One of the decisions which one faces as a self published author is whether to use the services of a self publishing company or, alternatively to do everything (or most things) oneself. I am currently mulling over this question. My collection of short stories, The First Time was published using the services of a self publishing company. For a little under £400 the company formatted my manuscript, sent the book to various ebook retailers and designed a book cover.

Using the services of the company relieved me of the chore of having to format the book for the various retailers which would, I imagine have taken up a considerable chunk of my time. Again I lack the necessary expertise to design a book cover. However £400 is a considerable chunk of money especially when one considers that it is possible to format your own manuscript and send it to ebook retailers completely free of charge. I am in the process of writing another book, Samantha and I’m considering doing the formatting and distribution myself this time around. I know that this will entail formatting the manuscript to comply with the requirements of the various retailers, however so far as I have been able to ascertain most distributors provide their titles in epub format and Amazon does, for example format the manuscript on the author’s behalf (this does not relieve the writer of the obligation to check for typographical errors etc prior to submitting their work).

If I go down the do-it-yourself route for Samantha I’m still left with the issue of whether to pay someone to design a cover. Amazon and other ebook retailers will provide a generic cover for your book (if you don’t supply your own) and this would mean that my book could be published free of charge. However although you should not judge a book by it’s cover the fact is that an eye catching cover can assist in attracting the attention of purchasers so, on this basis I may pay for the design of a cover.

I would be interested to hear your views.