As an author I entered the world of self publishing like a naïve young virgin with little (if any) idea of the big bad world. I self published my first book “The Girl At The Bus Stop” on Amazon with only very minor difficulties and, best of all it cost me £0 to do so! However I am still waiting for what should have been my first published book of short stories, “The First Time” to be published as an e-book. Unlike “The Girl At The Bus Stop” I chose to use the services of an outfit specialising in assisting authors who wish to self publish when publishing “The First Time”. Their website states that books should appear within 6-8 weeks and be sent to approximately 200 e-book publishers for distribution. It is now around 1 month since I signed up with this company and as of today (19 November) I am still waiting for the book cover which I paid extra for to be e-mailed to me for approval. I’m beginning to wish that I’d gone down the road of using Amazon’s self publishing feature for both books not just “The Girl At The Bus Stop”.

I paid just under £400 for the privilege of having my book cover designed, the book formatted in order to make it suitable for e-readers and for the file to be sent to around 200 e-book publishers. I am, as I say beginning to question whether this was money well spent.

I would be very interested to hear the views of others.