspace, there are two elements to...
TRANSCRIPT
Print On Demand
Amazon Custom
Table of Contents What is CreateSpace? 3
What’s the 365 project? 4
What else can I make with CreateSpace? 6
Working with Createspace 7 How do I create a book? 7 I don’t live in the US. Can I use CreateSpace? 9 What kind of books can I create? How do they look and feel? 9 How many pages does my book need? Can they be blank? 10 Uploading the Book 10 ISBN Options 11
Creating the Interior 12 Setting up the interior in Canva: 13 Margins and Bleed 15
Creating the Cover 16 Setting up your cover: 17 Setting up the Size for your cover image - This bit is a little tricky! 19
Final touches! 21
Where will my CreateSpace books be available? 23 Troubleshooting: Why are there other sellers on my book listing? 24 Oh no! I got an error about the title. It has to be on the book? 24 Can I add more photographs, keywords or other details to my listing? 24 How do I market my CreateSpace book? 25 Build a Social Media following 25 Amazon Giveaway 25 Contests 25 Press Releases 26
Resources for self-publishing 27 Courses 27 Tools 28 Public Domain Artwork 28
Further 365 Project ideas: 29
365 Project with Katharyne - https://365.katharyne.com 1
Curate and Tangent
Curate is the premier class for digital inventory. Learn to create books, educational materials, t-shirts and much more. The core course features over 15 hours of video including walkthroughs of Merch, CreateSpace, GumRoad. There are templates for your books and all kinds of resources. Plus we keep adding interviews, bonus classes and more! And don’t forget... membership of the class gives you access to our busy Facebook group. Join over 500 supportive members and students to share your successes, ideas and friendship as you create and sell your products. They’re waiting for you :) Join here: https://curate.blueskysuite.com
Tangent is the only system of its kind. Give Tangent a word or image and it will give you dozens of great keywords. Generate color palettes, explore over 15,000 niches, source public domain artwork and content. This powerful software also includes a Chrome Extension so you have the power of Tangent anywhere online! Watch the free Tangent class here: https://tangent.rocks/product-ideas
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What is CreateSpace? Amazon CreateSpace is a platform offered by Amazon allowing you to publish your own books, CDs and DVDs. For this course, we’ll be concentrating on books. Books created using CreateSpace can be made available on Amazon.com, Amazon Europe and using the Extended Distribution option, they can also be distributed to bookstores, libraries and educational institutions. CreateSpace is a print on demand platform. You do not pay fees to sell on CreateSpace and you do not have to handle any physical product. Instead, you upload your digital content files and create a listing for your book. When a customer looks at your book on the CreateSpace store or on Amazon.com and decides to buy it, CreateSpace prints the book and ships it out to them. CreateSpace books are high quality and look fantastic! And you don’t need to be an author to create them. Students in our Coloring Book and Curate courses have published all kinds of books, some with amazing success. Sasha O’Hara’s ‘Calm The F* Down’ coloring book became the #1 Adult Coloring book on Amazon and reached the top ten of all books, becoming a bestseller! Jordan Colton’s ‘Horrible’ coloring books were picked up by a large subscription box company, distributing over 1000 units and were also chosen by the MST3K TV show to be a feature of their reunion event! During the current back to school season, several sellers have reported dozens to hundreds of sales of their composition and graph books. CreateSpace books are professional and beautiful and best of all, they allow individuals like us to compete with giant publishers… and win!
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What’s the 365 project? 365 Projects have become increasingly popular, especially at the end of the year. They are simply a way of accomplishing a big task by doing one smaller task each day for a year. These can be artistic, flippant, fun, serious and even life-changing. 365 projects could focus on health, such as exercising a certain amount each day or eating five pieces of fruit a day. They can be family or relationship focused, like reading a different bedtime story to your kids each night or taking your spouse on a daily ‘mini-date.’ They can be learning focused like learning a musical instrument or language. Or they can be artistic projects. This guy created a skull a day for a year and it became his brand and business. http://skulladay.blogspot.com/ But how does this translate to your career as a book publisher? Well, the simplest ‘365 Project book’ is a diary or planner, with blank spaces ready to be written in. But that’s a little boring because there are so many yearly planners already available and it would be difficult to stand out. More interestingly, one of the most popular ‘365’ books right now is ‘365 things to do with Lego bricks.’ This would be a perfect holiday gift for a Lego fan. Now, while we may not own any rights to Lego, we can take inspiration from this and see that creating a 365 project is the perfect way of packaging a niche as a desirable Christmas project. What I also like is that you as an author/publisher do a little work (suggesting a Lego build) and the reader performs the majority of the work (actually building it). What if you created a 365 book about robots, owls, bacon, unicorns…. Robots? That sounds difficult. But it really isn’t. What if your book simply prompts the reader to design a robot each day. So Day 1, the prompt is ‘A Robot Greeter’ Day 2 is ‘Washing the Dishes’, Day 3 is ‘Robot Army’ and so on. And then a blank space for the reader to design their creation. All you have to come up with is a short 2-5 word prompt for each day. If you’re stuck for robot prompts, use Tangent Words.
