How To Switch From Createspace to KDP Print Amazon Publishing

UPDATE: Amazon has made it official. Createspace is closing in a few weeks. The migration process is now more streamlined and those with big catalogs can port everything across in one go. More here.

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Createspace is rumored to be closing soon – meaning all users will be forced to transition to KDP Print (or use an alternative service). I decided to get ahead of the move to scout out any potential issues, and there are a few for you to watch out for – meaning, somewhat paradoxically, that you may wish to make the leap sooner rather than later.

I know, I know, it sounds like a big plate of hassle with little upside. But the process might be easier than you think, and could save you bigger problems in a few months. On top of that, this could be a good opportunity to update those old paperback files, clean up your metadata in line with current best practices (hellooooo 2012 keywords), and perhaps consider some distribution alternatives. Let’s get to it!

Createspace is Closing?

Ever since the launch of KDP Print, it has been rumored that Createspace is closing – after all, it doesn’t make sense to maintain a second, off-brand POD service, especially one where the architecture is creaking and security issues are multiplying.

I spoke to one of the senior Createspace people at NINC last year, and he explained that the two services have been slowly folding together at the back end for quite some time, and that they were now working out of the same building. What we’ve seen more recently is the gap between the two closing at the front end, with Createspace killing off extraneous services like copy-editing, and KDP Print replicating the last few features of Createspace it had been missing – things like author copies and Expanded Distribution.

Bar some minor kinks to be ironed out, and a couple of international issues, that process is pretty much complete. Outside of Amazon, nobody knows when Createspace will actually shut its doors, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens over the next few months. Which means you are going to have to move soon anyway. But should you do it now, or wait? Is the process tricky? I decided to find out.

Switching to KDP Print

It’s mostly good news on this front. The process for transitioning existing Createspace titles to KDP Print is really simple – it basically involves a few clicks, inputting your ISBN number, and then reviewing the new files in the previewer.

KDP Print Dashboard screenshot 1

First, you click the “Create Paperback” button in your KDP Dashboard beside the desired title. Yes, this is the same process if you are making a KDP Print paperback from scratch – you will just skip a bunch of steps if you already have a Createspace edition of that title. However, you may wish to review your keywords and categories at this point.

The system will pull through the metadata attached to your ebook edition, rather than your Createspace edition. Which may be a good thing anyway, as it is probably more up-to-date/optimized, but give it a once over. You get more keywords and the like with KDP Print so make sure you are maximizing the opportunities here in line with current best practices.

Once your metadata has been reviewed you’ll get asked at the bottom of the page if this title was previously published by Createspace.

KDP Print screenshot 2

Assuming you select Yes, you will then be prompted to input the ISBN number for your Createspace edition – which will either be the free ISBN number that Createspace assigned you on publishing, or your own ISBN number if you went that route. The system will then pull through all the information about your paperback – trim size, paper type, cover finish, bleed settings, and then the interior and cover files also.

Warning: as soon as you input your ISBN number here, your Createspace edition will vanish from your Createspace interface, so make a note of anything you need before it disappears. Don’t worry about the customer side though. Your book will remain on sale during the transition, even if you are caught up in approvals for some reason (more on that in a moment).

You can make changes to the interior or cover files at this point, after you pull them through, and this may be a good time to update anything. Then you are asked to review the book in the previewer before saving and moving to the final page: pricing.

This part is quite different from Createspace in that you have a little more freedom when it comes to territorial pricing, and can set separate prices for Amazon US, UK, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, and Japan. The interface also handily displays the final selling price after local sales taxes are applied, as well as what your own royalty per sale will be, so you can tailor that as you desire and have it all neat on the customer side, if that’s important to you.

There is a big Publish button at the bottom, but you may wish to first order a proof if you have made significant changes to your files during the transition. One big advantage of KDP Print for “international” types like myself is that we can now get proof and author copies sent to us from Europe rather than America, greatly reducing both cost and shipping time, making it much more economical to sell by hand at cons or to bookstores.

One minor disadvantage is that proof copies now have a rather ungainly PROOF emblazoned upon them so can’t be reused, but this is where you order one of those, if needed. Author copies are ordered elsewhere (and don’t have that PROOF printed on them), but you’ll have to wait for approval first. Those author copy orders go via your regular Amazon shopping cart, so the shipping options and costs should be familiar to you.

Then when you hit the Publish button, your files will get sent for review. There is a human layer to the reviewing process and they seem to be reviewing things quite closely and finding some minor errors that Createspace missed.

For example, in a paperback I had on sale since 2012, KDP Print was unhappy that a small excerpt in the back restarted the pagination rather than continuing from the main text. A relatively easy fix, and the old edition stayed on sale throughout, so no real hassle – just something to watch out for.

The real problems come when you have a more serious issue, because support is now handled by KDP rather than Createspace. The support from Createspace was generally excellent, augmented by the availability of good phone support and well trained staff who understood issues on the spot, and who generally had the expertise/authority to resolve them.

The same cannot be said for KDP Print support. Questions seem to go into the general KDP customer support system, which is… uneven at the best of times, and fairly terrible for anything remotely complicated.

My issue seemed relatively straightforward, if a little odd. My bestselling paperback – Let’s Get Digital – went through the review process just fine. But when it went live on the customer side, I noticed something weird. Digital is now only purchasable by Amazon Prime subscribers.

Wut?

Digital is only orderable by prime members

Here’s where the wheels come off. I emailed KDP support about this in late July. They then replied on August 1 saying they were going to have to consult with the relevant team (because why would the person with expertise actually be answering the emails?), and get back to me on August 5. That never happened. I’ve sent five emails over the last ten days asking what the situation is with no response whatsoever.

So now I’m stuck. Welcome to KDP customer service.

Should you transition now?

Despite these hiccups, I think so, yes. The review process is relatively quick – it took less than 24 hours for each of my titles done at various times over the last few weeks. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if that changes considerably when hundreds of thousands of titles need to be reviewed simultaneously.

Support is abysmal, true, but I don’t see it getting any better when thousands and thousands of support requests flood the system, so you might want to get ahead of that rather inevitable clusterfudge.

What about other services?

Reedsy has a good breakdown here of Createspace/KDP Print v Ingram Spark v BookBaby v Blurb. I’d agree with them that services like BookBaby and Blurb are sub-optimal ways to do your paperbacks. (I’m not even including Lulu here who should be avoided for a whole bunch of reasons, not least their tawdry links with Author Solutions.)

I’d also agree that – ideally – you should probably use Createspace/KDP Print to reach Amazon customers and Ingram Spark for non-Amazon distribution, particularly if you are a wide author who sells a bit of print. If you are a KU author who sells little in print it might not be worth the hassle, and you can just use Amazon’s Expanded Distribution network if you wish to reach somewhat outside of Amazon.

Up until now, I’ve always used that Expanded Distribution network, and made a decent chunk from it, but it does have disadvantages. Aside from restricting you somewhat on price on Amazon itself, you are giving up a big portion of royalties (around 20%) to access the same Ingram network that you could access directly, but without the ability to offer the level of discounts (or returns) that will attract real orders from that network, so Ingram Spark is something I’m looking at longer term for that. And then of course there are some stores and institutions who despise Amazon so much they won’t even order Createspace books.

However, going via Ingram involves a bit of extra hassle: fresh files with my own ISBNs and slightly tweaked cover files, etc. A job for Captain Tomorrow.

