![]() |
Yes, I had to tinker and make a beta cover. |
The book is ready to fly and in my excitement to finally publish, I had to hit the brakes. None of this round of beta readers uses an e-reader, so I had to look into my print options.
I don’t own a laser printer and quickly found that printing a 692 page behemoth on an inkjet to be a really bad idea. So,
I checked Staples’ print center and they wanted $30-something per copy. (Initially they said $70 — and my heart stopped — then they rechecked their math.) My local book megastore, Powell’s City of Books, larger than life and even cooler than you might think, has a print on demand machine that can crank it out for $15 per pop. Pass. I turned to Lulu.com, saw the price would be $10.74, but checked CreateSpace.com just to make sure and saw it was lighter by a buck-sixty.
Hurrah!
But then, as I dived deep into CreateSpace, reading the fine print, formatting and uploading the work, setting up a cover, I hit bottom with a thud. CreateSpace is thoroughly setup to print for publication and NOT for a couple prints kept private. Presumably (based on a forum post) it’s possible, but first you have to go through a review process that can take 24-48 hours.
Sigh...
So, back to Lulu. Thankfully, I only wasted a couple hours on CreateSpace. No biggie.
*Grumble, grumble.*
After an hour with Lulu I got it done and printed, finally... However, shipping prices are abysmal for the couple copies and the wait will be annoying (3-5 days just to print).
Follow-up: I get home tonight, check my e-mail and see the review process from CreateSpace is done. So I click over to see what the price would have been if I had waited for them. Minimal right? No big deal, right?
Wrong. I could have saved $4/book! AND gotten the book faster. Color me bummed, disappointed and wishing CreateSpace had put the info upfront.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for reading, now tell me what you think.