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Birthday Robot, Robot Overlord, Robot in Space, Robot Mouse, Robot Fish This is really a quick process. You could also source simple images to create a 365 coloring book (maybe include two or three tiny images on a page rather than 365 separate pages!) Remember - the concept is that you, the book creator does a little work and your reader does the majority. Of course, if you really want to do the work, you could set yourself a challenge to write 365 poems, songs or stories and publish the results in a book at the end of the year! But creating simple prompts is easier to scale and sell! Here are a few more ideas: ‘365 Owls to Color’ ‘365 Jokes about Unicorns’ ‘365 Bacon Challenges’ You could of course also do a 52 project with weekly tasks or even a 12 project with monthly tasks.
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What else can I make with CreateSpace? When most people think about self-publishing, they think the difficult part will be ‘writing a book.’ Of course, CreateSpace is wonderful for memoirs, novels, how-to guides, screenplays and whatever else you can think of to write. But it’s also very possible to make money with CreateSpace making blank, low-content or curated books. Here are some more ideas:
● Journals, diaries and planners ● Puzzle books - There are many puzzle generators out there including Discovery
Education http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/ ● Game books - Madlibs, Would you rather?, Kiss/marry/kill etc. ● ‘Gag’ Books with mostly blank pages, like ‘100 Things Men Know about Women’ or
‘Smart Things Politicians Say’ ● Curated books of public domain information like recipes, quotations, art or coffee table
books of photographs ● Curated Federal government information (usually in the public domain) for example
NASA or military manuals, lists of statistics or collections of charts ● Lined paper, graph paper or paper for specific purposes like honeycomb grids,
mindmaps and handwriting paper. Isometric (3D printing) paper has been a big seller for us.
● Events planners - Wedding, pregnancy, moving house ● Templates for sewing, quilting, knitting etc. ● Themed and curated recipe or cookbooks ● Organizers for passwords, recipes, shopping lists etc.
Don’t be afraid to try books for different niches. If you create a book with a template for logging journeys, mileage etc. perhaps you could ‘reskin’ it with a new cover and introduction for different audiences - roadtrips, kids, truck drivers, school bus drivers…
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Working with Createspace
How do I create a book? On CreateSpace, there are two elements to a book. The cover and interior. You can use CreateSpace’s own cover creator to build your cover, but I prefer to design mine using the tool, Canva. Interior files are usually uploaded as pdf documents, but you can also upload .doc or .rtf files and CreateSpace will convert them to pdf for you. You can create these documents using any word processor like Word or Google Doc. Optionally, I also use Adobe InDesign for document design (great for lined paper, for example) and Adobe Acrobat to do tasks like joining multiple pdf documents together. It’s a straightforward process and you do not need to be a designer to create a book. Lean more about CreateSpace’s interiors here: https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/InteriorPDF.jsp
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How do I calculate my royalties and how do I get paid? You are paid a royalty depending on the price and composition of your book. Larger, full color books are more expensive to print than smaller, black and white books. CreateSpace Royalty Calculator is here: https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/#content6
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I don’t live in the US. Can I use CreateSpace? CreateSpace is available to international sellers but you will need a US TIN number. You can apply for one here: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/taxpayer-identification-numbers-tin Here is more information from CreateSpace on what you need to set up your account overseas. https://www.createspace.com/Help/Index.jsp
What kind of books can I create? How do they look and feel? CreateSpace offers a selection of book sizes including most industry standards. The books created are perfect-bound paperbacks and look extremely professional with excellent paper quality. If you are looking to create hardbacks or spiral bound books, you will need to find a different publishing service. Lulu.com is one popular option. With CreateSpace you have the option of color or black and white. Color is significantly more expensive to print, so can be more difficult to sell unless you have a special project in mind. You also have the choice of glossy or matte covers. The glossy covers are more standard. The matte covers feel more artistic and unusual and have a slightly rubbery texture but they do pick up fingerprints. Find out more about CreateSpace’s sizes here: https://www.createspace.com/Special/Pop/book_trimsizes-pagecount.html
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How many pages does my book need? Can they be blank? The minimum page count is 24. There cannot be more than two consecutive blank pages in your book (or more than ten consecutive blank pages at the end). However, you can create lined paper or add a simple motif or watermark to your pages so they are not checked as blank.
