CreateSpace. Love it or hate it, the merge is upon us!
CREATESPACE, MEET KDP
Actually, the merge has been upon us for a long time now. I got the announcement email from CreateSpace back in September. It said, “In the coming weeks, we’ll start automatically moving your CreateSpace books to KDP”. I was, honestly – and perhaps lackadaisically – fine with that. I’m one of the few folks out there who had very little complaint about CreateSpace. About KDP, too, really. For the most part, I have found that as long as you do your research beforehand, many of the hurdles and pitfalls take care of themselves. And, being quite Type A, I always do research.
I know what you’re thinking. My lack of motivation to make the move myself was pretty un-Type A, right? Well, here’s the thing: I was curious. How would they handle it? What would happen? I also wasn’t worried because I do my best to keep excellent backups of all my files. I had extra copies of everything that lived on CreateSpace and was already considering uploading it all to KDP. So, in my mind, I was already halfway there if everything went to hell and I needed to intervene.
YO, WHERE’S MY BOOKS AT?
Fast forward to the end of October. I don’t know if my definition of “coming weeks” is ramped up by my oft-manic tendencies, but I decided I didn’t want to wait any longer. There didn’t appear to be a single shift on my end between CreateSpace and KDP other than the addition of this little nugget:
Time to take matters into my own hands.
I’d done my research, which made me wary of the change. There have been plenty of negative reactions online to the move. Most specifically, I’ve seen a lot of people mentioning issues with the “three steps” part of the process. Is it as easy as KDP wants you to believe? Or is there more to the story?
That’s what I wanted to find out.
HOW IT WORKS:
Theoretically, it should be this simple.
Step 1:
Log in to your CreateSpace account to let KDP recognize and access your files there.
Step 2:
Log in to KDP to link the accounts (in my case, since I already had both).
Step 3:
Magic
HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED:
I clicked that big gold button, and it opened CreateSpace for me to log in:
I logged in and got this screen:
It had my account info and images of several of the books in my account as well as a total count of the books under my account on CreateSpace. That was all correct, so I kept going.
Next, I was prompted to do a fresh login on my KDP account:
The system quickly found and linked up with the correct account again:
That successful link lit up the gold button on Step 3 – if you look back at the three-step screenshot above, you’ll note this button was previously greyed out and unclickable. Here it is, all bright and shiny:
I clicked the button and got this message:
It had a cute little fountain pen graphic, but I guess I missed it in my screenshot. I am ashamed.
That message changed, after a brief moment, to this one:
So…that seemed super promising! And, as it promised, I was redirected momentarily.
Sure enough, when I took a peek at my listings, I had all the books I expected to have. Bonus points: all the Kindle and paperback versions I’d previously linked on Amazon were actually linked. Hopefully, that means no more having to swap between services to see what’s what! All my paperbacks used to live on CreateSpace. As soon as I looked back at my KDP bookshelf, they showed up right along with their ebook counterparts. Here’s a shot of that new view:
However, this made one thing very apparent. There were a few books I hadn’t previously linked. Luckily, it appears KDP has a new fix for that. Many of you may be familiar with the older, somewhat cumbersome (or mostly just annoying) process of having to manually link book editions. Here’s the new option:
I’ve used this option to link everything that was previously unlinked. So far, I haven’t seen a change in the Amazon store, but I’m watching and waiting…
Also, for anything linked incorrectly, there’s also this option (located in the features under the … button):
I haven’t had to use that feature yet, but I’ll report back if I end up needing to put it to use.
So…
IS THE CREATESPACE MOVE ACTUALLY SIMPLE?
The answer is yes and no. Yes, it was as easy as the three steps they offered to get the books into KDP. No, you’re not quite done once the books are in their new home. It’s time to take a peek at each of your paperback listings to make sure nothing has decided to walk on the wild side in the transition. Here’s an excellent article from Alli’s Self Publishing Advice blog to take you through the finer details of the process. I know I’ve glossed over a lot of it, but this post is about my personal experience only. Plenty of experts have already explained how to fix the bugs and issues, so I highly recommend you look to them for your own CreateSpace to KDP move.
And whether you decide to make a manual move or wait until the imaginary book elves do it for you, make sure to read through that ALLi article anyway. You’ll want to make sure your listings follow the right rules. You’ll also want to ensure your books are in perfect shape so you can keep those readers coming back for more!
Over to you! Have you made the move? If so, how did it go? If not, what are you waiting for? Let me know in the comments below!
Until next time, cheers and happy writing!
