I told you recently about my quest to get print editions of my new indie-published titles listed on the Chapters/Indigo website. Part of the solution was to make those titles available through another print-on-demand portal. I was using Createspace, but now have made the True Love Brides available through LightningSource as well. This is a new edition, with a different ISBN#, but otherwise the books are the same.

The finished books don’t look that different from each other. The Createspace editions are on the left and the LightningSource ones on the right. (The Highlander’s Curse DOES look different but it’s not a fair comparison. My last copy from Createspace has the glossy cover but it’s now matte, and the LightningSource cover is matte. The photograph looks really different because the finish reflects the light differently.)

There are slight variations – The Warrior’s Prize is a little darker on the right book, and The Renegade’s Heart is a little more yellow, but this is within the tolerance of different print runs. They look pretty much the same.They do feel a bit different, though, and that’s because of the paper. The paper used by LightningSource is thinner, and I like the thicker Createspace paper better. I also like the Createspace cover stock better. Here are the LightningSource editions on the right and the Createspace ones on the left – see how that little bit of difference adds up over 300 pages per book! There is one other difference that had to happen for the books to be stocked at Chapters/Indigo – they had to have the retail prices printed on the back cover. Here you can see the LightningSource cover on the left and the Createspace one on the right.

When you use the cream coloured paper for the interior pages at Createspace, it makes the spine wider because the paper is thicker. I hear through the grapevine that the cream paper through LightningSource is the same thickness as the white paper from Createspace. I’m giving that a try with the three Dragonfire books currently in production at LightningSource and will show you how that comes out. They’ll also have glossy covers, just like those Dragonfire books do from Createspace.

The first three True Love Brides books are already listed for sale at Chapters/Indigo and there have been some orders filled already. I’m curious to see whether any other booksellers make these editions available. Time will tell!

The Crusader’s Bride will be my first title to be published simultaneously at both Createspace and LightningSource. Those books are both in production now.