This largest hurdle to overcome in self publishing is marketing.  Most authors must promote their own books in order to sell them.  Some people believe they can just place their book on Amazon and it will sell, this is mostly untrue.  If you use Createspace your book is placed on Amazon automatically and for the most part you will direct your customers to purchase there.  I would not discourage anyone from placing their book on Amazon as they have a huge retail base, however, if you are directing most of your retail sales you will have to pay a percentage of your profits to Amazon.  If you direct your sales to our bookstore there is no cost over the production costs involved in printing the book.  Most of our authors also have their books on Amazon we can drop ship to their distribution locations for you.  They do this because our print quality is higher than Createspace.  This would be our strongest selling point, we have a superior print quality and we do not charge a percentage of profits for our sales.