But if that is something you are considering yourself, you may wish to opt out of the Expanded Distribution Network for KDP Print when transitioning your files from Createspace to reduce some messiness when you do get going at Ingram Spark. And if you want a proper guide to Ingram Spark, this post from ALLi is a good basic primer, with links to more detailed resources. Just keep in mind it has costs where KDP Print has none, and is not recommend for beginners at all as the process is quite convoluted.

Summary

  • Createspace is closing soon, possibly in the next few months
  • Transitioning to KDP Print is (largely) painless
  • Customer service is terrible – be warned
  • Perhaps do it now to avoid delays when everyone switches over
  • Use this opportunity to update any files and clean up metadata.

UPDATE: Some good info popping up on social media in response which I’ll copy here:

1. There are some issues with author copies where big orders (like 20 books or so) will get split into 4 or 5 separate packages which arrive at different times – a pain if you have to trudge 40 minutes away to the post office, like me.

2. Amazon have said privately that they are working on automating the migration process. So you could just do nothing and let that happen. However, given they have 2m titles to migrate, I’d personally want to avoid that and get ahead of it, given possible backlog with approvals and support, even if there are no issues with the migration process itself (and I suspect there will be with that many titles).

3. People generally seem to think this is happening soonish. Fall comes up a lot in rumors. No firm date I know of, but that sounds about right to me, if I had to guess.

4. Workflow-wise, especially for those of you with lots of titles. This will be a pain one way or the other, but if you can arrange the transition for when you are updating files that will be most efficient. But I recommend doing it like this: don’t update the file before the migration. Start the process, and then before you approve the interior and cover files that KDP Print pulls across from Createspace, insert your new updated files. Then submit for review. Your old CS file will stay on sale until it’s approved, which means you’ll have no downtime.

And I’ll just add this: my Prime-only issue (screenshot above) has now been resolved. It only affected that one title, so appears to be a one-off glitch.

145 Replies to “How To Switch From Createspace to KDP Print”

  1. This may be slightly off topic, but have you worked with the Kindle Create app? Supposedly you can format one file – and submit it for both ebook and paperback (KDP) publishing.

    1. No, I haven’t used it. I was working on the presumption that would lock you into only using those files on Amazon. I do my own formatting via Notepad++ and Caliber, and can easily convert the files to epub/mobi/etc. Print, I outsource. Aside from maybe Vellum – which is mac only so I haven’t used it – I haven’t been hugely impressed with any of the automated tools for making paperbacks.

    2. If you want a professional-looking book layout, you cannot use one Word file for an ebook AND a print book. Well, you can, but your print book will not be up to standard. The only real way to do a proper layout is with a quality desktop publishing program, like InDesign.

    3. KDP does not work. My books came out beautiful from Create Space. I didn’t have any trouble with putting my e-books on Kindle. However, after hearing rumors from you and Joanna Penn about Create Space closing down, I figured I better transition over to KDP before all hell breaks loose.
      Theoretically, my Create Space book is supposed to migrate over to KDP using the Create Space files. Not happening. I got the ugliest book insides I have ever seen in my life. When I read the KDP proof, Kindle book formatting had shoved em and en dashes and hyphens in the middle of sentences and they were scattered through my book like grains of pepper. I started to go through the book chapter by chapter and it got worse. Do you know how hard it is to find dashes and hyphens in a 55K book? I gave up after the first 5 pages. No, I did not stuff dashes and hyphens in my Create Space book. I worked as a typesetter and I know better.
      I was appalled. The only thing I’m going to do is strip all the formatting and start from scratch with a brand new ISBN # and different size paperback print book on KDP so at least it will give me time to figure out this disaster. Do you honestly think more than a million + books will transfer over smoothly? Amazon needs to get their customer service to hit the ground running. Because if they can’t even answer a simple question like yours, what is going to happen when all these millions of books (print books) transition over from Create Space to KDP?
      As an Amazon customer since 2000 when I bought my first Kindle and as an early adopter and voracious reader, Kindle=ebooks. Books=Print Books=Create Space. 2500 books on Kindle and at least 2K print books. plus I-books and audio.
      This whole fiasco reminds me of when CocaCola tried to rebrand New Coke as THE COKE and eliminate the taste of traditional Coke, now called classic. That turned out to be a disaster too. Pepsi was ecstatic over the year-long market blunder.
      I’ll bet Ingram Spark will be happy to print Author’s books and distribute them. Amazon will lose major market share in the transition. There are plenty of vendors hoping to see Amazon bite the big one.
      In conclusion, I love Create Space it was logical. The instructions were clear. The Proofs worked out great. The people were wonderful to work with and answered questions in 2 days.
      My books are equivalent to the big 5 in every way. That was my first goal. I researched every detail of a thousand print books so I would be comparable to any of big 5 trade paperback and Large print books. Now I have to work with a format that was made for ebooks. Kindle does an excellent job on ebooks, not so good with print books. I reserve my judgment until Amazon Kindle Direct Print is identical or superior to Create Space.
      My next choice, because I do not want all my eggs in one basket, as Joanna Penn says, is to publish print books with Ingram Spark so when Amazon Kindle Direct Print drops the hammer I won’t be caught. I also took her advice and am publishing worldwide e-books with Draft 2 Digital like she does. I love reading your blogs and her podcast. Keep up the good work. You both are honest people.

      1. Can someone recommend a good tutorial for a non-techie on preparing a new book for upload in the KDP paperback program? I know how to do it with the e-book version, formatting it myself, creating a hyperlinked TOC. creating my own cover with Kindle Cover Creator and uploading my own stock photo, but when I played around with the paperback screen, I didn’t understand it and stopped at a certain point. Amazon then sent me a tutorial which I plan to go through but I wonder if there’s another tutorial someone can recommend. I have not yet uploaded the e-book version yet, if that matters. I want to do both at same time. Thanks in advance to any one who can give me advice.

      2. Thank you for your comments. Sorry for your frustration. I’ve been reading some blogs, trying to decide when to make the transition. I have two books in proof stage; and I am planning on a book table in a few weeks.
        I think I’ll order books from CreateSpace before moving forward with the transition. I just received my second proof on one of the books today; CreateSpace still seems to be running smoothly.
        9/21/18

      3. Just a heads up. I am a Canadian author with two novels originally published through Createspace. I recently was transitioned to KDP Direct.

        Since the transition, I have entered a black hole! No sales being shown in royalty reports (although I know people have ordered my book!). So, as a test, I ordered my novel through Amazon.ca. Guess what? It showed my book would be shipped between Sept 24 and DECEMBER!!! I suspect there are printing/shipping issues not being reported. I have tried to contact KDP Direct and their customer service is horrific. They have yet to answer my question.

        1. Hopefully this will improve. My first set of author copies took 3-4 weeks. Second took 2-3 weeks. Third took 5 days. Pretty rapid improvement for me at least.

        2. My trade paperback version has disappeared completely from CreateSpace and KDP. Nowhere to be found. Same with their customer service departments. No responses from KDP or Amazon On-Demand Media. The “black hole” as you call it. All that publishing work done for nothing. No sales data listed for them either, though there has been positive movement on my Amazon sales ranking for the trade paperback version. This is terrible in every way. The “Link a paperback” link does NOT work on my KDP page either.

          We used to be able to call CreateSpace or have them call us, but now there is no “call us” feature available. What is an indie author to do? What recourse do we have? I purchased and assigned ISBNs to these titles. Will KDP compensate me for the purchase of another ISBN when I have to re-publish this trade paperback? Will they do all the publishing work again for me? Compensate me for lost time?

