You are an author and you wrote, Plenty of Catfish: Volume I (The Fishnet Series). The basis of your story is about catfishing, which is a deceptive manner of creating an intimate relationship for the purpose of deceiving someone. How can you decide as to whether a Standard or Expanded Distribution platform is ideal for your book? You’ve come to the right place.

You know that, as an author, it is important to educate yourself on all of the various aspects of being an author. You’ve decided to use the Createspace (Amazon.com) platform. As you begin to navigate through the sections you saw that there were two distribution channels Standard and Expanded within the Project Homepage profile.  

In this article, you will be provided with an overview of the program. Be mindful that there is so much more to this program. The goal here is to provide you with the basic information in order to make a sound decision pertaining to the distribution channels available within the Createspace platform.

Once you are in the Createspace Project Homepage profile you will see the following sections that need to be completed in order to get exposure for your book:

Create

Setup

Review

Distribute

Sales and Marketing

For the purpose of clarity, we will only focus on the Distribute section. Under the Distribute section you will see:

Channels

Pricing

Cover Finish

Description

Publish on Kindle

To make the process easier to understand we will talk about only the first two sections: Channels and Pricing. It is recommended that you set your pricing first so that you can best gauge how the pricing rolls out within the two distribution channels.

Under the Createspace umbrella, there are two distribution channels Standard and Expanded. The Standard Distribution is a channel that allows your book to obtain exposure virtually throughout the world which includes the following markets:

Amazon.com

Amazon.ca (includes Canada)

Amazon Europe (includes France, German, United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain)

CreateSpace eStore (allows you the ability to create your own eStore to directly sell your products)

Expanded Distribution is a channel that allows your book to obtain exposure in a more traditional fashion which includes the following markets:

Bookstore and Online Retailers (an example is Barnes and Noble (brick and mortar), as well as, bn.com (online))

CreateSpace Direct (includes your community or Mom & Pop bookstores)

You may have heard that a lot of the brick and mortar bookstores do not like to purchase books from the CreateSpace (Amazon.com) platform which is true. Now for the sake of explanation of the Standard and Expanded Distribution Channels here’s how it works:

Book List Price: $29.95 (Pricing)

Your Royalty - Standard Distribution (excluding CreateSpace eStore): $12.78

Your Royalty - CreateSpace eStore: $18.77

Your Royalty – Expanded Distribution: $6.79

Your pricing, target market, and royalties are the primary focus that you should concentrate on to determine which markets would best suit your needs. You can either chose only one or both of these distributions channels they are free.