Maybe it's the holiday

Well, with my own multiple rounds of editing done on my novel, I don't have much to do at present while I await my fabulous volunteer editors to send me feedback. As such, I decided to try and make some progress on other areas of the self-publishing process, namely familiarizing myself with how exactly to publish an eBook, make a book available for print-on-demand (POD), cover art, a little publicity, etc.

Given my unpredictable work schedule and my lack of patience for technology when I can't seem to get it to work properly, I decided it might be a good idea to pay somebody to do some of this stuff for me. In particular, I'm pretty sure I have no idea what constitutes good cover art. I can barely dress myself in matching colors every morning, let alone design something visually pleasing for an entire demographic. So I looked around, but the easiest services seemed to be with CreateSpace, given that I'll be targeting Amazon mostly with my first go. I don't know how they compare price-wise and I haven't been able to find too many reviews on the quality of their work. I'm hoping to document some of my experiences just so other people navigating their services might benefit from knowing what to expect.

So, I went on the CreateSpace website, which was pretty easy to navigate, and I started looking at what they offer. They provide services in various categories from marketing to editing and other miscellaneous tidbits, so I compiled a list of what I was most interested in. A few areas indicated you can get favorable pricing if you bundle services, so I then hopped on over to their "contact us!" link and composed my inquiry. I explained a bit about my book (genre, small synopsis, etc) and listed the services I was interested in.

The next morning, I received an email from a CreateSpace Publishing Associate thanking me for my interest and attempting to put me in contact with a Publishing Consultant that would work with me to determine which package would be best for my needs. The Associate also left me a voicemail on the phone number I provided with pretty much the same information. This was Tuesday, the day before the 4th of July. I didn't get any contact from the Publishing Consultant that day, so on my day off on Wednesday, I sent her a quick email to see how we could coordinate a phone consultation (obviously not anticipating a same-day response due to the holiday).

Well, it's now Saturday. They work M-F 9-5 EST. I haven't heard anything back since that initial email. My guess is that the Consultant I was paired with is probably out for the week on vacation for the 4th of July holiday. It's just odd that for a big company like Amazon they wouldn't have to put up an email auto-responder if they are out of the office. My plan is to give it til this coming Tuesday before I get fussy (I can give it a day for someone to catch up on emails after being out of the office).

Sadly I don't really have anything else to report. Looking forward to getting the ball rolling. If CreateSpace doesn't pan out and anyone knows of anything comparable, at the very least for book cover & formatting services, please let me know!