          In regard to another responder to this article, who stated they would go with IngramSpark, think hard about it. I have my hardcover with dust jacket version through IngramSpark. They charge for EVERYTHING, and it gets very expensive. They also charge me a $1.99 “handling fee” for every book order, no matter if I need just one copy or fifty. CreateSpace never charged those types of fees. We’ll have to see about KDP. Standard processing for IngramSpark is 7 days! Ridiculous. That does NOT include shipping time, so if you need your books soon, fugeddaboudit! If you want them to process your order in 3-4 days, the price per book rises by about $3 for my hardcover. Again, ridiculous. And I don’t know how they compute their UPS postage fees, but they are very expensive comparatively! CreateSpace used to have excellent quality control and would replace my books if there was even the slightest defect. IngramSpark has what they call “within our acceptable standards for quality” or some hogwash. Getting them to accept ANY responsibility for poor quality is a battle. The bindings to an order of 10 hardcovers I ordered were only half-glued! I complained, sent photos, but got the, “I’m sorry but the bindings fall within our acceptable standards for quality.” That came from their “Their Two” level customer service (management). What if a reader/customer had ordered my book? It looks bad for me the author, not IngramSpark. I have no confidence in IngramSpark in terms of quality output, and that’s very sad since the end user is paying for the product and has expectations.

          It’s very sad that indie authors get treated more and more like the stray dogs of the publishing world. I suppose we are to be happy with the bones they throw us, or for simply letting us play on their lush lawn. Cynical? Perhaps, but I was very happy with CreateSpace. Now they no longer exist, and it would appear my trade paperback version published through them doesn’t either.

        3. An update to my previous comment:

          Contacted KDP through the regular consumer Kindle phone number. They transferred me to KDP. Spoke to senior support representative regarding my print books. Evidently when CreateSpace transferred my titles for me they created a second KDP account. After researching, this seems to be a common glitch at the moment. They are merging the two KDP accounts for me but it will take up to 24 hours. Sales data will appear when print titles appear. They also told me that the “call” feature on the “contact us” page is activated upon merging of CreateSpace and KDP accounts. This was not there before, but just checked and it already appears on my KDP contact us page. So the process of merging accounts has begun, it would appear. I was harsh in my criticism of KDP and wanted to correct my criticism – in fairness.

  2. Great information as always David! An author friend of mine is considering moving to Lulu – you mention here they should be avoided for a whole bunch of reasons. Is there somewhere I can research what these reasons are for them?

    1. There is no good reason to use Lulu and plenty of very important reasons why it should be avoided. The author copies will be expensive, the shipping/distro costs are too high, the selling price to the reader ends up being too high as a result too. You are using a third party service to access Amazon, which is always a bad idea because it will mean your metadata will often be screwy and you’ll have messed up keywords and categories and no one will discover your book.

      And if that’s not enough, they have a secret partnership with the world’s biggest vanity press whereby all marketing and related customer service are covertly fulfilled by Author Solutions – a really terribly company which has been subject to numerous lawsuits and class actions for deceptive business practices and generally being shitweasels of the highest order.

        1. The benefits of using Lulu, particularly if you are in Canada:

          1) You can pay for your order through PayPal.
          2) Books are printed in Canada, so there is no duty at the door. With CreateSpace, a $200 order costs about $26 at my door. That’s on top of shipping fees.
          3) They offer hardcover.
          4) They have awesome deals every day. I never pay regular price. Yes, regular price is more than the CreateSpace price, but I order when I get free shipping and 10 to 15% off printing, which reduces the price per book to lower than the price per book at CreateSpace.
          5) The quality is great, and their colour pages are awesome.
          6) The system is easy to use.
          7) Having problems sizing up that cover? No problem. They give you the dimensions, including the spine width when you are on the page to upload your cover.

          I do NOT use their expanded distribution and publish my books directly to Amazon (Kindle and CreateSpace).

          I use none of their other services. They only provide my author copies and sell the books on their website. Although they are associated with a notoriously horrible company that takes advantage of authors, I will continue to use their services. I do my best to warn writers away from these bad companies, but I cannot control what they actually do.

          My philosophy is: I won’t divorce my husband because his niece embezzled more than $150,000 from my brother’s company just because they are related, so why should I not take advantage of a printing service that works for me just because they do business with crooks?

        2. If you have a way to make it work for you strictly with author copies – and because you are experienced enough to know about those other pitfalls – that’s fine. But I’m certainly not sending newbies there.

  3. Because Captain Tomorrow didn’t yet use Ingram and because you’ve done well in the Expanded Network, did you choose this option for each book in the KDP Print switch over? Is the messiness (of keeping the book in the Expanded Network) solely on the Ingram side?

    I have occasional sales from B&N for some Expeanded CS titles, and it sounds like I wouldn’t loose that in transition over to KDP Print Expanded Network. This makes me wonder about that messiness thing of then adding the best-sellers to Ingram.

    As always David, thanks for the excellent detail.

    1. Someone more experienced with Ingram Spark might give you a better answer, but my understanding is that it takes a couple of weeks or more for your title to exit the Expanded Distribution network, and if you upload to Ingram Spark before that process is complete it can cause issues. So you are looking at a gap in coverage there either way – depending on how/when/if you want to do that. I decided to opt out during the transition as a way of lighting a fire under me to get proper non-Amazon distribution sorted out…

  4. I’m nervous. I have been holding back due to the issue with author copies and expanded distribution. As a Canadian, it was not acceptable to not have my books available in my home country. I guess it’s time to take the plunge.

    1. There are some issues with Canada/Australia that I’m not 100% familiar with (I believe Australia is WRT author copies, not sure about Canada) that perhaps someone else can explain.

      1. Hi David – the Australian thing is problematic as Amazon refuses to ship author copies, citing the Australian government’s decision to force GST to be collected to imports ordered from international suppliers. They require author copies to be ordered at retail from the amazon.com.au “Global Store”. (We live in Australia, but like many authors, my wife and I sell most copies in the US, UK and Canada)

        To compound this, we sell non-fiction direct (as well as on Amazon) and I use Createspace to drop-ship directly to customers (and as you say their excellent customer service is not to be sneezed at!). Right now, I can still do that to Australia, but once I migrate to KDP, that won’t be possible, forcing a change in business model. For one title, we are already in Ingram Spark for extended distribution and they actually set the title up free for us after I had some issues (and you have to request Createspace to delete the title from their expanded distribution database – it’s not enough to just uncheck the box, as the ISBN still shows as “in use” to Ingram. Obviously using one’s own ISBN).

        So it’s a bit of a mess, with KDP not really offering the same functionality as CS in our specific case, and as for the level of CS service begin replicated inside KDP, I’ve no evidence they would ever get anywhere near it.

        Thanks for volunteering to go before being forced and sharing your experience!

        1. Thanks for that extra info. Hopefully it will resolve itself when Amazon opens printing plants in Australia – which is rumored to be coming.

        2. Not quite true, Robert.

          I’ve ordered proof and author copies from my Createspace dashboard since July 1st and had no issues. They were sent and received as normal and I had no email to say the orders could not be fulfilled because of my country of residence. When buying e-books, I have been redirected to the Aussie store, but had no issues thankfully.

          I’ll be holding out until they shut CS down and hopefully they’ll fix any issues they still have by then.

        3. Tiara, I may not have been clear. Yes, just like you I can order copies from CS to Australia since July 1, no problem. I drop-shipped one just a couple of days ago to Australia, ordering from here in the Sunshine Coast.

