Amazon has two branches of self-publishing: Createspace and Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). As an author you can choose to publish with one or both of these companies, depending on how you want to reach your readers.
Createspace is a direct to print company. You format your book to fit one of their templates and upload a pdf version of it to their website. When someone buys a copy of it they print it. Apparently the quality isn't the best, but it looks and feels like a traditionally published book.
KDP is the direct to Kindle (or Kindle app) company. The formatting for Kindle is different to print. I have had a hard time trying to format my book as I use a Mac. When I convert pages over to ePub format the page breaks disappear on the Kindle previewer! I downloaded other software to fix that issue, called Sigil, which it did. But then I found that Sigil inserted extra spaces between my paragraphs. Ahhhh! So I have gone around and around for days.
I went back to Createspace how to pages and I found that if I publish on Createspace, for $79 they will format my book for kindle for me! It is SO worth that cost. And the other day I popped into Kroger for some milk and bought 'a few other things' and ended up spending $160. It was so easy to spend that amount on food, so why would I quibble over half that amount to save me confusion and headache?
This weekend I hope to start working towards publishing on Createspace!
Oh, and I have a cover too! I love the book cover. I will post a photo of that in my next blog post. (SO excited about my cover!!!)
