CreateSpace

I recently launched my first book and have talked with many people confirming they had purchased my book from Amazon. Create space shows I only sold 20 books so far. One friend alone purchased 10 books. I know their reported sales are not to be true and they told me I had to get a picture of a bar code of EVERY book so that they could compare to their records. This is almost impossible and no way to prove them wrong. I feel as if they are stealing sales from me.

I've read the reviews here about CreateSpace and was surprised at some of the negative reviews. I've published eleven books and the quality of the finished books has been consistently excellent. Granted, I do all my own work from cover design to interior set up so the cost is zero. The choices available for the size of the book as well as the preformatted interior blanks makes the job extremely easy. Help is available but I've never had to utilize it so I'm not familiar with the costs involved.
There was one incident where a signature was omitted in one of six books ordered. I notified them and within days I not only had a replacement copy but they also included an extra copy at no cost to me. Working with CreateSpace has been an amazing experience especially their distribution which is worldwide within days of publishing.

I submitted a title and in the review process they tagged a bad keyword. OK no big deal. I corrected the key word and sent them the update. My title was "Suppressed" pending review. They sent an email that it would be released within 24hours. Guess what? 5 days later and sever calls to their support outsourced to India and nothing. AND they dont know anything AND they wont let you talk to the validation department. What a crappy way of doing business. This is an Amazon company? Close it and start over.

I don't want to waste too much time on reviewing a pitiful company which can exist solely because it's under cover of giant Amazon.
Createspace is one monumental mistake. From data transfer to the review process, to printing, to customer service. It's a shameful experience for anyone who knows how to spell the word book. Createspace is a senseless company, threatening one of the human kind's greatest wisdom: The Book. Mediocrity would be a giant step up for this shaking waste of internet space. I hope Bezos will take this birth defect to the moon one-way.

I'm a writer and had previously dealt with Create Space before it was taken over by Amazon
Create Space is no longer user friendly to self publishing writers. It's tricky because it seemed to force you to use their templates and force you to abide by their format.
Don't use create space. The stress takes over your valuable time. Instead of writing your book, you're dealing wih formatting and call center from out of US, in accents that are even hard to understand.

If you're having problems with CreateSpace please take it to the BBB. I did. It was amazing how quickly they responded to my complaint once the BBB notified them. I've also presented CS with a bill for the issue they dropped on me. When I first started with CS in late 2014 they were great. They had been bought by Amazon at that point but that company had pretty much left CS alone. Evidently that is no longer the case. Like a lot of you I also have been told that people have bought my books but I certainly haven't seen the revenue from them.
I was surprised to see that CS has an A+ review with the BBB. You can change that. If you want to know more about the issue I had with them please go to my website, cathypacematthews.com
My review. They have no respect for the independent author.
They only got the one star because I had to because yes it does get worse.

I self published a book Sep of 2016 and on both occasions just before Christmas, I ordered several hundred books. In 2016 they printed the black and white photos very dark and was told it was outsourced to another printer. They remade the books. Again, this Christmas 2017, my ordered was flawed again with very dark printing. They replaced the books again and they were exactly the same, dark printing. Sent all five cartons of books back and WON'T use CreateSpace again. Highly Recommend that you DO NOT use Createspace! They stink!

I am a children's book author with a large following and have sold hundreds if not thousands of books, all printed through CreateSpace. I just recently published a Christmas book and scheduled an event (book release) for the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I placed the order on November 14. I just reached out to them today (a week later) as I have not heard anything from them. They extended their lead time and never told us about it. So now I have a book release but I won't have any books... not to mention all of the preorders that I have already sold.

As if this isn't bad enough, whenever I do finally get an order, half the books (one time 80/100 books had print errors and had to be replaced. I couldn't sell them. I have found a new printer and will NEVER EVER print through them ever again. They are horrible beyond reason. Please be kind to yourself and don't use them.

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!

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,

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.

Despite having published 3 previous books with Create Space, the 4 book keeps failing the review process (20 separate times). This book is a second edition of a previous one so is very similar to edition 1 which was printed fine. Now we are told that we cannot have images (yes... jpegs0 that contain text in the background. There customer service (Tara Lewis and others) have no idea what they are talking about and have on several occasions lied to me about various things. Every time you try and get a straight answer they create another problem with the file. I have 15 years experience in print and design and have never come across such an amateur bunch of fools. DO NOT EVEN TRY TO PUBLISH A BOOK WITH CREATE SPACE - THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT

I have multiple titles with CreateSpace and before it changed hands, it was a very smooth process to revise exterior or interior files. Now, I have one of my titles suppressed because of copyright validation request. I've called and emailed multiple times and keep getting the runaround. A two word title promotion for the sequel is the only change made to the interior file and I get my title suppressed. This will probably be my last hurrah with CreateSpace.

Update: Since I submitted the above review, my title has been moved to Createspace Hold status (over a week now and still no change). It seems that Amazon doesn't want a title to be in circulation with another distribution outlet. Nothing prevents this if an author is using a different ISBN for another book distributor. Ingram provides hardcover and I use them for my paperback expanded distribution as well. I do have a signed agreement to exclusively distribute my audiobook titles with Amazon Audible and iTunes. But no such contract disclaimer prevents me from doing so with print titles. I have ten titles with Createspace and unbelievable the discourteous treatment I've been receiving.