          But KDP print will not and that’s one of the issues I was pointing out.

          If they manage to ever get around to opening printing presses here, that will certainly solve that issue, as David suggests.

  5. You say that KDP pulls everything from the ebook edition to create the print book. Like all of us, I begin Chapter one on an odd page (No.3 in my case), which is unnecessary with the ebook. But with the ebook there is a table of contents with the links inserted — not necessary with the print version. So how does the conversion from ebook to print avoid this?

    1. Hi Michael, the information pulled is the metadata – keywords, categories, author name, book title. Not the book content. During the migration process from Createspace, it will pull the PDF file for the interior that you previously uploaded to Createspace, which you can approve or amend at that point if you wish.

  6. David,
    Have you considered the political issues? I believe you are wrong. Amazon will not do away with CreateSpace anytime soon. Since you live in Europe you may not be aware of the the situation Amazon faces here in the US:

    It seems
    (1) President Trump really doesn’t like Jeff Bezos,
    (2) Congress is thinking Amazon is getting too big,
    (3) US legislature is considering possible antitrust opposition to Amazon’s business practices, pricing strategy and expansion

    so, why on Earth would Amazon try to get even bigger – right now? I believe there won’t be any change until president Trump is out of office.

    1. There really is no political angle to this, so let’s not go there and have this devolve into the inevitable Punch and Judy show.

      Amazon hasn’t stated its reasons for creating KDP Print other than they wanted to make the process easier. Neither has it stated why it’s planning to close Createspace but the answers seem obvious. First, Amazon is rebranding many of its “off brand” subsidiaries and Createspace is obviously off brand. Second, Createspace has seen an exponential increase in major security issues and my understanding is they are nearly impossible to fix without ripping out the guts of the backend – and that architecture is very old at this point, having being built on the guts of the old BookSurge platform.

      So it’s time for the transition for many logical reasons (that have nothing to do with politics).

      1. Well, David,
        I hear you. But, it’s not you or me that make these decisions. That’s why we have a congress. US Congress is getting increasingly weary of the sheer size of Amazon, Google, and Facebook; a president Trump who (apparently) can’t stand Jeff Bezos might push them to work.
        Plus, in theory, the politicians who shout “problem” are right. Imagine another recession. 50% of online sales hinge on Amazon and with it tens of thousands of jobs.

        https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellewitt/2018/05/01/how-long-can-amazons-ingenious-antitrust-avoidance-last/#476d13770ac0

        1. The issue of Amazon’s dominance, perceived or otherwise, has literally nothing to do with this blog post. Let alone any potential political considerations related to same.

        2. David, let me cut this short.
          I am betting 20 bucks that Createspace won’t shut down until Trump is no longer president. I look at the big picture.
          When I warned everybody about participating in review clubs, setting up street teams, and “other activities” I was right, too. Today, Amazon’s glorious free review system is gone and authors pay to get reviews or buy ads.
          To guess correctly what Amazon will be doing one has to look at what helps Amazon.

        3. I believe that Amazon did the growing when they purchased Createspce. So that part is behind us. Now they are essentially pulling Createspace from the Amazon orbit to the mother planet. That’s what I see.

        4. “That’s why we have a congress.” <– To tell a privately held company that it can't combine two of its departments?

          All Amazon is doing is folding Createspace (which you do know it already owns, right?) into its Kindle Direct Publishing wing, which makes perfect sense from every standpoint. I promise you that whether or not Trump likes him is not at all a concern for Jeff Bezos in making this extremely tame and not at all controversial business move.

        5. Thing is CreateSpace is Amazon, KDP print is also Amazon , so shutting one down doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to their dominance or not. (it could be argued the other way that having fewer services makes them appear smaller)

          This is a red herring to the discussion at hand

  7. Hello, David.
    The issue you found with the book being available only to Prime members, do you know if that has happened to other authors? Is it a hitch particular to your book, or is it a new policy to be found somewhere in the small print of our Amazon terms?

    1. Haven’t heard anyone else with this issue, and it didn’t happen to the other titles I transitioned.

      1. Jumping in to add that I know of at least one other author to whom this happened and last I heard his book still was only available to Amazon Prime members. It’s an odd glitch and presumably they’re working on keeping it from happening, but it’s not a completely isolated incident.

  8. Hi David,

    First of all, congratulations on “Let’s Get Digital”. Great and valuable information and well told.

    I am in no-man’s land at the moment. I have done all my ISBN stuff with CreateSpace and a designer is working on cover and interior. Now I find out that it might be a good idea to move to KDP.

    Can I actually change at this time or would I be better off publishing on CreateSpace and then immediately tranferring over to KDP?

    Thank you for all your helpful tips. They are greatly appreciated,

    Kind Regards,

    Declan.

    1. I’d suggest continuing with the publication process on Createspace, and then when everything is live and on sale, looking at starting the transition. That way everything will remain on sale during the transition – in case you get caught up in the review process or anything like that.

      You won’t need any different files so there’s no need to go back to your designer etc.

  9. Some good info popping up on social media in response which I’ll copy here:

    1. There are some issues with author copies where big orders (like 20 books or so) will get split into 4 or 5 separate packages which arrive at different times – a pain if you have to trudge 40 minutes away to the post office, like me.

    2. Amazon have said privately that they are working on automating the migration process. So you could just do nothing and let that happen. However, given they have 2m titles to migrate, I’d personally want to avoid that and get ahead of it, given possible backlog with approvals and support, even if there are no issues with the migration process itself (and I suspect there will be with that many titles).

    3. People generally seem to think this is happening soonish. Fall comes up a lot in rumors. No firm date I know of, but that sounds about right to me, if I had to guess.

    4. Workflow-wise, especially for those of you with lots of titles. This will be a pain one way or the other, but if you can arrange the transition for when you are updating files that will be most efficient. But I recommend doing it like this: don’t update the file before the migration. Start the process, and then before you approve the interior and cover files that KDP Print pulls across from Createspace, insert your new updated files. Then submit for review. Your old CS file will stay on sale until it’s approved, which means you’ll have no downtime.

  10. Two questions: 1) How does the royalty structure compare to that of Createspace? 2) Will KDP Print limit the number of author copies that can be purchased? I seem to remember having read someplace that authors will be limited to 1,000 copies. That would suck and, in my opinion, not be fair to the people who actually created the content.

    1. 1) By my reading, royalties break down identically – 60% of list minus printing cost. Author copy costs are calculated slightly differently, I think, but differences are minor.

      2) Haven’t heard or seen anything about that restriction, even when ordering author copies.

      1. Found the answer to the restriction question. My mistake. The limit is 999 per order. If we need more, multiple orders can be placed. Doubt I’ll ever need to order that many at a time!

    2. Also: Since we will receive a new ISBN, will we retain all of the ratings and reviews we currently have at Amazon? Will we need to do anything with the title over at Goodreads or will that migrate their on its own?

      1. If you go through the migration process outlined above, rather than publishing a brand new edition or whatever, you keep the same ISBN. Links don’t change either, which means reviews etc. remain intact. All smooth on that front.

  11. IMPORTANT:

    One fairly major difference between CS and KDP Print that could especially affect those currently selling a lot of print: while the royalties are the same under both systems, you get paid slower at KDP Print – it’s the 60 days you are used to with ebooks, rather than the comparatively speedy 30 days you have been getting with Createspace.

