Pete Masterson is a very generous man who shares his experience as a printer and a designer with many new publishers. He participates on many listservs, including the Yahoo Group Self-Publishing. It was on that group that the following piece first appeared. He has graciously given me his permission to quote it in its entirety:
Using the CreateSpace Publishing Plan Calculator that you can download from the CreateSpace web site (this is an Excel spreadsheet with macros). These prices are all based on a color cover and a black interior book.
A softcover book of 212 pages, 6 x 9 with a list price of $16.00:
CS standard plan, sold via estore you receive a net $7.06
CS standard plan, sold via Amazon you receive a net $3.86
CS ProPlan, sold via estore, you receive a net $9.41
CS ProPlan, sold via Amazon, you receive a net $6.21
Purchased direct from CS in small quantities for delivery to the publisher,
standard plan, you pay $5.74 per copy (plus shipping)
ProPlan, you pay $3.39 per copy (plus shipping)
Larger quantities may have a discount, but I did not see one show up
in the calculator up to 250 copies.
The CS ProPlan has a $39 start up charge per title. A $5 per year per
title fee is charged to maintain the listing.
———————————————
Using Lightning Source figures as comparison:
the same book with $16.00 list price:
With a 20% wholesale discount, you receive $9.14 per copy sold via LSI/
Ingram
With a 40% wholesale discount, you receive $5.94 per copy
With a 55% wholesale discount, you receive $3.54 per copy
The print cost per copy (in all cases) is $3.66 per copy
There is a start up cost of $75. A $12 per year per title fee is
charged to maintain the listing.
If you purchase copies direct from LSI for shipment to the publisher
this book would cost $4.08 per copy plus shipping.
This charge also applies to shipments made direct to customer at order
of publisher. (This charge is based on .015 per page instead of .013
per page for the interior. Cover charge is unchanged.)
orders of
50-99 units receive a discount of 5% (reduces unit cost to $3.88)
100-249 units receive a discount of 10% (reduces unit cost to $3.67)
250 – 499 units receive a discount of 20% (reduces unit cost to $3.26)
Over 500 units receive a discount of 25% (reduces unit cost to $3.06)
(plus shipping).
======
Analysis:
So, the CreateSpace ProPlan offers a slightly lower unit cost for
books shipped directly to the publisher — but does not seem to offer
any discounts for quantity purchases. (Per page rate is .012 for the
CS pro plan and .013 at LSI — the ‘cover’ charge is .85 for CS Pro
plan vs .90 at LSI — and this is the price difference.)
LSI gives greater flexibility in setting wholesale discount rates and
terms. Using LSI/Ingram distribution, the book is available to all
booksellers where CS is only available to Amazon. Using the CS
‘estore’ would allow a slightly better return on direct to buyer
orders from your web site.
In the end, the deciding factor is if the 20% discount through LSI is
more appropriate for your business plan or if limiting sales to Amazon
(and the CS ‘estore’) is suitable.
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Pete Masterson, Author of
Book Design and Production: A Guide for Authors and Publishers
Aeonix1@Mac.com
Aeonix Publishing Group http://www.aeonix.com
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[...] View post: Guest Post: Pete Masterson on CreateSpace Vs. LSI « The Profitable … [...]
>>> “In the end, the deciding factor is if the 20% discount through LSI is
more appropriate for your business plan or if limiting sales to Amazon
(and the CS ‘estore’) is suitable.”
For me, the deciding factor was not cost at all. I switched from CreateSpace to LSi simply because the quality at CreateSpace was not consistent enough. They started out all right; books were never quite good enough for me, but it seemed that each order had only a few “bad” copies. One day an order of 50 books went missing, and the replacement books were 50% rejects, and the replacement for those were also 50% rejects… Basically, it became something of a joke to open a box and know in advance that half the books would need replacing.
Faults in quality include:
- scuffed back cover
- wonky or misaligned spine text
- dog-eared corners and spine ends
- box and books covered in dust
- varying print quality (from faint to heavy)
- awful binding (orange glue, badly-pressed spines)
Since switching to LSi, I’ve ordered maybe 200 books (three different titles) and the quality has been superb. I would have to look very hard indeed to find something to complain about. The quality is consistent throughout. I had two books cut inexplicably short (by 1/4″) and a recent order had a number of books where the spine alignment was less than perfect, but overall I’m very happy to pay a little more per book when the quality is so much better — perhaps $4.21 rather than $3.50. But LSi uses a different (thinner) white paper, so the books overall are a little slimmer and lighter; I actually save a dollar on postage, so you could say that’s an unexpected cost benefit.
Finally, distribution is better at LSi, and my books showed up on Amazon just fine. You’d think that since Amazon owns CreateSpace, they’d make the books show on Amazon.co.uk as well as Amazon.com — but no, it never happened. Yet with LSi they showed up immediately.