My Small Publisher Amazon And CreateSpace Thoughts For The Day

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

In the next few weeks with two more books I'll have helped to publish a total of six books over the last 2-3 years as an independent publisher. Without the advancement of technologies like Amazon and CreateSpace none of this would have been possible. While it's not a one button solution and you still have many pieces to each project from editing to formatting to timelines to covers to print sizes to contracts to press to sales to finances (some of these managed throughout the lifecycle of a book)--these technologies have helped to level the playing field so that authors who typically may not have gotten a shot to put out their voices - and not because they aren't good writers - can put out their work. Even though it's big bad Amazon in some ways (because in other ways it's not), they've been the disruptors to the traditional and not always encompassing of other cultures and peoples publishing community.

There's on-demand printing so no need for inventory and cost of inventory, control over pricing, wholesale pricing/publication so you can work with retail shops and physical orders or bundles, promotional and discount support via coupon management for resellers, reporting and analysis tools - even though they can still get better and easier (for instance the reporting tools in Amazon need to have longer reporting periods and more summary reports and snapshots) - they are a great set of tools for an independent publisher, author, or group of authors.

In that way, we have tools to help get out voices in the printed form which has typically been dominated by what could sometimes be referred to as the minority majority in the sense that all voices exist.