I never published a book before so I have no idea what big publishing companies or other self-publishing companies are like. So I'm comparing my Createspace experience with customer service experiences in other milieus. The closest comparison I can make is with CD Baby. I've released three music CDs on CD Baby and I have found their customer service to be consistently awesome, so I was hoping to have a similar experience with Createspace. However, Createspace's customer service, in my experience, has not been as consistent.

PROs: It's affordable and it seems an easy way to get your book on Amazon.

CONs: The company seems heavily bureaucratic and disorganized. It reminded me of dealing with Comcast or the phone company. One person tells me one thing one day, then another day I talk to someone in a different department and they tell me something different, then I call back another day and get yet a different story; meanwhile, I've wasted two weeks because I got wrong information the first two times I called. As with large bureaucracies, I've found the solution is just to keep calling back until I get hold of someone who actually knows what they're talking about and can solve my problem. So this is the approach I took, and in so doing, have been able to painfully muddle through the self-publishing process. It has been about a month, from me submitting my first draft to them sending my author copy.

I think they're onto a great thing with the self-publishing idea and especially with printing on demand. Their prices for printing alone are 50% less than Office Depot AND they produce perfect bound books... literally at half the price of printing a booklet at Office Depot. That's pretty awesome.

In addition, I purchased their Marketing Copy Essentials, also awesome. MCE wrote a great blurb about my book, much better than I ever could have done, and filled out all the copyright and marketing information, which I would have had no idea how to do myself either. So A++ on the Marketing Copy Essentials package.

However, the company is divided up into different departments... the "Project Team", the "Member Services" team, etc, and the company doesn't do what I wish they did, which is put one person in charge of my project, so that when I call I always talk to the same person and they follow the book from first draft to publication. Instead, I'm always talking to a different person. No one has a direct line, and I always have to hold for 5-10 minutes just to get through. Then, I get passed back and forth between different people and different departments.

As an example, a week ago, I was told my complimentary author copy was going to be printed and sent to me in two days. Today, I found out it was delayed because there was a problem with the back cover. I fixed that in five minutes. Now, I'm on hold as they patch me back to the "Project Team" so I can find out if there's any way to expedite the printing of the author copy, as my release date is impending. I was on hold for so long today that I was able to type out this entire review while listening to the hold music.

Hence, the mixed review. Great concept, affordable, but it's in need of better organization in order to provide more effective customer service.