More About My CreateSpace Experience

CreateSpace offers a variety of ways to publish your book: from do it yourself to let them do it all. For Where Love Once Lived, I selected an approach that includes everything except the basic edit and the marketing video. I felt I was past the need for a basic edit and didn't know what I'd do with a video. However, I have recently seen the way videos are being used in marketing and may want to add that as well. This is the support I purchased from CreateSpace:

• LCCN Assignment
• Promotional Text Creation
• Comprehensive Copyediting
• Total Design Freedom Custom Book Interior
• Signature Book Cover
• Press Release Creation
• Press Release Distribution

The LCCN assignment was completed quickly. The promotional text creation is done. This includes book descriptions and author bios of various lengths for business cards, brochures, and copy for the back cover. Comprehensive copyediting is scheduled to be finished by close of business today.

I'm very pleased with what's been done by CreateSpace so far. However, what bugs me is that they won't start on the cover design or finalizing the book interior design or press release creation until copyediting is complete. When I asked if we could start on the book cover design this is the response I received:

Hello Sidney,

Thank you for your inquiry regarding the Signature Book Cover service for "Where Love Once Lived."

The Signature Book Cover service will not move forward until the Comprehensive Copyediting service has been completed.

I hope this information is helpful. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns.

Kind regards,
Stephen
Account Management
CreateSpace

I contacted them by phone to ask why, and was told they can only do one step at a time. I worked as a project manager several times during my career in information technology and we always looked for ways to overlap activities to move the project to a quicker completion. As long as an activity wasn't dependent on the completion of another or didn't require the assignment of the same personnel, we'd do the jobs simultaneously. This refusal by CreateSpace to work on more than one activity at a time worries me. However, after today, we should be past the lengthy copyediting step and the publishing process should move faster. I'm not sure what the next step will be. I'll let you know soon.