Lulu vs. CreateSpace (again), or It's tough being a Canadian

So, I've actually sold a few copies of rtfm* through Lulu and CreateSpace (the CreateSpace sales reflect people buying the book from Amazon). This lets me talk about, you know, getting paid.

In previous posts, I've suggested that Lulu was more flexible than CreateSpace and that CreateSpace was more rigid. This distinction continues to be reflected in their methods of payment.

Lulu has two ways to get your royalties to you: They'll send you a cheque or they'll deposit your money in a PayPal. account. I picked PayPal and, sure enough, every month my royalties appear magically in my PayPal account (where it just as magically disappears, transformed into a book or CD from ebay). OK, not every month--but every month where I actually make a sale.

CreateSpace also offers two options: They'll send you a cheque or deposit money directly in your account (my first thought: how quaint). The problem is that CreateSpace insists that you have a US taxpayer identification number before it will give you your money. So, as a Canadian, I have a couple of extra hoops to leap through with CreateSpace that I don't have with Lulu.

I'm sure that CreateSpace has a good reason for this (though Lulu disagrees). As a technical writer and software developer, I have a number of US clients (actually, 90% of my clients are in the US) but I've managed to get money out of them without having a US taxpayer id. I've usually had to provide a W-8BEN form to my US clients and I sent one to CreateSpace. However, without a US tax id, CreateSpace is uninterested in sending me my money.

So, if Lulu is more understanding of international users and more flexible then why use CreateSpace? One word: Amazon. Using Lulu, to get my book on Amazon.com, I'd have had to pay $100 (last time I checked). The fee actually covers much more than just getting your book on Amazon but that was all that I was interested in. With CreateSpace, getting on Amazon.com is effectively free.

So, if CreateSpace gives you what you want, why use Lulu? Again, a single word answer: e-book. CreateSpace does not have an e-book option (or I couldn't find it). I suspect this is to avoid stepping on the toes of Amazon's Kindle but that's pure supposition on my part. While I'd love to have my book available through Kindle, unfortunately Amazon requires that you have a:

• US mailing address
• A US taxpayer identification number
• A US chequing account (apparently sending you a cheque is not an option for Kindle)
  

I could make the first two happen but, for the money involved, I'm not prepared to try and open a whole new bank account.


It's an international world out there...except at Amazon.

Reading or read:

• The Unfortunate Marriage of Azeb Yitades by Nega Mezlekia
• Poems, 1957-1967 by James Dickey

Publishing History

I started creating RTFM on Lulu.com but (after, I admit, a cursory search) I realized that getting my book onto Amazon was--apparently--going to (a) require an upfront payment, (b) be more difficult than I thought. Since I'd worked through the whole "digital publishing" thing, I figured that I was ready to try a different tool (also the costs of shipping a book to Canada seemed exorbitant: $10.00 for a single copy though, of course, larger orders reduces the cost-per-unit). I ordered one copy (which is now on its way to the Library of Canada) and started exploring.

Since I wanted to get on Amazon, I went to Amazon. Their preferred provided seems to CreateSpace so I started working through them. The big change was getting the format of the cover right. I also had to change the name of the book from "RTFM*" to "rtfm*" because ClearSpace doesn't allow you to have a title that's ALL CAPS. Fortunately, I didn't have a problem changing the name to lower case. However, I created another problem for myself: My name.

I entered the name of the author as "Mr. Peter Hunter Vogel" which, apparently, can't be changed at this point (probably a more accurate statement: I haven't figured out how to change the author's name). ClearSpace is unhappy about the name on the cover ("Peter Vogel") not matching the name I entered as the author. I tried deleting the book and starting again but, sadly, because I had assigned my book an ISBN number, I can't re-load the book.

It will be interesting to see if ClearSpace can dig me out of this hole.

Started reading:

• Anne Sexton, 45 Mercy Street
• The Rough-Face Girl