What Happened to CreateSpace?! | CreateSpace Merging with KDP

About this video

Dale Roberts reports on Amazon’s late August 2018 announcement that CreateSpace would merge into KDP Print, on a ‘move or be moved’ basis. CreateSpace stopped taking new uploads, and some authors who stayed were forcibly migrated with no say. He walks through the reported problems: missing titles (contact the KDP Print team and report the title, which is why authors should keep title IDs, ISBNs, and ASINs in one place), missing covers (usually they propagate within a few days; escalate after a week or two), missing categories (CreateSpace’s BISAC browse paths that don’t exist in KDP Print are lost, though books can be re-filed), and lost keywords — some forcibly merged authors lost all their keywords. He notes CreateSpace allowed five keyword slots of up to 25 characters, while KDP allows seven slots of 50 characters, so authors should update keywords after the merge to add the extra slots. On the upside, KDP Print accepts much more HTML in book descriptions than CreateSpace did, and he points viewers to a tutorial at selfpublishingwithdale.com/HTML hosted by his assistant Ava Fails. He warns that keyword-stuffed titles CreateSpace tolerated may pass unnoticed until you edit and save the title in KDP, at which point KDP pushes back; he expects eventual audits and advises fixing or delisting such titles. Throughout, his advice for slow uploads, rejections, or cover problems is to contact the responsive KDP Print team politely and patiently.

Key takeaways

• Amazon announced the CreateSpace-to-KDP Print merge in late August 2018; authors who didn’t move voluntarily were forcibly migrated.
• Common merge problems included missing titles, missing covers, lost BISAC categories, and wiped keywords — keep title IDs, ISBNs, ASINs, and keywords recorded in one place to report issues.
• KDP allows seven keyword slots of 50 characters each versus CreateSpace’s five slots of 25 characters, so update keywords after merging to use the extra space.
• KDP Print accepts far more HTML in book descriptions than CreateSpace did, making richer product-page descriptions possible.
• Keyword-stuffed titles tolerated by CreateSpace can trigger KDP pushback when edited and saved; fix or delist them to protect the account.

Episode details: published December 12, 2018 · 7:58 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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