Friday Food for Thought #14

Createspace, KDP, and the On Demand Revolution

Week 2, Month 10, Episode #14

Well, I've been talking about this issue indirectly a number of times already, but I'm going to come out here and directly discuss some things that you may, or may not have already figured out from what I'v'e posted earlier.

I am a huge fan of the 'Indy' game development, independent artists, and decentralized manufacturing.  In short, I am a huge fan of anything that allows more people express themselves and get a slice of the pie, be it my Gaming dollar through Steam distribution, or your dollars through independent publishing.  What I'm going to talk about here is why I think that not only are these organizations and systems great, but why they're the wave of the future.

In the case of electronic distribution through Steam and eBooks consider, there is effectively NO manufacturing cost, NO manufacturing time, and NO wastage.  A large number of the hit Steam games and Amazon kindle books will never appear on a store shelf, either because they're digital or because they're not being distributed by a large company.

The old distributors of Publishing Houses and Gaming Companies utilize a distribution model based around an initial publishing run (or printing in the case of books) that is sent out to distributors and sold there.  In most cases, that initial printing or production run will never sell out, and ultimately will be returned to the producer.

This is why so many newly published authors that go the way of the conventional Publishing House never earn out their advance.  That first printing didn't sell out.  It's a huge risk for publishers as they print out a thousand books and distribute them, hoping to sell them all.  If they don't sell enough to make a profit on the investment of their printing, they lost money, perhaps lots of money.

The same is true with every industry that uses a traditional production scheme.  The thing is, this system is not the only game in town anymore.

After releasing my first two books on Kindle, I've started work on converting them for publication via Createspace, another Amazon company that uses on demand printing to fulfill orders.  Sure, I may never see the books on a bookstore shelf going this route, but then at the rate we're going I'm not sure how many bookstores will be around in the future with only Barnes and Noble remaining a chain bookstore in the marketplace.

Createspace has publishing options that cost money, but it also has options that cost nothing (Guess which I'm using).  On Demand Publishing has a number of other benefits, in that there is zero waste... much like for Kindle stories the book doesn't exist except as a digital file until someone pushes the buy order.

In the case of a Kindle book, you download a copy.  In the case of a Createspace work, it prints a copy.

Amazon is the number one distributor of books right now, so if going through Createspace gets me distrubted through them without having to wait for publishers to review, allows me to create a cover of my own design, and gives me the freedom to do nearly everything a publishing house would do myself... Why not?

Especially when it doesn't cost me a penny, and I can sit back and write another book.  I'm planning on releasing a book once a month, good luck getting a publishing company to keep up with that right now.

So... what's next on my plate?

Well, the paperback version of A Fox's Tale: The Warden's Daughter, VALKYRIE: Candidates, and THE GREATEST GAME: Hunters will be ready by November 8th (possibly much earlier then that considering my current schedule).  I will be releasing my first Alternate History, THE GREATEST GAME: Hunters on October 8th (hopefully), and the second book of A Fox's Tale will be ready on November 8th.  The second book of the VALKYRIE series is due for release on December 8th.  The second book of THE GREATEST GAME will be released on January 8th of next year.

So I'm really busy, which is partly why I didn't have a blog post last week.