Self Publishing in Canada
Self Publishing in Canada is not the same as Self Publishing in the USA. Unfortunately, not many of the books out there on the subject address these issues. We’ve identified many of the differences, and things to watch out for if you’re north of the border.
Here are some of the main issues to be aware of:
- ISBN’s in Canada are free. This is great – but it does mean when an author services company is “adding a $150 value” to your publishing package by giving you a “free” ISBN, that’s not actually a savings if you’re from Canada.
- Lightning Source is a great “print on demand” company to work with to get affordable, good quality books from, but they are located in the USA and only ship by courier internationally. That translates to at least $2 per book shipping charge on top of the print costs. Not necessarily a deal breaker, but definitely need to be budgeted for. And frustrating, when you compare it to the maybe 0.30 you’d pay if you were in the US.
- No Media Mail in Canada. In the US, there’s a special rate for shipping books and printed materials. We don’t have that, and books are heavy. Again, we pay a steep price for our shipping costs.
- As of the time of writing this, you can’t sign up to sell your content on Amazon Kindle unless you can provide them with a US bank account.
- Amazon.ca and Amazon.com are two different companies. It’s much more difficult to get your book listed on Amazon.ca, and they’ve now restricted ordering so that if you are in Canada, you have to pay full shipping if you order from Amazon.com.