    Meaning a one month gap in payments after transitioning. AKA Ramenpalooza

  12. Thanks for taking the time to post this, David. I never sold much in the CS store, but have used them to produce print books for more than ten years now. The process is familiar and it works for me. I always saw eBooks and print books as different products anyway, so I never really expected to streamline the process of formatting for different production. I hope that it never comes down to using a single file for both, as each has its strengths and opportunities. The learning goes forever on…

    1. Exact same templates. You download them from a slightly different place, but it’s the exact same file – they haven’t even renamed it.

  13. On the subject of ISBNs. My earlier books were the free ISBN from CreateSpace. I started buying my own after the third book. When moving a book with a CS ISBN over to KDPP, can the ISBN be changed to a Bowker purchased one? Or would those older books have to be done from scratch to have my own ISBN?

    1. I only briefly looked into this when checking out using Ingram Spark in tandem with KDP Print, and it appears you need to start fresh. AFAIK this means new edition, new links, and all that hassle. Not sure if it’s worth it.

  14. Sorry to hear you’ve had an issue with the support at KDP over your (very odd) problem. I shifted my four paperbacks over several months ago, 3 of them without a hitch, but the fourth was problematic – the metadata wasn’t accepted. This is a multi-author anthology I published with the maximum number of contributors allowed by CS (13). I contacted KDP support and had a reasonably quick reply that the problem was KDP only allows 10 contributors to be registered. It did take a couple of weeks to sort out, and several emails with different tech people, but was straightforward in the end, just having to remove 3 names from that list.
    One of my reasons for doing the changeover was the speed of getting author copies delivered (I had a signing coming up) which was wonderful, both in terms of speed and cost, although I had hoped that postage would be free for Prime members. Sadly it isn’t. I quizzed them on that and they said they will consider it, but I’m not holding my breath!

  15. For odd reasons, Amazon doesn’t like Canada, so we are not as fortunate in a few ways as the UK. For this reason, I will eventually move my books to KDP, so they will sell on Amazon and their expanded distribution, but I’m in no rush. Though many look down at Lulu, I currently get all my author copies from them for a few reasons:

    1) They accept PayPal as payment. This is great for those of us who don’t have credit cards.
    2) The print quality is just as good as CreateSpace.
    3) They offer hardcover, which CreateSpace doesn’t.
    4) The books are printed in Canada, so I don’t pay an added duty fee when the box of books arrive at my door.
    5) The system is easy to use.
    6) It’s free to make as many changes as I want (unlike IngramSpark).

    I use only their print service, nothing else.

    This has been working for me, so far, but I do understand anyone in the US and UK will benefit more from KDP.

    I’m hoping that when all my books are transferred to KDP that I will get direct deposit as payment and I won’t have to wait to reach the threshold of $100 in a particular country. In Canada, we are sent cheques when we reach the threshold. Yet we get direct deposit with Kindle sales.

    1. Do you get their annoying telephone calls that begin with “I represented a well known publisher”, to get your attention, before you cotton on that it is Lulu trying to flog you expensive ‘writers services’ ?

      1. Andrew, I have no idea if I get calls from them. If they are calling, it’s a complete waste of time. I never answer the phone unless I recognise the number or if the call display indicates it is someone I want to talk to. I respect the privacy of Unknown Caller and don’t answer. I get about 30 telemarketers/scammers a week calling, so the phone is practically useless. If I didn’t have three teenagers, I’d probably cut off the service and never look back.

        Also, I’m fairly certain they don’t have my number. I never enter my real number when I fill out forms on the Internet unless I want that company to call me. In this case, I don’t want their call.

        As David mentioned above, I’d never send a newbie to Lulu. Unless, that is, I gave them strict instructions not to buy anything and provide them with the possible horrors they might encounter.

  16. I’m in a possibly unique situation. In 2015(?) I lost *all* my files in a computer crash. CS has the only existing print copy files (my Kindles were generated by me). I have not (and never plan to) generate print copy files from a digital (Kindle) file. I have 1 YA and 3 cookbooks out.

    1. I downloaded my proof files from Create Space when I published my book free, even when I have my book files. Backup your writing on a flash drive. Back up all your writing (books, articles, blogs, photos, storyboards, etc) on another flash drive saved away from your writing area (for example, see hurricane Florence this week, and I lived thru a forest fire when I had one hour to get out). Save one flash drive in a lockbox. Back up on an external hard drive (mine is T-byte). Print out a hard copy as you write, store a separate print copy of the book in a lockbox. Do NOT save anything on your hard drive ever. It sounds like I’m paranoid but I’ve been using the blankety-blank computer technology in one form or another since 1964 (Yes, Virginia, I’m that old-and yes I’ve been a programmer, technical writer, illustrator, and computer science instructor that long-just call me a granny nerd). Now I’m retired from the rat race, I write for the intellectual challenge and the joy of learning something new. I am still backing up my writing to the max. Life is change. A lot of what I learned through my life applies to constant change and flexibility. Anything to do with computers is “change” to the Google-plex.

  17. I have a quick question David (nice article by the way, thanks).

    You mention that you transferred your book “Let’s Get Digital” from CS to KDP Print, and that it has now become labelled “exclusively for prime members”.

    My question: Have you transferred any other books yet, if so, have they been labelled “exclusively for prime members” too?

    Thank you.

    1. Only one of several titles was affected in this way, and support seem puzzled (although that’s increasingly a default position…).

      1. Hi David,

        I just checked “Let’s Get Digital” again on Amazon.com and it is no longer labelled “exclusively for prime members”.

        I guess support got to the bottom of it in the end 🙂

        Jason

  18. I use different files for the creatspace paperback than I do for the KDP ebook. If KDP print make a paperback from my ebook, the formatting is going to be WAY off – we are talking no page numbers, and no formatting to start chapters on facing pages. And no spine/back cover details.

    So is there an option to cross over, but use PDF print-ready files rather than the DOCX run-on kindle ready files?

    I’m not that techie so I could have completely misread what you’ve written above.

    1. KDP print doesn’t make the book from your ebook file. It uses the same PDF print-ready file you generated for Createspace. It’s a different interface with the same file requirements.

  19. What happens if you aren’t offering a Kindle edition? I have clients who are publishing in paperback only.

  20. Great post. I plan to do my next book at KDP. I’ve always done my paperbacks at CS. My first two books have CS ISBNs, but it looks like they will have no trouble going over to KDP. The next two ISBNs are my own. One I did a meta share with Ingram Spark, dropping expanded but I haven’t done that with my latest. I think to avoid the crowds, I’ll start with the first two and see how they do in transferring over.

    I’m not happy to hear about a 60 days wait between payments. I have always depended and calculated on that monthly amount. Ingram Spark is so confusing and how they pay. I have been in touch with KDP support and it wasn’t so bad. But then I live north of Seattle. CS support is awesome.

  21. Great post, David, but it leaves me rather sad as I’ve been super impressed with CreateSpace all along. As you say, their customer service is excellent. KDP’s customer service is…-sigh-

    One small thing I’d add to your how-to, although most things migrate from CS to KDP without a hitch, I found one small difference yesterday: in Print Options, KDP automatically changed the Cover Finish to Matte [it was originally Glossy]. So that’s something for people to watch out for.

    I’m not sure why KDP made the change but suspect it may be because Matte is the default Cover Finish. As for the manual review, I’m not sure who does it, but they don’t like any pagination that’s out of the ordinary and classify it as being ‘out of sequence’, which it’s not. Very annoying.

