A short YouTube guide by Julie Broad (BookLaunchers) comparing IngramSpark and CreateSpace for self-publishing. The video outlines five key considerations authors should weigh: ISBN ownership, setup/change fees, book formats (hardcover availability), printing cost and quality, and distribution reach (bookstore and international availability). The speaker recommends choosing based on the author’s distribution goals.
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If you're an author, you may be trying to choose between IngramSpark and CreateSpace and you're not sure which one to go with. Well, stick around. I've got five key considerations to help you choose. Hey there. I'm Julie broad with book launchers.com if you're self publishing a book, you've probably narrowed it down to do I go with CreateSpace or IngramSpark? But it might be hard at first to figure out which company you should use as your print on demand supplier. Well, here's five things to think about. First of all, let's back up a little bit. IngramSpark is owned by Lightning Source. They started IngramSpark to help self publishing authors because a lot of them were coming to their bigger brand, Lightning Source, which was really geared towards bigger publishing companies. CreateSpace is a division of Amazon, also dedicated to to self publishing authors. So what's the real difference? First of all, with CreateSpace, you don't have to buy your own ISBN number, which for some authors saving that $125 that it costs you to get an ISBN number is very appealing. Now I do recommend you check out my other videos on ISBN numbers because I highly recommend you get your own ISBN number regardless. But for some authors, they've done really well using the CreateSpace ISBN number and it hasn't been an issue for them. Lightning Source insists you bring your own ISBN number. Number two is the setup fee for CreateSpace. It's free. All changes are free. For Lightning Source's IngramSpark, it's $49 to set up and $49 for each change. So if you upload a manuscript and then realize there's an error later, you you're going to have to pay them another $49 for that change. So that's another consideration. Number three is the book types you can print. Both offer a wide array of sizes that you can print. But if you want to have a hardcover book, your only choice is to go with IngramSpark. CreateSpace does not offer the opportunity to print hardcover books. Number four is the cost to print. And I'll say a subset of that is the quality. The quality of printing a book at IngramSpark and CreateSpace is comparable. I would say IngramSpark is a little bit higher quality and that reflects in the cost to print. When we priced out a 6 by 9 book, which is a common nonfiction sized book in Ingramspark and CreateSpace, the difference was about 35 cents. So that book was about $4.20 to print. With Ingramspark and $3.85 to print with CreateSpace. 35 cent difference doesn't really seem like that much, but. But if you're printing thousands and thousands of copies, 35 cents will add up. But to me, the fifth consideration is the absolute most important for you, and that is distribution. Where do you want your book? If you want it, only on Amazon and that's all you care about. CreateSpace is a fantastic company to work with. They have great customer service. And of course, because they're owned by Amazon, your book is going to be published on Amazon. However, if you want distribution anywhere else, even international Amazons in some cases. But if you want bookstore distribution, you want independent bookstores to buy your book, you really have to print through IngramSpark. Because while Amazon or CreateSpace says they have worldwide distribution and it is available to bookstores, the reality is that the costs for a bookstore to buy it from CreateSpace are just so high that they will not buy your book from CreateSpace. So if you want wider distribution, your option is to go with ingramspark. So hopefully that helps. Those are five really important considerations. You got to take a look at your goals for your book and figure out what's going to matter the most to you and then choose between the two companies. If you like these tips, give this video a thumbs up. And of course, subscribe to the channel so you catch all the videos in the future. See you in the next video. Bye. IngramSpark is part of Lightning Store Stores. Okay, but stick around because I already told you, stick around. You're already here. Okay, Using for some. Okay. At Createspace, it was $3.85. Yeah, I got it right.
