As a writer who is doing self-publishing, my answer is to do it myself. I have significant experience with both editing and design, so I felt completely comfortable doing the work myself. If you don't think you're up to the task, you can always pay someone else. I've published through lulu.com and createspace.com, and both offer editing and design services. It's not cheap, but not terribly expensive either, and if you're not confident in editing your own work or coming up with your own design, it can definitely be worth it. I've seen plenty of self-published books where the author clearly should have taken advantage of these services.

On a quick look at Hugh Howey's cover design, I can't tell whether it's professional work or he did it himself, and the preview amazon provides does not include any copyright notice or artwork credit indicating it's his own work or someone else's. I don't like the cover design, and from the snips I read, I don't care for the writing style. It just doesn't grab me. YMMV.

I did two different covers for my book, one for the ebook, and one for the printed book, due to odd licensing issues I won't describe here. I personally prefer the second design (print version) to the first (ebook). Interestingly, cover preference on my book seems to be split on gender lines. Women generally prefer the unicorn leaping through a portal version, while men prefer the staring eyeball version. See for yourself here: ebook (first design) and paperback (second design)

Yeah, I would like the marketing effort a big publishing house can provide, but for first-time authors, they rarely risk much effort to promote them. It's a complete crapshoot, unless you have a friend on the inside (or a very good agent) with some influence, which I don't. In my situation, it's kind of a wash. For subsequent books, I can show sales figures and reader reviews for this one to support a pitch to a publisher. And who knows, if this one actually takes off (I have better chances winning the lottery, I know), I can ignore the big publishing houses altogether and keep a much bigger slice of the pie than they typically offer. I have a real job that pays pretty good, so I can afford to play it this way. Thank you for having a look at my book, if you do end up liking it, or you think of someone else you think will enjoy it, let them know.

One thing I wanted to mention in my previous post was that the eBook price for the HP books is higher than the print price. Really, WTF is up with that? Why do the big publishers think this is a good idea? It makes no sense. We already have all the HP books in either paperback or hardcover, and we also have multiple eBook capable devices, but we're not going to pay that much extra to get the eBook version, even though it's my preferred reading medium. Oh, well, I guess that's only one lost sale to them. There's probably plenty of other more avid fans of the series who are willing to pay up, but I'm seeing a lot of complaints about the high price they want. DRM free is win, but the high price is lose.

That actually made me crack a smile. Thanks.

This is exactly the reason I released my book without DRM. Also set the price at $2.99 because that seemed to be the most popular price point. Still isn't helping sales any, but I figure that's because few people know about it. I guess I could point people to it from slashdot: Cerberon on facebook click about for complete list of eBook availability.

Goodbye semi-anonymity for Ira Sponsible.

This is one of the main reasons I gave up on windows. No multiple desktops out of the box? Seriously? It's a basic feature of any modern desktop OS. Having to search for a good utility to add this capability to windows was among the many reasons it was much easier to switch to linux than to keep putting up with it. I didn't read the first post above as a troll. It's actually a reasonable question. Is there any real reason you would rather add basic functionality to an incomplete OS, such as vital programs, utilities, or games that won't work on anything else? If not, it's really worth considering giving it up altogether and using something that suits your needs better. For myself, I still have windows on my system, but I only boot to it on the rare occasions when I must sync to iTunes, or palm desktop, or run the current version of photoshop, none of which perform adequately (or at all) under WINE. Other than that, I don't miss windows at all.

The Butterfly Effect is named for the well-known fact that Chuck Norris kicking a butterfly in Asia will cause a whirlwind of pain in North America.

The phone is pretty awesome. Touchscreen android with physical qwerty keyboard, small form factor. Think of a souped up sidekick. Two complaints about the hardware: Very hard to find a case for a square phone, and no tab key makes it difficult to write. (Fortunately Jota text editor lets me put a tab button on the menu bar, basically fixing this complaint.) But the absolutely worst thing about the phone is that it's tied to AT&T's monumentally shitty service. If any other carrier had this phone AND I got the same discount on the bill, I would have gone with them instead. God AT&T sucks. No, I'm sorry, that's an understatement. I can't find the words to say how much AT&T sucks, but over 90% of my use of the thing doesn't require AT&T's so-called service, so the AT&T suck doesn't ruin the phone for me.

This laptop came to me with Vista, and was nigh unusable. Upgraded to Ubuntu, which vastly improved every aspect of my user experience. Now every time I have to touch a windows infected system, I can't help groaning from all the fail I have to suffer through to get anything done. (Especially when I have to connect our iPod or iPad to iTunes. Vista + iTunes must be that special level of Hell reserved for child molesters and people who talk in the theater.)

I was thinking something along the lines of carborundum or artificial corundum, either of which would make very durable disks.

Chuck also dug up the Oak Island treasure with a runcible spoon. If that ain't geek, I don't know what is.