    And now a question about the Minimum List Price. With CS, Expanded Distribution caused the Minimum List Price to be higher, and that MLP then applied to both Standard and Expanded distribution. Do you know if the same thing applies to KDP? I can’t check myself because I’ve gone wide with D2D so my books aren’t eligible for KDP’s Expanded Distribution.

  22. @Pete Blight
    It’s actually a book keeping thing. If Amazon kills off Createspace Amazon.com (entity’s) income increases vs. income of two different entities within the “Amazon empire.” Also, it can be argued that Amazon just buys up companies (which they did when, in 2005, Amazon purchased BookSurge, founded in 2000) to make “their own Amazon.com empire” bigger.

    Regardless, I am not going to switch because one thing is for sure: Until Amazon actually kills off Createspace they are going to work out kinks. I am not volunteering to be a guinea pig.

    And, had other authors not volunteered to switch to Amazon maybe Createspace would be more stable than it is today. I never volunteer to be a guinea pig. I remember the Windows 10 intro phase. Though I didn’t, three of my friends took it for free, then all of them came to my place to print stuff because Windows 10 crashed and none of them could not use their computer for 24 to 48 hours. Plus, all them spent hours on the phone with Microsoft getting the problem fixed.
    Let Amazon work out every problem before I (have to) join.

  23. Slight amusing aside, I contacted CS a few months back about the rumored shutdown, asking if they had a transition plan (that is, could I get in earlier, avoid the logjam, and so on).

    I got a fairly snippy reply back saying there were no plans to shutter CS, falling a little short of asking me to die in a fire but I felt the burning intent. I didn’t do the jump at the time due to the international and proof issues but it sounds like things are improving.

    Thanks for the post 🙂

  24. David, my question is simple.
    If I want to take my print editions out of Create Space altogether, is that something that they will allow? I asked some time back how the ownership works at their end. They said the content is mine, but the means of transmitting it (software) is theirs.
    I was in too much of a hurry in the beginning, but now I would like to take it all down and just start over from scratch.
    In addition, someone who was an unmitigated troublemaker took advantage of my linking to my books on Create Space, and used the contents of one to cause enormous trouble for someone else, a good friend. That’s over now. The jerk bit off more than he could chew and paid for it.
    But basically, I just want to start over from scratch.
    So to your knowledge, will there be any difficulty with Amazon/Create Space if I simply remove the print stuff altogether?
    Thanks for your feedback.

    1. You can unpublish/retire a Createspace edition whenever you like, but that doesn’t mean it will immediately go off sale. They will have some stock on hand that has already been printed and the TOS allows them the right to sell that off for a certain period. You should be aware that, unlike ebooks, paperbacks have a tendency to stick around forever in one form or another, via second hand sellers and the like.

  25. Thanks for a great article, David!
    I hope KDPP sort out the problem with Australia soon!
    I’ve been publishing my new paperbacks in KDPP and slowly transitioning my paperbacks from CS to KDPP. Very happy with the easy set-up process, and also the print editions seemed slightly better quality (no idea why on that one!).
    Then had to go back to CS for the last two, because I heard from Australian readers who wanted to purchase my books in print that they had to pay crazy prices for KDPP paperbacks via the Australian Amazon site. Three times the price of a US copy. 🙁

    1. Autumn, crazy prices sounds very off putting. I have used CS for my 12 guide books and have been very happy with the process. I live in New Zealand and would not like to see prices any higher than what they already are.

  26. Hi David, Thank you for this informative post. I decided to try moving the first book in my series from CreateSpace to KDP Print and all has gone very well. Contrary to your comment about KDP Print pulling the metadata attached to your ebook edition rather than your CreateSpace edition, however, I found that the manuscript on CreateSpace was the one pulled over.

    1. Hi Jill. Metadata is things like author name, title, subtitle, keywords, categories, book description. Those were pulled from the ebook edition for me as the first step in the migration process.

      The interior/cover files are pulled from Createspace though – which is what you want.

  27. Question for those of you who have been through the KDP Print process with new stuff rather than migrated books:

    Trying to publish a brand-new paperback at KDP Print and running into a weird error. Keeps telling me my ISBN entered in the dash doesn’t match the one in the interior when they are identical. Anyone know a solution?

    1. I’ve had the same issue today.
      Only thing I can think of is that the ISBN on the dashboard has no hyphens while the ISBN on my book’s copyright page does. I’m going to replace the hyphens with spaces and see what happens.

  28. I hope that KDP print will not take over from Createspace. 1) Because some of the stuff I publish needs to be hard copy. It just doesn’t work in Kindle. 2) Because I compared a KDP print version of a Kindle book with a book I created on Createspace. The same book. The KDP print version was dreadful. The only reason for Amazon pushing such a change through – if they ever do – is to make sure they have a version of the book on Kindle. Rather than making that transition I would actually transfer to Lulu or similar. I don’t think I’m alone.

      1. My original print book (Createspace) contained tables and other information laid out in a particular way. Kindle requires flexibility because people use different devices, different sizes and types of font. It used to be that case that you could use html coding to assist in this but that seems to have gone. Anyway, I tried to re-organise my layout so that it would make some sort of sense on an e-reader. When I transferred that to KDP print the results were simply appalling – because the Kindle flexibility doesn’t translate to print. It may be 100% fine for fiction but for a lot of non-fiction it’s just dreadful. I see no reason for Amazon to shut Createspace. The simple fact is that if you supply a pdf cover and a pdf laid out book you’ve done all the work for them – because that’s pretty much all print on demand requires. All Kindle to Print does is perform that process for you – no more, no less. But if you want control over the finished article then Kindle to Print takes it away from you.

        1. I think there is some confusion here which is very important to clear up.

          1. Createspace is Amazon’s long-standing POD platform.

          2. KDP Print is the new POD platform which does almost everything Createspace does in very similar ways too – even down to the finished product.

          3. Createspace has a service which will convert your print book to an ebook and distribute it via KDP. This is what I think you are referring to, not the POD platform (which this post is about). I should also note I don’t recommend using this service.

        2. David – I am most definitely not at all confused. I have used both KDP and Createspace for years. Some books I publish on Createspace only – because I simply don’t want to publish them in an ebook format. Others I publish on Kindle only – because it’s cheap, cheerful and the size of book and content don’t warrant spending the time and effort to properly layout the contents. A few, mainly fiction, I publish on both. In EVERY case I make sure that the finished product works in the medium in which it is published. When KDP announced the idea of moving Kindle files to print I experimented with it. Frankly, it was appalling. True, I used a non-fiction book which I had already put out on Createspace – fully formatted etc. I re-formatted it for KDP – taking into account the facts about ebook publishing like size of device etc. as mentioned above. I then used the Kindle to Print option to see what it would look like as a book taken from a Kindle source. Simply put – the result was embarrassingly awful. Both Createspace and the KDP ‘print’ activities produce a print on demand book. There’s no magic about it. The POD system simply requires a load of both cover and content in PDF format. KDP to print may well work for simple, solely text based content – like a novel. But having actually tried it I can assure you that for non-fiction it was rubbish.

          BTW I couldn’t make this a reply to your posting as there was no ‘reply’ option. Therefore, this may well appear on your page before your statement.

        3. Hi Phil, I’m certainly confused at this point even if you aren’t, because by my reading at least, I’m not quite sure where you are talking about KDP ebooks, and where you are talking about KDP Print paperbacks.

