CreateSpace

So it's been on the market for 12 years.

It was published by CreateSpace, which is owned by Amazon.

Oh, Amazon.

Yeah.

It's now called Amazon KDP, but it was previously called CreateSpace.

And I'm certain they changed the name because there were so many bad reviews about it online.

But now there are tons of bad reviews about Amazon KDP as well.

So all you're going to do is download this template here.

You got one page of instructions, how to publish it on Amazon Kindle Direct Press, Amazon Print, which is CreateSpace, and ACX, which is Audible.

It's a Word doc.

Really, really simple to do.

They...

There was a th- there was a company called CreateSpace-

Yeah

... which was not part of Amazon, which you could send them a, a digital book, you know, a PDF-

There were some other things that don't even exist now.

Like when I published my first book, I published it on CreateSpace, which was bought by Amazon.

But it's really one of the first places where you could step outside of the publishing house industry and independently publish stuff online.

I use that same platform.

There have been so many tools that have evolved over the years.

I mean, you just take the story of CreateSpace, right? CreateSpace was an organization to help people self-publish.

It was purchased by Amazon and went by CreateSpace for a number of years before they rolled that into what is now known as KDP.

So just noticing the evolution of the different companies and tools and services that are out there can show you that publishing has shifted dramatically.

It used to be that print books, e-books, and audio books all sort of operated independently.

Yeah, and what's cool about the length that we've been working together is we've been able to see all of the changes across all of the years.

Man, I remember when CreateSpace was like taken over by KDP and I was like, this is not going to be good.

I was all freaked out and like where, you know, what does this look like for authors and stuff like that? And now I look back at KDP and I'm like, Like that was terrible.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just want to get into like the mechanics of self-publishing.

You used CreateSpace, but did you use a third party platform to help you get the book jacket and all of that kind of stuff?

I did everything through them.

I don't know if it's changed.