CreateSpaceReviews 34

We contracted the publishing of a book destined for a book launch. The books were sent to an incorrect recipient in Italy via UPS a talk only company that does not know about customer service. Create Space received the books that were returned (without contacting the addressee) and since then - after promising that they would be resent - failed to follow up. We are still awaiting the delivery of the book and there has been no further information on their whereabouts. Appalling! Bordering on fraudulent... money was paid, no outcome,

Depending where you are on the do-it-yourself spectrum, there's some good and some bad here. My biggest complaint is that CreateSpace did not tell me upfront that when I signed up to have them set up my manuscript per their interior template, I would not receive a file that I could manipulate myself. (Perhaps it was in the small print, somewhere.) What I received instead for both my custom cover and interior file was a PDF file that I could not alter. Thus, I am locked into CreateSpace, depending on CreateSpace to tell me what the typographic specifications are (typeface, point size, leading, and so on), being unable to make what-if changes myself (for example, what will this look like if I change the typeface or decrease the leading?), and then having to pay them to make any changes, including some (but not all) of their own mistakes. Nor are the folks who worked on my cover and interior skilled book designers. They appear to be technicians who dump text into a template and have no sense of design (say, getting the leading reasonably right) or eye for details. For each round of reviews and corrections, they fix two things and then break something else. Had I to do it over again, I would take my CreateSpace money and pay a real book designer to build my file with my specifications and then give me that file so I can experiment and make my own changes.

Just like any business nowadays with their "freemium versions", and Amazon prime with their auto-charge feature that bills you if you don; t tell it not to, This is a business that needs to make money to keep their hosting. So, when you load your book up, especially if it has images, you will find that is nearly impossible to check what you have submitted. They will not let you format on the site, and also is incompatible with pdf, doc, docx, and rtf. So the work you put in to making it perfect in word or open office, you will find is nowhere close to what CreateSpace shows you. From a business standpoint, this is brilliant! Then they casually offer you very expensive support. I am not a hired goon, like many other reviews, I am seriously having a hard time understanding why this needs to be so time consuming and expensive, when CDBaby, works in a similar way for music distribution, i didn't find it to be this counter-intuitive and stressful

They say they are free but you would be lucky to have a penny left to your name. Distribution along with other services say free but they are not. The editing process was somewhat fishy, because during the second round I felt like the editor did not read my book. Her suggestions were often out of context, almost like they ran it through some error finding system and it generated results. I had to do most of the editing myself. I think what attracts us is thinking that because Amazon is behind it that the brand is trustworthy, but they are not. They try to make you pay for very minor changes, like one word would cost you $90! You basically have to take or leave the cover they give you because you do not have options. I would not go with this company again, and would advise people do extensive research and take their work elsewhere.

I used CreateSpace when it was BookSurge in 2009, and they were great: access to Amazon, good royalties, and staff were willing to help no matter what it took to get the job done well, which is why I came back

But now, 8 years later, I can't say the same thing. CreateSpace (CS) has you use a template for your book, but you quickly find that the template has severe limitations (like pagination, headers and other kinds of formatting). CS then charged me $149 for help with formatting and even then couldn't get it right. I talked to at least 4 different people to have the problem resolved, and in the end, just asked them to stop work. It was pretty clear that the experience from 2009 didn't fit into their business model today of only providing help until the service fee is exhausted. Result: the publication formatting looks amateurish. Looking back, I would have gone to UpWork for freelance formatting help, then published through CS. You can find someone less expensive and more accommodating than CS's add-on services. I regret not having known this earlier.

The help desk in the USA is extraordinary at CreateSpace. As of last week I started reaching a help desk overseas. I had several well-researched, extremely complicated questions. They told me when they picked up that I would have to just keep calling. I did that many times for two days and never got the US. I wrote a very negative review, but sent an email asking for help and got it via a phone call from a supervisor. So I am changing my review. This company has the best help desk in the USA--great people, cheerful, helpful and SMART. I am deleting my negative review. I hope, however, that they will continue to make it possible to ask for help from folks in the USA who understand the very complicated questions. I think that's why they have been popular to date.

I loved CreateSpace because they were available when I needed them, which was not often. But now not only do I get a foreign help desk that cannot understand very complicated questions about publishing, if I want to talk to the desk in the USA, they will not forward the call to a supervisor who can help. I will probably give up and go to another publisher. The overseas help desk say I can just call and call and call and see if I get anywhere, and I have spent an hour doing that in 2 days. I have never felt that the folks overseas answering my emails understood the complicated questions, so this is not an option. The folks at the help desk in the USA were phenomenal.

On 4 april Create Space charged my business account 5 separate charges totaling more then $3500. 00 in a two min time frame. I notified them of the "theft" within 20 min. The claimed they flagged orders and none were sent out. But here is where the real screwing begins, They "Create Space" are not responsible and totally refused to "Reverse" the charges. Now my business will be wiped out by tomorrow after noon. DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THESE PEOPLE!

I have used CreateSpace since 2009 and created 3 self-published books. Really for someone who has good to excellent writing ability, it's a humiliating experience to try the commercial houses in NYC. They won't accept you unless you know an agent, and agents are usually swamped. With CreateSpace, my first book was sort of a desktop publishing experiment. Considering I didn't think I was going to survive the first year after cancer, it made me proud. The second book was actually the product of many years of writing, and it was polished, but again the commercial houses may like Maya Angelou, but she was their token. They don't like creative nonfiction bios or creative nonfiction autobiographical stories unless you are way down low like sitting in prison. With these next two books, I used Bookcover Pro to develop the covers. I also used another editor to achieve the ideal layout. I had to call the Createspace company a few times to get the cover right---my fault being a bit on the picky side one might say. And also I had a bit of an Adobe flattening issue that took some time for me to work out. It took a few extra trial orders to get things exactly right, but Createspace was great to work with, very patient, and they didn't even force you to work with just one developer. To this day, I am very grateful to CreateSpace, because someday, when I have more audacity, I hope to actually market my books more. The burden of marketing your books is on you, of course, and you should not feel shy just because you self-published! They have a lot of examples of DIY authors whose presentations and touring have helped get them established.

It seems like the big publishers are running scared. They will not even consider reading, much less publishing authors who do not conform to their formulas for success. This is much like Hollywood films in the old days rejecting creativity in favor of formulaic success... thus opening the floodgates for independent film makers to take over. That's what's happening with the big publishers forcing authors over to something called createspace.com where an author copies and pastes text and creates the title online, edits it as many times as he wants. And publishes in both ebook format and paperback copies on demand... for free!

I am not sure whether to give createspace a good or bad review as they have some great features though the quality of the book has had many problems. I believe they are owned by amazon so the good news is that it seems easy to get yourself on amazon to sell the book. Publishing on demand has been a great idea by createspace and I think it is going to really catch on in the upcoming years. Publishing on demand basically means you do not print the book until it is purchased. The setup and install process is very easy on createspace and that was simple and much better than the lulu competition. The problem with createspace is that the physical book has bad quality control and the spine of the book can often appear misprinted. I would upload an image to show but that is not a feature I see here on sitejabber. There was extra glue or something also dribbling out of the spine of the book too. I did like how easy it was to get onto amazon digital kindle and maybe that is the real future of publishing anyways.