You probably don’t care about this, but here is a brief history of CreateSpace, which was Amazon’s primary print-on-demand service for publishing paperbacks from 2007-2018.
CreateSpace emerged from Amazon’s acquisition and consolidation of two separate services in the mid-2000s:
- BookSurge: A print-on-demand publishing company founded in 2000 and acquired by Amazon in 2005.
- CustomFlix: A DVD on-demand service also acquired by Amazon in 2005.
Following these acquisitions, Amazon combined the two services and rebranded them under the CreateSpace name in 2007. This marked the official launch of CreateSpace as the unified, Amazon-owned platform for independent authors and filmmakers to publish and distribute books, DVDs, and other media.
CreateSpace was a self-publishing platform owned by Amazon that primarily focused on print-on-demand paperbacks. In 2018, Amazon announced that it would be closing CreateSpace and migrating its services into Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), which had traditionally focused on ebooks. The integration allowed authors to manage both their ebook and paperback editions in one place rather than using two separate platforms. By late 2018, all CreateSpace accounts and titles were transferred to KDP Print, and CreateSpace was officially retired.
Key Points About the Transition:
- Unified Platform: Authors now have a single dashboard under KDP to handle both ebook and paperback publishing.
- Similar Services and Royalties: KDP Print offers comparable royalty structures and global distribution options that CreateSpace did, including listings on Amazon’s international stores.
- No Additional Costs: The migration was free and authors’ previously published titles were automatically moved over. Print quality, manufacturing, and shipping processes remained largely unchanged.
- New Tools and Features: KDP Print introduced some improved reporting features, a more streamlined publishing workflow, and the ability to manage all versions of a book (ebook and print) in one place.
Basically, CreateSpace was essentially merged into KDP Print to simplify the self-publishing experience on Amazon.