I posted a few weeks ago about the process of setting up the book on CreateSpace.com.
It took a little longer than I thought to make the book available, but that was due to time constraints on my part and not CreateSpace. When I initially submitted the book for review, they got back to me in a couple of days. Then I spent some more time proofreading the book and making small changes. Ultimately, I uploaded the interior text again.
Once they approved the book a second time, I needed to order a "Proof" copy to make the book available. The proof copy cost less than four dollars and then about four dollars to ship. You may want to consider ordering more than one copy to make the shipping costs a little more efficient. The copies will have "Proof" written on the last page or so, but it is a relatively inexpensive way to get copies of your book.
Of course, the down side of ordering a proof copy is that if you make any changes, you have to order another proof. It's a minimal cost, but it is a cost. So you want to be sure you book is completely edited and ready to go. Now that I think about it, if you were planning on printing out your book on your printer and looking through it that way, it might actually be cheaper to have them send you a proof copy.
It took several days for them to ship the book to me, because I didn't want to pay for faster shipping. Once I received the book and looked through it, I was able to log back into CreateSpace.com and approve my proof copy. The book went "live" on CreateSpace almost immediately.
Since this is an e-publishing blog, I will "Fess up" to an error I made in the cover design. My "Smoking eyes" cover design has a black background, so I chose a black background for the book as well. However, the black background is slightly different from the picture I imported, so it doesn't look quite like I envisioned. (You can see the box around the picture with the eyes.) Other than that, I thought the cover looked spectacular.
While they toys were still in the attic, I wanted to have Jack say, "We're all broken here." (It's a Lewis Carroll reference.)
But these are really minor things compared to the joy of holding your book in your hands -- especially when we started this particular book in 1992!
Happy Thanksgiving!