Uploading the Book With a little practice, you can set up a book in minutes on CreateSpace. First, you need a title. Bear in mind that CreateSpace like to see this title on the front cover or spine of the book so spamming this with keywords may not be a good idea. You’re going to be making a paperback today. Select Guided Process your first time around.
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ISBN Options An ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is a 10 or 13 digit identifier number required to publish a book. CreateSpace make this super easy for you by providing free ISBNs, so we’ll take them up on their offer and select ‘Free CreateSpace-Assigned ISBN.’ This allows you to sell your book through all of CreateSpace’s channels including bookstores using the Expanded Distribution channels. More information on ISBNs here: https://www.createspace.com/Help/Index.jsp?orgId=00D300000001Sh9&id=50170000000I1ec
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Creating the Interior The first thing to do with your book is to choose a size. CreateSpace provides a variety of options including industry standards and more unusual sizes. They also offer a printable comparison chart here to compare all sizes to letter size: https://s3.amazonaws.com/csp-mw-static/Trim-Size%20Comparison.pdf You can create your Interior using almost any word processor - Google Docs, Microsoft Word and Pages are all good options and CreateSpace provide templates. Alternatively, if you are making a blank book you can use Canva. Bear in mind that color interiors put the price up significantly so only consider these if it is very important to your project.
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Setting up the interior in Canva: Let’s make an 8.5 x 11 Book. This will be letter size and is a great size for coloring books and activity books. Select Create a Design and then Custom Dimensions. I add .125” to the width and .25” to the height to make it 8.625” x 11.25” This allows additional space for the trim.
Now you can use your creativity to drag elements onto the page or upload your own images. Make sure you use ‘Free’ Elements. At the time of publishing, these automatically include Canva’s extended licensing so can be used commercially. If you use paid elements, you will have to pay for extended licensing for each one which can quickly get expensive. When you upload your own images, make sure you either own the rights to those images or they are in the public domain. You can take our Curate course if you would like to understand more about where and how to source public domain images. Canva allows you to download your design as an image or PDF. For this project, we will download as a PDF.
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You can add up to 30 pages per PDF. If your book is 120 pages long, you would create four separate PDFs in Canva and then merge them together using a tool called Small PDF https://smallpdf.com/merge-pdf I also use Adobe Acrobat for PDF manipulation tasks but Small PDF is free .
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Margins and Bleed When designing your book, be aware that CreateSpace’s printers may trim the edges of the book so keep important information away from the edges of your pages. If your book has picture designs like the castle image above, or it includes lined paper, you will want to allow ‘bleed’ which takes the design to the edges of the paper. If you would prefer a margin around the edges of your pages, you will select ‘No Bleed’
https://www.createspace.com/Special/Enterprise/Publisher/submission_guidelines.jsp
When you upload your file, CreateSpace will review it and alert you of any technical problems. This process can take several hours and sometimes a day or so. You will later have the opportunity to order a proof copy or to digitally proof your book. For your first book, I recommend ordering a physical copy to make sure you are happy with the book. If you make later books with a similar trim and style, you can digitally proof them. Don’t be too worried about this process. If CreateSpace find problems, they can easily be corrected. It will not harm your account! More about CreateSpace’s requirements here: https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/InteriorPDF.jsp
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Creating the Cover You have several options with your cover. I created this book cover in Canva by creating a custom design. The ghosts and castle are free elements. A great way to make your text look professional is to use one of Canva’s pre-selected font pairings to create a complimentary title and subtitle.
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Setting up your cover: Let’s work in CreateSpace and Canva to create a professional cover. First step is to decide a finish. This part is easy! Generally, I will use a glossy cover. Matte covers look very cool and have a rubbery texture but they pick up fingerprints which can cause customer complaints in my experience. I would still use the matte cover for certain arty books.
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Now to upload the cover… I find the easiest option is ‘Build Your Cover Online’ which takes you to CreateSpace’s Cover Creator. You can select one of their pre-made covers but I don’t recommend it as they feel very generic. I usually opt for ‘The Spruce’ template which allows me to upload a picture for the front cover, without having to make any changes. Then I add the title to the spine and create a plain back cover. If you would like to add a custom back cover, use ‘The Palm’ template.
