I’m glad to say I’ve finally got this done. I’ve been periodically clicking the “migrate your books from Createspace” link over on KDP, only to find that while it took me to the correct account, it persistently refused to actually verify that account.
I also tried logging on to Createspace, waiting for a popup window to materialize to allow me to do it from the other direction. That didn’t happen either.
I was worried that whatever system they’d written did not work for me and I would have to wait for the mass migration and take my chances.
However, entirely without me doing anything, today I logged into Createspace again and there the popup window was. I followed the instructions and it went ahead without a hitch. Which suggests to me that they just hadn’t got round to my region yet, and I should have had patience.
The actual process itself does not link your paperback to the ebook version of the novel. You have to do that manually. Go to your paperback and click “Link existing ebook.” If your ebook has the same title as your paperback, it will show up in the results box. Then you click on it and lo and behold, the two versions are linked.
I had a slight problem because–out of curiosity, and once or twice just out of absent-mindedness–I had started to create KDP paperbacks of books I already had in paperback on Createspace. These unfinished, draft KDP paperbacks were already linked to the ebooks, meaning that the finished and perfected Createspace paperbacks could not be linked.
The solution to that turned out to be to go to the KDP paperback details and click “De-link this book.” After which you could go to the ex-Createspace paperback and go through the “Link existing ebook,” process.
Before I transferred over, I also turned some of my Createspace paperbacks off distribution. They were transferred over as drafts, and as they are the Alex Beecroft versions of books I will be re-issuing under the new pen names, I am keeping them as drafts. I’ll replace them with an Alex Oliver version as soon as I can manage it.
Altogether, relatively painless when it does happen, but if it hasn’t happened for you yet I don’t think there’s anything you can do to hurry it up.