Hands on with Amazon’s Print On Demand

The Amazon Print On Demand service always seemed pretty cool and something I wanted to try out on The Uneven Passage of Time. It is my most reviewed book so I thought it would be more likely that someone might buy it. (Please take a look, I spent spent $30 on the design and am now impoverished!

I mentioned recently that I’d hired someone to do a professional book cover for me. The results were awesome. At least, I think so. As part of the purchase I got a 3D rendering and also a double page spread, designed for a paperback book cover.

The things that had been holding me back before now were twofold. One was that my cover designs were crap. It turns out I can draw and do digital art, but I can’t design for shit. The other was that I don’t know how to create a two page spread. It is probably easy but it required learning and my brain was full.

Now there was nothing holding me back bar my rampant lethargy. After a lot of coffee, I did it and it was so piss easy, I feel bad for not having done it before. It is essentially the same process for uploading a book to Kindle but with a couple of other selections.

I had to pick paper quality, which was my favourite – default. I had to pick book size – again default. Upload the cover. And then the big one, the price. The printing cost me $2.15 per book. Or thereabouts. Add in other expenses and Amazon’s cut and I get a whopping 29 cents.

As I said though, it was an experiment. Not for the money. Which is good because I‘ve sold 12 copies in a few days and still made pittance.

The main issues I have, and which I will change, are that the book is slightly bigger than a normal paperback. It’s the size you get when there is the first run of a new novel but instead of a hardback, the publishers go for a slightly larger paperback instead. The other is that I didn’t put in page numbers. I guess I should.

Other than these minor issues, the whole Print On Demand experience has been great. Now I just need to finish my novel and I know exactly what to do. I hope this has been helpful.

If you want to see what my book looks like the easiest and cheapest way is to buy a copy.