A number of authors have been delighted and/or perplexed to find a new designation next to their books’ titles in their KDP dashboards, and that’s the option to create a print version of their ebooks. With some authors taking to publishing forums to find out more, the consensus seems to be that Amazon may be shifting its print arm to this model rather than CreateSpace.
CreateSpace once operated as a separate, stand-alone company. Once it was bought by Amazon, not much changed other than a nearly seamless transition over to KDP. Authors who create their print editions through CreateSpace can literally click a button and attempt to convert their books to a workable ebook. Other than a few tweaks like stripping any HTML out of your book’s description, the process isn’t all that time consuming.
While CreateSpace offers a perfectly acceptable operation for authors who can’t invest in high-dollar formatting and layout, the lack of syncing between dashboards is annoying. There has already been speculation that porting the process over to the new KDP Print will mean one dashboard for authors to check sales, returns, international purchases, and more.
For now, the only news about the still-in-beta program is that the files must be submitted in PDF, which is a break from CreateSpace accepting Word docs and PDF. Basically, too many authors can attest to the fact that creating a PDF just by saving a Word doc in that format will strip away a lot of the hard-earned features and leave authors with a less than satisfactory product. That would still leave authors paying a formatter to create a solid PDF file before submitting.
Until more authors are brought in to test KDP Print’s process and more information is shared with the publishing industry, the full scope of the program–as well as its merits and flaws–won’t be known.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.