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Setting up the Size for your cover image - This bit is a little tricky! Once you’ve selected the template, CreateSpace will tell you the size of image it needs for the cover. For a 8.5 x 11 book, CreateSpace requires an 8.75 x 11.5 image. They also specify the resolution of the image must be 300dpi (dots per inches, a measure of the quality of the image).
Don’t worry, we’re going to walk through this!
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To make sure your cover image is the correct size, open up Canva. Select Create A Design and select ‘custom dimensions’. Now we do math: Take the dimensions suggested by CreateSpace. For the current book size, those dimensions are 8.75 x 11.5. Now multiply each of those numbers by 300. This gives us: 2625 x 3450 Ok, you survived the math! In Canva, switch the units from inches (in) to pixels (px) and enter these dimensions.
Now hit Design and go to work on your cover! Allow a little space around the edges. When you are done, download it as a JPG. You should now be able to upload your JPG to CreateSpace without any issues. Now work through the rest of the cover editor. For this project, you will probably want to make the back cover text and author photo invisible on the back cover. CreateSpace will automatically add a barcode on the back. Finish up the cover and click through to complete setup. You will now need to wait for an email from CreateSpace to tell you your book is ready for the final touches. It may take several hours, sometimes as much as a day. Hang in there!
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Final touches! You made it. Now you can select distribution options, pricing and description. Generally, I always do the standard and extended distribution. Pricing is up to you. You can experiment with different prices to find a royalty you are happy with. Take a look at competing books to see how they price.
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You will also need to select a BISAC code. This determines how your book is categorized. Pick the category that best fits your book, for example Humor or Art.
Now, create a thoughtful description. It only needs to be a few sentences. Remember that you should include words that customers are likely to search for to find your book - either on Amazon or Google. You also get 5 ‘back end’ keywords that no-one will see but choose them wisely. These are important for helping your book get found. I would probably use ‘robots’, ‘christmas’, ‘diary’, ‘activity’, ‘robotics.’ It isn’t an exact science though - experiment to find what works for you! Finish up this page and your book will be published!
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Where will my CreateSpace books be available? When you publish your CreateSpace book, you have several choices for distribution. Standard Distribution options are: Amazon.com and Amazon Europe including Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.es, Amazon.fr and Amazon.it
- Your book will appear as if it is being sold by Amazon.com (or the relevant European Amazon site)
- Your book will get organic traffic like any other Amazon listing - Customers have all of Amazon’s usual perks including Prime shipping on eligible orders
CreateSpace eStore
- Sell the book directly from your own eStore. This can be integrated into your own store and you will usually receive a higher royalty than selling through Amazon, however you will have to drive your own traffic to the listing and sales will not improve the Amazon rank of your book.
eBook for Kindle
- CreateSpace can automatically make a digital version of your book available for Kindle. You will need a KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) account
Expanded distribution can also be selected (free) and will make your book available to: Bookstores, online retailers, libraries, academic institutions and CreateSpace Direct. The royalties are lower for these options but they make your book more widely available. More information on expanded distribution here: https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/ExpandedDistribution.jsp
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Troubleshooting: Why are there other sellers on my book listing? This is normal when you select expanded distribution. You will see other third party sellers (dropshippers) offering your book at a higher price. They automate this process across a large volume of books and are attempting to make a small profit based on international sales, taxes or shipping expenses. Don’t worry about it as ultimately you get the sale anyway.
Oh no! I got an error about the title. It has to be on the book? Some of our sellers creating composition books were surprised to see a message telling them the title of their book must be on the cover. Sometimes the book will be approved right away and sometimes CreateSpace will insist that the title is displayed. I generally put the title on the spine which solves the problem.
Can I add more photographs, keywords or other details to my listing? Generally, Amazon will automatically create the listing for you and add a ‘See Inside’ option which can take several days or occasionally weeks to appear. Sometimes, it is possible to add more photographs and keywords but you will need an Amazon marketplace account. The trick is to add your book to your merchant-fulfilled or FBA marketplace inventory, as if you were adding a book you had found at a store or sale. Once it is in your inventory as a marketplace listing, you can edit the listing to add pictures or additional keywords. These changes don’t always ‘take’ but it’s worth a try! You may also have luck contacting seller support or the catalogue team to request changes this way.
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How do I market my CreateSpace book? If you pick a great niche and keywords, it’s very possible to get organic sales with Amazon (and lots of them!) However, you want to get your book in front of as many people as possible, so let’s take a look at some more options:
Build a Social Media following Set up a Facebook Page, Twitter account, Instagram and perhaps even a Pinterest account for your book, author page or brand. If your books are across different genres or themes, make an account for each genre (e.g. a Kids’ brand and a separate Romance brand). Find current news stories that relate to your books and share them on your Facebook page or tweet them. Use hashtags where relevant. Ask your friends to share your book with their friends.
