To those writers, like myself, who don’t have the patience, money, influence, connections, time, or intestinal fortitude to bang their heads against the doors of agents and publishers to get their work “out there,” I would like to advise they do not give the money they have earned doing work they have not enjoyed to a self-publishing company. From my experience, you will not receive the help you are promised. You will do just as well publishing through Amazon for nothing, or next to nothing if you pay for a photo to use for your book cover. There may be some people who have had a different experience with self-publishing companies, but I am unfamilair with anyone.
I actually did quite a bit of research into self-publishing companies, comparing their quoted services, reviews, and claims for helping authors, and contracted with Dog Ear Publishing in 2014 to publish my first novel, Cliodhna’s Wave. Dog Ear Publishing has since gone out of business and, because of my relationship with them and their handling of my manuscript, I have run into an unbelievable and aggravating number of problems, one of which I am currently trying to rectify by retyping the entire book and, once retyped, uploading it again to Amazon. As of the writing of this post, I have finished retyping Part I. I imagine with all of my duties being a homeowner, and a normal middle class person, it will take at least until the end of summer to finish retyping the manuscript.
I would request if you had been wanting to read Cliodhna’s Wave, wait a little longer until it is republished. I will announce when Cliodhna’s Wave has been republished.
(I would remove it from Amazon, however, I found that I am unable to do that because it has been assigned an ISBN number. Since I’m the author, it doesn’t make sense to me that I cannot remove my listing since I do not feel it is good enough to be purchased now, but, that’s the way it is. Since my books are not exactly, hot sellers, though, it’s not worth the time, effort, and frustration trying to fight the issue.)