The Self Publisher's Ultimate Resource Guide is less than ultimate

I received a review copy of The Self-Publisher’s Ultimate Resource Guide in an exchange for an honest review.

This is essentially a master list of some of the top service providers and resources for authors. Some of them are relevant for new traditionally published authors as well. The lists are good and helpful as a very basic starting place for research. The sections are reasonably chosen and organized.

There are two reasons that this book doesn’t get an enthusiastic review from me. First, the descriptions of the services are vague and uninformative. Often the listing simply states the claims of the provider without giving any independent confirmation of quality and bang-for-buck.  As a self-publisher who has already published several books, I can see how the early sections of the book sum up information that I already know. I had to learn all this on my own through simple research but what I know from my research is far more than is contained in this book. But when I picture a newbie coming to these lists, I don’t see how the lists would save more than a little time.  

Because the listings are vague, the newbie will still have to do exhaustive hours of research to determine which of the providers is makes sense for their circumstances. I found the information on these lists within an hour or two as a newbie. I spent months researching which providers to use. If the experienced authors of this book had provided some more detailed information about the various providers, including things that many of us know simply because we have enough experience to have learned the difference between Smashwords and Draft2Digital, the guide would be much more useful to the newbie.

 That alone would have knocked this book down a bit in my rating. It gets knocked down further because of the price. I’m sorry but with the going prices of ebooks these days, charging $7.99 for a “book” of lists that is only 180 pages borders on exploitation of the new and inexperienced. I gave the book three stars on Amazon. give three stars to books I buy that I don’t find entirely useless but wish I hadn’t spent that amount of money on. Had I paid $7.99 for this book I would have been disappointed and disgruntled.  

That said, if you have the money this book would save a little time if you are still in the very early stages of research. It is a handy summary for those who are more experienced and simply want easy links to everything all in one place.