self publishers

I'm not sure what constitutes a self-publishing group, but the question to ask for anything like this is: What can they offer me that I can't do myself?

I'd go direct with Amazon KDP, Createspace, and maybe use a distributor like Smashwords or D2D for all the other channels. But that's just me; what works for me may not work for everyone.

The main thing to avoid is paying chunk of money to anyone who promises to "help" you self-publish.

Steve, I looked briefly at Fresh Ink and almost fainted at the price. That said, with editing, I did spend about the same amount of money. But I love choosing my cover designer, and editor. I did the formatting myself. For the ebook, I used the free book from Smashwords to guide me through the process, it wasn't that hard. And for the print version, I used bookdesigntemplates.com.

My point is if you want to you can do all that stuff yourself. But if you don't want to do that, then my advice is check out the books they have produced. Look at several do you like the covers? Find them on amazon, how are the reviews? Do they get any complaints about editing? In my mind even one is too many.

If you like the covers, and the books are NOT getting any bad reviews for editing issues, then you would likely be okay to go with them.

Fresh Ink thread: http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=282186

Page thread: http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=260642

Fresh Ink looks subpar to me. Page Publishing seems more reasonable if you are a complete technophobe but I would have a ton of questions about how one can leave the service if you're unhappy, and I don't care for the vast majority of their covers.

I think the better path for self-pubbing is to upload direct to Amazon and other vendors yourself. Formatting is learnable. Cover art and editing can generally be had at more affordable prices than any of these services offer. The ancillary services like marketing, PR and such from all such services tend to offer little value for their cost and are to be avoided even if you decide to go that route for the publishing.

So Fresh Ink charges a minimum of $1500 and then takes 30% of cover in perpetuity as well? And then I looked at Amazon to see what you get. Hell to the no.

$1500 might be an okay price for art and formatting for digital and POD. You could probably shave it down a bit from there. But regardless you want to upload it yourself under your name and not being paying anyone ongoing fees.

Self publishing should involve you publishing your book yourself, not paying someone else to do it for you. If you also have to then let them take a cut of the income, something is wrong.

Do it yourself. Don't use these "services".

It can seem intimidating but if you break it into stages it is not so bad.
1) Editing/copyediting (as needed)
2) Coverart (ebook and POD format)
3) Formatting
4) Uploading to vendors

There are people here who can give recommendations for each stage.

For formatting, I am a HUGE fan of the Lyx program. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LyX) It took me around a month of full time work to really figure out how to use it. I asked a lot of questions online and did a lot of research during that learning period. There is still a lot about it I don't know.
BUT
It produces very beautiful, professional looking documents (Books, papers, letters, etc...). And it's free. And it has a pretty strong user base that can help you with questions that you will come up with. Here's a helpful pdf (http://www.dr-adel.com/pdf/lyx-book.pdf)
If you go with Lyx, message me with any questions you might have.

If you pay for print formatting, make sure the person you hire uses a professional page layout program such as InDesign or Quark and not Microsoft Word.

I have yet to see a "self-publishing company" offer anything of value to a writer looking to self-publish.

Agreed, Profen.

I would add that I've seen over a hundred books from such companies, and there were major problems with the publication of every single one.

So they want at least $1,500 AND 30% of your sales in perpetuity? Walk away. If you have to pay the publisher they are a vanity press, no matter what they call themselves, and there is nothing they could do for you that would be worth that price.

I self-published my last novel with Amazon. I paid a graphic artist $200 for my cover and a freelance editor about $300. Everything else was done by me. The novel has done well and there haven't been any complaints about its quality so far.

There is absolutely no reason you should have to pay such a ridiculous price to have your book published.

I think Page needs someone to look over their titles.

That's an...unfortunate title.

You mean it's not an Austin Powers spinoff?