          KDP Print’s POD service – when migrating from Createspace – pulls the interior files from Createspace. The exact same ones used in your paperback. It then prints them as KDP Print paperbacks in pretty much the exact same way which end up looking almost identical. There should be no reason your tables are messed around. These books aren’t read on screens, they are paperbacks.

          If you are starting a new book via KDP Print, then you should have a properly formatted print file, like you do for Createspace. You should most certainly not use the file you used to generate your KDP ebook – and Amazon doesn’t advise this either.

  29. KDP print has much tighter standards than Createspace. I’m migrating a couple of titles to start with, and they’re strict about text on cover bleeds. I also had pagination issues from using CS provided templates; I’m not sure whether that was an error I introduced or if it was there in the template to begin with. So I haven’t had any titles without issues, on books that have been up on CS for years.

    The good news is, there doesn’t seem to be a gap in availability whilst these problems get ironed out.

  30. Yeah, I’m kind of wondering about KDP. Last night I transferred over all my print titles that aren’t already set up with IngramSpark. This morning, I woke up to find email about “issues” with two of my titles: one claiming my cover doesn’t have bleed (it does), and another claiming the ISBN inside another title doesn’t match (it does). Which is stupid, because if that were accurate, neither title would be available through CreateSpace in the first place.23

  31. I transferred 18. Four had issues. I resubmitted all again, that fixed one of them. The other three they have me going around and around — cover is too large (it isn’t), barcode covers text (it doesn’t), images inside don’t bleed (there are no images inside). Very frustrating. I think their checker is buggy.

  32. If one merely wishes to use Lulu for creating hardback author copies, how do you avoid them allowing Author Solutions and their other distribution partners access to your book?

    1. Your information will be passed to Author Solutions and other partners regardless of your wishes. You can, in theory, just use them to create hardback author copies, but keep that in mind.

  33. Thanks for this practical and very helpful analysis. I’ve had my print books available on both CreateSpace and Ingram Spark since the books first launched. Since that’s the case, is there any reason for me to make the switch to KDP Print? I’m thinking I might want to do nothing and just stay with Ingram Spark as sole POD producer. I assume Amazon will still sell them.

    Thanks for any tips on that.

    1. The only reason to switch to KDP Print now is if you wish to get ahead of the (inevitable, I argue) change. However, whatever you decide on that front, I don’t recommend using Ingram to distribute to Amazon. There are a number of disadvantages, including Amazon regularly displaying your book as Out of Stock because it doesn’t wish to act as a free warehouse for Ingram (and Ingram doesn’t deliver books fast enough to Amazon for its liking).

  34. Greetings David,

    I just tried to migrate from Createspace to KDP and it failed on the first step (verifying Createspace account and books). I followed the link now prominently displayed on the KDP bookshelf, and began the process. After logging in to Createspace, things ground to a halt.

    I assume it should have redirected me back to KDP, but it didn’t. I have an email into support.

    I’m not going to stress too much about it. Perhaps try again later.

    With thanks,
    Lee

  35. Thank you for the article & assistance.

    One question: when I attempt to create my paperback with KDP, it is telling me my personally owned ISBN is already being used on another item. Is it true then that I will need to use a new ISBN for the KDP book even though I will be migrating it over from CS?

    Of course KDP is no help with this issue and has not replied whatsoever.

    1. Hi Megan – I think you are running into this issue either because you are trying to make a new KDP Print paperback with the same ISBN, or because the migration process changed as of this morning (just about to post a blog about it – then will update this post too).

      It’s getting slammed right now with people, but when it dies down try going here and using the new automated migration process: https://kdp.amazon.com/createspace-transfer

  36. **an update to the ISBN issue.**

    KDP replied to my question (!!) with the following statement. Looks like privately owned ISBN’s will have to await the geeen light from KDP.

    “Hello Megan,

    I understand that you’re unable to enter the ISBN that you’ve used in CreateSpace to publish your title on KDP.

    CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) are becoming one service. We’re making updates to allow you to move your books from CreateSpace to KDP in a few simple steps. Over the next few days, you’ll be able to start moving your titles from inside your CreateSpace Member Dashboard or KDP Bookshelf. We’ll send you an email as soon as you can start moving your books.“

  37. Don’t forget that royalty payments will now be delayed an extra month in KDP. And that’s an improvement? No, that’s Amazon keeping your cash for an extra 30 days.

  38. Hmm… I’m not getting the option to list my books as previously published in CreateSpace when logged into KDP. Is this just a glitch for me, or are they doing some kind of tiered rollout to different authors? I’d love to get started making the switch, but it’s literally not an option for me yet!

  39. This was so helpful, David. I can’t thank you enough. I love Createspace and have been fretting over this transition. I’m particular to the point of obsessive over my books and just couldn’t see how Amazon was just going to slide all my formatting, graphics, drop caps, fonts, etc. over to the new platform. Ugh. I have a little more courage now. And it makes sense to start soon so I can go slow… and obsess without having a meltdown. Ha ha. Thanks again.

  40. And what will happen to payments due from CreateSpace? Are they all going to be paid up immediately? (That was a joke.) But seriously, there could be a lot of money owing to authors. When will they get it?

    1. Hi thought I had posted the following yesterday but I can’t seem to see it anywhere so I’m trying again here. I am wondering if any of this is LEGAL! Can David help us on this point? CS always say they are a totally separate company from KDP – if you have any queries that “overlap” and it’s about, say, a print book not appearing on the Amazon site, you have to contact KDP. CS says it’s not their business. So how are they allowed to just transfer people’s files – without their permission – to another company? They might as well be transferring them all to IngramSpar or another competitor. Hey – perhaps that’s not such a bad idea! But I would like to have an answer to this. I think it’s pretty important for all authors.

      1. I’d be surprised if Amazon didn’t have all the legalaties straight before attempting something like this. Besides, the TOS of Createspace and KDP generally has such wide-ranging catch-all provisions that more or less allow Amazon to do whatever it likes.

  41. I’m not finding the window below the adult content question where they ask have you previously published this book through CreateSpace. And since I can’t click yes to that question, I’m stuck filling out and uploading everything like it’s a new book. So I stopped. Now I have a draft entry on my bookshelf which I can’t get rid of.

    Not sure what to do—maybe wait for the quicky CreateSpace option, where you answer a few questions and they migrate everything for you.

    1. In KDP beside your saved draft there are 3 dots, click on it and you should see the option to delete it. That’s what I did because I’m not sure if we have a draft if the process will work to transfer from CS (once we get their email because it looks like we can’t do it any other way now).

      1. There are three dots beside the CONTINUE SET UP button on the draft version of the book. When I click on the dots I get three options to continue editing the process to publish the book. I don’t see any option to delete. Thanks for the input—do you think I’m looking in the wrong place? I don’t see any other three dot option on the draft listing.

        I’m going to continue to monitor this process through the internet and author friends. At some point, I hope to find an option or directions that work for me. Worse case scenario is that I will have to reload the files on the print versions of my self-pubbed books.

  42. I tried doing this but never got asked the “Is this a Createspace book?” question. So I didn’t follow through to the end. Maybe it would be better for me to wait and let it do this automatically with the move so I don’t mess something up? Not sure what to do.

    1. I Just tried too since I haven’t gotten the email to move my books and didn’t see anywhere it asked if this is CS book so I stopped and deleted the saved draft. Guess we’re stuck now to wait until it’s our turn. Their process must have gotten slammed and couldn’t handle the workload.

    2. I had this experience, too. No option to choose that it was previously a Createspace book, so I deleted it and sent a help email. Also, I tried linking print and ebooks and that function didn’t work either, although both versions show up on the Amazon platform. Love the Amazon glitches!