Amazon Giveaway https://www.amazon.com/giveaway Use Amazon Giveaways to set up a contest to give away one or more copies of your book. I like to run a ‘Lucky Number’ giveaway and I find two books for around 1000 participants to be a good ratio. While you can use giveaways to build up a Twitter account, you can also use the ‘Lose message’ to advertise your book to each of the people who enter the contest. For my ‘Mansplain Journal’ book, this was the lose message I used to drive curiosity for the book: “Well, actually, it seems you didn't win. So basically, you lost. Nevermind, there's a store called Amazon where you can buy books. Like this one. You probably should buy it. Something to do in between all that crocheting and other girl stuff.”
Contests There are many other ways to run contests to build interest. Gleam and Rafflecopter are two of the most popular.
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Press Releases Select editors from local newspapers or TV stations or from specialist press and send them a copy of your book. Either ship directly from Amazon with a gift message or ship a media package with an introductory letter. You will want to do research on your recipients though as this strategy can quickly get expensive. Pick editors whose interests relate to your book (travel, sport, parenting etc.) Networking Networking takes an extra level of bravery, but finding influencers can be one of the fastest ways to grow your publishing empire! There are paid services to help you do that, like FameBit, BuzzSumo and Tomoson but you can also browse YouTube, Instagram and even Google to find prominent bloggers, YouTubers and podcasters who might enjoy your books. The really big guys will want to be paid to promote you, but influencers with small, engaged audiences can sometimes become your biggest fan club if you ‘click’ well with them and their people! Offer them a copy of your book to giveaway and be willing to help them create interesting content about the topic of your book - an interview, a giveaway, a game, a guest blog. Don’t overlook attending conferences, conventions or events linked to your book too. If you contact the press team at a conference, they may be willing to include you on their blog or give you speaking time.
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Resources for self-publishing
Courses Curate https://curate.blueskysuite.com The premier course for Digital Inventory includes walkthroughs on CreateSpace, Teachers Pay Teachers, GumRoad, Merch and many more platforms. It also includes templates for your CreateSpace books. OnDemand http://ondemand.blueskysuite.com/ Free mini-class teaching the basics of dropshipping from print on demand sites to Amazon. Also includes an introduction to Amazon Custom Platforms Amazon CreateSpace https://www.createspace.com/ Lulu for Self Publishing https://www.lulu.com/ GumRoad - Selling Platform for information, digital and physical products https://gumroad.com/
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Marketing Gleam Contests https://gleam.io/ Rafflecopter for Sweepstakes and Promotions https://www.rafflecopter.com/ Amazon Giveaways https://www.amazon.com/giveaway Tomoson for Influencers https://www.tomoson.com/ FameBit for Influencers https://famebit.com/
Tools Canva https://www.canva.com/ Google Fonts https://fonts.google.com/
Public Domain Artwork Metropolitan Museum http://metmuseum.org/ Flickr Creative Commons https://www.flickr.com/commons Project Gutenberg www.gutenberg.org https://pixabay.com/
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Further 365 Project ideas: Accomplish a task
- Read a book (War and Peace, The Bible) - Read multiple books - Write a novel (a page a day), play or memoir - Make videos - Write a screenplay or create a movie - Learn a language - Master a video game - Reorganize, clean or redesign your house or garden - Complete a project in the office - Learn something new about your city (ghost walks, nature trails, mountain biking…) - Take photographs of a particular subject or theme (people, buildings, trees, stickers,
tattoos…) Create a habit
- Meditate - Diet - Exercise - Pray - Visit somewhere - Take walks - Manage sleep - Log dreams - Volunteer - Take care of an animal - Grow plants
Learn a skill
- Musical instrument - Practise a sport - Bake - Craft - Learn chess or Rubik’s cubing - Draw or paint - Sing - Learn a monologue or poem - Word of the day (get specific! A dinosaur, a medical term, a star!)
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Wealth
- Budget - Sell something - Create products - Offer services
Health, wellness and beauty
- New make-up looks - New hairstyles - Happiness activities - Affirmations, mantras, gratitude, visualizations
Relationships
- Do an activity with the kids, read to them, make bento boxes, exercise with them - Do something nice for your partner - Fun dates - Create a dating profile - Visit elderly people or create gifts for homeless - Write a daily love poem for your spouse
Fun
- Go on adventures - Rainy day activities - Board or roleplay games - Collect something (stamps, postcards, magnets, erasers, shells) - Taste wine, chocolate, cheese, coffee...
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