One of the advantages of publishing a book using the CreateSpace POD service is that your title gets an automatic listing on Amazon.com.

And so it is with Lady Caine, which has just taken its place alongside the millions of other titles.

Many POD services promise that your book will be 'available' through Amazon. But what this often means is that it is listed on the standard industry databases - such as Bowker's Books in Print. Amazon may well pick it up from there. But it's likely to be shown by Amazon as 'special order', with a correspondingly slow delivery date. That's likely to put off some potential buyers.

Being part of Amazon, CreateSpace goes further than that. Not only is the title shown as 'in stock', it may also appear in 'People who bought X also bought Lady Caine' links shown on pages for other books. And it's available for Listmania lists. In other words, to Amazon.com customers, your self-published title appears identical to any other book.

The only major drawback to CreateSpace is that it's entirely US-oriented. The title does not appear in other Amazon stores, such as Amazon.co.uk. It would be good to see them fix that.

Naturally, you make less money from these retail sales, via Amazon, than you would from sales you've driven directly to CreateSpace. But at least - for orders from outside the US - the books are shipped at Amazon's reasonable rates, rather than CreateSpace's ludicrous tariffs.