  43. Update for Euro authors:

    Author copies are not quite as straightforward as billed. All author copies are actually printed up and sent from Germany, meaning huge delays on fulfillment and shipping (they say it’s five extra days but my experience is about 2 weeks extra). I have no paperbacks for a con this weekend which is incredibly disappointing.

    Order whatever you need early…

  44. I’ve been trying to transition one of my books from CreateSpace to KDP Print for over a week but although I start where you have me start — “Create Paperback” from my KDP dashboard — from there I enter Bizarro world. (I’ve emailed KDP help 3 or 4 times now, btw, and getting only a canned response from them.) After saving my metadata on the first screen (Paperback Details), I’m never asked if this is a CreateSpace title, but I go onto “Paperback Content” and from there I can’t go on. Can this be because I have my own ISBN (bought from Bowker) and not a CreateSpace ISBN? It can’t seem to reconcile my imprint name and the ISBN. Won’t even launch the Preview, let alone go on to the next step.

    I am pretty sure that I am the one doing something wrong, but I can’t figure out what. The thing that really throws me is that I’m never asked if my book is a CreateSpace title, which it is.

    Thanks for any suggestions.

    Martha

    1. I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. What you’re actually doing is creating a new paperback and not reconciling your CS paperback. I tried too and it looks like KDP has taken that option away so now we have to wait until we can do it via there 3 step process. Hopefully we’ll get some sort of email but best to check your CS account periodically (from the video I saw, in the messenger center we should get an email).

      1. Thank you, Francois! It makes a lot more sense now thinking that perhaps the options changed in the last few weeks.

    2. Hi Martha,
      It’s happened the same to me: I’m never asked if this is a CreateSpace title!
      So I went back on my steps, I erased al the data and I put a single “-” as the name of the book. Now I have an annoying Draft called “-” in my bookshelf but the book is secured in CreateSpace “My projects”!

      I don’t know why but… I don’t think that legally all this merge process is completely correct. I think, but I am not an expert, that a company could not oblige a customer (as we are) to “opt” only for a single other publishing service. It is not write in our contract with Createspace.

      If Createspace close… I have the right to opt out, vanish from Amazon… then, calmly, choose the right solution, that it could be KDP Print I don’t say no. But with my times.

      This hurry, this fear push us to opt for KDP in a no-return way and so acquire new not-so-happy customers.

      I think that Createspace can’t close if even one at least of its customers decide do not move to KDP. It could freeze its services, consenting only to an opt out, not accepting new titles but always continuing to honour the contract!

      It is simplier manage 100 customers than 1.000.000 so… here you are “the fear operation”.

      Please excuse me my awful English and for not so politically correct way to tell my thoughts!

      Have a nice day!

      Cordially.

    3. Yes, I am having the same problem Martha but it saved what I had completed into a draft. I went back to the dashboard and deleted the printed draft and now have to wait until it’s possible to upload. So if you have a draft copy saved, I suggest you delete it, in case it gets confused when the eventual transition is created. 🙂

      This whole dilemma would turn you to drink. Mine’s a Baileys 🙂

  45. Following up my earlier post: This morning I received an email from CreateSpace | KIndle DIrect Publishing notifying me of the changeover. The email also indicated that if I wanted to make the change myself that it would be easy to do. So I clicked on the link which opened in my CreateSpace account and sure enough, the pop-up window popped up! I have to say the migration process was ridiculously easy. I pressed a few buttons, and all my paperback titles appeared. I confirmed that these were my books, then pressed another button which took me to Kindle Direct Publishing. All the print titles were listed correctly with their ebook versions. Whew!

    I still have that annoying print book (partial listing) that I tried to move to KDP earlier and quit because I got stuck in a Catch 22 loop that I knew was just wrong. Plus—unlike the rest of you, I don’t seem to have a delete option. For now, I’m just happy to have all print books live and listed together with their ebooks.

  46. I’m glad to hear the process was easy for you. I still have not received such email, but hopefully the process will go as smooth. Have you tried to contact KDP about the catch 22 issue to see if they can delete it for you?

  47. Having tried manually to move a Createspace book to KDP, and finding it one of the most appalling experiences ever, I clicked on the appropriate button to move all my books from CS to KDP, just to see what happened. This time, about 2 minutes of waiting and everything seems to a) have moved no problem and b) automatically linked print and Kindle versions where such exist.

    If you have books in Createspace it seems the way to go. I am, however, regally p*ssed off that Amazon will now be holding on to payments for an extra 30 days.

  48. I’ve had the same issue today.
    Only thing I can think of is that the ISBN on the dashboard has no hyphens while the ISBN on my book’s copyright page does. I’m going to replace the hyphens with spaces and see what happens.

  49. We have just received our first proof copy from KDP Print – for which we had to pay, of course, and we wanted to use it for photography etc. It has a printed band right around the cover, front and back, about 75 mm down from the top, right through the title, with “Not For Resale” repeated around it. And no ISBN and barcode on the back, just their own barcode of some sort. Is this KDP’s “standard” proof? If you’ve paid for a printed book, it should be exactly as supplied, NOT with their stuff scrawled over it! I think this is disgusting. Anyone have the same on theirs??

  50. We have just received our first proof copy from KDP Print – which thankfully seems to be reasonably OK – for which we had to pay, of course, and we wanted to use it for photography etc. It has a printed band right around the cover, front and back, about 75 mm down from the top, right through the title, with “Not For Resale” repeated around it. And no ISBN and barcode on the back, just their own barcode of some sort. Is this KDP’s “standard” proof? If you’ve paid for a printed book, it should be exactly as supplied, NOT with their stuff scrawled over it! I think this is disgusting. Anyone have the same on theirs??

    1. Unfortunately, that is now how proof copies look with KDP Print (which is either noted in the post above or perhaps in my follow up post on this). You can get author copies without that silly band but you have to order those via your KDP dashboard (same price). Oh and you can only order author copies after a book goes live, which is a little annoying…

  51. Having been a very happy Amazon customer for 20 years and the same with CreateSpace for nearly 10, I had positive expectations for the transition — but boy, was I wrong.

    Aside from the complaints listed above, there’s an even more egregious problem:

    ** KDP doesn’t support certain languages. **

    When I’d read this “warning” ahead of the transition, I stupidly assumed it applied only to Kindle books, since that was KDP’s longtime bread and butter. Surely, they just had not updated the terms and conditions, and this didn’t apply to print books. Besides, we’re providing a font-embedded PDF, so why would it matter what language it’s in?

    Well, for whatever reason, it does. My assumption based on experience so far is that KDP is *not* using the press-ready PDFs we upload, but instead they’re converting them for whatever stupid reason. And this is what prevents “unsupported languages” from being printed.

    So, now hundreds — thousands? — of former CreateSpace authors/publishers are in total shit because they can’t carry on. They can continue to sell any of these unsupported-language books that had come from CreateSpace, but they *cannot* update them nor can they upload new titles. Were you in the middle of publishing a series of several English-Chinese books, as is the case with a client of mine? Well, too frickin’ bad.

    It would be one thing if this CreateSpace-KDP transition were sudden and unexpected. But this has been in the works for a long time. That something like “unsupported languages” (such rare and exotic languages as Russian, Chinese, and Japanese) is bringing people’s publishing goals to a grinding halt is completely inexcusable. That KDP cannot even provide even a rough estimate to this being fixed is insulting.

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