Amazon’s CreateSpace Will Stop Offering Author Services This Year
by STEVEN SPATZ, President of BookBaby. BookBaby has offices in Portland, OR and Philadelphia, PA to meet the printed and eBook needs of thousands of self-publishing authors around the globe.
Sometimes being bigger is not always better for the customer. We just learned that our friends at Amazon’s CreateSpace are getting out of the author services business. That means writers need to go elsewhere for vital author services, including editing, cover design, and book formatting.
The statement from Amazon, as reported by South Carolina’s The Post and Courier: Updated
“After a thorough review of our service offerings, we’ve made the decision to discontinue CreateSpace’s paid professional editing, design and marketing services. We will work closely with impacted employees through this transition to help them find new roles within the company or assist them with pursuing opportunities outside the company.”
Frankly, I’m not surprised. Amazon is interested in big business — REALLY big business. It’s difficult for a mega-mammoth company like Amazon to work one-on-one with the individual would-be author. That’s not the strength of their business.
That’s where we fit in. Working directly with self-published authors IS the core strength of BookBaby. In this highly digital world we live in, BookBaby prides itself on the analog nature of our business — people talking with people — to help authors self publish with printed books and eBooks they can be proud of.