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.