CREATESPACE: MY LAST-DITCH EFFORT
Third in a series, this is. I’ve just sent the following to CreateSpace and can only hope someone with a brain and a bit of intelligence sees sense…
Right, okay, I have taken the following steps to get past your system’s absolutely irrational dislike of ALL CAPs in titles and your insistence on a nonsensical rule plucked from the air that any text on a book cover constitutes the title of the book.
If these changes are not acceptable, I will have to take my creative work to one of the other POD companies. I really do want to use the services of CreateSpace rather than go forward with my work only having bad things to say about a brief experience with the company.
1) Although ‘a barking mad novel about goths, gays and students gallivanting’ is not a subtitle for the book but rather a descriptive on the front cover to avoid people buying it thinking they’re getting a book about dogs, rather than one in which the labrador is a thematic component of a novel, I have input the text into your online system as being the subtitle. It isn’t but if it gets me past your algorithms and doesn’t creatively compromise my book, great.
2) The title and subtitle would never fit in the headers of the book. I have used author name and book title.
3) My novel is called WOOF! whether you like it or not in all caps. So, on your system it is listed with only one capital letter – like thus, Woof! – but in the book itself it is WOOF! on the title page and headers.
The fact that I have had to undertake these manoeuvrings is nothing short of bizarre but at least I don’t think they compromise the finished creative product in any way. If you still come back to me with the insistence that I basically either change the title of my book or produce a different cover, I’m done and will never have a good word to say about CreateSpace from this day forth. It is worth reminding you that authors are the most likely people to go online and post their complaints about companies they’ve had (or tried to have) dealings with, and a bad rep is easy to acquire but much harder to overcome.
Do please let me know if the above is satisfactory and, if it is, we can proceed. If it isn’t, I reiterate that I wish to speak to someone senior at CreativeSpace who will have to explain to me why irrational pedantry is considered good corporate policy.
Many thanks.
I tell you, this kind of Kafka-esque shit is worthy of an entry in the WOOF! comedy universe in itself…
