How to move your books from CreateSpace to KDP Print

Moving all your books from Createspace to KDP Print is now as simple as following a five-minute process Amazon refers to as Verify > Link > Move.

In my earlier post announcing the news of Createspace merging with KDP Print, I mentioned that Amazon had promised us an easy way of moving all of our books at once. Well, I’m pleased to say that the company has delivered, letting me move all of my books at once in a matter of minutes!

So, here is a detailed guide of how to move your books from CreateSpace to KDP Print (luckily, I took screenshots as I was racing through the process).

1. Log Into Createspace

When I logged into Createspace, I got a prompt to move my books to KDP Print. Being the risk taker that I am (ha ha), I clicked on it right after grabbing a screenshot for you.

How to import Createspace books into KDP Print | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's book

KDP Print describes the 3 steps as Verify > Link > Move but in truth you enter straight into step 2 if you follow this route. You end up on a page which will guide you through the other two steps, with Step 1 shown as completed:

How to import Createspace books into KDP Print | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's book

2. Log into KDP Print

Step 2 is pretty much as simple as clicking “Log in” to log into your KDP account. You enter your login details and are taken back to the previous screen, with a nice green tick confirming that the two accounts have now been linked to each other. You are also asked to move your books by clicking the big yellow button at the bottom of the page. I drew a deep breath and clicked on it.

How to import Createspace books into KDP Print | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's book

3. Move Your Books from Createspace to KDP Print

After watching a cute scribble animation for a couple of minutes(tops)…

How to import Createspace books into KDP Print | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's book

…I ended up on my Bookshelf. Success!

How to import Createspace books into KDP Print | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's book

4. Unlink/Link Books

However, you may have noticed in the above screenshot that the newly imported paperback edition of Musiville is missing its link to the Kindle eBook.

Yep, even though your books have now been moved to KDP Print, you still need a fourth step: link the print and Kindle editions, if this has not happened automatically. A missing link will result in you having two copies of the same book on your Bookshelf; one for Kindle and one for the paperback. This will have no impact on your book pages or the shop; it only influences how books are displayed on your Bookshelf. However, it did bug me, and I wanted the editions correctly linked.

After scratching my head for a few seconds, I realized that one possible reason for a duplicate listing occurring is an earlier attempt at creating a paperback. Even if you had left this lingering as a draft, KDP will remember and won’t let you link the imported edition until you have unlinked the previous one. This is not the only reason, though, as I also had two of my books inexplicably unlinked after importing. Thankfully, both situations are easy enough to remedy.

For Musiville, I first needed to go to my existing book and unlink the Draft paperback I had created in the past.

How to import Createspace books into KDP Print | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's book

I was asked to verify my decision, which was as simple as clicking OK.

How to import Createspace books into KDP Print | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's bookAfter that, I was able to link the new edition with the existing one. I had to do this for a couple of my titles, as you can see below, but the process didn’t take more than an extra 5 minutes or so.

How to import Createspace books into KDP Print | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's book

The only book I had trouble with was my Greek translation of the Tao Te Ching. I was wondering how Amazon would handle this, as Greek is not yet supported by Kindle. My worst fear was that it would get stuck on Createspace, where it would forever linger in some weird book-purgatory status. Thankfully, I needn’t have worried. The book was imported into KDP Print along with the rest of them, but put on hold; presumably until KIndle supports Greek.

How to import Createspace books into KDP Print | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's book

So, it looks like this is what we have all been waiting for: Amazon to create an easy, fast way to import all of your books from Createspace into KDP Print at once!

Update

My author friend, Effrosyni Moschoudi, had this to add:

“Only 1 category was showing so I added a second one. I could also add two more keywords as only 5 were on there. And I had to change the option to worldwide rights/distribution as only some territories had been picked. For each book, launch the previewer, and if the content is different, upload the book again. Best to do it ourselves before it has to be done automatically in big batches. I expect the customer service will be inundated if there are problems. So best we do it now on our own.”