Amazon. The biggest, most powerful, far-reaching, influential seller of books in the world. As an independent author, you are going to need Amazon like a fish needs water, so pull up a chair, grab a beverage, and get ready for the most immersive, information-heavy chapter of this book.
There is a lot to cover, but don't worry if you can't take it all on board at once, most of it can be used for reference. You don't need to know all of this now, but you will at certain points in your publishing journey. I have found it's better to know before you begin what you are going to be face, rather than after. I recommend bookmarking this chapter so you can come back to it as and when you need. Ready? Here we go.
Createspace
Your print publishing journey on Amazon begins with Createspace. You will need to create an account with them, and then with your completed manuscript in hand you will navigate through their dashboard filling in the details of your book as you go along until they have all the information and material they need to prepare your book for printing. Here is a screen grab of what the dashboard looks like.
اوووه! هذه الصورة لا تتبع إرشادات المحتوى الخاصة بنا. لمتابعة النشر، يرجى إزالتها أو تحميل صورة أخرى.
So, how does this magic happen you ask? Is there anything one should know before one starts to click on things right, left, and center. The answer is YES.
There is one major caveat you are going to want to be aware of and this regards the decision you make regarding your book's ISBN. An ISBN is the long 13-digit number you see on the back of a book above the bar code. It's a registration number of your book's title and format, (meaning you must have a separate ISBN for each format, e-book*, paperback, and hard cover.)
*except for books on kdp, which is part of Amazon, they use a different registration system (ASIN) for Kindle books which means if you don't intend to publish your e-book on other platforms like ibooks, Google Play, etc, then you won't need an ISBN for your e-book.
Below is the information about ISBNs from Createspace and what will happen if you choose to use their free ISBN for print books. In short, if you take their free ISBN, you CANNOT publish your printed book anywhere else, ever. You are stuck with ONLY publishing your printed book on Amazon. Does this matter, one asks? Yes, for three reasons: how much saturation one wishes to have in the book market outside of Amazon's reach (certain countries don't use Amazon, or their post is unreliable, but they have book sellers who can stock your book); to retain the possibility to publish one's book in hard cover format (which is not possible with Createspace but is with Ingram Spark), and to be able to list your book in the international catalogues that book sellers use around the world. You can avoid taking the free ISBN by purchasing your own. The options for doing so are listed a little further down under the image 'What's an ISBN?'.
Also, before we continue, it is worth mentioning that Createspace has two channels for distribution: Standard Distribution which is Amazon.com and Amazon Europe, and Extended Distribution which is for having your book listed in book sellers' catalogues and made available in libraries (of which the library option is only available to those who choose the free ISBN). From everything I have read, the Extended Distribution via Createspace is actually fairly useless since most book sellers won't choose a book sold via Createspace aka Amazon, they will always order books listed via Ingram Spark's listing where the profit is higher. If you have chosen the free ISBN however, then you might as well take Extended Distribution, but if you have chosen to buy your own ISBN, do not take Extended Distribution because this will supersede your book being listed correctly and will show up in catalogues as available via Amazon, and it is very, very difficult to fix this once it has been selected.
