Brilot Press

Amazon

Amazon Confirms that CreateSpace and KDP Print will Merge into a Single Platform

 

Not in the least bit unexpected, Amazon has informed authors that its CreateSpace platform is set to merge with KDP Print soon. This has been on the horizon for more than 18 months since Amazon launched KDP Print in 2016.

Authors have been receiving an alert notification on their CreateSpace dashboards over recent days and many established indie authors had already begun the process of migrating their books before the news was confirmed.

Further details of the migration process are available here on KDP’s main help page. The intention appears to be to offer all the same CreateSpace services/benefits on KDP Print, though it is not entirely clear yet if authors will be able to avail on the same wholesale book discounts.

 

Hello,

We’re excited to announce that CreateSpace (CSP) and Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) will become one service, and in the coming days, we will give CreateSpace members the ability to move their account and titles. To ensure a quality experience, we will add links to the CreateSpace member dashboard in phases so authors may see it at different times. As a reminder, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) now offers Expanded Distribution to sell your paperbacks to physical bookstores in the US, as well as the ability to sell your paperback books on Amazon.ca and Amazon.com.au (Amazon.mx coming soon). With these features, KDP’s paperback distribution will be on par with CreateSpace’s distribution. KDP also offers features that aren’t available on CreateSpace. These include the ability to purchase ads to promote paperbacks on Amazon.com and locally printed author copies in Europe.

As a result of these enhancements to KDP and our ongoing efforts to provide a more seamless experience for managing your paperback and digital books, CreateSpace and KDP will become one service. On KDP, your paperbacks will still be printed in the same facilities, on the same printers, and by the same people as they were on CreateSpace.

In a few weeks, we’ll start automatically moving your CreateSpace books to KDP. Your books will remain available for sale throughout the move and you’ll continue to earn royalties. Once we begin this process you’ll be unable to edit existing titles or create new titles on CreateSpace.

If you have a release planned soon or you would like to start the move yourself, we are making updates that will allow you to move your entire catalog in just a few steps. During this transition, you can contact KDP customer support by email and access phone support in English.

There are a few payment and printing fee differences associated with the move. Going forward you will be paid on KDP’s payment schedule. CreateSpace pays monthly royalties 30 days after the end of the month in which they were earned while KDP pays monthly royalties approximately 60 days after the end of the month in which they were earned. As a result, you’ll be paid in September for any royalties earned in August on CreateSpace and be paid in October for any royalties earned in August on KDP. In addition, some low-page count books will see an increase in printing fees when they are printed in the UK and EU. This affects a small number of titles. If your titles are affected by this change, you will receive a separate email on this topic. Learn more about KDP’s printing fees here.

To learn more about the move and review the latest, visit here. We’ll be in touch with more updates in the coming weeks.

It is still Day 1 for independent publishing. As Amazon’s recent shareholder letter noted, there are more than a 1,000 authors who earn more than a $100,000 a year from their work with us. We could not be more optimistic about the future of independent publishing and this change will allow us to innovate faster for you.

Best Regards,

The CreateSpace and KDP Team

Book Marks

Literary Hub Launches a New Book Review Aggregator Site BOOK MARKS

Site Aims to be the Rotten Tomatoes for Books

 

Literary Hub has launched a new section of their site — Book Marks — to showcase book reviews from the most important and active outlets of literary journalism.

“Book Marks will help readers find books they will love by giving them access to the critical discourse that is an essential part of our ecosystem,” said John Freeman, LitHub’s executive editor and former president of the National Book Critics Circle.

While online readers’ reviews robust conversations about books and foster new and diverse book-loving communities, it is also valuable to read what professional critics have to say about a title. Book Marks will aggregate reviews from more than 70 sources—newspapers, magazines, and websites—and average them into a letter grade, as well as linking back to their source. Each book’s cumulative grade functions as both a general critical , and, more significantly, as an introduction to a range of voices and opinions that make up the world of American literary criticism.

“We understand it is difficult to summarize the nuance and complexity of a review into a letter grade,” said Literary Hub Editor-in-Chief Jonny Diamond. “But we believe that Book Marks will lead more readers to reviews, and amplify critics’ voices in a way that benefits readers and writers alike.”

Visitors to http://lithub.com/bookmarks can browse this year’s books, delve deep into critical reviews, and offer their own thoughts. “Book Marks will help readers discover books, while spotlighting books that deserve more attention,” said Literary Hub Publisher Andy Hunter. “We’re bringing it all together in one place.” Literary Hub has over 180 committed partners, from large publishers to small bookstores, and features a mix of content contributed by those partners as well as original material, including author interviews, features, excerpts, and essays.

Through consistent and engaging editorial content, LitHub has quickly acquired a wide audience and has become the go-to site for all things literary. “Book Marks is an important step for Literary Hub as we grow into the definitive online destination for book lovers,” said the site’s co-founder, Morgan Entrekin, Publisher of Grove Atlantic. Literary Hub was launched in April 2015 and quickly grew its audience from 150,000 to 1.2 million monthly visitors in its first nine months. The site was conceived by Entrekin and ASME Hall of Fame editor Terry McDonell, as a daily destination for readers, from self-described book-lovers to casual readers. They collaborated with the nonprofit Electric Literature to develop and launch the site in April, 2015.

HOW BOOK MARKS WORKS
“We scour the most important outlets of literary journalism in America each day and assign their book reviews a letter grade. When a book is reviewed at least three times, those reviews are averaged into a result at Book Marks.”

 

ABOUT LITERARY HUB
“Literary Hub is an organizing principle in the service of literary culture, a single, trusted, daily source for all the , ideas and richness of contemporary literary life. There is more great literary content online than ever before, but it is scattered, easily lost—with the help of its editorial partners, Lit Hub is a site readers can rely on for smart, engaged, entertaining writing about all things books. Each day—alongside original content and exclusive excerpts—Literary Hub is proud to showcase an editorial feature from one of its many partners from across the literary spectrum: publishers big and small, journals, bookstores, and non-profits.”